NEWSA+SIMBION_tweaked Support and Gameplay

[DARK TEMPLAR]

How's it going with the ideas I posted, have they been any use at all

[Nightwatch]

How's it going with the ideas I posted, have they been any use at all

I haven't forgotten them, don't worry. But, you may need to wait a for following (further along the road) update than this coming one for it. Your ideas need a lot of scripting, and testing and again testing, yet still not guaranteed that they would work under this engine. You ideas are very good, if proved that they can be applied, they'll offer some new experiences in the game.

New update, which is intended to make the mod 2.4.1, is having a bit of a delay as all you know, due to the reasons that I felt it was necessary to put this Forum up this week, so of course it caused a delaying effect on other things. But, the update will the there soon, I'm running the test-game now (got a very Hot Game as opposed to a Cold One, so I like it a lot) I may decide release it as it is, as 2.4.1. or delaying a bit more and making it a bit more comprehensive. Decisions are in the oven and cooking.

[jamie1992]

Hey Nightwatch remember the invisible walls in Pripyat?

I found the culprit.

http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=wwktxk&s=4

[DARK TEMPLAR]

Well as long as I have been helpful I'm happy and if you pull those things off then I'l be even happyier, til then good luck cherio

[Nightwatch]

Hey Nightwatch remember the invisible walls in Pripyat?

I found the culprit.

http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=wwktxk&s=4

Great catch jamie1992 It seems you're doing some extensive work on Pripyat.

You should consider putting this finding on the "Modding Techniques" forum as well, with its explanations and the nature and extent of the work that's needed.

Well as long as I have been helpful I'm happy and if you pull those things off then I'l be even happyier, til then good luck cherio

Thanks

___________
Hey Guys,

Any recent pictures? PDA stats now showing even more kills, downed choppers, twisted controllers, burning ACPs? Any other interesting photos? I'm still collecting pictures for the website. Forum installation and mod update work delaying it a bit but I'm building the "Players Corner" and will open it -link it to the website- soon.

[nandersen]

Wow, I got a CTD that actually provided some info:

Code: Select all

Expression    : fatal error
Function      : CScriptEngine::lua_error
File          : E:\stalker\patch_1_0004\xr_3da\xrGame\script_engine.cpp
Line          : 73
Description   : <no expression>
Arguments     : LUA error: ...shadow of chernobyl\gamedata\scripts\xr_logic.script:406: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value)

This happened in Dark Valley very close to the pig farm.

[Nightwatch]

Thanks nandersen posting the problem.

It seems the engin ecould not get a Id for a respawned NPC. When there are many NPCs and and increased action/activity, these may be seen. It should continue normally on reload, though. Thanks.

[busetibi]

hmm, things have turned interesting since my road trip around the zone and my return to Pripyat.
we now have Zombified Stalkers and Dark Stalkers to add to the mix that is Pripyat :twisted:

@nandersen yep that is a common one, just reload and ignore it till it pops up again :lol:

[nandersen]

lmao, hes got them round the wrong way.
the "red" one is the tweaked inventory

You couldn't be more wrong ;)

See the latest edits to my previous post.

[DARK TEMPLAR]

Another fun idea poped into my brain while C&C Renegade this afternoon, what if the game tracked your acurasy and the points where you hit the enemy. Kind like this: acurasy 67.3%
points hit:
head 20
stomach 69
crouch 10
leg 20

[Nightwatch]

nandersen

1- As you should know from GSC Forum, as it says in my Sig there, I specifically discourage players to download any files whatsoever unless offered by me and by the NEWSA+SIMBION_tweaked site.

2- You, or anyone else, should not offer any files, tweaks whatsoever for this mod. If you want to show your hand, you can continue playing with the original SIMBION, it needs many tweaks, but just don't copy my tweaks.

In the past, we had very serious problems with such anuthorized, unsolicited offers of downloads.

You are making not one, but too many changes in this mod, and you are reporting problems afterward. I do not allow this mod to be a practice ground, or a playground.

You are now not receiving anymore support. If you don't like something about this mod, you can go and play with another mod. I didn't sell this mod to you, I don't owe you anything. You are slowly messing with the mod.

If you want to continue playing, reinstall everything, do not touch anything and then you can expect to receive support. Otherwise you are off.


Your "unauthorized file offer" post has been deleted.

If you insist you will be banned.



(PS: All other posts which contained the unauthorized links in their quotes regrettably have been deleted to remove the link.)

_________________________________________________________
Please DO NOT download and install any files whatsoever from link other than those in my sig and on the Mod Website

[nandersen]

Nightwatch you are overreacting bigtime. The only "changes" I made was to remove sky4ce shaders and to change inventrory grid - none of them can cause any of the crashes that I experienced. The crashes are clearly caused by AI stuff and this is neither shader related or UI related.
I'm very surprised that you deleted the entire post when the only thing that you really didn't like about it was the file link.

Don't take bug posts personal. This is to help you improve your product and not to criticize your work.

Also, being a player can be very frustrating with CTD lurking behind every corner...

EDIT: Just downloaded and reinstalled 2.0 and 2.4 patch. This time I used ONLY the installers and did not make any changes afterwards (not even the optional things). Unfortunately this does not help.
I got a CTD when trying to talk to a guy (just guessing: he's probably a member of the hunter faction):

Code: Select all

* MEMORY USAGE: 331504 K
stack trace:

001B:012B105B xrLUA.dll
001B:03E91E7C xrGame.dll

EDIT2: and the yantar problem is also reproducible:

Code: Select all

Expression    : vertex || show_restrictions(m_object)
Function      : CPatrolPathManager::select_point
File          : E:\stalker\patch_1_0004\xr_3da\xrGame\patrol_path_manager.cpp
Line          : 155
Description   : any vertex in patrol path [yan_scientist_bunker_walk] in inaccessible for object [yan_scientist_help]


[Nightwatch]

nandersen

Also, being a player can be very frustrating with CTD lurking behind every corner...

There are no CTD lurking every corner. I and many others play this mod by hours with no CTD. Also Yantar "vanilla" scientist crash has been fixed in version 2.4 and those "rare instances" of some hunter crashes have been fixed by the new coming patch.

I have neither forced nor lured you to play this mod, it was your own choice. If you feel "very frustrated" with your game in any way whatsoever as you say you do, you do not need to get so frustrated and you are under no obligation to play this mod, I suggest you to stop playing the mod and have a nice happy time.

Thank you for your interest so far.

__________________
Please DO NOT download and install any files whatsoever from link other than those in my sig and on the Mod Website

[busetibi]

okay people it's teaser time

mostly Monolith and Military occupy this area of the map, I get the odd Freedom guy, Duty never comes down here.
oh and it's the area with heavy Controller infestment (usually 4 or 5 at a time)

http://busetibi.homestead.com/files/ss_ ... ipyat_.jpg


I love the smell of burnt Zombies in the morning

http://busetibi.homestead.com/files/ss_ ... antar_.jpg

so I'm back in Pripyat for my last stand, I've been back to Cordon and made my way back through all the levels (including the dreaded DV)
the initial goal I'd set myself at the start of this run through is almost complete, although I still feel I've missed out on mutant kills which is weird because I've killed every mutant that I've come across taking it to the extreme limit of chasing dogs in the hills of Agroprom.
anyhoo, Pripyat is my hunting ground of choice.
my lone Freedom guy in the stadium is dead!!
I finished off doing my "rounds" of Pripyat and checked out the stadium before taking on the Controllers in the school building (which will be again occupied by Bandits and Monolith, I leave the area and they come back)
I'd just got into the stadium itself and saw him fighting off Snorks as I ran to help him he went down, dead :(
went ape on the Snorks (14 of them) then headed back to the underground car park to hard save before heading onto the school.

[Nightwatch]

Another breath-taking account, busetibi
So you love the smell of burnt Zombies in the morning... It somehow reminds me "Apocalypse Now. "

Those pictures are going to the Players Corner as well. The section hopefully will be opened next week. Opening forum delayed things for a few days.

As you know, because the mutants fight with each other, too, unless they find a sweeter human flesh to their taste, their numbers in this occasion might have seemed (and happen) to be less than your previous walks. But as it appears, you've compensate it with controllers.

[Draakon]

I think you all guys need to relax down. Nightwatch, according to licenses, nandersen is free to do such tweaks as long as he shares only the modified files, not the whole gamedata folder.

[NatVac]

Yes, Draakon, one can tweak other's efforts to their heart's content, but Nightwatch is under no obligation to support such modifications of his release. Any such offer within the official support thread might be mistaken as being officially supported. Normally I would not say this, but history has wreaked havoc on my understanding of game players.

Here I go sticking my head where it can be easily removed -- from my body:

nandersen, there's a lot of precedent on why modders don't take changes in their mods very well. My first related memory was of a player who demanded that the Redux team fix a bug in their mod that no one else was experiencing. When he mentioned a specific symptom and cited specific lines of code, I went and checked, and sure enough, it was not in the Redux code. But it was in the retail game. It turns out that he'd extracted the gamedata.dbn files in the wrong order, overwriting the newer versions of the files with an older version, and the mix with Redux would crash. (Ref: the Redux thread at GSC.)

Later another player loaded bardak's 1.0004 bfa, had a crash, and immediately claimed the bfa was buggy. Wow, it took a long time to track down the cause because the player claimed there was no other change to his system that might affect his game. Eventually he admitted he had more than 450 MB of other mods he insisted did not affect the bfa, but of course bfa files expected certain vanilla scripts to remain the same. The bug was turning up with a symptom in another script (actor was nil) due to a changed file that was not compatible with the bfa. He wound up apologizing, but we won't recover the hours spent trying to get past the player's repeated insistence that he had done nothing wrong. (Ref: the "Bardaks 1.0004 bug fix attempt" thread at GSC.)

And you are well aware of the ZRP being cited for causing problems, where the player insisted there was no other mod, just vanilla, patches, and ZRP -- and yet the symptom was a reference to a missing trader repair variable. There is no trader repair in the ZRP. Yet the same player came back later and accused the ZRP of causing crashes in a different way, and when I pointed out the fallacy in that (the error indicated it was not a clean install, cf. page 107 of the ZRP thread), I was called a liar. (Ref: ZRP thread at GSC, page 112.)

Finally, at ZSG a player copied an optional file, then had the dreaded incompatible mod error because he didn't know what he had done. He insisted it was pure ZRP that was crashing when he used the Modifier. It turns out the problem was caused by a 1.0004 system.ltx he manually copied onto a 1.0005 version of the game. (Ref: ZRP thread in Mods section at ZSG forum, pages 14 and 15.)

The common point in all this? Everyone had modified the mod, but unfairly and incorrectly blamed the mod for the crashes they saw, because from their perspective, they had not done anything to affect the mod itself.*

Yes, you are trying to supply something helpful. But we already spend a lot of time and effort fixing the current problems in the mods as they are, and dealing with the complications of merges with other people's mods and tweaks might be very stress-inducing.

And yes, Nightwatch overreacted. Maybe you weren't aware of the previous occurrence of a similar tweak effort posted on the GSC version of this thread. The player there was also well-meaning as you were -- but the context is similar.

References provided upon private request; the data is supplied for corroboration, not for personal attack on anyone.

¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
Nightwatch, I'd like to issue a caveat about the 2.4 fix of the scientist. It may be that if a reload of a save made before the completion of the scientist's measurements, he can still go into hyper-alertness and have the same problem. The fix would be to programmatically make him only aware of threats within a much smaller distance -- which is now done after the measurements, but may need to be done earlier.

_____________
*And I just saw Kanyhalos get attacked when he simply said honestly, "I don't know what the problem is." Do we modders want that?

[Clay65]

Sorry, but i can only disagree with Nightwatch behaviour (and with what NatVac said too)

You're not talking about two identical things, and this is totally wrong.

In the past we had some1 THAT ASKED PPL TO DELETE THE SCRIPT AND CONFIG FOLDERS before applying his "fixes"... and this was surely the worst thing that some1 could do...
But it's not like just proposing a fix in a couple of files, that could have been easily tested to see if they were good or not, and that is a common practice in all forum threads in the world of modding.

Sure... sometimes there are ppl that go over that "limit", but i didn't see it this time.
And removing just the links ( while asking to nandersen to "not do that again" ) was surely something that i could understand ( I couldn't agree, but i could understand... ), without coming out with those pathetic sentences...

Your "unauthorized file offer" post has been deleted.

If you insist you will be banned.

I think that nobody is here to spit on your work, Night, but surely nobody here can say that Simbion is a bug-free mod... cause it's not the truth...

[fatrap]

Well..... looks like a bit of trouble in paradise. Hope that it settles down soon because the folks that hang out here are the highest caliber of people that any forum could wish for. We surely don't want to lose any of them...

But, folks being folks, things like emotions and tempers can sometimes get a little outta control. Just like it did here.

There are a lot of valid points that are in the previous posts. NatVac cited several instances where mods were blamed for things caused by third-party modifications to the original mod. That is a very frustrating experience for a modder to go through.

Nandersen is relatively new to the STALKER community and has not seen as much of this stuff as some of the rest of us. In my experience, he has always tried to be helpful.... not harmful... and he was simply trying to help in this instance. What he probably did not know is the history of the AMK/ABC/SRP mod that this mod is based on.... and how much hard work it took to get it to this point. I remember Lee28, rockingmtranch, spelk, Nightwatch and many others pulling their hair out to get it up and going.... it was pretty rough. So you really cannot blame Nightwatch for being a little over-protective...

But.... and there is always a but.... nandersen did not do anything severe enough to warrant a ban warning. Not even close. A friendly email from Nightwatch to him would have probably been enough. Just telling him "hey, this is what we are trying to accomplish here and I need to keep really strict control on it".

But to delete posts and threaten banning..... nope, waaay outta bounds. That sounds a bit too much like censorship to me. And since only one person here has that power, it could easily be construed as a dictatorship. But I don't really feel that that is what it is.... just folks being folks.... and maybe having a bad day from other R/L stuff that set them on edge....