[WIP] "The Clear Sky", a STALKER Overhaul mod

[The Philosopher]

Overhaul of my old STALKER mod, i really wanted to comeback and revisit the mod, fixing some of the problems and adding new stuff both from the STALKER series and ideas of my own


Features:

---

-New weapons like the AS-VAL and the GM-94 unique ( i hope) from one another
-New enemies! forget about the old Carcass that was just an annoyance than an actual threath
-A new live world where you encounter dangerous anomalies but also valuable artifacts

Screenshots:

---

Recommended Addons:

---

DarkDoomZ
Relightning Doom
Inmerse
Weather
Reverb
Ambience Sounds

Download link

[thugsta]

Funny i too am creating (almost done actually) a stalker/fallout'ish roguelike mod, i must of missed your old mod version. We have a similar idea but different execution, nice

[GoalDude-00]

Alright, first forum post since I completely forgot I even made this account a while back.

Having played this mod's earlier iteration, I like the direction you took as far as the monsters and weapons roster are concerned - but right now, I feel the mod is very unbalanced. Basically, the new monsters hit really hard and/or are too tanky while you really don't get enough weapons or ammo to fend them off. Some of the weapons also feel very underpowered.

I understand going for a survival horror kind of feel, but the monsters are far too "aggressive" for that. They also wander around the map instead of staying put until they see you (which I absolutely am a sucker for after spending who knows how many hours playing Shut Up and Bleed), which leads to some very heated and unexpected encounters. Sure, that's all well and good, but don't you think the player should have the means to effectively fight back the higher level of monster aggression? I'd suggest either making the weaker weapons stronger (the knife, pistols and SMGs mostly) or lowering the health of the monsters.

Just for the sake of making my point in regards to bullet spongy monsters, here's a small list:

---

The smaller arachnids can take up to three shots from the Fort-12 to kill and are quite fast, tiny and prone to swarming you - one attack from any weapon should be more than enough to kill them. They don't need health to be a threat.
The arachnid matriarchs feel oddly balanced when it comes to this: they're bigger, slower and don't swarm you as quickly. You could lower their health if you cared, but simply making them less likely to spawn is also good enough.
The carcass is, indeed, an actual threat now. The main issue is it can take a full mag from the Fort-12 to "truly" kill and they replace imps, so they'll be numerous. As if that wasn't enough trouble, they'll get up fairly often and quite quickly at that - there were times where I had just killed one for another which was nearby to get up and kill me instead. You can keep them tough in terms of health, but make them slow so the player can at least run away from them. Keeping them from resurrecting after just a few seconds would be great and potentially create more opportunities for the player to conserve ammo, especially if there are a lot of carcasses in a previously cleared area of the map. The vomit attack could be made to cause almost no damage to the player on impact, but instead rely on the poison effect to deal damage - just a thought.
The bloodsucker feels pretty balanced. No real comments aside from how much damage they can deal and how fast they attack, maybe scaling it down slightly would be a good idea.
The boar also feels pretty balanced, but it can take a bit of a beating with the weaker guns which I suspect is the intention.

The actual issue I have with this mod's current iteration is just how rare it is to find ammo and guns. It took me quite a few tries to summon anything, which is sort of offset by the fact sometimes you'll get a pretty large amount of ammo to work with but until then you'll be stuck with a fairly weak pistol and a knife to get you out of trouble. Again, I understand limited resources, but as it is right now you're really starving the player of ammo and guns to deal with very aggressive and strong monsters that will never drop ammo. Even SUAB will give you some ammo and armor when defeating monsters, so at least you won't be completely out of options if one of your guns goes dry.

This one is more of a personal issue. I'm not sure if the mod has Brutal Doom's gore or nashgore or whatever in it, but I really don't think it improves the mod in any meaningful way and I'd prefer an option to switch it off so it won't get in the way while playing.

I hope this doesn't come off too harshly, as I do like this mod and its vibe. I'd like to see it continue to be updated and it can be quite fun sometimes.

[The Philosopher]

Alright, first forum post since I completely forgot I even made this account a while back.

Having played this mod's earlier iteration, I like the direction you took as far as the monsters and weapons roster are concerned - but right now, I feel the mod is very unbalanced. Basically, the new monsters hit really hard and/or are too tanky while you really don't get enough weapons or ammo to fend them off. Some of the weapons also feel very underpowered.

I understand going for a survival horror kind of feel, but the monsters are far too "aggressive" for that. They also wander around the map instead of staying put until they see you (which I absolutely am a sucker for after spending who knows how many hours playing Shut Up and Bleed), which leads to some very heated and unexpected encounters. Sure, that's all well and good, but don't you think the player should have the means to effectively fight back the higher level of monster aggression? I'd suggest either making the weaker weapons stronger (the knife, pistols and SMGs mostly) or lowering the health of the monsters.

Just for the sake of making my point in regards to bullet spongy monsters, here's a small list:

---

The smaller arachnids can take up to three shots from the Fort-12 to kill and are quite fast, tiny and prone to swarming you - one attack from any weapon should be more than enough to kill them. They don't need health to be a threat.
The arachnid matriarchs feel oddly balanced when it comes to this: they're bigger, slower and don't swarm you as quickly. You could lower their health if you cared, but simply making them less likely to spawn is also good enough.
The carcass is, indeed, an actual threat now. The main issue is it can take a full mag from the Fort-12 to "truly" kill and they replace imps, so they'll be numerous. As if that wasn't enough trouble, they'll get up fairly often and quite quickly at that - there were times where I had just killed one for another which was nearby to get up and kill me instead. You can keep them tough in terms of health, but make them slow so the player can at least run away from them. Keeping them from resurrecting after just a few seconds would be great and potentially create more opportunities for the player to conserve ammo, especially if there are a lot of carcasses in a previously cleared area of the map. The vomit attack could be made to cause almost no damage to the player on impact, but instead rely on the poison effect to deal damage - just a thought.
The bloodsucker feels pretty balanced. No real comments aside from how much damage they can deal and how fast they attack, maybe scaling it down slightly would be a good idea.
The boar also feels pretty balanced, but it can take a bit of a beating with the weaker guns which I suspect is the intention.

The actual issue I have with this mod's current iteration is just how rare it is to find ammo and guns. It took me quite a few tries to summon anything, which is sort of offset by the fact sometimes you'll get a pretty large amount of ammo to work with but until then you'll be stuck with a fairly weak pistol and a knife to get you out of trouble. Again, I understand limited resources, but as it is right now you're really starving the player of ammo and guns to deal with very aggressive and strong monsters that will never drop ammo. Even SUAB will give you some ammo and armor when defeating monsters, so at least you won't be completely out of options if one of your guns goes dry.

This one is more of a personal issue. I'm not sure if the mod has Brutal Doom's gore or nashgore or whatever in it, but I really don't think it improves the mod in any meaningful way and I'd prefer an option to switch it off so it won't get in the way while playing.

I hope this doesn't come off too harshly, as I do like this mod and its vibe. I'd like to see it continue to be updated and it can be quite fun sometimes.

Thank you very much for the feedback! so i will start saying that the monster "placement" is just for testing, so in the next update will be like the old version, where monsters will rarely spawn so that the dont swarm you and dont end up killing you that quicly, now for the other points:
-I was thinking of adding a SUAB style kick to back off monsters, just like i did in the Thing mod some months ago
-Ill try to reduce the amount of health some of the monsters have, or making them more slow/vulnerable
- i will edit the Carcass so that they just resurrect once, like in Call of Chernobyl, also i like your idea of the vomit attack but i dont know if the poison damage is calculated by the impact damage plus the poison damage itself, so i will test it and implement it if its possible, also for now the Carcass wont resurrect if you use fire weapons like the Molotov or the GM-94 and you can actually destroy the body of the Carcass
- The Bloodsucker in STALKER is just as a threath there, so i dont think will reduce any number

[Dr_Cosmobyte]

Tossing my coin in, i'd like to say i've also liked a lot your mod. Can't add more than what GoalDude said, but one thing i can help: Poison properties can be defined in the projectile such as poison time and poison damage. So you can customize projectiles as much as you want. Since you are a SUAB player, i would suggest studying how the Turmoil does its attack, try to mimic the values and play around with them.

[thugsta]

Played around with your mod, while it does need monster variation as well there is just way too many spiders and too little of ammo for how spongy they are.

On a sidenote, i like your sprites for the zombies etc. are they yours or where are they from? Can i borrow them with credits of course?

[The Philosopher]

Played around with your mod, while it does need monster variation as well there is just way too many spiders and too little of ammo for how spongy they are.

On a sidenote, i like your sprites for the zombies etc. are they yours or where are they from? Can i borrow them with credits of course?

Take a look at the credits file but the Carcass sprites were made by HorrormovieRei

[EmerphiS]

excellent mod at least in the little I tried, love the weapons and especially the imp replacements

I have questions still, this mod will continue to be worked right? It has a lot of potential and is not as complex as other similar ones

Also, do you plan to split the weapons and monsters in order to mix with other packs?

a session of these horror monsters with weapons like lethal Doom or led weapons would be quite interesting

[-Ghost-]

Nice, glad to see an actual STALKER mod! Guns feel pretty good; any plans to add more of the common ones like the AK74 or MP5? The ones right now feel a bit more exotic than what the player would have for most of the game.

[KTwo]

I highly endorse you to keep going with this mod, the addition and level of detail in some weapons is stunning.
Perhaps polishing up the sprites a little bit more could make this perfect besides the addition of more unique / rare guns?

Btw the KS-23 ejects yellow shells and not red. (Since its not a 12ga)

[-Ghost-]

Yeah, the sprites could use a little more polish. More weapons and gear would be cool too.

[KTwo]

Will there be any new updates?
Something?

[Unregret]

I'm also curious about this