Q2 saw some major progress on this mod, mainly in the areas of Alife and level porting. The new alife behaviour was nearly finalized, so you can expect to see a much more dynamic system, with Stalkers travelling all over the Zone, heading to areas on interest, moving to camps at night, and even moving to cover to escape emissions. There is still some work to be done here, some fine tweaking, but the core mechanics are done.
Level wise, 1 new level is done, with another 1 under work, and a 3rd added. Existing levels are being adjusted to work with the new levels, and the new alife system, in addition the moving of nearly all factions to their new bases.
For those of you who care, all 15 new weapons have been added, and balanced along with a rebalancing of all of the existing weapons for the new damage system. Firefights are very interesting now.
However, I haven't got much work done the past fortnight, and it doesn't look like I'll get much done the next one as well due to various RL commitments eating into my biggest chunk of spare time - weekends.
I was planning on having an update out this week, but sadly, it hasn't materialized because the time I would have used to prepare it I simply haven't had.
So, where do I aim to be with Q3?
Well, at some stage, mostly done with the new levels, linked into the existing ones and each other, and alife on them and moving around. Hopefully have removed all of the existing vanilla storyline elements from the vanilla levels, and adjusted them to fit the setting for this mod. And at some point, release a closed Alpha build to a select list for playtesting, bug finding, and concept/idea suggestion.
Lastly, something that probably went unnoticed by many of you here, is the moving of this mod to 828 Studios, the creators of the CS: Faction Fronts mod, now the Clear Skies mod. I have been working with them for over a year now, and even a bit before that as a freelance modder. I have enjoyed working with the other guys over at 828, and am honoured to be a member of the team. One of the reasons for this change is that the rest of the 828 team offered to help finish this mod once they were done with Clear Skies. I'm not sure when that will be, but I know it'l be when I'm knee deep in new configs, and need some dedicated testers/bug fixers to patch them all up, in addition to texture work for the model overhaul.
So barring anything major and unexpected, next status update should be due in September sometime. Hopefully, I'll be able to resume work on this ASAP, and start cranking out new screenshots and videos at some point. I was aiming to do an Arena gameplay video for this months promo update, but the time to do that hasn't materialized (in addition to finishing it off as well...)
Be seeing you in the 100 Rads for a bottle of vodka after my round in the Arena soon. Until then, Until then, Happy Stalking Stalkers!
~SetaKat
Good luck!
Can't wait