Greetings.
This is the last major update and the last mod page re-design. I've decided to describe the whole way of development from the first prototype to the final version. Including how I started to mod stalker games. If you are not interested in the modding memoirs, just check trailer for the latest update and download the mod to try it youself. Satisfaction is not guaranteed though. And still you can't demand anything from a freebie mod after all. Your expectations are only yours, try this mod on your own risk.ABR COP MOD 2.2 Update Trailer
The mods I played.
My first real PC game was Clear Sky, it was just released, and I liked it a lot back then. I didn't like SOC for being too boring, but I liked it with ABC Inferno, the mod probably not very many people are aware of. I remember finishing RMA mod at least once. I played COP only on release for like 3-5 times and never touched it again, didn't like it much too. I tried some old mods like Lost Alpha, Reborn 2.47, Stalker Soup, Dead Autumn 2, Dead City Mod. But those didn't become my favourites, though the last one was funny. Later, the mod that catched my attention for a couple of years was Autumn Aurora. For ABC Inferno, RMA, Autumn Aurora mods, I made some fixes and tweaks and that's it. Inspired by Autumn Aurora, once I even launched Misery, sure this mod is iconic, but after trying to kill a boar for a couple of minutes with a shotgun, I just deleted it and never installed again. So, you can say that I am not a die-hard fan of the series, neither the mods.
ABR PACK - so easily forgotten.
All modding thing started as a joke in 2016. SAMmy, later our tester, didn't like stalker games at all. And since he adviced me to play Assassin's Creed series games. I decided to overhaul COP, since it looked the easiest to overhaul, with bunch of mods around, and to show him that stalker is not that bad and have some interesting music and aesthetics at least. And in 2017 ABR PACK was ready.
I uploaded it here, just for a fun. Some people looked interested in it and I decided to make something bigger. The modding was a hard hobby, since I don't have coding skills. 99% of answers on the modding forums were like "Learn C+ at first" or "Nobody will do stuff for you, do it yourself". At least there are some tutorials online. But in the modding, it is only experience what matters. And getting the experience is like bashing a head on the wall over and over again, expecting things to change. So don't be surprised, if some modder will not run happily to make another addon for you or change something since you asked for it.
Even think up the name was a trouble. At first I wanted something like Autumn Overhaul by ABR (heavily inspired by Autumn Aurora). But I ended up with ABR MOD. Looks ok for modding the game by GSC. Abbreviations.
ABR MOD 1.0 - stroke of luck.
For ABR MOD 1.0, I decided to tweak AtmosFear 3 weather lighting, since I was tired of eternal darkness in the game. It never mattered, was it 9 AM or 9 PM, it was always artificially dark. AF3 has very difficult structure, so in the end, I have made a light version of it for the mod needs with more consistent weather cycles instead of weather being everchanging. So Zaton became a foggy swamp, Jupiter is a bright autumn place, and Pripyat is a darker version of Jupiter. Each weather cycle was tuned to a particular location's AN4 nature style to create a unique mood. This inspired by two things. There was very beautiful Autumn in 2017, I saw weathers and nature which I recreated in the mod. And I was really impressed with how each location in Dark Souls 1 looked unique and special, when I played it some time ago.
There were first experiments to tame MSO, to prevent a total chaos in the Zone. As for the balance, it was like I just broke already slight balance in the game and it became just a sandbox in semi-open world. Probably this was affected by Assassin's Creed series games, which I was playing in that time. The mod even had the option for having all stash coordinates from the start of the game. Thinking of it now, it's like 1.0 have been made by another person. I don't even remember much of creating it. Since most of the time I was learning how to make things instead of actually making something.
Since I was into music creation before all this. I paid extra attention to soundtrack extension and weapon sounds. Many weapon packs tended to have very loud and very crispy sounds. I made them to sound more cinematic-like, so sounds wouldn't burst ears, probably some people like that though.
The release wasn't big at all, some people waited for it, some people even streamed it. But after 2 weeks, Joe Donnelly featured ABR MOD 1.0 in PCGamer, and an unexpected hype happened. I fixed all reported issues in last patch 1.2.2. After hype calmed down a bit. I decided it's time to replay the mod I did. And I didn't like it at all. It was boring, felt empty, may be it was really too like vanilla game, which I never even liked?
ABR MOD 2.0 - team work.
Somehow when I started to make 2.0 version, there appeared my new team mate PYP, which helped me a lot with modding utilities and provided engine, model, animation and tons of other kind of tweaks. So in the end, PYP litteraly made a half of the mod. We gathered our weapon pack from other weapon packs with many tweaks. And this was the best part of making 2.0, to work in the team, building something collectively. That's the reason ABR MOD will never have different weapon pack, since we made all we needed to this mod, a good balance of quality and quantity. SAMmy also was engaged in the process more, as an advisor.
In 2019 I had tons of personal dramas and burnt out completely, the mod has fallen into a development hell. And I decided to reassamble it from scratch in 2020 on the base of Unofficial Patch. That was the only way to restore in my memory what was going on in gamedata folder, and fix all the issues in the process.
Probably I felt myself inspired after good responce for 1.0. And I decided to tweak balance for my liking, to make this game fit a survival horror genre, with which it names itself. It happened that my team mates had the same point of view, how this game should be. Zone should be a dangerous place, where you struggle to survive. Also, during the development of 2.0, I was playing Dark Souls 1 and Resident Evil series games. So they affected the mod too.
The Beginning of RE3 really affected me. And I decided that mod needs resource management and loot reconsideration. This is when looted weapons became unsellable. Deleting stashes was good not only for game economics but for optimization as well. Funny things is they shouldn't be sellable even in 1.0. But since I never repaired weapons to sell, I missed that aspect, and some might still have tons of money with this oversight.
Since there can't be any bosses in stalker. Let's forget about helicopter in Clear Sky, please. Inspired by Dark Souls 1, I created those one time spawned mutant packs and monolith gangs near story helicopters. So there would be some kind of challenge at last. Since I played vanilla many years ago, I wasn't attached to it at all. So I had a clear view how this game could be improved on par with other games, thinking outside of the stalker box.
The idea of locking player on Zaton came from The Outer Worlds, where player is locked on the first planet until quest is finished. And this helps to do that CoP missed, compared to SoC and CS, the feeling of progression. Zaton became a starting location, you don't have cool gear and you can't make tons of money in half of the hour. As intro stated, the main income for stalker are artifacts and this is what become important, same as sidequests. People might say, that player has less freedom now. Probably it is, if look at the game as a sandbox. But as a survival horror game with RPG elements, this lets player to feel growing his strenght while adapting to the Zone and getting a better gear. More of that, lock on Zaton has a technical advantage. It helped to control spawn of the mutants and made quests more stable. Since there were less variables and less chances for game to bug.
MSO was greately nerfed and changed back, closer to vanilla. Because sometimes, a mutant could run in and break the quest flow. The balance was set up, but the game still felt empty. And then SAMmy gave an idea which made MSO work much more interesting. Since ABR PACK, a-life distance was 300 meters, while vanilla value was 150. Back then I thought the more, the better. SAMmy said just make it 200. And it changed everything. Actually, 300 meters a-life turned Zone around player into a sterile place where nothing happens. With 200 meters a-life, the Zone became alive and a-life started to work. Mutants fight each other and stalkers, they migrate and some interesting situations happen. Sometimes same species mutants pack up in a big flock. So that's why to be agile and well prepared is a key to survival. Use the environment, take a high position, bear grenade launcher, take some energy drinks to have stamina in important moment. Resource management became more important.
Diplomat achievement always felt a bit out of place in harsh place as the Zone. So No Compromises achievement was added, now player could complete Debts and Hostage quests both ways, with diplomacy and with the force, and have the same reputation reward. Pioneer achievement was deleted since it was about creating anabiotics, the medicine available from the start in vanilla. Deleting anabiotics probably would be a solution too. But this pill gives you opportunity to skip the emission or sell it for money. This is much better, than achievement reward to buy this stuff in the late midgame, when it's useless.
All NPC and mutant textures were darkened, since they had pseudo lighting, from the times when game was developed to DX8. Also they just didn't fit to my version of AF3 weather and AN4 autumn nature. And I made many custom faces with different eyes colours and more horror looking zombie faces.
There were made 5 variations of each weapon shot to make long fire bursts sound more pleasant and not too artificial.
ABR MOD 2.2 - final major update.
This release is a fresh view at the mod after a long break. I rejected idea of keeping mod as much vanilla as it could be and decided to make the things as I wanted initially.
Upgrade schemes were made from scratch, now they are standardized and linear for everything, except for most of 9x19 pistols where you can choose accuracy or 3 round burst fire in the second column.
Since damage from bullets was raised since ABR PACK, outfit protection should be increased too. So you'll have all the protection upgrades from vanilla summed up, without useless decisions like what is more important durability or armour. They both matters, and you'll get both of them.
In the new update I raised anomaly damage, so you can't just run through the anomaly eating medkits. At least, this will be much more difficult now. Medical consumables now are more important. Since there are some strong radioactive fields, which will require anti-rad or radioprotectant. But weak radioactive fields will not be so dangerous, since every outfit in the game, except for the Coat and Steel helmet with no gasmask, have at least average radio-chemical protection.
But not all outfits have thermal-electrical protection. So there will be some choices. On Zaton you can buy Sunrise, a light armour outfit with average thermal-electrical protection, or Berill, middle armour outfit without thermal-electrical protection. While electric anomalies can be avoided, fire anomalies will be deadly. Also you can order CS3-A from Nimble, a unique trader and this will be a middle armoured outfit with thermal-electrical protection. But it will have more stamina consumption and only 2 artefact containers, while Berill have 3 and Sunrise have 5. Yes, in the final update, you can have 5 artifact containers in Sunrise even on first location. This was inspired by ABR CS MOD a bit.
Now, outfit descriptions will show what protection outfit have compared to other ones. And how or can it be changed with the upgrades later. So when you will think what to buy, you will see in description that Sunrise will have 5 artefact containers after the upgrades, while Berill will have only 3. And yes, there are no artifact containers at all without the upgrade.
Because of raised anomaly damage. Some things had to be changed. First of all, the place where Noah shows you how to reach teleport doesn't damage you much, even without fire protection, so there wouldn't be a soft lock or wasting medkits for nothing. The place where you help two stalker near fire anomaly, the novice stalker will give you 2 medkits (telling how scared he is to save his buddy), one is for his friend, other one is for you to heal. Since nerfing all the anomaly for this quest would mean easy fire artifacts and breaking the mod balance and logic of quest. Scientists' mission for psy artifact doesn't require any particular outfit and helmet, you will receive few packs of psy blocking pills. But their mission for checking mutant agression hypothesis does require outfit with fire protection and any helmet with gasmask. Since without fire protection you will burn there. Even better to have artifact for fire protection for this mission or at least many spare medkits, but this is just an advice. Psy fields in Pripyat quests deal less damages.
A word about SEVA, it is litteraly an anomaly bath suit, which you will aqcuire by the quest for the late midgame. Now it has more durable anomalous protection and is the best outfit to gather artifacts. But, due to lack of proper head protection and no availability to wear other helmets, even after all physical upgrades, it has less armour than Sunrise with Sphere-08 helmet. Since head protection matters.
And about head shots a.k.a. one shots. Vanilla game have oneshot protection, it doesn't make you invincible, litteraly it does though, for 500 ms, but you still might be killed in the game. This was added to all difficulties. So there will be less one shots in the game, if you quick enough to run away and heal.
This was a logical decision, since all weapons in the game having their real life RPM and bullet speed values. So weapons now are good even without upgrades. NPCs, litteraly, have better weapons now. Same as you.
I need to point out, that now you can have your weapon or outfit almost fully upgraded even on first location. Tools for calibration, which available in the endgame, in Pripyat, are required only for these upgrades: running in exo, target detector for scoped sniper rifles, and 3rd generation night vision for helmets. Though, weapon upgrades are not very necessary, outfit upgrades are the key to survival in the final update.
Weapon descriptions are changed too. You'll see where and when the weapon was produced, some values from configurations and the available addons.
Each type of ammo have regular and special ammo. Shotguns have slugs, which makes them more accurate. Rifles have armour piercieng ammo and pistols have expanding ammo to hit harder.
As for semi-automatic weapons, they have moderate fire rate now. So pistols are not so useless. Enemy with a semi-automatic shotgun is scary. Monolith snipers are shooting like insane now, not that good, I guess, but at least you can do follow up shots with SVD.
Since weapon values from the box were raised. All weapons have only accuracy, recoil, durability upgrades. Special upgrades were already mentioned above. Handling stat and additional inertia when swinging the weapon are removed. Camera effects when reloading a weapon were removed. All weapon draw, holster and reload animations were sped up. All sounds were synced.
Weapons have new jam system. Weapons jam only after exhausting its resource, which is shown in description. After that, weapon will jam constantly. Resource values are near vanilla, some are reduced, some are increased. So actually, on practice, you will not have random jamming with good condition weapon. If your trophy weapon reaches 28% of condition, and reward\bought\stashed weapon reaches 10% of condition, you will have jam after each shot. So if you repair your gear in time, you will not have any problem. This was inspired by System Shock 2 and Far Cry 2.
If the weapon pack we had wasn't so big, probably I would make some rusty textures for trophy weapons like in Far Cry 2. But, there are mercs in the Zone, if they will have rusty LR300's, this will look very strange. May be if engine let us to change weapon models after death, then some weapon in blood and scrathes would be cool. But we are already scratching engine's RAM limit in 4GBs. So doubling all textures would just kill the performance and stability. So you'll just have the "can't be sold sign" on trophy weapon icons. This can be turned off with the addon, so weapon icons will be clean. And after all there are many games when you just can't gather trophy weapons. So this is not a must have thing in the game, may be it is for vanilla, but I never take it as an absolute to be orientiered on.
Also, upgrade descriptions were changed to be more realistic. Fitting the parts for accuracy, the detail coating for durability, armour plates, dampers and etc.
New and intuitive Burer shields, so you understand when bullet is deflected and when it is not. Vanilla game has awful Burer shields, so you don't understand when to shoot.
Pripyat's story quest were re-structered a bit. Quests are given in the certain order, to minimize possible bugs. After capturing Gauss rifle, you will have a quest to find Zulu, marked as a story one.
Vanilla bug, when for Pripyat quest dead body didn't appeare, and you couldn't finish the game, now can be fixed manually. Go to the menu and click onto "Fix corpse in pripyat". A cutscene will start near the place where body should be spawned and an explosive charge will be placed into your inventory. This looks not so good, but it works.
And probably the most important thing, draw distance for every weather now is vanilla 350 meters, except for very foggy with 200 meters. So finally Jupiter and Pripyat have more FPS and better performance. I tweaked all non foggy sky textures to have vanilla-like fog in the distance. 1000 meters looked off anyways. Especially on the Jupiter, where you could climb up high and see empty space between horizon and end map.
A new soundtrack is added, this was taken from ABR CS MOD and one extra track was composed. These tracks were made specially for ABR MODs. Can be easily deleted to have expanded vanilla music.
Some issue fixes - more in changelog.
- Now repair and upgrade discounts are working. They didn't because of MSO changes to one script. But we found it and fixed it.
- Another great fix of vanilla bug, there will be no bleeding in the underground tunnel.
- Preacher will not be preaching after his death, this was mod's issue.
- There will be no more AF3 decease, the eternal bad weather cycle bug, when rain just doesn't stop.
- Now mod uses vanilla weather script. The bad side is that you might see abrupt weather change after loading a save, just like in vanilla game.
- Noah's door closing faster, so there is less chances for him to be eaten by mutants. Can't make him immortal since he might become hostile.
- You can sell one Compass artifact to Jupiter scientists.
- Groza have its PO scope back.
- Major doesn't wear helemt in cutscenes any more. It looked strange, so now it's like in vanilla.
- Fort17 and AKS were removed.
- AK without stock has returned to the game.
- You have 4 different random gear setups to start the game with: Toz66 + PM, Toz34 + PB, AK without stock + PM, SKS + PB.
- You start game in Black Coat. You can find fully upgraded Brown Coat\Gasmask\Steel helmet on the Zaton.
- Music from Underground and Lab is removed, since it didn't stop on location change sometimes.
- New main menu.
- Weapon damage is based on its caliber.
- Buckshot has more spread.
- KOBRA dot moves according to line of fire.
- The distance when bloodsucker becomes visible is increased a bit. It is easier to eliminate it.
- The mod was repacked. Each db file has a proper name. I hope installation will be more intuitive.
- You can have vanilla levels, reskinned with AN2, if you don't copy HD Levels Addon files. Also you can just delete them, even after starting a game. This might help, if you need better performance or just want less overgrown locations.
- Pripyat have mechanic with free repair back.
- Medics heal more health more for free.
- Evacuation mission doesn't(?) bug anymore, probably because of removing snorks near school or because of the next fix.
- Vanilla issue when Sokolov and one military guy didn't go to evacuation is finally fixed.
- Stock of Jupiter trader updates as intended. Faction outfits are added, according to faction help counter with each possible values. You will have Exo, Bulat, Sphere-12M and machine gun with its ammo, after you received Pripyat 1 underpass mission. This will happen no matter did you help any faction or not.
- Jupiter trader sells 3 Veles detector, after you received Pripyat 1 underpass mission. So you can finish
- Zaton trader quest without finishing scientists' sidequest on Jupiter.
- Compass were added to the hud. Sammy's idea.
- Kardan will make you gauss ammo for 2000 and one Flash or Sparkler artifact.
- Squad of bandits and stalker was added to Zaton, so camp looked more alive.
- Squad of Freedom\Duty was added to Jupiter, so camp looked more alive.
- Weapon shots don't lag with attached silencer.
- Small font size in some localizations issue fixed.
- Bigger font size for 2K or 4K - 125% and 200% font size for bigger monitors.
Conclusion.
We believe that this mod has 98% stability. There was no save corruption reports on public builds ever. But stalker games are very unstable and you may have some bug or crash. Which probably could be cured only by replaying from some earlier save.
If some issues will show up, there might be updates. But as for the balance, gameplay and other important things, this mod is finished. We did our best. Our team completely agreed, that this mod is vanilla, as it should be.