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Weekly Recommendations Thread: What are you playing this week? (sh.itjust.works)
submitted 5 months ago by to c/patientgamers@sh.itjust.works
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[–] 4 points 5 months ago (11 children)

Oh man, are you playing vanilla Anomaly? It's a solid place to start and all, but the rabbit hole goes deep when it comes to modding. STALKER has a huge modding scene, especially in Eastern Europe, and there are tons of plug-and-play modpacks out there. If you're into the game and want a more elaborate, more refined experience there is a metric ton of content out there, whether you want more survival/scavenging stuff, a vanilla+ experience with just better graphics or a classic unhinged STALKER Soup.

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  • [–] 4 points 5 months ago (10 children)

    Mostly 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.

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  • [–] 4 points 5 months ago* (9 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 4 points 5 months ago (8 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 4 points 5 months ago (7 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 3 points 5 months ago (6 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago* (5 children)

    Yes well, development on official Anomaly versions is extremely slow, and so Demonized releases his modded exes on a much faster development cycle.

    Yeah, the modding landscape is very messy. A lot of presumed foreknowledge, very user unfriendly and also very scattered. Nexusmods for Anomaly is largely unused, ModDB is a mess and a lot of stuff is now scattered across various Discords, sometimes with important patches and additions buried deep inside threads with absolutely zero discoverability.

    I would personally recommend some weather mod, I find vanilla weathers pretty underwhelming in comparison. There are a bunch though, Melancholy Weathers is close to a 1.0 release. But I have that opinion about most things Vanilla Anomaly. It does its intended job extremely well, which is to be a stable and unified platform for modders (compared to the mess of Call of Chernobyl-based mods that preceeded it), but it's fairly lacking without add-ons. Although I may just have been ruined at this point, I have played and modded Anomaly a lot.

    Another thing I forgot was the Mod Configuration Menu. A lot of mods will also depend on that for configuration. It's so easy to forget all these absolute bedrock foundational mods, sorry! Here is another must-have: Beef's NVGs.

    Final recommendation (for now) is Dark Signal Audio packs. These are some of the best sounds you can find for Anomaly. They work fine with the other audio mods from that sheet I linked, you can futz with the load order in MO2 to decide which should overwrite what.

    Let me know if there is something else specific you're looking for, I can go back and sift through my stuff and refresh my memory. But I think the absolute best way to get a baseline grasp of what exists out there is to download some modpack(s) and look through their mod list. Even if you decide to build from scratch yourself later rather than use something as a baseline, it will help clue you in into what mods exist.

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  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago (4 children)

    Man, the rise of Discord had such a tremendous negative effect on online communities it's not even funny. I hate it.

    I'm not against replacing vanilla weather, I simply want to familiarise myself with the original before doing so - just like with gameplay additions. I get your pain though, when I start modding I tend to go pretty hard myself so going back to vanilla experience can be difficulty.

    I don't have anything specific in mind, I usually just play something, take note of what bothers me or should be expanded on and then start looking. That or just browse at random until something catches my eye. I'll probably just start with checking out the mods you linked alongside your personal list and go from there. I haven't really modded Stalker since CoC so I don't have a specific vision in mind like I do with other games I play, I'll just figure things out as I go.

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  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago (3 children)

    Yeah, Discord replacing forums and places like ModDB is definitely terrible. I hate it too.

    For me I kind of approach modding in reverse, almost. I tend to first canvas as much as I can and put together a collection that I like, and then I will playtest and if I run into specific issues I'll look for further mods that solve them as I go. For me it saves me time because I know right off the bat there's going to be things I want to change, and I don't need to play vanilla first to know that.

    Also a note about that document I linked: it's very very far from being comprehensive. It was made to save me time on the Discord because users kept asking about mods to add onto the baseline HACR pack. So I have omitted a ton of essential mods (as you could tell) simply because they were already in HACR base. But it's something at least.

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  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago (2 children)

    While I prefer the "classic" approach I actually do the same for some specific titles (mostly Bethesda games). As long as it works for you, that's what matters. Modding is suppose to be about fun after all.

    No worries about the doc, I want to use it as a starting point, nothing else. You helped me plenty enough with figuring out the basics of Anomaly modding, time for me to do some legwork on my own.

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  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    No problem at all, I love Anomaly and modding it (as you can tell) so I will happily talk your ear off about it if you give me half a chance to. And I'll be happy to give further help or tips in the future if you want to, too.

    Enjoy diving into the rabbit hole, I'll keep an eye out for future weekly threads to see what you end up with!

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