[Misery 2.1] Stiivais' misc tweaks. Thread - MISERY mod for S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat

As usually, there are some aspects of the current balancing of the mod that i dislike, so i set out to alter the files and tweak the gameplay to my likings.

I will post my results here, but please keep in mind that i play as a sniper mostly and that some of the files will be of the specific class related files, which might adjust the balance slightly. One way is to change the parameters for all of the classes, but this can be a nearly impossible task for just one person.

However, i'd like to eventually create my own, custom class, that would be decent at using all of the weapons and would act as a middle ground between all of the available specializations, but such a feature is still pretty far from where i currently am, because i really don't feel inclined to rush anywhere...

ARMOR REWORK [v1] - 25.03.2014
Description:
This is a modification i made to balance out the deterioration rates and damage protection values of the various armored suits one can come across in the game. What i disliked the most about the current state of things was that the lower tier suits (the stalker novice suit along with the overcoats) were in noticeably lower condition even after short firefights compared to the other suits. This was because, compared to the other suits, their resistance to damage was 3-5 times lower, which actually made early game much harder, because you had to spend noticeable amount of money on repair kits for repairing armor that is not very good by itself and isn't worth such frequent repairs. Furthermore, the protection stats were also out of balance, because the heavy overcoat was better than freedom's light armor (along with the stalker suit (Sunrise bodysuit?)), the exo-skeleton made you a walking tank, however the scientific suits (SEVA vs Ecolog) had different resistance stats, as well as imbalanced protection values. Lastly, in my opinion the stamina drain was also unfair, as the scientific suit shouldn't penalize players that much, seeing as the armor is supposed to be maneuverable in the first place, to navigate the anomaly fields, in which one can only stay for relatively short periods of time (please note that the values were taken from the sniper game files, so there will be about 10-20% offset from balanced values if you play with another class, however this is not a big deal at all). Please let me know your experience with this simple tweak.
Download link:
DROPBOX

NPC VISION TWEAK [v1] - 4.04.2014
Description:
After the initial release of 2.1 people complained about how the A.I. had even better vision than in release 2.0, which is mostly true. Not only were the detection parameters set to values that made A.I. spot the player much faster, but also the total view distance was increased drastically, to compensate for the increased a-life switch_distance setting that could be increased because of the many performance optimizations done. The combination of both of these things lead to situations like being spotted and shot from 200m in the middle of the night. This tweak aims to change that, by changing all of the A.I. profiles for all skill presets, bringing the NPC's situational awareness back down to realistic values. Now, this won't make your game as easy as with the stealth fix i made for 2.0.x (the current values are roughly a mix between the 2.0.x values and those of the stealth fix), but it will definitely prevent some of the frustration you would encounter otherwise - the parameters that were changed the most were the ability to see in darkness, as well as the rates at which the A.I. detects the player, making them more consistent between the different skill levels (with a slight overall decrease, most noticeable for higher tier NPCs). This time, however, the accuracy wasn't changed, to keep the Misery experience as dangerous as it's supposed to be.
Download link:
DROPBOX

NPC VISION TWEAK + ACCURACY TWEAK [test1] - 4.04.2014
Description:
An experimental tweak, which should decrease the accuracy of NPCs slightly, thus allowing for firefights to last slightly longer, increasing player's odds of survival even if he initially doesn't notice from where he is being shot at. I am not sure about how well this functions, but the impact should be lesser than the accuracy fix for 2.0.x, because i wanted to balance the odizzido's "Weapons and ammo mod for misery 2.1", so that the NPCs wouldn't be made deadlier than they already were (because it appears to me that the damage output of most weapons was increased). So, this shouldn't make the game too easy, merely give you more chances to survive longer range engagements.
Download link:
DROPBOX

MUTANT BALANCE TWEAK [v1] - 4.04.2014
Description:
A small tweak that adresses some of the characteristics that make specific mutants overpowered in my opinion. Currently lowers the running speed for mutant dogs, pseudodogs and wild cats by roughly 5%-15% (yet does not change their jumping ability) and increases the distance at which the bloodsuckers become visible by about 50%, to give player more time to react (2-3 seconds, if the mutant is sprinting straight at you). Probably not recommended for hardcore gamers, as it makes the game noticeably easier.
Download link:
DROPBOX

more tweaks to come eventually...

Edited by: Stiivais

I was wondering if there was any point in paying more to get the sunrise suit instead of the heavy overcoat

Thanks for all your hard work, especially the texture pack

sloughfeg00017 wrote: I was wondering if there was any point in paying more to get the sunrise suit instead of the heavy overcoat

IIRC sunrise bodysuit offered better protection in regards to environmental hazards (which is what stalkers would need), whereas the heavy overcoat was more combat oriented (what bandits would need), but it indeed always felt kind of wrong to me, as combat is what you will be doing most of the time, and therefore a dedicated suit for artifact collection shouldn't be more expensive, compared to the combat one. The tweak attempts to balance this out, although they still remain specialized for their own tasks.

Stiivais wrote:

sloughfeg00017 wrote: I was wondering if there was any point in paying more to get the sunrise suit instead of the heavy overcoat

IIRC sunrise bodysuit offered better protection in regards to environmental hazards (which is what stalkers would need), whereas the heavy overcoat was more combat oriented (what bandits would need), but it indeed always felt kind of wrong to me, as combat is what you will be doing most of the time, and therefore a dedicated suit for artifact collection shouldn't be more expensive, compared to the combat one. The tweak attempts to balance this out, although they still remain specialized for their own tasks.

Have you added some upgrades to SSP-99?
I would really like to see some radiation upgrade for that suit. Right now it has lower resistance to radiation than seva...

Not yet, i am yet to play the mod more extensively.

Update: Oh boy, the thread got stickied. Now i know how i will have to spend my weekend - delivering.

Edited by: Stiivais

Would you take kindly to (unobnoxious) suggestions here? : ))) I've been trying to tweak some things on my own and I think I got somewhere with enemy detection and vision distance, amongst other things.

Of course, but i have to warn you that i probably won't be able to implement some of them (e.g. new features, you'd have to look for the main dev team's help for that, but most have personal matters that need their attention atm, from what i've heard), or my progress of doing so will be slow, so please keep your expectations not too high.

Either way, vision distances for both mutants and stalkers is on my to-do list, but if you'd like to try your hand at doing this yourself in the mean time, then a while back i did a tutorial on the topic, which might be of some use to you. What i intend to do for the new version would be making the mutants sight worse than humans' (except for perhaps chimeras and bloodsuckers, e.g. the stronger mutants), but be able to detect humans at close distances better, such as through bushes and the like, possibly in darkness too, simulating their increased sense of smell compared to their two legged foes. As for humans, i'd like to slightly decrease their reaction times in regards to spotting players over great distances, so firefights like what we currently see can happen, but a bit more rarely (a small bit, from the feedback i gathered). Also, people seemed to appreciate the old accuracy tweak, so i will have a look at that. Lastly, i will probably also implement helmets in the armor tweak, because it makes no sense for some of them to have the durability they do.

If there's anything else you'd like done in the following weeks, please let me know and i will see what i can do.

Update: Oh, and another thing - grenades. While people say that the insane accuracy is hard-coded, some said that the accuracy tweak had some effect on AI's insane trajectory prediction ability. Then again, it might just be placebo. However, i have to wonder if the AI uses the default weapon's stats (which seems to be the case for other firearms). If so, then i could simply make the grenade throw more inaccurate for both player and the AI, thus making it a bit more tolerable, but this would probably introduce other problems, such as the inability to throw your grenades through narrow doorways or windows reliably...
Writing this down so i don't forget what i am supposed to do, instead of just playing Splinter Cell: Blacklist (a pretty good game, despite what most people thought what it would be like, with the new, more action oriented, approach).

Edited by: Stiivais

Stiivais wrote:

sloughfeg00017 wrote: I was wondering if there was any point in paying more to get the sunrise suit instead of the heavy overcoat

IIRC sunrise bodysuit offered better protection in regards to environmental hazards (which is what stalkers would need), whereas the heavy overcoat was more combat oriented (what bandits would need), but it indeed always felt kind of wrong to me, as combat is what you will be doing most of the time, and therefore a dedicated suit for artifact collection shouldn't be more expensive, compared to the combat one. The tweak attempts to balance this out, although they still remain specialized for their own tasks.

Going by the numbers in the description, the heavy overcoat is better for environmental hazards than the sunrise suit, and the medium overcoat is about the same (slightly better for electric i think)

I don't know if this is just the description, i haven't checked in the config files

Stiivais, I am currently working on slimming down the 2.1 config files (5-25% decrease in file size), with zero negative effect, thought I am unsure if what I think I am seeing is genuine improvement or placebo. Anyway, 60K/+ lines is a LOT to trim.

ShotgunSurgeon wrote: Stiivais, I am currently working on slimming down the 2.1 config files (5-25% decrease in file size), with zero negative effect, thought I am unsure if what I think I am seeing is genuine improvement or placebo. Anyway, 60K/+ lines is a LOT to trim.

I am obviously not the guy whom you should ask about this, but it seems to me that in regards to the actual time in which the scripts are executed, there should be relatively little difference, as the comments probably aren't parsed past checking where they start, however, you most likely could free up some RAM, because the files loaded into the memory would be smaller. Either way, while +60 thousand lines (many of which have comments and some of which are entirely redundant) may seem a lot to most people, the actual size of all this data probably is somewhere just around a couple of megabytes, which really isn't a whole lot. If i were you, i'd find something less frustrating to do, as running through a whole folder of text just to find out that there is an error somewhere would really be something that nobody deserves to experience.

Thanks Stiivais, I was using your tutorial on vision distance and detection in the first place - it was immensely helpful.

My goal was to fix errors/ redundancies (Such as the snork's "jump akata"), improve formatting, and reduce size. Anyway, it was late, and I forgot an important question to place: do you want these to merge with your work, or no?

Thanks. I like your "Armor Rework"!
Btw Stiivais I had a question to do... How can I increase the number of NPCs in the zone? Which file do I have to edit? Standard size is 300... I would more NPCs.

rafmc1989 wrote: Thanks. I like your "Armor Rework"!
Btw Stiivais I had a question to do... How can I increase the number of NPCs in the zone? Which file do I have to edit? Standard size is 300... I would more NPCs.

300 is the radius in meters in which NPCs are rendered in real time, so you can see them ingame. Everything outside 300m radius is invisible to you and is computed by your CPU and stored in RAM.

In regards to NPC vision/detection, mercs at the processing plant are able to detect you on the bridge AT NIGHT and open fire, even if you are sneaking around and, say, attempting to recover a certain item on the bridge needed to complete a certain quest. (I think I'm being overly careful with the spoilers.) Of the twenty-plus times I've attempted to do this (with all three classes, not a single time have I not been spotted and shot at -and most of the time hit.) So that might be one good location to use for testing/benchmarking. That's currently the main place I'm using for testing, as well as closer ranges to the mercs, to alter vision.

Edited by: shavedllama

piotrburz wrote:

rafmc1989 wrote: Thanks. I like your "Armor Rework"!
Btw Stiivais I had a question to do... How can I increase the number of NPCs in the zone? Which file do I have to edit? Standard size is 300... I would more NPCs.

300 is the radius in meters in which NPCs are rendered in real time, so you can see them ingame. Everything outside 300m radius is invisible to you and is computed by your CPU and stored in RAM.

I may be wrong, but I think he is talking about the actual number of squads (bandit, stalker, merc, duty, freedom, etc.) groups actually patrolling. As in instead of running into maybe 1 or 2 merc/bandit groups in one day in Zanton you run into 3-5. Sorry if I'm wrong :X

Cpt.Flapjack wrote:

piotrburz wrote:

rafmc1989 wrote: Thanks. I like your "Armor Rework"!
Btw Stiivais I had a question to do... How can I increase the number of NPCs in the zone? Which file do I have to edit? Standard size is 300... I would more NPCs.

300 is the radius in meters in which NPCs are rendered in real time, so you can see them ingame. Everything outside 300m radius is invisible to you and is computed by your CPU and stored in RAM.

I may be wrong, but I think he is talking about the actual number of squads (bandit, stalker, merc, duty, freedom, etc.) groups actually patrolling. As in instead of running into maybe 1 or 2 merc/bandit groups in one day in Zanton you run into 3-5. Sorry if I'm wrong :X

You're right! In the installation process I could choose among different values such as 300, 350, 400, ecc. I would to increase that value... How can I do it ?

rafmc1989 wrote:

Cpt.Flapjack wrote:

piotrburz wrote:

rafmc1989 wrote: Thanks. I like your "Armor Rework"!
Btw Stiivais I had a question to do... How can I increase the number of NPCs in the zone? Which file do I have to edit? Standard size is 300... I would more NPCs.

300 is the radius in meters in which NPCs are rendered in real time, so you can see them ingame. Everything outside 300m radius is invisible to you and is computed by your CPU and stored in RAM.

I may be wrong, but I think he is talking about the actual number of squads (bandit, stalker, merc, duty, freedom, etc.) groups actually patrolling. As in instead of running into maybe 1 or 2 merc/bandit groups in one day in Zanton you run into 3-5. Sorry if I'm wrong :X

You're right! In the installation process I could choose among different values such as 300, 350, 400, ecc. I would to increase that value... How can I do it ?

This value won't increase the number of NPCs per se but you will see more of them. The only advantage of this is that you can see more NPCs without moving from place. With lower alife value you would need to move around map more often to "uncover/render" the NPCs.

Stiivais do you know a mod for adding helmet view in the third person perspective? I would love to have that.

To increase the activity going on in zone, you could try editing the following 2 files:
...\gamedata\scripts\sim_squad_actions.script and ...\gamedata\scripts\smart_terrain.script
At the top of these, you will find values that change how long it takes for A.I. actors to respawn / how long they stay at camps.
Decreasing these values will make the Zone feel more active, as there will be more units moving around at any given time, as opposed to just sitting around in camps.

As for the helmet view - no, sadly i don't, you'd probably have to ask some of the guys who know how the scripting works a bit better than i do. But why would someone want this kind of evades me - isn't such a view a bit too immersion breaking?

Either way, consider this a shameless bump, i put together something in the last hour (during this week i had other things to attend to) and updated the main post. I'd like to hear your opinions of the new tweak, because it should make the experience at least slightly better.

Edited by: Stiivais

Thanks for your great tweaks, they make a huge difference to gameplay.

Do you know a way of turning off the invisible zombies (or at least making them visible)?

Invisible zombies? I don't think that there's such creatures, as the files only mention bloosuckers using those invisibility shaders. Do you mean poltergeists, by any chance? Am i missing something (still haven't played the mod extensively)? :/

Edited by: Stiivais

Johnnydadda wrote: Thanks for your great tweaks, they make a huge difference to gameplay.

Do you know a way of turning off the invisible zombies (or at least making them visible)?

Yeah i have something like that too!. Some zombies have very transparent models and textures, don't know what is causing that.

I noticed after the armor rework my freedom suit has a decrease in stamina when wearing as a recon compared to before, is that normal?

Loading screens switched to sniper ones, I'm assaulter. How do I revert them back?

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Edited by: PassiveAggressive