This expansion for S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Call of Chernobyl and Call of Misery/Last Day/STALKER Dead Air aims to provide CoC stalkers with a in-game chat system, based on our servers, and increase the immersion with some features regarding the gameplay aspect of the game. Trading between players and a proprietary Android app are only some of the elements we want to introduce in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. The chat is now live and has been stress tested, this means that we are moving not only in polishing the already existant chat script, but also in creating and inventing new exiciting implementations, like worldwide leaderboard, a trading mechanism, dynamic maps, even an official application for Android! This lightweight addon will surely enhance your journey into the Zone, at a low performance cost. Another point stressed by us is that we don't want to make of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. an arena game, just mating the mother concept of "game" with "immersion". No lies, we just want to make a really good addon for u!
Hello fellow stalkers,
these two months have been surely a giant leap forward in reaching our 0.9 release, the dynamic maps one!
Bad news first: both of us are very busy with our real life commitments, especially codeonion, so the actual development has been slowed down. Nevertheless, it goes on!
The smartphone app is being debugged, codeonion did a really good job in creating a completely new application first, and then in finding and solving a lot of annoying bugs. As soon as we have a solid version, we will post something concrete about it.
Moving game side, let me illustrate you how the dynamic maps technically work: we collect some informations both about the map and the player, which some of them are achieved through the SDK, we insert the data inside a particular formula written for translating them in a "language" compatible to the plugins server side, et voilà! You can see a marker in the map, which is you!
As the app is being worked on, I'm concentrating on some security measures for what will come next: trading! In particular, I'm reworking our old security algorithm: XRAYCKSUM. It will detect ".ltx cheaters" (those who modify files), helping the mod in a peculiar phase of the "ingame market" system and guarding its transactions.
During the last month I've worked on graphics, in particular on ideating a proper logo for the mod. You can find it in the image!
This image somewhat represents our graphical conception of the mod: we want everything of our work to be a completely new product, not copied from anyone and anything, but inspired from Art Noveau advertising leaflets, which gives a minimalist touch, Soviet '80s technological design and modern elements: we don't want our mod to be an anachronistic piece of code!
For this image in particular we took inspiration from the following digitalization of a museum in my hometown which displays tons of such leaflets: Collezionesalce.beniculturali.it
The logo instead is inspired from this Soviet period logo collection: Instagram.com
Both of us are really happy and satisfied of how the work has been and is being handled, so we're looking forward for the next post!
Stay safe out there in the Zone,
XRay-PDA Dev team.
Its amazing work, but Im not sure about that ".ltx cheaters"
For example I always set traders to buy guns that are in condition between 0.3-0.5 Because anything bigger is just stupid and unrealistic(like traders in zone could not get parts from broken gun just by paying less for it.)
I also lower amount of ammo that they sell(yep. I prefer that).
And sometimes I modify weapons recoil, because some mods have huge recoil for small 9mm pistols and almost none for some shotguns.
I would not call it a "cheating", its actually setting game to own preferences, and even call it "fixing", so how that trading would work with such modifications?
Hi,
not every file will be checked, for example files regarding the singleplayer area such as vendors settings. Also, we don't want to force changes in your game, but of course, a reading of all the available items/weapons is required.
Everything about the trading feature is not in motion, so changes could happen.
Originally I imagined to create a schedule of which products the market can actually accept (mod users in this way can't sell items that would make someone else's game crash). The mod then proceeds to read all the items that are stored in your game files, comparing their names to the ones we have. If they are accepted, they can be sold.
I thought about your suggestions, as I've originally intended to use the prices written in the .ltx files, making a control of the file originality compulsory to avoid frauds like a sausage with too much zeroes, but in reality we can also store the prices in our server, retrieving them as the game makes a trading request.
XRAYCKSUM would be used as a control function to make sure no modifications on our scripts took place, as spawn menu users are already detected in CoC and we only have to use a conditional to check if one is using them or not.
In both cases, we are still working on the dynamic maps, so everything about what will come next is still in the air. XRAYCKSUM will be in both cases applied, but we'll see how :D