Mutant relation and Game performance Thread - MISERY mod for S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat

Jasper and I puked around and stumble on something interesting. The mutants interactions in game are taking up considerable amount of processing power.

When I set the mutant relations completely neutral to each other (every mutant attacks only humans), the game performance increased considerably. Jasper is working on a version where mutants only interact with one or 2 other species which will create realistic food chain but also increase the performance.

Complete neutral mutants will populate the zone and will not die until shot by NPC or player, which can create some very dangerous battle for players. Reduced interaction will focus on realistic food chain, but also increase the hostility towards human players, which can create some serious actions.

So what do you guys think, 2.2 is coming out soon and the team is looking forward to see if this idea will bring enough attention to be put into work queue.

Sounds great, well done guys! Out of curiosity when is the greatly anticipated 2.2 being released? Cheers!

Only the stalker gods know ... until then try both of these alternatives out and see which you prefer: neutral Dropbox.com (must be renamed game_relations) or minimal Dropbox.com (can just be copy and pasted here C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Stalker Call of Pripyat\gamedata\configs\creatures Don't forget to backup original file in case you want to stay with 2.1.1 original levels. You DO NOT need to start a new game.

Complete neutral mutants with heavy fog combo = hell

I don't have enough courage just to step out of the base now.

You'll have to just start eating only mutant meat so you don't smell so human ...

I must say since I have been using complete neutral tweak, the mutants seems stronger than ever.

Just one trip in Pripyat I have found all the factions, all dead, including monoliths. Duty, freedom, stalker, mercs and monoliths bodies everywhere piling up on top of mutants, and still more blood sucker roaming around. I have witnessed first hand how 4 blood suckers flush out a squad of monolith from hospital, I manage to wait until monoliths are dead then take out blood suckers. Didn't got a chance to loot because more mutants are joining soon after.

I have been testing the flesh and boar spawn in Zaton, sniping them on top of the ship with KSVK. I have noticed they spawn right away when the first group is dead, no real delay between the spawning of mutants. I am lead to believe mutants spawn much faster than NPCs, which create some imbalance in game when we tweaked them to be complete neutral.

Interesting idea

As DeseartEagleV says, with no mutants picking each other off, they all stay at maximum strength and the humans hardly stand a chance. I always did enjoy running into mutants chasing each other, it gives the game a lot of life and makes them easier to deal with. But a big performance increase would certainly be nice.

I'll try the mutants-neutral mod and see how much faster it runs, and how it affects the game. I'll also post my results soon

Edited by: beanydood

The performance boost is quite noticeable. It's really a matter of if being completely neutral breaks game for your style of play or if you prefer a little more immersion at a smaller cost to performance. We appreciate your feedback.

Yes the complete neutral gives quite a boost on FPS. I have gained at least 10 to 20 fps with the tweak. Perma heavy fog will also increase fps big time, it will cut off everything behind 30 to 40 yards away. For lower end rig they can get max fps out of the game with heavy fog.

But seriously the game difficulty become unreal at some spots. Mutants and players will run into each other, and everything happens within 5 to 10 yards.

If anyone else has tried these tweaks, we would love some feedback. Too hard, too easy, ideas for better pairs of mutants which are natural enemies (please elaborate why). If you have tried both, what were your observations?

on the one hand it would be most realistic if the mutants also fought each other, but performance and the zone being MISERABLE I agree in making mutants mostly neutral to each other. not 100% because I think considering mutant activity in your playstile (also according to what weapons you're using) is a important part of the play experience. we've all been standing on some rock, overloaded, radiated and hungry and watched the mutant situation in our path play out one way or another, deciding the next steps taken..

Is it possible to have an "attack" chain of command for Mutants?

for example if player/npc is attackable then priority for mutants x

if player/npc is unreachable then mutants x attack mutants y and mutants z will always try to attack player/npc nomatter what (bloodsuckers will just lurk around waiting for their chance)

some lowtier mutants should battle it out, cats vs dogs and dogs/cats vs boars & fleshs to some extend.



arent they cute strolling around hand in hand?

I tried to minimize interaction with mostly pairing like cats have level 1 enemies of dogs/pseudodogs and rats. level 2 (higher priority) all humans. So cats would fight dogs and rats (one above and below in food chain) but would choose to fight humans if presented with both opportunities. Only the very highest (Chimera. Gigant, etc.) don't have something higher in food chain and prefer to chase humans the most. My line of thinking is as the only non-mutated animals in the zone we smell offensive and seem to be 'unnatural' to all the mutants and so are enemy #1. I'm not sure if there is a way to have them ignore humans who are unreachable or not. If you use notepad++ to examine the game_relations file you can compare how I set it up vs. the Misery default. Level 1 is enemy, 2 is worst enemy, and zero is neutral.

The idea seems fantastic! I vote for minimal interaction.

Would it be possible to let the user decide it whilst the installationprocess?

I've voted for "Minimum interaction to each other (Increased performance)".

No interaction at all doesen't feel right to me...

This is an unofficial tweak that is quite easy to tailor to your own vision of the Zone. Use a program like notepad++ to open the game_relations file. There is a chart for the mutants and values 0 for neutral 1 for enemy, 2 for worst enemy. You could also start with one of the 2 versions above and edit from there. If we receive strong feedback and performance reviews we can ask for it to be the Misery default. It is a simple to try as making a copy of C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Stalker Call of Pripyat\gamedata\configs\creatures\game_relations.ltx (I renamed mine game_relationsoriginal) and copying one of the above files into the same directory overwriting. Should we receive enough feedback about the files, not the idea, it could be included in a future installer.

I for one am hoping that there will atleast be option to modify the file so that one can still use current mutant behaviour. Maybe some guide/directions how/what to modify to keep the 2.1 mutant relations in 2.2.

I would actually like to see every mutant species hate eachother and battle it out, the mutant - mutant battles are fun part of the game and i love luring mutants to their enemies

As for the performance issues - my computer is 6 years old, and i still can get quite steady 60 fps at 1920x1200 resolution, yes i have lowered the settings to dx9 and done other tweaks aswell, but still the game looks quite good. I´d rather keep the current mutant relations than have better performance.

/edit: didnt see the last post by Jasper34 before writing this, there seems to be the guide about modifying relations, thanks.

Edited by: Miserator

Jasper34, is the game_relations file available on your profile reflective of the one alluded to in your 29-Jul-15 post above?

If so, have you received any feedback with regard to affect on gameplay (FPS, game stability and immersion)?

Thanks in advance for your feedback.

Oh, I know the effect. If watching flesh chase bloodsuckers in and endless loop or other stuff like that is the core of Misery immersion to you, you would miss that.

No stability problems, in fact less AI workload means better FPS and stability. Rename the original file something unique like game_relationsorig and paste it into the folder, try it out. I still left natural things like dogs hate cats, etc. Everything has as least one natural enemy in addition to humans. The more busy things get, like after you return from Pripyat the first time the more noticeable the performance boost is. You can easily revert at any time.

As to 2.2, no decision has been made yet on using that file or one similar to it. That will be done last minute during balancing, I expect.

Great to hear!

I will definitely be adding this to my play-through. Thanks again for your quick response.

I am always interested in feedback. If you think it is too much, think different mutants should be natural enemies, etc. please send me a PM. There are a lot of ways to go with it. Bottom line is mutants chasing each other is a huge portion of the total CPU/GPU workload. Any reduction directly leads to better performance and more processing head room.

Will do. Appreciate your dedication to the Misery community.

I love this mod, it's a pleasure to work with such a team and serve where I am able.

Good to see ppl finally coming to check this out. Been having fun with mutant relations before Xmas.

Their original behaviors force the PC to load extra contents, a lot of them. If you look around and find out how many line of scripts are dedicated to mutant movements and maneuvers you will realize the less aggressive (to each other)they are, the less contents the PC have to deal with. So the complete neutral really gives some decent boost, but unrealistic to some.

Interesting discussion.

For me personally, I'd go in the complete opposite direction. I'd prefer more mutant interaction. Stuff like dogs and snorks dragging killed flesh corpses back to their lair is something you almost never see in Misery, if at all. I'm guessing this might have to do with mutants not really having a home base, but rather randomly roam around the map?

Mutants killing mutants is part of showing the whole "brutally dangerous zone" state of mind, for me. It gives the zone life, the mutants reason to be there, other than "more stuff for you to kill". If everything are just reduced to monsters with different stats, all trying to kill you, I feel the zone loses a lot of the charm. Realism is claimed as a big part of what Misery is trying to do, and mutant interaction is, for me, a big part of that realism, and something I'd like to see expanded more.

At the very least, if you go with reducing mutant interaction, could you make it an optional install?

Mutant lairs would be interesting and give you some places to navigate. The only one is the bloodsucker lair, which was always quite boring.

I have always found actually seeing mutants kill each other is rather rare. I see them chase each other forever but almost never stop and fight. Unless you are extremely patient, you don't get to observe it much in the wild either. Corpses only last an hour now, two hours for 2.2 because they cause too much of a workload otherwise.

You can tune the zone's mutant interactions to your own preference editing the same file. You can choose for each species what they are neutral to, dislike, and hate. Since the biggest performance complaint is stutter/lag making the mutant world more chaotic would be counter productive. If, after balancing, performance is as good or better than 2.1.1, I doubt much would be changed with mutant interaction. It would remain a viable fix for those with less robust systems to play with less negative performance impact. I love all the feedback, that's why I put the files out there for people to try rather than just guess about how it would be.

I would love to hear what players think would be the most natural food chain order. Everything being passive or attacking everything else being obvious non starters.