Is A Life 2.0 just a random encounter spawner?

[Vakula]

Do we no longer have a simulated persistent world Stalker 1 was famous for?

[FissionChips]

Smarter person than I:

https://www.reddit.com/r/stalker/comments/1gzr5rf/as_a_software_developer_heres_what_i_think_is/

[Bad Distraction Carnifex]

Random is over simplifying it. As someone who's modding currently I can give some insight to the working aspects of A-Life 2.0.

It's what is coined a "Game director". This "game director" is responsible for spawning in units.

If you look under the hood it has a few important variables.

1) Stuff related to spawn distance, minimums, maximums, radius cone for the spawns, etc.

2) Stuff related to POIs. Who goes to what POI, basically.

3) Chance of a spawn occuring.

So YES. It is a "random encounter spawner" but if you stay in the area of the spawns long enough they'll do what A-Life 1.0 did, effectively.

The problem is they spawn and despawn way too close so anything meaningful they could do doesn't matter. There's also some jank that I can't fix like how spawns aren't persistent through reloads. That's backend stuff that I can't even try to mess with since we don't have proper modding tools yet and I'm way too stupid to write them myself.

A-Life 2.0 from what I can tell does a rudimentary simulation in a small bubble around the player, similar but not as complex as what A-Life 1.0 did.

[Vakula]

Originally posted by Bad Distraction Carnifex:

Random is over simplifying it. As someone who's modding currently I can give some insight to the working aspects of A-Life 2.0.

It's what is coined a "Game director". This "game director" is responsible for spawning in units.

If you look under the hood it has a few important variables.

1) Stuff related to spawn distance, minimums, maximums, radius cone for the spawns, etc.

2) Stuff related to POIs. Who goes to what POI, basically.

3) Chance of a spawn occuring.

So YES. It is a "random encounter spawner" but if you stay in the area of the spawns long enough they'll do what A-Life 1.0 did, effectively.

The problem is they spawn and despawn way too close so anything meaningful they could do doesn't matter. There's also some jank that I can't fix like how spawns aren't persistent through reloads. That's backend stuff that I can't even try to mess with since we don't have proper modding tools yet and I'm way too stupid to write them myself.

A-Life 2.0 from what I can tell does a rudimentary simulation in a small bubble around the player, similar but not as complex as what A-Life 1.0 did.

yeah I mean the whole appeal of A Life 1.0 was that there were events happening in the world parallel to what you were doing, and you could find the outcomes of those events, or happen upon an event mid progress AFAIU. This new system seems like a massive downgrade.

[FissionChips]

Anomaly 2.0

[Snoopkirby]

The game appears to be doing what old 3D 16bit games did back in the 80s and 90s, every once in a while spawn something outside radius while traversing through the game area, and delete them from existance if they not special and are a bit outside render distance. Bugs in the game are making spawns occur dangerously close to the player and making them unable to respawn when they're in the in-between distance where they are supposed to reappear if you reapproach them.
This is a massive design and technological regression.
I'll make a thread explaining this in further detail.

Originally posted by FissionChips:

Smarter person than I:

https://www.reddit.com/r/stalker/comments/1gzr5rf/as_a_software_developer_heres_what_i_think_is/

This reddit post makes no sense, it takes less effort to just make the planned thing work than build an entire fallback system that shouldn't be necessary in the first place. The OP has nothing to corroborate his claims.

[Vakula]

Originally posted by Snoopkirby:

The game appears to be doing what old 3D 16bit games did back in the 80s and 90s, every once in a while spawn something outside radius while traversing through the game area, and delete them from existance if they not special and are a bit outside render distance. Bugs in the game are making spawns occur dangerously close to the player and making them unable to respawn when they're in the in-between distance where they are supposed to reappear if you reapproach them.
This is a massive design and technological regression.
I'll make a thread explaining this in further detail.

Originally posted by FissionChips:

Smarter person than I:

https://www.reddit.com/r/stalker/comments/1gzr5rf/as_a_software_developer_heres_what_i_think_is/

This reddit post makes no sense, it takes less effort to just make the planned thing work than build an entire fallback system that shouldn't be necessary in the first place. The OP has nothing to corroborate his claims.

I didnt make any claims, I asked a question along with a cursory observation. The guy in the reddit post also just poses a hypothesis, and nothing factual about the game code supports his claim - "It's important to note that this is ultimately my educated opinion, and may not be realistic given the specifics of the Stalker game engine, but it is typical of software development. "