Comment on Weekly Recommendations Thread: What are you playing this week?
Essence_of_Meh@lemmy.world 1 week agoMostly vanilla, just some custom settings and basic mods (LASS, UI bars to see hunger & thirst, additional quest templates). It’s my first time trying it so I don’t want to go too deep into modding until I work out a solid baseline for what does or doesn’t work for me. I’m sure I’ll create a customised monstrosity soon enough.
Is there anything in particular you’d suggest to check out? Can be anything as I’ll pick and choose anyway but it would be nice to know something that’s tried and tested to start with.
Making your own custom modlist is definitely the most satisfying thing, although I recommend using some kind of vanilla+ mod pack as a baseline just to save time. Last year when I was playing and modding STALKER Anomaly I used the now-defunct HACR, but it lives on spiritually as Null Point. That should be a good moddable baseline. Back then when I was hanging out in the HACR Discord I put together this document of some mods I liked that I added on top of the pack. I haven’t played or updated that document since last winter though and there’s been some new cool stuff.
Otherwise there are tons of YouTube videos out there that list like, Top 10 X-type mods for STALKER Anomaly, those are a good way to find new stuff. ModDB is full of nice mods, although unfortunately a lot is moving to Discord now. Hang out in the STALKER G.A.M.M.A. Discord server, that’s (unfortunately) a place where a lot of new cool shit gets posted. There is an engine mod on there that gives true Picture-In-Picture scopes with negligible performance hit, if you care about that stuff.
Also, make sure you know your way around some kind of text-comparison program like WinMerge or your favourite code editor because you’re going to have to merge some scripts and make your own patches if you’re building your own custom modlist.
Essence_of_Meh@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Appreciate the links, I’ll check them out once I’m ready to for more changes. I will most likely stick to a fully customised mod list as I tend have rather particular (dis)likes and going with packs can be more annoying than helpful (still find them useful as a reference point though).
Thanks for the pointers, looks like my journey is about the get started for real.
I almost forgot! You may already be using them, but you’re going to need a version of the modded exes as many mods depend on them. They are already baked into the PiP engine mod if you go digging on the GAMMA Discord, but if you don’t then grab them here. Use the MT-Test version if you don’t use the PiP exes, it has more performance. (I can’t live without PiP anymore though).
Also visually Screen Space Shaders, Atmospherics and Weather Expansion are used by many. I also really like Arrival.
But there is a ton of stuff you can add, an entire Toxic Air/Gas Mask system like in Metro is available if you want and so much more. If you like having companions around the TALKER mod lets you hook up AI to get dynamic dialogue.
Essence_of_Meh@lemmy.world 1 week ago
I’ve seen couple mentions of modded exes but didn’t pay much attention to them (mostly due to no info beyond “they exist” when I saw them). Now that I checked the repo it makes more sense. You’d think technical improvements like this would be included in the base package but I guess they have their reasons for not doing it.
One thing I’ve noticed about Anomaly mods is: their mod descriptions suck. There might be a sentence or two about what a mod does but most of the ones I checked have no specific details about features and lack any info about requirements. I thinks some of it has to do with ModDB treating Anomaly addons differently than “normal” mods, giving them less space to work with but regardless of the reason, searching through mods is much more of a guess work than I’m used to. Looks like previous modding experience spoiled me quite a bit in that regards.
I actually checked the weather mods you mentioned but decided to skip them exactly because of the limited descriptions. Like, I don’t know if Atmospherics is a replacement or an addition to existing weather types and I don’t want to replace the vanilla weather if it’s the former (it’s too early for that). Seems like I’ll have to dig deeper to figure out what I’m interested in.
Once again thanks for tips and recommendations, they are extremely useful.