Stalker Sandbox#2 - Chernarus version

[benevolentdevil]

 Since I had some luck with day of survival tweaking, ( and figured a few things out to do and what NOT to do more importantly ) i'm re-visiting some STALKER mod, and developing a multi-player Co-Op for the mod.  

 It Features all the bells and whistles of DAP Stalker mod. Mutant blind dogs ( though they look like Arma Dogs) , Artifacts, anomalies ,Radiation, detectors, bolts, and PSi-Shield.  Psi-Storms , Zombified Stalkers , , bloodsuckers are in the mod, but they are actually too OP to use.  

 Nightime play will suck , as lighting is minimal.  Nightvision will be hard to get/rare finds ... but might be able to buy them ... maybe.

Things already included:
Real Survival pack - yes food/water needs are a must.  You will need to scavange for food and water, find empty-cans to cook meat in, hunt animals for meat. Water can only be gathered from Blue water containers ( water thats been boiled, cleaned/filtered/decontaminated ) IF you find a canteen. Otherwise, must search for bottled water.
To create fire, you need to find stacks of Timbers ( big piles of pre-cut logs) ... I'd rather wish the RSP designer allowed for tree chopping instead, but is what it is.  Piles will be scattered around to use.

 Medkits , and anti-rad medicines cover most the "injury" aspects.  So far i'm using "simple-first aid" , so medical tents, ambulances, ect will also cure damage , but not radiation.

Health- there is no "bleeding" like in Dayz, no bandages like that. No "blood" to restore , using the default Arma2 hit system.
( This remains very ACE compatible for those wishing to use ACE ).

You can "sleep" , and it has supporting scripts for tent placement, but I'm not finding the specific ones it works with. Still working on that.  

South coastal area... the entire region is one massive "deadzone" , Cherno, and Elektro , Balota, Salvation Island , the usual "starting places" in dayz are in this absolute deadzone. Radiation so powerful it kills quick, you will not gain enough antirads to survive there more than a few seconds.  
( I did this for flavor/variety/and keep players out of the most laggy of areas, )

All players will be of the Loner/stalker faction, and currently I have it set up to support 8 playable units. I could add more, or if someone wished can add more playable units later on via editor.
 I figured 8 for a Co-Op/semi-rp was enough.  Of course you can run the mission single-player just fine, or LAN and play solo.
I did this to give a decent PvE ( Player vrs environment/survival) feel ... not a PvP fest.

 Enemy AI will come from other factions:
Duty ( Opfor ) faction has became xenophobic and seem to attack on sight, though they remain semi-friendly with military/mercenaries operating in this Zone.  

Military/Mercenaries(Opfor) - while these factions will not enter the specific areas Stalkers visit, they do patrol and set up check points, trying to catch Stalkers/undesirables. They've become pretty much hostile to most groups.

 Freedom,(Bluefor)  "friendly" tentatively with Loners , hardcore enemies of Duty.  Freedom Stalkers might not engage hostilities with Loners , unless Loners engage hostile actions first.

 Civilians are almost non-existent in the zone , though occasionally suited scientist might be seen around in places.

Monolith faction , and Bandits are hostile to everyone but themselves.

 - Plans on my todo list :
+ Set up the merchants.
+ Use the good ZeroBuildings to open up interiors of more structures.
+ Add more buildings to the map.
+tweak weather settings and visibility to enhance the environment.
+Flesh out the map with appropriate spawns , faction held areas, Add places of interest.  Create stashes, loot drops, finalize my random gear and random survival elements spawns and place them down.
+ Add in lots of points of interest to explore and find/discover.

 - Possible adding in blow-outs, still on the fence with that though.

More to come, it's very much a WIP at this point.




 





 

[benevolentdevil]

I could not figure out how to get the video to display on this forum, but here's two for the WIP so far.

showing the RSP features a bit of how to

Showing a simple means of a point of interest known , and zombie combat

[jackoff123]

woww  it best

[benevolentdevil]

Added traders, working though I need to edit items offered some are not showing up.

 Added test anomalies ( working) , added test artifacts. Artifacts sold at traders. Once done trader offers quest/side missions.  Working.

More to come.

[benevolentdevil]

OK Beta test ...

No huge game breaking bugs discovered, that's good. a few glitch issues with bolts not loading on spawn. Sporadic though.

Multiplayer seems fine .

 Player reports:  

- Almost all players were unhappy with real survival pack items taking up two inventory slots , say like canned food, water bottles, and logs.
  This I have to address from a perspective of realism/immersion:
1- This is not a game of inventory management, and cargo space is limited on a unit.  These are Stalkers , on foot , there's no way to lug around loads of items more than what packs can carry.
  Resolving the complaint comes in two forms.
 Form A- find a bigger capacity backpack. There are some that offer more cargo than others, they are found in random spawns around the map.
 Form B - Run ACE2 as an addon, which changes inventory and rucks , some game play features. Real Survival pack works with ACE so I am told, this is untested at this time though.  ACE2 system however, allows for much larger carrying capacity loads, i'm just uncertain it changes the medical system in place or not.  However, running ACE2 addon, will grant a decent amount of realistic perspective to the game mode.  
 Sub-Dev note on the "mission" , the mission -should- be able to be played with OR with-out ACE , as it was not designed with ACE mods as requirements.
2- Immersive game play wise , however does mean making decisions. Whats more important to your character, carrying an extra weapon, or carrying food and water with you on a STALK?
 Want grenades, but must "sacrifice" your water bottle?  Maybe drop logs you were saving for fire?
These are elements of Player vrs Environment.  
 Solution offered- Play with friends. More units playing, means more cargo capacity by default. Sharing is caring.

Minor complaint 2-  Some players found it "off-putting" starting with a map, radio, binoculars , and basic soldier gear.
 Solution offered - none.  
Explanation:  again immersion/realistic standpoint ... these are STALKERS , whom have came into this zone willingly.  
 Unlike most "survival games" , it doesn't make sense armed units would blindly wake up with no knowledge of the area they are in or are going into.  
Secondly, in the STALKER games, you had a very extensive PDA that displayed maps, area info, known locations, ect.  Armas map system isn't as nice as the PDA units, but serves the same basic purpose/functions.  It simply makes no sense to me to force players to waste time, starting out totally blind, have to find a few key things they really should have anyways.
 The radios themselves serve no real function, but were left in for Immersive means anyways.

Minor complaint 3-  traders will not buy/sell guns or ammo found.  Traders only seem interested in artifacts and mutant parts.
 Solution offered- None.
Explanation- Lets face it finding guns/ammo isn't too hard , and would put all the effort of locating stashes, and artifacts pretty useless if players can just go make loads of cash buying and selling weapons.

Minor complaint 4- Players currently were unhappy about no vehicles , all travel by foot.  
Solution offered- Vehicles, and vehicle spawns are not in game yet. All other features and debugging was to be done first.  I eventually will include SOME vehicles , no armed vehicles will go in game as functioning vehicles though.  Mostly unarmed varieties, support vehicles.  
AI MIGHT have operational armed vehicles , if lucky can be stolen or possibly salvaged from an attack.
 Again this feature is not in yet.
Vehicle refuel and repair will need to find appropriate means to do so, like a repair truck ( standard arma 2 play) , gas station, refuel truck, ect.
 There will be NO working flying vehicles installed into the mission ever.  Flight makes things far to "easy" .
Minor complaint 5- Some items are not "showing up" in traders, but it will take your money for "buying" the blank area.  
Solution offered: None at this time-  
Explanation - I've tried removing those items offered via scripts , but it wound up breaking ALL the merchant system.  Since it's not game breaking issue, just reverted it back to default.  
 The "missing items" either have had thier classnames changed ( which is not documented at all) , or have been removed or left unfinished by the original STALKER developers.  
If I can "find" addons with these items included i will simply port them into the mission and add the addons to the STALKER DEV addons.  
Or if possible, discover what classnames were changed to, I will fix the issue.
It unlikely given the age of the mod/game of the former being possible.  Research into the addon , the original developer used a few models made by somone else, whom requested they be changed or removed. I don't think these items were ever "replaced".  The Original creator, abandoned the project in 2014 , a new dev took up the project in 2015 and made it a more stable/playable addon, but still did not include these few key items.

Minor complaint 6-  This was not a complaint , but more of an observation.  There is a lack of persistent storage and character saving going on.  
Solution offered-  I'm not a database/server guru , but a write to database from a dedicated server seems the only way to realistically offer some form or persistence in these features.  As I learn more about it, and HOW to set it up , I will look into adding this feature into the mission.
 As it stands , Single player saves of course save your progress.  
Multiplayer though , if someone is hosting can save progress I think.  If not , progress will remain as long as the server is running , but everything will default back to the start if reset or shut down and started up again later.
Explanation - i'm only one person , and seriously have no idea how to do databases, or set it up so Arma2 oa directs information to a database for this, or how to script say " personal locker" for some persistent storage for characters.  Not yet at least.

[benevolentdevil]

ACE 2 , ( Advanced combat environment does indeed work 100% with system in place.  And adds more cargo/carry capacity.

However the bolt "bug" , where bolt use is not always present upon starting seems a bit more pronounced ( relogging seems to fix the issue per unit ).

 And ACE negates the extra open buildings normally  on the map.  < Minor bug.  Runs friken fantastic though!

[benevolentdevil]

WIP update :

I found and fixed the flashlight!

The specific scripted stalker tent still eludes me , but thats the only error i'm getting from the traders now!

This has been a head-ache for years , now if not playing with ACE , you aren't stuck with the g17 as a lightsource.

However the flashlight is a weapon , so takes the secondary slot. toss it in your pack, and you can now have light when it's dark, and your choice of sidearm!

[benevolentdevil]

WIP update-

 Decided today to remove the more random placed weapon and food spawns , and elect for a more direct "stash" system.  

 Reasons for this, i did not know in mission editing there was a limit to objects placed in editor, that once exceeded you can no longer "preview" or test the mission.  Uncertain if too many objects will cause game crash or not.

 Since i'm using real survival pack, there are objects I MUST place down or that system fails.

 I also decided to remove the RH weapon addon packs from the mission files.  I thought it'd be uber awesome to include more/different weaponry , but then one runs into the problem of "adding too much" , you want to include everything available when you have it.  
 I thought extra pistols , some smgs would be nice, but honestly it just gives too many choices for me as dev, and too many for players playing too.

Since STALKER is more russian based in weaponry for the most part, i'm gonna re-do it all and thats weaponry I will focus on more.

I got half way through doing all the spawns and then noticed I exceeded the object limit , after sever hours of painful culling , I realized I didn't even get to include the medical system items, nor finished fleshing out the map, not to mention add all the artifacts and anomalies.

 So ...  a re-work is order.

[Rachel-gamer(gaming and more).]

CONTENTS DELETED

The author has deleted this message.

[benevolentdevil]

Here's a snag I ran into last night ...

 Chernarus is "too big" to have all the objects placed I needed for real survival pack, and random spawns I did. ( My spawn system runs off game logics) , there's a limit to how many objects you can place down , and I did not know that.

 I had all that done, weapon spawns, survival spawns placed in , and still did not have my encounters, medical, stashes or artifacts put in.

 So, what I did was pull my random spawn system out , and decided to go with a total stash/crate system instead.  Hoping it cuts down on the number of objects.

At this point, I might have to get better at scripting and load objects by scripts, trigger based so it only loads in when needed.  I've tried this before and nothing I seemed to do work.

 I still need to figure out how to spawn "bandits" and opfor dynamically too anyways. ( also something I hadn't gotten to work yet. )

 I came so far along , but after I placed all the things I wanted for the base "survival" aspects , I noticed I could no longer "preview" or test , and the mission would crash trying to load a game.
 So started removing objects, and it left me with such bare minimum objects, wasn't worth doing that way.

 Takistan I agree is a way better map , but it's actually larger landmass wise than Chernarus.
I'll see what I can do there though.  Takistan runs way better than Chernarus , it's better optimized.
 I was trying to get Chernarus map done ( everyone has Chernarus even on Arma2 free version), first then was gonna do other maps.  

[benevolentdevil]

OMG!!! Arma editor needs an undo option!!!!

So I was adjusting position of everything by highlight and dragging, and accidentally hit the delete button ...

Lost all the work I did.  Completely.  All my scripts are still in place, but everything in the mission file is gone.

Tried re-loading, and it gave me a blank map too!!  GGGRRAAAHHHHH!!!!

Maybe i'm just not meant to do this??? I dunno...