Hi shay! big fan of your mod, i been in the AI loop since before the game came out. Investigating , reading, learning as much as possible about what Alife is, how it works, what GSC is doing or trying to do. From everything i gather, my assumption about the 1.1 patch is. 1.the values are locked as to not allow modders to tamper with the AIdirector, maybe to allow a more cohesive feedback from the players? approximately 120.000 alife mods downloads since launch (total from: alife extended, your mod, roadside picnic mod). Thats a lot of people whose feedback can interfere with the feedback of vanilla with no mods players. 2. They specifically said "improvement" as not to say this is the definitive version of alife 2.0. In many of the paragraphs of the patch notes, GSC said "player may encounter" as if to make it vague how is and isnt AIdirector working. This in my opinion is not a lie, they say "you may encounter NPC that you recently meet if you walk in their direction" thats true in the sense that NPC now leave online mode, go to offline mode and at a certain range they still exist possibly allowing player to meet them again, also true, it doesnt say "players ALWAYS will find the npc they meet". 3. Yesterday and today even, i tried finding a group of stalkers traveling and i specifically tried to replicate the situation of seeing them un render in the distance (100meters) waited 30 seconds and enter the bubble again to see them still travelling although in the same position. But there is a caviat to this.... i tried to see them at 90 meters walking away from me, then i run at the opposite direction for 20 seconds roughly 300 meters away or maybe more and then running back into the NPC direction to see if i found them, and indeed i found them but FURTHER away. Meaning that possibly the offline path system is working but if its on the edge of the online bubble they dont move. 4. i was very critical about GSC but i have to say after reading the patch note, they didnt lie, yes there is a fake spawn happening , but they never said "NPC will not spawn out of thin air, all NPC are coming from lairs throughout the map".
Hey! thanks for the kind words :D 1. Yes some of us in the discord have had the same idea that this could be the cause but there is also a large minority that find's it weird that GSC would do that since the modding community is rather small in the grand scheme of things. its a hit or miss as to the reason why they did that but yes that is one running theory. 2. I have to give you points for the sharp remarks on the 2nd point there and i have to agree on that one, it is a solid point to discuss. 3. Again raising a good point here, i need to agree that on the letting them stay in offline part i can do better. 4. I was very critical of myself and the things i saw but i have to agree that after reading trough the notes, the way i worded myself and presented some of the stuff is not in the best way. Effective a few minutes ago to an hour sorry was distracted, i've change most video titles, delisted all videos except this one and edited the description to more accurately reflect the reason for these videos. I will keep this video up for tonight and in the meantime see what we can work with until tomorrow, then i will unlist this video and replace it with a more appropriate one as i did not except that many views on the 5 minute one, i legit tought it would be a couple of ten people from the discord and the doc coming trough. You've raised excellent points here that have put my mind into thinking more about the situation, it's sort of like let someone else see over it and give their opinion since mine is clouded due to 4 weeks of work. I strongly invite you to come into the discord where such points you mention can be raised sooner and we can together work on a proper fix and future for the mod :)
@@NACCOY Sorry for the second wall of text: Thank you very much for reading my comment, im really passionate about Stalker2 maybe not as much as you because you made an excellent mod that help a lot of people for free, thats a lot of love for the game. Now that i think even further about the alife situation,but without seeing the source of the game. I have a roughly estimate why is also, for us, the guys who like the technical stuff,NOT as complex as we want in 1.1. For the NPC to stop spawning out of thin air, the game needs... 1. a sort of table or dictionary that allows to write down the position, status, npc-id in a virtual space in which allows to sustain those npc, because AIDirector cant spawn npc out of thin air, they need to exist from the moment that the player start the game, 1 second into the game. (after or during tutorial). 2. this table would erase the current spawn system because each npc would exist and persist from even 2km away from the player and beyond. 3. GSC needs a sort 3 layer system online (close and rendered), offline (far away and unrendered), distant offline (1km or more away, also unrendered) Because this is the way to make performance wise possible. 4. online mode is already figured out, its programmatically complete. (needs improvement in distant up to 200meters would be a reasonable number) 5. offline is in Progress, what is missing is ... tick of actions , every second or half a second the AIdirector will make a decision based on factors for how far npc will move in X and Y cordinates(traveling) and in case of combat, how much the combat will progress (example: 2 boards vs 3 stalker, every sec a board takes 15 damage o so, and a stalker will take 20) if the player crashes into a combat that is still on going (moves from offline to online), player will encounter and render those actors in the state that they were, life wise, position wise, ammo etc. (THIS is the next step to the alife system to improve in a dramatic way) 6. distant offline. To make it simple , same as offline mode but the data that handle is smaller ,and the amount of NPC that will use this mod would be in thousands of NPCs since it covers the 85% of the map, and the AIDirector tick of actions needs to be longer as to not overload the performance, every 30 seconds, every npc in the whole map that is 2km away, will either move, battle , patrol, conquer lair. Now because the player is so far away , this battle can be automatic as in the current offline mode of 1.1 , or they could be separated by a 3 or 4 ticks(2 minutes) to allow the player to run so quickly as to be able to go through distant offline -> offline -> and possibly meet that battle situation almost 80% in progress. (Wishful thinking truly, we wouldnt even notice it , they can make instantaneous dont think would matter even for technical guys like us.) Now this is the type of system that would erase the close spawn and basically most of the Alife complains, little to say, this system takes A LOT of time to produce. so the question is, did GSC move into a direction of a more complex alife system? maybe yes, they are catching more data of offline npc and for longer, performance hit is lower or same, they can realistically speaking introduce in 1.2 offline tick of action for offline.
@@emanuel81111 Hey, sorry for the late reply i can't get to answering your previous comment atm since im very bussy but here is the invite link for the discord, you can find me under mod posts and then my mods name :) discord.com/invite/stalker-gamma
Hi shay! big fan of your mod, i been in the AI loop since before the game came out.
Investigating , reading, learning as much as possible about what Alife is, how it works, what GSC is doing or trying to do.
From everything i gather, my assumption about the 1.1 patch is.
1.the values are locked as to not allow modders to tamper with the AIdirector, maybe to allow a more cohesive feedback from the players? approximately 120.000 alife mods downloads since launch (total from: alife extended, your mod, roadside picnic mod). Thats a lot of people whose feedback can interfere with the feedback of vanilla with no mods players.
2. They specifically said "improvement" as not to say this is the definitive version of alife 2.0. In many of the paragraphs of the patch notes, GSC said "player may encounter" as if to make it vague how is and isnt AIdirector working. This in my opinion is not a lie, they say "you may encounter NPC that you recently meet if you walk in their direction" thats true in the sense that NPC now leave online mode, go to offline mode and at a certain range they still exist possibly allowing player to meet them again, also true, it doesnt say "players ALWAYS will find the npc they meet".
3. Yesterday and today even, i tried finding a group of stalkers traveling and i specifically tried to replicate the situation of seeing them un render in the distance (100meters) waited 30 seconds and enter the bubble again to see them still travelling although in the same position. But there is a caviat to this.... i tried to see them at 90 meters walking away from me, then i run at the opposite direction for 20 seconds roughly 300 meters away or maybe more and then running back into the NPC direction to see if i found them, and indeed i found them but FURTHER away. Meaning that possibly the offline path system is working but if its on the edge of the online bubble they dont move.
4. i was very critical about GSC but i have to say after reading the patch note, they didnt lie, yes there is a fake spawn happening , but they never said "NPC will not spawn out of thin air, all NPC are coming from lairs throughout the map".
Hey! thanks for the kind words :D
1. Yes some of us in the discord have had the same idea that this could be the cause but there is also a large minority that find's it weird that GSC would do that since the modding community is rather small in the grand scheme of things. its a hit or miss as to the reason why they did that but yes that is one running theory.
2. I have to give you points for the sharp remarks on the 2nd point there and i have to agree on that one, it is a solid point to discuss.
3. Again raising a good point here, i need to agree that on the letting them stay in offline part i can do better.
4. I was very critical of myself and the things i saw but i have to agree that after reading trough the notes, the way i worded myself and presented some of the stuff is not in the best way.
Effective a few minutes ago to an hour sorry was distracted, i've change most video titles, delisted all videos except this one and edited the description to more accurately reflect the reason for these videos.
I will keep this video up for tonight and in the meantime see what we can work with until tomorrow, then i will unlist this video and replace it with a more appropriate one as i did not except that many views on the 5 minute one, i legit tought it would be a couple of ten people from the discord and the doc coming trough.
You've raised excellent points here that have put my mind into thinking more about the situation, it's sort of like let someone else see over it and give their opinion since mine is clouded due to 4 weeks of work. I strongly invite you to come into the discord where such points you mention can be raised sooner and we can together work on a proper fix and future for the mod :)
@@NACCOY
Sorry for the second wall of text:
Thank you very much for reading my comment, im really passionate about Stalker2 maybe not as much as you because you made an excellent mod that help a lot of people for free, thats a lot of love for the game.
Now that i think even further about the alife situation,but without seeing the source of the game. I have a roughly estimate why is also, for us, the guys who like the technical stuff,NOT as complex as we want in 1.1.
For the NPC to stop spawning out of thin air, the game needs...
1. a sort of table or dictionary that allows to write down the position, status, npc-id in a virtual space in which allows to sustain those npc, because AIDirector cant spawn npc out of thin air, they need to exist from the moment that the player start the game, 1 second into the game. (after or during tutorial).
2. this table would erase the current spawn system because each npc would exist and persist from even 2km away from the player and beyond.
3. GSC needs a sort 3 layer system online (close and rendered), offline (far away and unrendered), distant offline (1km or more away, also unrendered) Because this is the way to make performance wise possible.
4. online mode is already figured out, its programmatically complete. (needs improvement in distant up to 200meters would be a reasonable number)
5. offline is in Progress, what is missing is ... tick of actions , every second or half a second the AIdirector will make a decision based on factors for how far npc will move in X and Y cordinates(traveling) and in case of combat, how much the combat will progress (example: 2 boards vs 3 stalker, every sec a board takes 15 damage o so, and a stalker will take 20) if the player crashes into a combat that is still on going (moves from offline to online), player will encounter and render those actors in the state that they were, life wise, position wise, ammo etc.
(THIS is the next step to the alife system to improve in a dramatic way)
6. distant offline. To make it simple , same as offline mode but the data that handle is smaller ,and the amount of NPC that will use this mod would be in thousands of NPCs since it covers the 85% of the map, and the AIDirector tick of actions needs to be longer as to not overload the performance, every 30 seconds, every npc in the whole map that is 2km away, will either move, battle , patrol, conquer lair. Now because the player is so far away , this battle can be automatic as in the current offline mode of 1.1 , or they could be separated by a 3 or 4 ticks(2 minutes) to allow the player to run so quickly as to be able to go through distant offline -> offline -> and possibly meet that battle situation almost 80% in progress. (Wishful thinking truly, we wouldnt even notice it , they can make instantaneous dont think would matter even for technical guys like us.)
Now this is the type of system that would erase the close spawn and basically most of the Alife complains, little to say, this system takes A LOT of time to produce. so the question is, did GSC move into a direction of a more complex alife system? maybe yes, they are catching more data of offline npc and for longer, performance hit is lower or same, they can realistically speaking introduce in 1.2 offline tick of action for offline.
@@NACCOY i would love to join the discord btw, which one its?
@@emanuel81111 Hey, sorry for the late reply i can't get to answering your previous comment atm since im very bussy but here is the invite link for the discord, you can find me under mod posts and then my mods name :) discord.com/invite/stalker-gamma