Page 6 of 7

Re: Lost Alpha - Q & A

PostPosted: Thu Mar 22, 2012 8:51 pm
by Red Schuhart
You'd still get the map marker showing a filled stash.

But it was pretty disheartening first time through SoC, checking all these boxes and such I kept falling over, only to find they were all empty. Took me a little while to figure out that those short on-screen messages I sometimes got when searching a corpse were connected to those boxes and backpacks.

In CoP you fall over little piles of equipment without even a box to check. Often stuff is missing - grenades rolling away and such - and an incomplete one picked up can foul up the count in the PDA.

Even with mods that have NPCs filching stuff from stashes there are numerous that are far enough away from their usual paths to use as temporary stashes in SoC.

As for filling them all from the beginning, I see getting a stash message from a bandit as confirmation that I've killed a bad guy - he got that stuff from somewhere and, being a bandit, it can't have been morally obtained. Duty and Freedom messages are extra thank yous for shooting endless dogs, flesh, boars, rats and suckers. I don't shoot loners, but any messages I get from them are considered 'better I have it than the next passing bandit'. Military - only if they shoot at me, and they don't give many messages, but taken as the prize for winning in the bullet-slinging contest.

.

Re: Lost Alpha - Q & A

PostPosted: Thu Mar 22, 2012 10:09 pm
by basist
come on! what kind of stalker would put grenades in a place from which they can roll away?)))

Re: Lost Alpha - Q & A

PostPosted: Wed Apr 04, 2012 2:48 am
by nalle
I got a few questions about weapons I'd like to ask:

1. The basics of keeping combat challenging was to have weapon accuracy low and player health high (Compare to many mods where it's high accuracy but low player health). Has the vanilla Stalkers way been kept intact in LA? Judging from the trailers I'd say yes, but I'm asking to be sure.

2. In vanilla Stalker the weapons stats were incorrect (This was especially true in CoP) so that weapons that appeared as equal in for example zoom or accuracy were in fact different. Has this been fixed in LA?

3. Will pistols and shotguns be as useless in LA as they were in SoC (outside of the first map - Cordon)?

4. Will LA similar to SoC (and in stark contrast to CoP) slowly and gradually let the player aquire better weapons all the way up until the end?

5. How will silencers affect weapons and combat?

6. Will LA feature all new weapon sounds?

Re: Lost Alpha - Q & A

PostPosted: Wed Apr 04, 2012 5:19 pm
by KazakHD5770
If you added weapon upgrade system then unapgraded (clean) weapons will be just pieces of crap like in CoP/CS or will "clean" weapons have same parameters as in SoC?

Also it will be stupid if some "sniper" upgrades for AK-74 will make AK-74 be accurate like "clean" LR-300 or further. Also all accuracy incrasing upgrades have to affect reliability of weapons. Soviet weapons have some backlashes - those need to add reliability, but also those decrase accuracy.

And don't forget that hit power parameter depends basicaly on type of ammo and length of barrel, so if there will be "change type of ammo" upgrade then with change from 5.56x45 NATO to 5.45x39, hit power, accuracy and other parameters have to FALL because barrel still same length :)

I hope your upgrade system is based on REAL weapon engineery :)

P.S.: Sorry about my english, i used some unusual words...

P.P.S.: Add :bear: in Lost Alpha please XD
P.P.P.S.: Oh, fourth april already...

Re: Lost Alpha - Q & A

PostPosted: Wed Apr 04, 2012 7:27 pm
by basist
I got one question nobody seemed to have asked yet:
Will there be a possibility (or already is) to collect all the 'bonfire-time' jokes (anecdotes) from all 3 releases into one game? Of course, it's minor. But I think it will provide more variety to your time spent next to NPCs having their rest. The only problem I see is additional space (ogg files containing those stories for all factions).

Re: Lost Alpha - Q & A

PostPosted: Wed Apr 04, 2012 7:49 pm
by KazakHD5770
Will you make slow healing by medkits?
It's not only CoP's idea. In old (2003) GSC's interview one of developers said "there will not be magic medkits which will completely restore player's health in one moment".

Would you add feauture that will allow to make own treasures? (Drop backpack where u want and fill it with stuff.)

Re: Lost Alpha - Q & A

PostPosted: Fri Apr 27, 2012 10:22 am
by nalle
Does the cancellation of stalker 2 in an way effect the release of LA?

Re: Lost Alpha - Q & A

PostPosted: Fri Apr 27, 2012 10:02 pm
by basist
this is the most bothering question now!

Re: Lost Alpha - Q & A

PostPosted: Mon May 07, 2012 10:26 pm
by The Mureena
A question... How is the economy in the game? I'm asking this because in vanilla you got way too much money as almost all the prices were imbalanced. I'd really like to see some sort of discussion on the topic since it hasn't been discussed a lot.

P.S. I also wrote this to bring some life to these forums since everyone seems to rely on moddb.

I wrote this to create discussion. Don't let me down please... :D

Re: Lost Alpha - Q & A

PostPosted: Tue May 08, 2012 5:33 pm
by basist
Let me be your "opponent" :) in terms of money but not in terms of site activity - it really needs some shake up!

On one hand - I strongly support the barter idea. Just swap few boxes of ammo for a couple of medkits or a good assault rifle for an artifact. Why should money be involved in the process of exchange when u have something u don't really need but it's interesting for your counterpart and your counterpart has something he doesn't need but being of great value for you? I think in matters of life and death money should not be the point of concern. And the entire Zone is a big matter of life and death.

On the other hand, vanilla economics is CRYING for improvement! What's the point for Sidorovich, Barkeep, Voronin, Lukash and any other NPC except for Sakharov to pay THE SAME PRICE for, say, Vyvert artifact? Do they all need it equally? Or what's the point for a well equipped NPC (in SEVA) to pay you for vodka or antirad? Or what's the point of trading food in Bar area? Shouldn't food be cheap in Bar and expensive in areas which are far from camps (Radar, underground labs etc.)? Or why wouldn't rookies take OR BUY nice and powerful weapons from you? Or why would all NPCs have 5000 ru in their pockets regardless of their rank or equipment? Plus, they never seem to trade with each other.

Re: Lost Alpha - Q & A

PostPosted: Tue May 08, 2012 8:12 pm
by LoboTheMan
basist wrote:Let me be your "opponent" :) in terms of money but not in terms of site activity - it really needs some shake up!

On one hand - I strongly support the barter idea. Just swap few boxes of ammo for a couple of medkits or a good assault rifle for an artifact. Why should money be involved in the process of exchange when u have something u don't really need but it's interesting for your counterpart and your counterpart has something he doesn't need but being of great value for you? I think in matters of life and death money should not be the point of concern. And the entire Zone is a big matter of life and death.

On the other hand, vanilla economics is CRYING for improvement! What's the point for Sidorovich, Barkeep, Voronin, Lukash and any other NPC except for Sakharov to pay THE SAME PRICE for, say, Vyvert artifact? Do they all need it equally? Or what's the point for a well equipped NPC (in SEVA) to pay you for vodka or antirad? Or what's the point of trading food in Bar area? Shouldn't food be cheap in Bar and expensive in areas which are far from camps (Radar, underground labs etc.)? Or why wouldn't rookies take OR BUY nice and powerful weapons from you? Or why would all NPCs have 5000 ru in their pockets regardless of their rank or equipment? Plus, they never seem to trade with each other.


It is quite easy to change the economy in the game. All-though it is tedious work
You just have to over the trader files, and define the buy and sell price for all items.
The same goes for NPC's
Giving the different NPC's different money, or to allow bartering with swapping items would require some more serious scripting (just guessing here :) ).

I did do an overhaul of the economy in Priboi Story Overhaul. Where I limited what traders and NPC's will buy from the player, so grinding money by selling 50 makarov's to hapless NPC's is not possible.
Also the NPC's and traders give very little money for items they will buy.

I wouldn't mind doing the traders/NPC's sell & buy lists, to jazz it up a bit ;)
I am not sure however, how to do the work to, lets say have an NPC at the Bar charge 300 RU for a medkit, and an NPC selling the same item in Pripyat or Radar for 600 RU.

Re: Lost Alpha - Q & A

PostPosted: Wed May 09, 2012 9:47 am
by The Mureena
Really interesting ideas. It's always nice to know other peoples opinions too especially the ones that are well-founded.

Re: Lost Alpha - Q & A

PostPosted: Wed May 09, 2012 11:09 am
by KazakHD5770
As LoboTheMan wrote, it's easy to tune some trade parameters. But difficult to make different prices on different levels (remove&spawn same medkit with different price when player/npc go to another level, eh?)

Wait a minute... It's possible to check current game level, check item's section and change price right in game! Or...

I belive economy in LA will be tuned or already was tuned as much as possible in normal config files. One of developers wrote that they will work on economy right during playtests (finally godmode and unlimited ammo disabled :D )
It will be funny if all Dezowave team will stuck because one of traders don't have necessary items to survive and go further xD

Interesting detail: why do player ALWAYS initiates trading? NPCs never want to trade with players and of course NPCs' sell/buy prices were made like "player need to sell/buy those things, so those things will be sold cheap and bought expensive by player", but why don't make NPC init trade? If NPC will need medkit or something, he can go to player and say it and start dialogue with few variations "i'll give you medkit for free; pay 300 ru; pay 600 ru; pay over 9000 ru; i don't have medkit; give me all your stuff", but it will be much more annoying than "come in, don't stay there" :D

So, NPCs can send messages to main HUD (like NPCs send tips when player gets new mission) and then player can go into PDA chat to chat with sender about subject...

For example:
1. Message on HUD "i need a medic here!!! medkit, please answer if you can give me one!
2. Player goes to PDA chat and chatting with NPC, taking job, delivers medkit...

We can see something like that this screen http://media.moddb.com/images/mods/1/12/11987/986fd.jpg - it's really cool, but in that case player will init chat with NPC first, not NPC, also it seems to be not random.

Re: Lost Alpha - Q & A

PostPosted: Fri May 11, 2012 3:57 pm
by LoboTheMan
KazakHD5770 wrote:As LoboTheMan wrote, it's easy to tune some trade parameters. But difficult to make different prices on different levels (remove&spawn same medkit with different price when player/npc go to another level, eh?)

Wait a minute... It's possible to check current game level, check item's section and change price right in game! Or...

I belive economy in LA will be tuned or already was tuned as much as possible in normal config files. One of developers wrote that they will work on economy right during playtests (finally godmode and unlimited ammo disabled :D )
It will be funny if all Dezowave team will stuck because one of traders don't have necessary items to survive and go further xD

Interesting detail: why do player ALWAYS initiates trading? NPCs never want to trade with players and of course NPCs' sell/buy prices were made like "player need to sell/buy those things, so those things will be sold cheap and bought expensive by player", but why don't make NPC init trade? If NPC will need medkit or something, he can go to player and say it and start dialogue with few variations "i'll give you medkit for free; pay 300 ru; pay 600 ru; pay over 9000 ru; i don't have medkit; give me all your stuff", but it will be much more annoying than "come in, don't stay there" :D

So, NPCs can send messages to main HUD (like NPCs send tips when player gets new mission) and then player can go into PDA chat to chat with sender about subject...

For example:
1. Message on HUD "i need a medic here!!! medkit, please answer if you can give me one!
2. Player goes to PDA chat and chatting with NPC, taking job, delivers medkit...

We can see something like that this screen http://media.moddb.com/images/mods/1/12/11987/986fd.jpg - it's really cool, but in that case player will init chat with NPC first, not NPC, also it seems to be not random.


What I would lik to see is that the traders do not have unlimited money.
It is easily changed in the XML files where you change a 1 to a 0, that way you can sell items to a trader until he is out of money, if you feel like it.

Also a 12-24 hour delay when you get your stuff repaired, that would be nice. :)

Re: Lost Alpha - Q & A

PostPosted: Fri May 11, 2012 9:45 pm
by basist
A non-instant repair would definitely be cool! The worse the condition - the longer the repair.

Plus, I'd always wanted to see player able to sleep WHEREVER he wants (as in earlier builds, with no sleeping bag or bed needed) - same as other NPCs do. Availability of sleeping bag and or bed should give bonuses to rest or stamina maintenance or health recovery after sleeping.