NEWSA+SIMBION_tweaked Support and Gameplay

[3040Krag]

Ow, ow, ow

Ow

Ow! Ow Ow Ow Ow!

Sorry, it was hard to sit down to post this due to the spanking I got in Stancia2. Whew, when Nightwatch mentioned earlier in this thread that he'd given some serious firepower to Monolith for Stancia2, he wasn't joking!

Anyway, a few questions now that I'm "done." Although I've read all 107 pages of this thread, I may have forgotten or missed the answers if already presented.

1. Throughout the game I occasionally got what I call mini-blowouts. A sharp in-rush of breath as though a fist had hit me in the stomach, a spike in my radiation, blurred screen, quaking earth, pounding heart. What ARE these?

2. I thought I read that you walk back to the lab after going through the final teleport in Stancia2. Instead, I teleported to the Ferris Wheel in Prypiat (right in the middle of a pack of psy-dogs, with two controllers around the corner and a horror time beginning mere seconds after teleport). Did my system glitch or was I mistaken about walking out of Stancia2/Lab/Stancia1?

3. What's with the Monolith haxors in Stancia2? About half the time I died it was my own fault, the other half I was both shot and tracked through solid objects, some of them 10-15 foot thick concrete. Buggy engine? For a while I had to quicksave after every move as I was getting headshot by Monolith I couldn't possibly see.

Overall, a big Wow! was that fun. Thanks!

[Nightwatch]

Glad that you've completed the onward phase of the game and returned to Pripyat for the Free-Play phase, 3040Krag
(This is the correct course of the gameplay on this mod.) After you've taken the last LV on the NPP roof, you are transferred back to Pripyat. Then it's your luck what kind of a mess that the player finds himself If you hadn't killed the rooftop RPG guy in Pripyat before, you'll find him there waiting for you when you've returned)

This phase of the game, the Pripyat return is a wide-scale battle fought between many parties, and with the inclusion of all sorts of mutants and creatures. You will see waves of Stalkers, bandits, mercs, Duty & Freedom soldiers, monoliths rushing through the streets towards NPP as the emissions have now been stopped, and entering bloody battles between them. Staying in Pripyat for some time, will bring grand battles for those who like such episodes.

In order to walk around the NPP you should not take the last rooftop LV, but instead you should turn back and explore the grounds; however, you can still get back to NPP as before through the Pripyat-NPP exchange., if you wish so later.

--Yes, if I understand the example that you give correctly, it'd be correct to call those mini-episodes as mini-blowouts, sudden radiation spikes. It is an effect which was to be used for the hit effects of some radiation bullets as well, but those ammo were later removed (may come back later)

-- I can't quite visualize the example about being thrown/dragged through solid objects after being shot (and killed probably), but if you are still alive when that happened, it must be some rare glitches on this specific situation; however, if you mention that this happens after the character is fatally wounded (and the game is over after those scenes) then it's the case that STALKER continues after the game is over, well, in a sort of suspended animation style without the interaction from the player, and in those circumstances, the game engine may throw the body (the player) very high in different directions, which may even go through some solid material; this is the way the engine sometimes works, quite normal.

Well, thanks again for your great praises, I'm very pleased that the mod has left a good playing experience I'm sure everybody join me in this. Pripyat return episode will bring experiences not least less exciting.

[3040Krag]

Sorry, I was apparently not clear. The situation with the Monolith was like this:

I'm behind a concrete abutment. I poke my head around the left side to make a kill, the noise alerts another Monolith. From the direction of the blood spray on my mini-map, he's shooting me through about 10-15 feet of concrete from the right. Crouching (to be quiet) I move away from his aim point. But that doesn't work, even though he can't possibly see me he continues to fire, hitting me with every shot. Made me think of aimbots and wall hacks in CounterStrike.

Or, the time near the beginning of Stancia2, there's that stack of 3 steel pipes between me and a Monolith. Not only is he shooting me through the pipes, he continues to hit me with every shot as I move. I can't shoot back as I can't see him through the pipes but he sure knows where *I* am, so I die.

Thanks for the answers. Yes, I found that Prypiat turns into a free-for-all with both friends and enemies EVERYWHERE. Loads of fun for the whole family

[Nightwatch]

Ah, yes, that is one of the vanilla bugs. There are some areas in level design that have some fault which do not quite help the engine to calculate the mass when AI action is concerned, however you cannot shoot through such fault lines regardless of that. I think, this kind of glitches somewhat are common in many games, if I were to be fair towards STALKER. I see no other alternative to run away from such a position if I ever find myself standing behind --if I can, of course.

[3040Krag]

Oh! Another one. No Shonei (the "invincible" controller) in Stancia2. Glitch due to my meager system specs, a Horror-Lite feature, or what? I was itching for some more dogtags

[Nightwatch]

Well, some impact of the Horror_Time has been reduced in Horror-Lite as expected ( a few non-Horror-Time dangers are also slightly reduced). When you have found chance to play the Extreme mode, you will find more controllers (also more powerful) one can possibly wish for.

[3040Krag]

All right! Looking forward to the day I am playing with a system to match the game! Thanks again!

[Nightwatch]

You're welcome

[busetibi]

someone mention Controller Dogtags?

[rockingmtranch]

someone mention Controller Dogtags?

Being as they are worth 10K rubles each, I'd think you are extremely rich Busetibi

[Nightwatch]

He has so many of those tags now (easily several thousands in total, I guess) that I think he plans to make a fortune in Steel Markets when the prices are right

[3040Krag]

Is there any way to "refresh" a level without starting a new game? Like editing a script file or ??

I'm in endgame mode, traveling all over the zone. I've hauled a bunch of AK's down to Cordon to give to the rookies only to find the rookie camp is almost a ghost town. Nothing's respawning, NPC's or mutants.

Wild Territory isn't spawning much anymore, either. Aside from the rookie camp in WT, the Duty passing through, and a few blind dogs, nothing's there. No snorks, no bloodsuckers, no pseudodogs, few to no bandits or mercs. Even the bandit invasion from Yantar seems to have disappeared.

Horror time has been absent for several game days, now, blowouts have been absent for much longer.

I also lost the sun in Dark Valley (stayed "lost" as I traveled to other levels), it took deleting NEWSA+Simbion and reinstalling it to get the sun back.

Other levels seem to be OK with respect to this "problem" except that Stancia2 doesn't appear to have any respawns, either. It's TOO quiet!

[Nightwatch]

The nature of the mod is "Symbiotic" receiving this character from ABC and AMK mods logic, and on this note, particularly from ABC, which responds to "how the game is played and how the progress is made" not only checking "what progress has been made." In very shortly, (from enemy numbers and their ranks, etc, to their armors and weapons, and to your own armors development, etc. More info is on the web site) the game spawn and all other behaviors are defined by the player's way of progress in the game. So, it's more organic than being scriptive. More than hundred variables are constantly being checked and values are reassigned accordingly during the game, in fact, during the composure and tuning of the mod (mainly the original straight SIMBION) there were suggestions from modding community that this mod will not be able to run beyond Pripyat as the number of variables being checked by the engine were beyond the handling capacity of the Xray engine. However, here we are now. While this point is not the case here, still, it shows the complexity of the affairs in "spawning" as well, therefore, there's no a simple script change to refresh the level, which if forced will definitely cause very serious problems and the game will come to halt either completely or go jumping from one crash to another.

(Spawn also check time, and it's a possibility that if you stay in a level a bit longer, or enter/exit, you may see more spawning, though I doubt this, because I would think that your system cannot possibly cope now at this stage of the game with the weight of the game, as memory demand has now very high.

We have established that your current rig is under the required minimum specs, and the problems that you refer are arising from this reason. The required processing power (including the memory) is simply not there, thus not-perfect-results are expectable.)

There are "spawn level settings" available from the main menu which instructs the logic in its command of the game, but I don't think that setting it to more frequent spawn levels will make any difference, your system will either pass it/drop the instructions or try to force and cause more serious bottlenecks.

[3040Krag]

Thank you for the detailed explanation of the symbiotic relationship between the game and the player. I don't doubt for a moment that sub-par system specs are at the heart of my problem, even the gameplay itself bears this out in subtle and not so subtle ways.

"Losing" the sun was a not-so-subtle clue. My system simply couldn't bear the load in Dark Valley, and as such couldn't load the time of day "switcher." I entered DV just at sunrise (timewise) but it became instead a world of perpetual dark, lasting across several zone days and was only fixed by a NEWSA+Simbion reinstall.

A middle-ground clue that my system was causing a cancer in the game came a couple of weeks ago. Bar kept getting slammed by military and merc coming through the north-west guard post. Most of those times came while I was on another level, returning to Bar I could see only the aftermath. After 3 or 4 times that the guards were killed, they were never respawned so the north post is unmanned to this day. I suspected then it was a system spec issue as there are over 2 dozen Duty doing other things in Bar on any given visit.

Subtle clues come in the form of enemies not recognizing me too well at times, sometimes I have to literally get in their face before they attack.

c'est la vie, if it gets boring I can always start a new game.

[audioave10]

Stalker (and the large great mods like NEWSA), have caused most of us to spend some considerable money on upgrading our PC's. I must say that I'm glad I did
spend that money since everything else plays great and I feel ready for future games. Just a video card upgrade should help you much if you can find the funds
for it. Cheers.

Edit: If your on a laptop, you are stuck I think.

[3040Krag]

lol, I'm putting two children through college, paying off my recent re-education college loans, one in high school and have been out of work for over 8 months now (not counting school). I need to find me a sugar momma!

I used to be an avid overclocker, even (very briefly) holding some records back in the day, tell me about spending money on a sweet rig! I'm living off of life savings now, but am sorely tempted to put one together much like the "econo" rig ultradad described in his hardware thread. Two in fact, one for me and one for my youngest!

My DFI NF2 Lanparty was the bomb when they were new (loved hitting 250 MHz FSB with it) but struggles to play ANY of the more modern games.

[audioave10]

LOL, just ignore me as I'm past all responsibility. My only daughter is 32, married and makes more money than I do.
When I have extra money, I'm not sure what else to spend it on!

I had an Abit A8N back then...it was great too. But yes, the DFI was the best then.

[3040Krag]

Sad, Abit was beginning their decline then, their best BIOS people went to DFI. Still good hardware tho. Abit being second-rate was sad, they did some amazing hardware before they took the slide. Awesome BIOS for teh DFI'!

I still have a propane-charged, phase-change cooler stored in my garage. -80C CPU temps was uber cool at the time. 3dMark, oooh!

I married and had children later in life, at 57 y/o it's weird to be gaming, prepping for "retirement age" and having kids in HS at the same time!

[audioave10]

Cool...another "Veteran" member. This is a great hobby!
Back on topic (sorry Nightwatch)....just wondering how your getting along on any possible future patches?
I know your very busy.