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About this mod
Restores most online A-Life functionality.
This mod brings back the chaos of the alife in the old trilogy and also prevents spawns close to the player - consider it a stopgap measure until GSC fixes issues with their present a-life system.
This mod is an experimental beta.
- Permissions and credits
- Changelogs
I got sick of seeing the same insufferable A-Life discourse online every day so I fixed the A-life myself.
Shoutout to Grok's Discord Server for playtesting, and especially Flic for testing :')
Roadside Panic
A-Life Fix And Spawn Overhaul
This mod restores the chaotic dynamism of the old stalker games by "unlocking" the range of the director.
It also murders your framerate, so you can enjoy the authentic 30fps 2007 Shadow Of Chernobyl gameplay experience.
How Did You Fix "A-Life"?
Duct-tape. The AI director in Stalker 2 is actually very complex internally, however its function is gimped because of severe bugs compounding each other.
I troubleshooted the present bugs to the extent of my ability and duct-taped a solution, to coax the a-life system into working around its own field of anomalies, so to speak. There is only so much you can do with cvars when the game's spawn system is broken immensely, but this mod at least demonstrates that alife can work theoretically.
Meet my good friend, Skitzo Skif
**this gif is not indicative of the base game spawn experience.
In this gif, the ALifeGridVisionRadius value is 10x smaller than in the base game.
However, I'm demonstrating this because the ALifeGridVisionRadius is one of a couple of reasons why the game's spawn system is broken. The low radius of the vanilla ALifeGridVisionRadius setting neuters the online alife interactions that you would otherwise see.
The ALifeGridVisionRadius is set to 80m in vanilla. This is not just the radius of director spawns, this is the radius where all actor models spawn, and it is also the radius where actors are interactable. This 80m radius is the "real world" bubble around the player and nothing else outside of it exists. What about offline alife? Well, offline alife does not exist and the game does not seem to have persistence of individual npcs. This means the game will not track the movement or schedule of a Glup Shitto from the Lesser Zone to Pripyat. In this sense, the offline a-life of the past games no longer exists.
The Director in this game has its own system to manage offline events outside the "bubble range". Except this kind of flat out does not work.
I will elaborate more on the specifics of the a-life problems that i discovered and my workarounds in [PENDING PAGE EDIT]
There are a couple of other issues with the A-life system that is breaking it and causing not only janky behaviour but flat out non-existent a-life simulation.
This mod should prevent or at least mitigate abrupt spawns, and it will also deliver the immersive a-life interactions such as npc-npc firefights, of course..
There are 3 files available.
Roadside Panic has an 800m online radius. It is already very heavy on a-life spawns and scenarios, but it maintains vanilla squad density.
Roadside Suicide has a 800m online radius and spawn configs turned up to 11. Director will spawn as often as she can, and in quantities higher than vanilla. Caution: this version might lead to miserable experiences and miserable performance too.
Roadside Panic - Lite has an 250m bubble radius for world spawns around the player. This version mitigates bugs created by high-alife distance.
All versions also slow the day/night cycle by 4x, because that is the timecycle I play on and people hate vanilla daycycle.
(Timecycle cvar is changed in a CoreVariables which my mod modifies too)
In the video above you can see multiple overlapping events taking place
You also might *hear* the NPCs before you see them, allowing you to avoid encounters or plan around them.
Note that this mod is EXTREMELY performance heavy and the current spawn settings are OVERTUNED.
I am working on optimizing it and finetuning it, but I decided to release it now since everyone is complaining about alife.
Be wary - if you have been complaining that the zone in Stalker 2 is dead, you might be biting off more than chew here.
The current AI director settings are likely overtuned - I have not had significant time to playtest this yet. Typically I prefer testing my releases more than I have, but people on discord really seem to like it and everyone has been talking about alife being missing, so here you go.
Day-night cycle is also slower by 4x, because thats the timescale i play on and the variable for it is in the same .cfg that this mod utilizes.
Version without timescale changes will be released soon.
There are still systemic issues with the spawn system. This is a stopgap measure until GSC fixes the underlying bugs with the AI Director, or "A-Life 2.0"
I will write more about them later, but im tired right now so just try the mod and see for yourself.
Whats The Catch?
Performance. This mod will slaughter your frames on an already unoptimized game.
A top-of-the-line CPU is recommended.
Persisting Spawn Issues. As said before, the director is broken, and what all a-life cfg tweaks are doing is finding bruteforce methods to circumvent said issues to get more spawns and world events.
Quest NPCs can sometimes be missing and towns can be empty until you save and reload. This seems to be an issue with director spawns overriding regular spawns, or a failsafe that blocks important spawns when alife is active in an area. Mods that cranks up the director creates this SERIOUS problem and there might be no way to work around this side effect at this time. This might be unsolvable until GSC fixes the spawning system.
Technical Details
The primary cvar changes used by the mod to work are listed below. Most importantly, the world bubble radius, ALifeGridVisionRadius, is set to 800m, where it was 80m in vanilla. Director cvars for spawn distance are set past 100m to encourage the director to spawn scenarios far from the player, not nearby. This only works when the bubble radius of ALifeGridVisionRadius is set really high too, of course. DefaultSpawnDirectionAngleMin is set to 0 to attempt to prevent backspawns, as spawns behind your player are likely the most jarring ones as you have enemies spawning in areas you have cleared. This is not perfect, but this is the best we can do with cvar changes.
CoreVariables
ALifeGridUpdateDelay = 0.0
ALifeGridVisionRadius = 86426.0
SimulatePhysicsDistance = 6200.0
GenericModelGridVisionRadius = 25358.0
AgentSpawnNavMeshQueryDistance = 750.0
bALifeTick = true
CorpseTimeout = 6000
PsyNPCCorpseTimeout = 5
LairSearchingRadius = 100000.0
AlifeDirectorScenarioPrototypes
DefaultSpawnDistanceMin = 12358
DefaultSpawnDistanceMax = 61986
DefaultSpawnDelayMin = 6
DefaultSpawnDelayMax = 48
DefaultPostSpawnDirectorTimeoutMin = 4
DefaultPostSpawnDirectorTimeoutMax = 120
DefaultSpawnDirectionAngleMin = 0
DefaultSpawnDirectionAngleMax = 180
DefaultALifeLairExpansionToPlayerTimeMin = 2
DefaultALifeLairExpansionToPlayerTimeMax = 120
DefaultExpansionSquadNumMin = 8
DefaultExpansionSquadNumMax = 16
DefaultExpansionLairDistanceMin = 6000
DefaultExpansionLairDistanceMax = 25256
DefaultShouldDespawnNPCs = false
AIGlobals
MinALifeSpawnDistance = 8000
MinALifeDespawnDistance = 100000
MaxAgentsCount = 150
Compatibility.
-This mod is likely incompatible out of the box with a host of other mods out of the box, as it tweaks a couple of very common cfg files.
-Due to the copious amount of Zs prefixing the mod, this mod will likely load last and overwrite other mods modifying the same files.
-Patching and merging multiple cfg files is easy - I will link a guide below.
The list of modified files are:
CoreVariables.cfg, AIGlobals.CFG, ALifeDirectorScenarioPrototypes,
ALifePopulationManagerFactionPrototypes
Is "A-Life" Real? Did the developers lie to us?
*sigh*. This discussion is stupid because a-life has always been a smoke-and-mirrors marketing term for a complex npc control system, together with the dangling bells and whistles of intersecting mechanics.
A-Life does not exist in Stalker,2 in the sense that the system operates so vastly different that trying to use the old A-Life as a mental benchmark is pointless.
There is no A-Life in Stalker 2, there is only A-Life 2.0. But even this brings confusing associations with the old system, so I just call the system the AI Director. Or Her. She is the Ariadne whose thread weaves the path of those who walk the maze of the Zone; she is the seamstress of the Fates themselves, maybe she is the Zone herself, for she too is bequeathed with treacherous mysteries in equal part sublime and confusing; and she is also whatever other ridiculously ornate and purple figurative you can conjure to string together ideas of feminine mystery and grace and destiny and strings and divinity, simply so you can avoid the exhaustive and mundane topic of attempting to the incensed layman why this new encounter system is not a downgrade and why there would be no reason to pine for alife 1.0 - if only she worked as intended.
This new AI Director is not by any means is watered down. In fact, the reason she is such a mess is that the ai system is in fact too fucking convoluted.
But rest assured, the Director can do all the things you expect out of Stalker. She is able to schedule faction conflicts and turf wars, and create the kind of gunfights in the old stalker games, the ones you hear in the distance and hope to avoid walking into.
"Technical Documentation of spawn system coming tomorrow."
Shoutout to Grok's Discord Server for playtesting, and especially Flic for testing :')
Roadside Panic
A-Life Fix And Spawn Overhaul
This mod restores the chaotic dynamism of the old stalker games by "unlocking" the range of the director.
It also murders your framerate, so you can enjoy the authentic 30fps 2007 Shadow Of Chernobyl gameplay experience.
- Unleashes full potential of online a-life. Expect
- Heavily mitigates cases of enemies appearing out of thin air right behind you, like in that reddit clip of the military base everyone keeps talking about
- Significant extension of A-Life range. NPC and NPC interactions can be seen and heard from afar.
- Different factions will fight for territory at POIs.
- Keeps your legs warm in winter with performance impact.
- Prevents quest npcs and towns from spawning normally at times. You have to save and reload the game to get quest npcs to spawn.
How Did You Fix "A-Life"?
Duct-tape. The AI director in Stalker 2 is actually very complex internally, however its function is gimped because of severe bugs compounding each other.
I troubleshooted the present bugs to the extent of my ability and duct-taped a solution, to coax the a-life system into working around its own field of anomalies, so to speak. There is only so much you can do with cvars when the game's spawn system is broken immensely, but this mod at least demonstrates that alife can work theoretically.
Meet my good friend, Skitzo Skif
**this gif is not indicative of the base game spawn experience.
In this gif, the ALifeGridVisionRadius value is 10x smaller than in the base game.
However, I'm demonstrating this because the ALifeGridVisionRadius is one of a couple of reasons why the game's spawn system is broken. The low radius of the vanilla ALifeGridVisionRadius setting neuters the online alife interactions that you would otherwise see.
The ALifeGridVisionRadius is set to 80m in vanilla. This is not just the radius of director spawns, this is the radius where all actor models spawn, and it is also the radius where actors are interactable. This 80m radius is the "real world" bubble around the player and nothing else outside of it exists. What about offline alife? Well, offline alife does not exist and the game does not seem to have persistence of individual npcs. This means the game will not track the movement or schedule of a Glup Shitto from the Lesser Zone to Pripyat. In this sense, the offline a-life of the past games no longer exists.
The Director in this game has its own system to manage offline events outside the "bubble range". Except this kind of flat out does not work.
I will elaborate more on the specifics of the a-life problems that i discovered and my workarounds in [PENDING PAGE EDIT]
There are a couple of other issues with the A-life system that is breaking it and causing not only janky behaviour but flat out non-existent a-life simulation.
This mod should prevent or at least mitigate abrupt spawns, and it will also deliver the immersive a-life interactions such as npc-npc firefights, of course..
There are 3 files available.
Roadside Panic has an 800m online radius. It is already very heavy on a-life spawns and scenarios, but it maintains vanilla squad density.
Roadside Suicide has a 800m online radius and spawn configs turned up to 11. Director will spawn as often as she can, and in quantities higher than vanilla. Caution: this version might lead to miserable experiences and miserable performance too.
Roadside Panic - Lite has an 250m bubble radius for world spawns around the player. This version mitigates bugs created by high-alife distance.
All versions also slow the day/night cycle by 4x, because that is the timecycle I play on and people hate vanilla daycycle.
(Timecycle cvar is changed in a CoreVariables which my mod modifies too)
In the video above you can see multiple overlapping events taking place
You also might *hear* the NPCs before you see them, allowing you to avoid encounters or plan around them.
Note that this mod is EXTREMELY performance heavy and the current spawn settings are OVERTUNED.
I am working on optimizing it and finetuning it, but I decided to release it now since everyone is complaining about alife.
Be wary - if you have been complaining that the zone in Stalker 2 is dead, you might be biting off more than chew here.
The current AI director settings are likely overtuned - I have not had significant time to playtest this yet. Typically I prefer testing my releases more than I have, but people on discord really seem to like it and everyone has been talking about alife being missing, so here you go.
Day-night cycle is also slower by 4x, because thats the timescale i play on and the variable for it is in the same .cfg that this mod utilizes.
Version without timescale changes will be released soon.
There are still systemic issues with the spawn system. This is a stopgap measure until GSC fixes the underlying bugs with the AI Director, or "A-Life 2.0"
I will write more about them later, but im tired right now so just try the mod and see for yourself.
Whats The Catch?
Performance. This mod will slaughter your frames on an already unoptimized game.
A top-of-the-line CPU is recommended.
Persisting Spawn Issues. As said before, the director is broken, and what all a-life cfg tweaks are doing is finding bruteforce methods to circumvent said issues to get more spawns and world events.
Quest NPCs can sometimes be missing and towns can be empty until you save and reload. This seems to be an issue with director spawns overriding regular spawns, or a failsafe that blocks important spawns when alife is active in an area. Mods that cranks up the director creates this SERIOUS problem and there might be no way to work around this side effect at this time. This might be unsolvable until GSC fixes the spawning system.
Technical Details
The primary cvar changes used by the mod to work are listed below. Most importantly, the world bubble radius, ALifeGridVisionRadius, is set to 800m, where it was 80m in vanilla. Director cvars for spawn distance are set past 100m to encourage the director to spawn scenarios far from the player, not nearby. This only works when the bubble radius of ALifeGridVisionRadius is set really high too, of course. DefaultSpawnDirectionAngleMin is set to 0 to attempt to prevent backspawns, as spawns behind your player are likely the most jarring ones as you have enemies spawning in areas you have cleared. This is not perfect, but this is the best we can do with cvar changes.
CoreVariables
ALifeGridUpdateDelay = 0.0
ALifeGridVisionRadius = 86426.0
SimulatePhysicsDistance = 6200.0
GenericModelGridVisionRadius = 25358.0
AgentSpawnNavMeshQueryDistance = 750.0
bALifeTick = true
CorpseTimeout = 6000
PsyNPCCorpseTimeout = 5
LairSearchingRadius = 100000.0
AlifeDirectorScenarioPrototypes
DefaultSpawnDistanceMin = 12358
DefaultSpawnDistanceMax = 61986
DefaultSpawnDelayMin = 6
DefaultSpawnDelayMax = 48
DefaultPostSpawnDirectorTimeoutMin = 4
DefaultPostSpawnDirectorTimeoutMax = 120
DefaultSpawnDirectionAngleMin = 0
DefaultSpawnDirectionAngleMax = 180
DefaultALifeLairExpansionToPlayerTimeMin = 2
DefaultALifeLairExpansionToPlayerTimeMax = 120
DefaultExpansionSquadNumMin = 8
DefaultExpansionSquadNumMax = 16
DefaultExpansionLairDistanceMin = 6000
DefaultExpansionLairDistanceMax = 25256
DefaultShouldDespawnNPCs = false
AIGlobals
MinALifeSpawnDistance = 8000
MinALifeDespawnDistance = 100000
MaxAgentsCount = 150
Compatibility.
-This mod is likely incompatible out of the box with a host of other mods out of the box, as it tweaks a couple of very common cfg files.
-Due to the copious amount of Zs prefixing the mod, this mod will likely load last and overwrite other mods modifying the same files.
-Patching and merging multiple cfg files is easy - I will link a guide below.
The list of modified files are:
CoreVariables.cfg, AIGlobals.CFG, ALifeDirectorScenarioPrototypes,
ALifePopulationManagerFactionPrototypes
Is "A-Life" Real? Did the developers lie to us?
*sigh*. This discussion is stupid because a-life has always been a smoke-and-mirrors marketing term for a complex npc control system, together with the dangling bells and whistles of intersecting mechanics.
A-Life does not exist in Stalker,2 in the sense that the system operates so vastly different that trying to use the old A-Life as a mental benchmark is pointless.
There is no A-Life in Stalker 2, there is only A-Life 2.0. But even this brings confusing associations with the old system, so I just call the system the AI Director. Or Her. She is the Ariadne whose thread weaves the path of those who walk the maze of the Zone; she is the seamstress of the Fates themselves, maybe she is the Zone herself, for she too is bequeathed with treacherous mysteries in equal part sublime and confusing; and she is also whatever other ridiculously ornate and purple figurative you can conjure to string together ideas of feminine mystery and grace and destiny and strings and divinity, simply so you can avoid the exhaustive and mundane topic of attempting to the incensed layman why this new encounter system is not a downgrade and why there would be no reason to pine for alife 1.0 - if only she worked as intended.
This new AI Director is not by any means is watered down. In fact, the reason she is such a mess is that the ai system is in fact too fucking convoluted.
But rest assured, the Director can do all the things you expect out of Stalker. She is able to schedule faction conflicts and turf wars, and create the kind of gunfights in the old stalker games, the ones you hear in the distance and hope to avoid walking into.
"Technical Documentation of spawn system coming tomorrow."