More believable uniforms for NPCs... Thread - S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Chernobyl mod for S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat

I've recently tried out a couple of mods that do an AWESOME job of strongly increasing the sense of immersion by changing the appearance of the equipment and gear that NPCs wear. The main method that they use to increase the sense of immersion is that they try to make the clothing and equipment look more real by basing it off of real life equipment.

The first is this one, Novaja Mutacija.

The second mod, using a lot of the same models that can be found in Novaja Mutacija, is Remake.

A great source of NPC replacements and their like can be found from the following two links...

Stalker-mods.clan.su

Stalker-mods.clan.su

My main concern is that if one is willing to make the NPCs appearance more believable is that one more step is taken, and that is to ensure that wearers of this equipment can be easily identified by the patches that they wear, so that their factional allegiance can be obtained visually.

Thank you for considering this!

I can say for certain that we won't do any visual overhauls of the mod. The variations pretty much stay close to vanilla design. Someone should make visual overhaul as an addon.

I'm happy to see that you also agree that it would be nice to have someone come out with new NPCs and uniforms as an addon, Alundaio.

I'm posting below some new and great looking uniforms for a modder's consideration:

Stalker-mods.clan.su

This next link is hard to judge what it supplies, as the Chrome translation is difficult to understand. I believe what this next pack of NPC models does, is that it supplies the NPCs and special characters from ferr-um's monumental Novaja Mutacija mod. Said mod supplies amazing new models to NPCs AND mutants. I think this link supplies just the NPCs. Not sure.

Stalker-mods.clan.su

There's also this great looking one for possible NPC replacements...

Stalker-mods.clan.su

Edited by: Kyle_K_ski

Loving your links, Kyle.

Edited by: Sir.Bufton-Tufton

From Foxtrot:

Loving your links, Kyle.

Hah-hah! You're most welcome - I'm very happy that you're getting so much enjoyment out of them.

Here's a page devoted to a bunch of VERY cool looking STALKER-inspired meshes for Garry's mod.

After experiencing a big chunk of some of the best NPC models in the Remake and Novaja Mutacija mods, I can say that I love the following the most:

(1.) No more ridiculously large feet. Seriously. I could never understand why every default pair of boots in the Zone were so ridiculously over-sized. Walking through mud is hard enough with normal sized boots on, so putting on a pair that's implausibly four sizes too big would make pulling one's feet out of the muck nearly impossible. All of the new meshes that I've seen have properly sized footwear.

(2.) The extra-realistic looking meshes make the Zone feel far more believable, more immersive, and a lot more scary than the default "sci-fi" look that most of the suits have. The NPCs look HUMAN. It's incredible the psychological impact on the player. When I now see NPCs wearing the more realistic gear encounter mutants, my ability to sympathize with them increases dramatically, as they look more fragile than the sci-fi uniforms. Ironically, when the more realistic looking NPCs start hunting me down, THEY scare me much more than the "alien" looking sci-fi look does. lol

Would you be generous and willing enough to bundle up your NPC replacement work and post it up as an Addon for Call of Chernobyl for the rest of us to enjoy as well? I've tried doing so myself, with no success. I don't know what I'm doing wrong exactly, even after investing a lot of hours reading online articles and videos on how it can be done. I'm hoping that if it wouldn't be too much trouble for you, you could share your successful efforts to ModDB's enormous STALKER community - is this doable? I'm fully confident that a huge chunk of the fans would LOVE to finally use these meshes in Call of Chernobyl.

I fully understand your concerns about being able to "easily" identify whether or not an NPC is a friend or a foe. To me, one of the problems with all of the games is just how quickly the enemy AI is able to identify friend from foe - they're much too good at it while I'm much too lousy at it. For myself, this has been an issue since Shadow of Chernobyl. Even in the default titles, there isn't much unit distinction in the STALKER series than a little bit of paint and an arm patch.

If you are able to upload your NPC work as an Addon, do you also know how to alter textures? What would be ideal, if possible, is to make it look like someone used cheap acrylic paint to quickly apply a series of 10 cm. tall stripes that wrap around the head at eye level, a stripe across the pectorals, a stripe (with the usual patch) on each deltoid, a stripe around the middle of the biceps and finally a stripe around the middle of each forearm. Members of the Duty faction would have all of these stripes be painted red, while the colors for Freedom would be bright green, Clear Sky would have sky blue, and Loners could be a medium gray. Bandits, of course, would have no colors declared.

Whether or not these texture changes can be made is not a "Top Importance" concern to me. Getting much better meshes/textures into the game, in general, is, and hopefully is something that can be made a reality for the community.

Yours,

Kyle

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POSSIBLE working WITH Call of Chernobyl replacement-and-reality-based NPC meshes HERE.

The meshes can be downloaded directly from here.

I have some concern, as the translation program has done a pretty poor job of interpreting the Russian text into English. I'm hoping that someone with some Russian language skills can check the file's webpage out, and clarify if what I'm reading is accurate.

I'm not sure that the mod will work properly with ONLY the NPC meshes installed. It MIGHT require a patch for the Addon as well. I'm not sure. This COULD be the patch here.

If someone can do a better job of translating the Russian text, please let me know if I'm correct on this. If so, I'll rewrite this post so that the understanding of what these files do is better understood.

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I downloaded that mod and it looks awesome, just drop in gamedata, no further actions required. I took some screenshots.

Media.moddb.com
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It works for NPCs and also the actor.

Mod is up and running - Moddb.com .

Mod is down and deleted lol, it seems that the stalker clan version was not authorized by the author.

Awwww! That's too bad.

Hope there's a remedy for it. I find it odd that it was considered to be a "rogue" mod, as it's been posted on that site for a week already. Is it that they just don't want it posted on ModDb, or...?

I consider myself VERY lucky to have downloaded it from the Stalker-clan.ru site last night.

Did it need a patch?

No, it is great.

It improves a lot, definetely a keeper in my setup

Yes i haven't understood it very well but patience, author contacted me and i of course deleted it.

So, there's a possibility that the author of the mod will post it on ModDB? Or at the least keep hosting it at Stalker-clan.ru...?

I can't check that site right now. I hope, that at the minimum, that they'll keep it hosted there for future downloads.

The mod is still there at stalker clan, i dont think they will delete it, but who knows for sure. It seems that it is still wip, ok but i dont understand what is the mod doing at stalker clan if it is still wip, how could they have it ? lol

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Yeah, those models in your screenshots look GREAT in-game.

I'm hoping that Real Life gives me a break to finally install and try all of this amazing content. As much as I love the default STALKER games, the new models and textures just raise the sensation of absolute dread to a whole new level. It's hard for me to consider going back to the default assets again.

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It looks like Ninja_Nub[NOR] made his awesome, amazing, tremendous, stunningly fantastic NPC meshes available on ModDB here.

Those screenshots have made me drool on my keyboard, to short out my computer system! Oh yeah, the quality is topnotch. Astounding.

And, as challenging as it is to believe, these meshes are still works in progress. They look so polished already.

Call of Chernobyl has brought out The Best work from everyone. Thank you Ninja_Nub! I'm in Zone heaven!

Woot!

:-D

Edited by: Kyle_K_ski