Any updates on the A-Life situation?

[Bad Distraction Carnifex]

Waiting until either a mod or the devs fix it a bit more. Anything been done or in the pipeworks past that initial fix?

[Bad Distraction Carnifex]

I'm hoping modders will fix it. Even if it comes with a big performance drop that's fine by me!

[Slackerdude74]

Well there will be another big patch soon either the end of this week or sometime next week, because they also have to add dlss4 to the game. So maybe more ALife stuff in that patch?

[ReeDeR]

what does alife mean? What should it be?

[BeavisSaves]

I can live without it, but it would be very nice to have eventually.

[ReeDeR]

Originally posted by voloeb100500:

Originally posted by ReeDeR:

what does alife mean? What should it be?

Living, breathing in game world, even when player is not present in that location.

I'm not sure that this is feasible. Especially since the game is based on random encounters with infinitely generated bots at the moment.
And ALIFE requires a different approach to everything. There should be no visibility sphere in the game. And the number of NPCs on the world map should be limited.
Considering that the map is very large, there should be a lot of NPCs and mobs. And the computing power will not handle this.
Or there should be few characters, but then the map will be empty.
The game's economy is also tied to the number of NPCs. There will be less loot with real ALIFE.
Just think about it.
The developers are not ready for such global changes.

[Sayuri]

Originally posted by ReeDeR:

Originally posted by voloeb100500:

Living, breathing in game world, even when player is not present in that location.

I'm not sure that this is feasible. Especially since the game is based on random encounters with infinitely generated bots at the moment.
And ALIFE requires a different approach to everything. There should be no visibility sphere in the game. And the number of NPCs on the world map should be limited.
Considering that the map is very large, there should be a lot of NPCs and mobs. And the computing power will not handle this.

Yes, games are able to handle it, they have been able to handle it for many years. The trick is to simplify NPC behavior and NPC characters that are far enough away.

If the player is not around to see it, it doesn't require fully spawned NPC characers, just some "pretending" by the game, to simulate NPC behaviors far away from the player.

That's how every open world game with persistent NPCs handles it and it works perfectly fine if done properly. NPCs being simplified when far enough away is not noticeable by the player, again as long as its done properly you could have hundreds of NPCs, if not more.

As for random encounters : You can have an open world with persistent NPCs AND have random encounters. Skyrim for example does that.

[ZedLeppelin]

There are already a number of mods that improve A-Life on Nexus Mods. FYI.

(not fixes, but improves)

[ReeDeR]

Originally posted by Sayuri:

Skyrim for example does that.

I wouldn't say that Skyrim has a special life simulation. There are bots spawning in certain locations that never leave. And mini-meetings with a random assassin, a group of imperials dragging a prisoner, etc. I don't remember exactly. They also disappear into thin air. This is the same spawner. It just has some kind of mini-story. Stalker has the same thing) You can meet three bloodsuckers)
ALIFE in Stalker means something else. NPCs must travel between maps. So that you can meet a group of lone stalkers in the Zalissya. And then as the game progresses, they, for example, meet you on the DUga.
And as they travel, they can kill someone, from a group of bandits for example, and the group will become smaller. Or they may not reach at all and they will be killed and you will find their corpses while you are moving along the plot. And while they are going to the Duga, they change weapons or armor. THIS is a life simulation.

[Silentghost]

I refuse to play the game without a functioning A life system. Without it, just another generic FPS. Which i became bored with over 10 years ago. there only so much point gun shoot gun that i can deal with. Its boring.

[Cheyenesku]

I love how everyone thinks A-Life from Anomaly woudl work in a big open world. Even now Anomaly A-Life is a resource hog and ups the requirement of Anomaly way above they should be (we just dont feel it due to specs we have nowadays). Back in the day, when Anomaly devs made A-Life work in the same capacity in all maps at the same time like in the map the player was in, it was optional, very heavy on CPU and came with a warning. In OG games A-Life on other maps were simple equations and A-Life in player's map was working together with a spawn bubble (yes, there were enemy spawns behind you back) and scripted spawning (eg. bandits always spawned at certain entrance to Garbage and walked to attack Loners, they werent coming from any base). They tried to make it bigger with Clear Sky with faction wars but we know how it went - its still incredibly buggy.
NO PC WOULD BE ABLE TO RUN the game if it had that, especially with big draw distance of NPC's like everyone wants.
Also they would need to make two systems - before SIRCAA there is pact between most factions so there is no faction wars, after SIRCAA all hell breaks loose.
They are on the right track with this one (we will see what they cooked for the next big patch after next one - next one is DLSS4 support), remember they need to make it work with big open world so it wont only run on most powerful pc. This also needs the engine update to 5.4 version at least, which will also fix AI, optimization etc. (common problems of UE5.1 and all games on it)

[in]

comparison about ALIFE in old STALKER games:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjMCZvxcoiw

I understand one big map compared to previous STALKER split into many smaller region.
As stated above, want to hear from DEVS, is this a fundamental impossibility of how large the game is now? Limit with engine etc? Too taxing on performance?

STRONGLY agree that such deep well executed mechanics of ALIFE are critical for stalker. The randomized bubble occurring around player in STALKER2 makes me not want to play until fixed.

[in]

ALIFE 1.0 - the AI spawns 200m ? But when not visible, they still exist and take "offline" actions as combat etc. as was shown in the video. Perhaps the system can works similar?

Put is simply, the ALIFE 1.0 was always happening, and your bubble was 200m visibility of existing NPC doing ♥♥♥♥. Whether you are there to see it or not.

In 2.0 world is dead and your ALIFE bubble is 150m randomly spawning NPC etc.
Perhaps with similar "offline" calculations as in old games performance should not be limit ?

[Cheyenesku]

Originally posted by in:

ALIFE 1.0 - the AI spawns 200m ? But when not visible, they still exist and take "offline" actions as combat etc. as was shown in the video. Perhaps the system can works similar?

Put is simply, the ALIFE 1.0 was always happening, and your bubble was 200m visibility of existing NPC doing ♥♥♥♥. Whether you are there to see it or not.

In 2.0 world is dead and your ALIFE bubble is 150m randomly spawning NPC etc.
Perhaps with similar "offline" calculations as in old games performance should not be limit ?

Offline A-Life is in the game. There is a video of dude testing it with no clip/flying cheat. The game remembers stalkers walking somewhere and renders them back when you are getting close