Ever wonder why bandages made you thirsty when you used them? Or why on earth you would bother with a pill that gives you 1% chemical resistance?
Requires DLTX
Works with 1.5.1 and 1.5.2
This mod attempts to remedy the bizarre medicines in anomaly. Why would I bother with 1% damage resistance? Why does every single drug make you hungry, thirsty, and/or sleepy without consideration of the type of drug? How much damage resistance are these painkillers actually giving me?
This replaces or modifies drugs that were only useful in the early game, weren't useful at all, or didn't make sense to be in a video game (why does a tetanus vaccine treat radiation poisoning?) as well as changing the effects of some drugs to better match their real life counterparts. These drugs have been balanced so that their effects are worthwhile for their side effects. It also removes bizarre effects that don't make any sense, like bandages and tourniquets making you thirsty, or morphine magically healing wounds.
Some examples of changes made:
Replaced tetanus vaccine with ketamine, small glucose shot with atropine, 027 pills with diazepam. Replaced some of the boring drugs that just do the same thing as others with pills made out of ground up artifacts, which have very debilitating side effects and powerful bonuses. Removed the bleeding restoration of metamizole and morphine. Gave vinca a damage resistance bonus and buffed its bleeding restoration. Made stimpacks reduce sleepiness instead of increasing it (why would stimulants do that?). Changed the effects of painkillers so that they don't feel like they're tiered, now you have reasons why you might choose metamizole over morphine. Gave yadulin multiple uses so you don't feel like you're swallowing an entire pill bottle. Made caffeine pills and energy drinks last longer.
![ketaminedesc]()
I don't want to write out a list of everything I changed, just go into the game and see for yourself.
This doesn't necessarily make the drugs more realistic, the system would need a total overhaul for that to happen. It also doesn't remedy the problem of item bloat. There aren't enough effects programmed into the game for the number of items it has, so there are gonna be some items that basically do the same thing. It probably isn't balanced either, I threw it together in a couple of hours haphazardly.
Some of the drug descriptions aren't accurate, because the game uses a script to add the things that list sleep, thirst, and hunger increments, and that script wasn't written to consider the possibility of certain combinations of values. For instance, the bandage will say "slight sleepiness decrease" or something like that, but the bandage doesn't effect needs at all. The rest of the description will be accurate. You can just ignore the parts that list hunger, thirst, and sleep changes and use the better stats bars mod to see what they actually do. I won't touch scripts for the sake of compatibility.
This mod still needs a lot of work, and will probably change a lot. Consider it a proof of concept. I would appreciate feedback.
to do: replace some of the weird painkillers with ones people would actually use in real life. add coated bandages, and add a variety of painkillers with different effects.
update 1: added artifact based drugs.
update 2: added diazepam. reduced the intensity of diclofenac and gave more reason to use it. reduced dizziness across the board. improved description so that you know what you're downloading.
update 3: fixed some grammar issues in the drug descriptions. added ground goldfish tablets.
update 4: replaced diclofenac sodium with phytomenadione. I wasn't happy with the state of diclofenac and thought there were too many pain killers and not enough anti-coagulants.
update 5: buffed yadulin so it can fill the roll of long-term healer that diclofenac used to fill. added gabapentin.
update 6: changed drug descriptions so you know how much damage resistance they give you, instead of the "strong, moderate, average" vague garbage.
update 7: changed fireball tablets to meat chunk tablets. the fireballs were buggy (made you invincible to bullets, only sometimes made you resist fire). added aloe-vera bandages. they are wip as they need a fdda patch.
update 8: crash fix related to the id of 027 pills ie diazepam
update 9: balance update. ketamine was nerfed a little (damage resistance and carry weight together is kinda op). pain killers no longer provide rupture resistance. buffed the rupture resistance of anti-coagulants. increased the prices of yadulin and ketamine. some other changes were made, you might not notice them. also made a shitty preview image.
should be compatible with everything that doesn't effect medical items. Groks body health system should be compatible, but using it will be difficult because both mods change the descriptions of the drugs.
Requires DLTX
Why isn't this compatible with Grok's Body Health System?
I'm actually not sure if it is. Doesn't it use a different system for consumables?
edit: looking at the mod, it probably will be compatible. Both mods edit the descriptions of the drugs, however, so it will be difficult to use them together. load mine after body health system. You'll get weird effects that you aren't expecting from drugs otherwise
I just used winmerge for the descriptions, keeping the info about first-aid and post-heals. All good!
oh man some drugs Literally take my half HP also the side effect feels like someone punched me in my face
Does it feel like the buffs make up for it? I don't want them to feel too unbalanced.
honestly i don't know but i feel like it's so powerful and the side effect also is so powerful
I'll be reducing the dizziness and adding more buffs in the next update. I think they are a little bit unbalanced.
1.5.1 or 1.5.2?
either, you just need dltx
thanks bro
I think the Artifact based drugs are great, you should expand on this!
was already doing that lol, added goldfish pills
En.wikipedia.org
En.wikipedia.org
Seems like its actual use risks aren't substantially greater than any other powerful NSAID. No need for a health cost IMO. You could potentially induce low-level bleeding due to its vascular effect, but have it be low-level and end quickly, doing much less damage than the actual restoration, but something to discourage use while in combat.
Thanks for the feedback. Yeah I'm pretty unhappy with the way the diclofenac is right now. There just aren't a lot of good options to make it "realistic" or even distinct from morphine or metamizole. I'll probably end up just replacing it with something more interesting. We don't need so many different painkillers that all do the same thing. Perhaps a racetam?
As an anti-psy drug given their cognitive effects? Maybe. There's not a lot of those but not much need given how rare psy fields and the like are compared to everything else a player needs to worry about. I never minded the multiple painkillers aside from the obvious of morphine being straight-up the best. I like your change of making the diclofenac a long-lasting restorative, giving a very low but steady healing rate to let someone heal up slowly after combat without using a medkit. That said, the aspirin (salicylic acid) should be changed to something else, maybe something for neuropathic pain? Gabapentin would be a nice choice for a combination anti-psy and mild painkiller. Also, don't be afraid to have drugs be a mix, such as a gabapentin/pregabalin mix called "Psy-Killer" since it stops both psychic assaults and general pain.
I'd also give stimpacks a bit of hunger gain back. All that energy and healing has to come from somewhere, after all, but I'd throw in a stamina boost as well so the player doesn't get hurt too badly by the hunger in combat.
En.wikipedia.org
That list is a nice place to start for ideas and research. Just look at what's A. the major risks in the Zone (so nothing that needs significant long term treatment) and B. would make sense. I'd put an emphasis on either powerful but specialized treatments for immediate concerns or a multi-use ones given the variety of the dangers. And don't forget topical creams and the like, since a nice tube of even aloe vera would be a nice way to treat a burn or any sort.
I actually was already using the list of essential medicines as a source (i mention it in the ketamine description). I was also thinking of gabapentin as a good choice for use in the zone. I'll probably add it soon.
Metamizole is actually not aspirin. Despite it being called salicylic acid in the game code, it is a different drug. It's a prodrug and its metabolites are some cannibinoid and another nsaid. In game terms it serves the same purpose that aspirin would, though, and I probably will replace it because no one uses it anymore irl.
Aloe vera is a great recommendation! I hadn't thought of that. I was trying to think of drugs to give burn resistance, they probably will need to be topical drugs. For FDDA compatibility though, they would be out of place and not have any kind of animation.
Aloe vera bandages.
Ah, gotcha. Good to know all of that. That's a good idea then. And what Stachelhaut said, plus you can use treated/coated bandages for other things as well, such as vinca-doped bandages for even better healing or ones with anti-chemical compounds. There's also kaolin (a clay compound) which would work as an anti-chem and anti-bleeding compound in bandages. Kaolin-treated bandages are actually the US military's bandage of choice (the QuikClot Combat Gauze) due to its extremely quick clotting, and it could possibly even heal slightly due to its ability to close wounds up fast.
Funnily enough, there's a lot of multi-use drugs and treatments out there that Stalkers would love to keep around that just don't show up in Anomaly.
Okay, sorry for even more words, but personally since IMO painkillers are probably the number one needed item in the Zone after anti-rad drugs, I don't mind a lot. Personally I'd have two each of benzodiazepines, opiates, and NSAID's, one oral with long term but low potency and low side effects, and one injected that's short term but with potent main and side effects. Benzos would double as anti-psy drugs, the oral one giving psi protection and the injected version healing psy damage, NSAIDs accelerating healing the most due to their direct effects on inflammation, and opiates giving the strongest damage resistance.
I was trying to avoid changing textures and animations for this mod, but I will probably need to if I'm going to be satisfied with it by the end. So yeah, coated bandages probably in an update sometime.
I wasn't thinking in those terms but now that you say it, painkillers would be the drugs I would look for the most if I were in the zone. I think some variety of painkillers would be good, my main issue is that in vanilla they all just did the same thing. I've already got some variety of painkillers that have different resistance values, I'll probably expand on that.
NSAIDs being the only ones that restore health because of anti-inflammation, opioids having the strongest physical resistance values, and benzos having other non-physical resistances. I'm limited in the kind of effects I can use without writing scripts. I can't restore psych health and I don't think I can add shock resistance. Vanilla drugs just didn't do those things so there isn't code for that stuff. I'm also limited by the fact that the damage calculation is really wacky. Explosion resistance and ballistic resistance is the same thing. Can't buff one without buffing the other.
Don't worry about saying a lot, I appreciate it. You're the only one here who's given me more than one sentence of feedback.
Good to know you like my feedback. To be honest, I haven't actually played the mod yet since I've been a bit busy to crack open Anomaly, but even just from reading your description and talking to you I can tell I'm going to enjoy these changes.
And I wouldn't worry about explosion and ballistic resistance being the same thing. Physical pain is physical pain, and I'd apply the same thing to animal bites.
Speaking generally, I'd put any dissociative or mood-altering drug in the psy protection category as well. Yes, that includes cocaine since whoever or whatever is trying to fry your brain has to fight past the effects of whatever you're on to do so. And to be fair cocaine should reduce damage as well since its you know... cocaine.
Amphetamines could also be added as an upgrade over caffeine, reducing more sleep and restoring more stamina and adding carry weight boost from the stimulant effects, with minor psy protection from the cognitive effects, and very, very minor damage resistance. I would have it increase hunger, but that should really be a thing for everything with a stimulant effect more potent than caffeine.
If you felt like making a lot of new drugs, you could even branch out into cooking recipes, where you dilute drugs in water to reduce their effects, both good and bad while greatly increasing the duration due to being taken orally. Mix one dose of cocaine with two units of purified water to create cocaine tea for example. Oh, and mix cocaine and morphine to make a speedball, if the player feels like dying from OD that is.
Well I hope you do like it once you try it. It is far from finished in my eyes, I think it still needs a lot of work.
The damage calc is a problem in the case of my "ground fireball tablets." The drug is supposed to anomalously provide 70% fire and explosive resistance. It practically makes you invincible to bullets if you realize the bug. Which is why it doesn't last very long.
Psy protection in this game is very bizarre. Would being smart make you better or worse at repelling a controllers attack? I was sort of acting under the assumption that the dumber you are, the safer you are. Wouldn't we see zombified mutants if it was the other way around? If that's the case then any drug that improves focus should worsen psy resistance. Either way, I don't want to make so many drugs improve psy resistance. It's supposed to be like a mid-late game challenge, and giving the player tons of options for combating it would kind of make it lame.
I'm not sold on the idea of making stimulants make you less hungry. In real life they do worsen your appetite, but that isn't exactly sating your need for food. I might make them improve hunger if I feel like they need better buffs for their price/tier.
I'd love to implement a crafting system combining drugs. I have no idea how to do that though lol. My understanding of lua isn't really strong enough to be implementing things like extra drug effects and crafting. I'll do some research into the idea, though. Might be easier than I'm assuming.
I have a problem when installing through Mod Organiser 2. The first version of your mod before updates work just fine but when I want to run with any updated version my game doesn't launch.
did you delete the old versions? Which dltx version are you using? Can you post your crash log?
Nothing changed between updates that would make your game crash on a new one compared to an old one.
I deleted the first version before launching with a newer one. The crash happens with any version thats not the initial release one.
* Detected CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-3570 CPU @ 3.40GHz [GenuineIntel], F6/M10/S9, 3402.00 mhz, 36-clk 'rdtsc'
* CPU features: RDTSC, MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE4.1, SSE4.2
* CPU cores/threads: 4/4
Found commandline file!
Initializing File System...
using fs-ltx fsgame.ltx
File System Ready...
FS: 65978 files cached 67 archives, 13489Kb memory used.
Init FileSystem 8.053253 sec
'xrCore' build 8219, Aug 8 2021
-----loading f:/games/anomaly\gamedata\configs\system.ltx
FATAL ERROR
[error]Expression : <no expression>
[error]Function : CInifile::Load
[error]File : Xr_ini.cpp
[error]Line : 789
[error]Description : fatal error
[error]Arguments : Attemped to override section 'sleepingpills', which doesn't exist. Ensure that a base section with the same name is loaded first.
stack trace:
That's weird. I understand whats happened and how to fix it but I don't understand why it happened. Do you have another mod that effects drugs?
Try the new version I just released and tell me if that fixed it.
If that doesn't fix it open mod_system_better_drugs.ltx and delete the whole section that starts with ![drug_sleepingpills]
It's the first mod for drugs that I installed. The new version works and has new items that you added, cheers.
Good to know, hope you like the mod.
The problem was that I used the wrong item definition for diazepam. What confused me was that it worked fine on my machine, despite the incorrect definition. Strange.
I'll give this a go, sounds interesting!
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My first meds mod I installed, but I feel like nothing else can come close to it. The grounded goldfish tablets and ketamine got my sides, but the boost in sleep reduction for caffeine was the icing on the cake.
My only gripe is that some of them seemed somewhat overpowered, especially when using only once. Maybe entirely remove satiety gain of certain meds like cigarettes?
For some reason, it simply doesn't work. No errors, I just installed the addon and no changes in the game. I am confused to be honest
Update: I think it may be because I'm playing on russian, although i am not sure