men stalker

[radiant stone]

https://thunderstore.io/c/lethal-company/p/YaBoiDucki/men_stalker/

A monster that is intended to fill a niche role that isn't done by the vanilla monster : a stalker-type monster like the Braken, but one where instead of fighting it by constantly looking out for it on your back to prevent it from entering its attack phase, the gimmick is finding it in the first place (Thus it is hard by design, but you have a LOT of time to do so) before it enters the attack phase so that you can adapt and flee from it (Whether you fled from it successfully or not is made ambiguous by design, but it is quite intuitive : run in the opposite direction ): the attack phase is a lot more similar to the Jester in the sense that it is a lot more infrequent than the Braken's (Since it takes a lot of time stalking you) but also a lot more destructive (Not AS destructive, though, as you can kill it, it gets stuck on door for a while and doesn't deal a whole lot of damage. But it is VERY fast and always know where each players are)

I opened this thread so that I'm up to date on things related to bugs, but to also hear people's opinion on whether or not the Men-stalker successfully accomplish it's intended gimmick (or every kind of opinion in general !)

However I unfortunately don't plan to add anything new or revisit his animation or model/texture (I must admit it is quite an uninteresting design) (or god forbid its cursed goofy aaah sound effect), however I will make sure that it is bug free and accomplish it's intended role (Through balancing or, if necessary, adding a few new mechanic)

If you want to help out on some things i would be very glad and thankful ! But I may not give a fast answer

[tall saffron]

YEEEAH !!!!

One of my favorite custom mob, really 🙏

[wicked warren]

Hey nice to see this has been updated. Were a lot of the bugs fixed?

[radiant stone]

Yes a lot got fixed. Works just fine so far.

[latent warren]

neato!

[frosty glade]

My problem with the older versions was that the men stalker always become stuck in some place making killing him too easy

Also is this compatible with the mod to sell bodies?

[radiant stone]

Probably not

[gleaming plover]

it probably works yeah

sellbodies would make it drop samples that you would have to configure there

[latent warren]

sellbodies adds generic entity drops for modded enemies

common, uncommon and rare depending on the monster's power level

[solid reef]

?modder 335448720479092737

[vernal hatch]

Added role Modder to yaboiducki

Yay! @radiant stone you've been assigned the modder role. Head to #role-picker to select which type of modding you're interested and active in.

[bold gulch]

i think when hes stalking me my game lags

[radiant stone]

Thats a suprise, I can see why it will when he is in his "Rush/attack" phase, but in his "Stalking" phase he doesn't have some weird shenanigans happening in the code. Is it possible if you could please give me his "Behavior state" when the lag starts happening ?

(This implies that yes, he does have some weird stuff happening in the code during his rush phase)

[bold gulch]

maybe it was the stalking phase im not sure

[radiant stone]

He has 5 states and 3 of them are really similar so I can understand why it's hard to guess

(similir by the look of it)

[bold gulch]

cause idk where he is

[radiant stone]

I'm not sure, wish I could help but that's not enough info to work on something. If you catch anything related to him that is interesting on the BepInEx console when the lag was happening it would be awesome if you could paste it

which is understandbly not easy to spot, thinking about making him print out more stuff on the console to help out with debug

[bold gulch]

i looked for things in the console couldnt find nothin

[radiant stone]

can't really do much since there isn't that much info, but thanks for the feedback !

[vivid wasp]

is this mod updated for v56?

[plucky dagger]

try to increase the rarity weight until i encounter this enemy challenge starting now

[pulsar bronze]

you're not meant to see him

he does a good job at hiding and keeping his distance

its very rare for you to actually spot him in his stalking stage

just gotta wait for him to ambush you lol

[plucky dagger]

never been attacked

yet

[pulsar bronze]

I've only been attacked like 3 times

but that was when he was buggy

so he'd attack me and then just get stuck in place

but now it's fixed so he should actually try and kill you lol

[radiant stone]

He is actually quite common.

On average his spawn chance is between 10%-20%, which is already more than the Braken's spawn chance.

If he feels rarer than 10-20 %, it's most likely because of how he functions :

• Doesn't move much during his idle phase
• Stalking phase last a long time (60ish seconds)
• Doesn't know where you are so long as he isn't in his stalking phase

I might force him to actually move toward you, or roam a lot more during his idle phase

[plucky dagger]

that would be cool

[plucky dagger]

Kaiji

[radiant stone]

Well sh*t

i'll go fix it now

[plucky dagger]

tanks

[radiant stone]

Honestly I have zero clues what this could be, i'll go ask for some help in development-general 😬 Thanks for the report !

[radiant stone]

Pushed an update.

[red zenith]

It works now and through testing the new model and the animations are way more appealing and I honestly like the goofy nature, bravo

[bold gulch]

I will test it out

[plucky dagger]

Yayyyy

[barren marsh]

Man mvoes liek a smiling friends character, scareed the hell out of me when I saw hi mfer the first time

[lavish coral]

say it aint sooo

[pulsar bronze]

Assuming this doesn’t work for v60 then

[lavish coral]

no it doesn't

i set it to the max spawn weight and it still didn't spawn

[pulsar bronze]

It spawned for me but

He doesn’t move or do anything

[pulsar bronze]

@radiant stone Will you be fixing this mod for v60?

[radiant stone]

Yes it's being fixed, will post an update tonight.

I deprecated it since it's not compatible with v60

[radiant stone]

Actually, pushed an update. Should be up to date
Thanks as always 🙏

[pulsar bronze]

appreciate it

[bold gulch]

Let’s goo

[pulsar bronze]

@radiant stone Do you know if you can nerf men stalker lol he's kinda op

It's mainly the speed, once he goes into his chase mode he has super speed and just overwhelms you so its hard to defend sometimes

[radiant stone]

It's kind of the point actually, the downside for his big aah speed during his chase sequence, is that you have plenty of time to spot him during his stalking phase, is manageable with a weapon (If you have 1 of course), and is bad at opening door. I know the last point means that the geometry (aka RNG) of the map can screw you up but I consider it to be part of the gameplay.

Actually, I'm more considering to nerf his stalking phase (Once you "cancel" his stalk phase, he can kind of just, immediately stalk you again without cooldown, AKA he can camp a large area of the map. Which is why I've been considering adding a cooldown before he can stalk again)

I'd like to know more about your input though, I'm definitely interested if you don't mind. He is definitely designed to be a very "extreme" character, I definitely understand that, and as mentioned above I do think he has a couple of problems.

Another thing that I've come to notice about his design flaw is that for an extreme mob, his mechanic/gameplan is not intuitive at all.

Thanks for the input as usual!

.

Actually as a response to your input :

I'll decrease his movement speed, with a bit of reflexion and retrospective this definitely indeed seems like a decent change

Ah, I'll see tomorrow. Thanks for sticking with the mods, appreciate it

[pulsar bronze]

Yeah I get that, it's fine if he remains the way how he is if that's how he's intended. It's just that sometimes like I spot him, and he wanders off, but then 15 seconds later he just charges at me full speed giving me no time to react, he kinda forces you to have a weapon on you because you can't outrun him once he enters his chase mode, and even with a shovel he attacks you so fast that by the time you even begin swinging he's already gotten 2 hits off you. But, at the end of the day it's not a big deal, I like the monster a lot, just thought I'd ask for a nerf.

[scarlet mauve]

is this updated for v62

@radiant stone

@pulsar bronze have any idea??

[pulsar bronze]

yea it works just fine

[scarlet mauve]

aight

also

one thing

can i have 2 monster mods?

like specimens and this one right

[pulsar bronze]

you can have as many as you want

[scarlet mauve]

alright

ty

[pulsar bronze]

I have like 50 monster mods lol

[scarlet mauve]

DAMN

[scarlet mauve]

IMPORTANT QUESTION

FAST

@round void

im the host do i only need to change the config spawn rate or do they also have to

@radiant stone

sorry for pinging

im just inviting my friends already

[radiant stone]

Ayy yes you only need to be the one changing the config as the host , iz fine 👍

[thin escarp]

I don't think I really understand what the counterplay to this guy is... are they just like, a Jester variant? Best counter is to just run?

[lavish coral]

either get outta there

or kill it

it's not invincible

[stoic dove]

this mod is great

one of my friends saw him standing at the end of a dark hallway and their reaction was priceless

thanks so much for making this

[tough harness]

Is it possible to add a damage per hit configuration? @radiant stone

Of course he is terrifying, but you want to survive from him...

And if possible, add spawn configuration on Vanilla and Custom moons

[radiant stone]

Someone asked me this a while back, unfortunately I have no clue on how to add a configuration file on json and I currently don't have the motivation to learn it.

[radiant stone]

thanks for the bug report btw ! I'll check it

also I just noticed that it's skin is weirdly glowing, should be easily fixed.

[tough harness]

but can't anyone in modding tell you?

[radiant stone]

I can ask ! But it would be like asking someone to entirely do your homework : I've tried to look at other mods as to see how they do it, and I still have no idea of how it works.

[tough harness]

Well, then can it reduce the damage to 10-15?

[radiant stone]

i'll think about it, I feel like 20 is just fine for now. But thanks for the suggestion !

[tough harness]

I just didn't pay attention to this mod before, I thought it would be updated, more configs would be added, but then I decided to add it to the build for streamers again

[radiant stone]

Small changes to the model (fixed a gap in the mesh and reajusted the mat. I'll try to see the error today posted above.)

[radiant stone]

First error is totally fine : it's ugly, but its an error that happens when the IA hasn't yet decided on a path to "roam around". You can ignore it, it won't affect anything.

the second one I found the root cause I think : should be fixed easily.

[radiant stone]

Updated. Should be on the store soon ! Bug should be fixed, although untested. After some test. still not good enough...

[radiant stone]

NOW it's actually fixed. Update soon.

[tough harness]

I'll check everything later, I'll write

[radiant stone]

re-reupdated, latest is 2.5.3

[tough harness]

what does he check every time?

[radiant stone]

wops my bad, nah it means nothing. Just simple prints in the console for testing purpose. Fixing it

[stoic dove]

He's just going for the optimal play here

This company shit is no joke

[plain sierra]

PlayOneShot? You should do what the unity log says, it's a good game.

[tidal osprey]

pro tip: don't have FairAI on with this guy

[tidal osprey]

the men-stalker decided to beat my ass because a turret shot at it

for context

[stoic dove]

You could just disable turrets from targeting him specifically

[lavish coral]

@radiant stone running the game through the unity profiler, it looks like the men stalker is causing quite a bit of lag spikes through its behaviorupdates

[radiant stone]

Damn... I'll see what I can do with that, but I'm not sure if I can do anything to optimise it. Not sure what's lagging

[lavish coral]

i know Zagster's good when it comes to the profiler, they could probably help if they have the time

i also have the .data file for the profiling if needed, though i may need to mediafire it bc it's like 200mb

so if you need that feel free to ask

[analog finch]

Hey, whenever i load men stalker sometimes it absolutely floods the command line with red text like this, and i think might be causing lagspikes. Do you know what could be could causing this?

I don't know what a "null Reference exception" even is lol

[radiant stone]

sorry for the late response; haven't been active on this mod for a while due to having moved on to something else.

Basically this happens when it couldn't find a spot to pathfind to.

This always happens the first time it's loaded in. Usually it doesn't happen at all after the first time it tries to pathfind.

a.k.a Code is junk. but shouldn't be an issue after it has picked a target. but otherwise, as pedro pointed out, it seems like this mod isn't exactly well optimised, i don't know why though.

I'll see if i can fix it. I'll try to do something about it tomorrow.

[analog finch]

Awesome!

[carmine nymph]

was the mod reuploaded just to make the m lowercase

[plucky dagger]

It’s a cool mod

[radiant stone]

I.. don't remember doing that ? 🤨

Oh yes, I did do that! Weird...

Yea ignore it : I was still really new to modding in general.

[radiant stone]

A bit late, but from my VERY limited knowledge of how Unity work (or as to how I should interpret that graph) : Is it right to assume that the Animation/Rendering/Script are the main culprit behind the lagspike ?

thanks for the bug report, as always

[lavish coral]

Uhhhhh okay gimmie a secccc
Through my also very limited unity knowledge,
-# possibly even more limited since i honestly don’t know a damn thing abt coding
it looks like the cause of the lag spikes is the amount of time it’s taking for the behaviorUpdate script to go finish for the men stalker

I can’t really provide much more info since i like JUST removed the .data file from my computer yesterday since i wasn’t using it and it was taking quite a bit of space up

I know zagster can understand the profiler well but i don’t really wanna keep slapping the stuff onto them since they’re the only one i know that can 100% understand it

So hopefully that’s enough context to help you with the issue

[radiant stone]

Yes that would be enough ! many thanks again 👍 Looks a bit grim though... I don't understand nearly enough about Unity to pin point where it's going wrong

[tidal osprey]

@radiant stone is there any specific values the men-stalkers are set for on vanilla moons?

or is it 20 all across the board

[radiant stone]

It's the same across all moons. For info it's not exactly "20", the 20 in the parameters is more like a "modifier" of the actual spawn value

[tidal osprey]

@radiant stone sorry for the ping

but uhh

you should probably fix this

[radiant stone]

👍 thanks

[radiant stone]

It's taking a bit of time to push out an update : was working on "cleaning" the code so that it's actually not a spaghetti mess, should be good soon 👍

[stoic dove]

Based yaboi

[tame sluice]

Is it intentional that the stalker has no walking animation when stalking? I have many interiors in which it is clearly visibly that he is just standing when trying to hide in the distance.

[stoic dove]

yes

his animations are a bit scuffed

[tame sluice]

I see I did not mind it at all but my friends said it looked unfinished and wanted it out unfortunately. Hoping there will be one in the future as I personally like the man stalker very much

[dusty raptor]

I'd love for this to get it's own animations. It's a pretty cool monster

[radiant stone]

ye it is : it's supposed to be look "static" when stalking and observing the player from a distance. That being said, it's supposed to be "animated" while it's moving.

but yes in general the animation are a bit scuffed. Thinking about it

[stoic dove]

got this error last night during a session

idk when it happened or what it means, but it didnt seem to affect anything else

[radiant stone]

quick checked it : by the look of it, it's most likely nothing to worry about 👍

[radiant stone]

Yea it's taking some time : Remodeling/Animating the thing, may take a while

[radiant stone]

Hello gamers : trying to push out an update : remodeling/animation is done, now I'm struggling with Blender/Unity to try to get it to work.

Thanks you, as always.

[rocky ice]

Just tried the new update and the model and animations are a lot better

just 2 small things I think that would perfect it

-a sidestep animation for when hes walking sideways

-maybe having the upper body move a lil when walking

[dawn yew]

i didnt like the new model :v

The old one fit a lot with the game this new one i dont think it fits the new color doesnt help either i think he is less scary now

[radiant stone]

Yes im definitely aware of the color issue : its definitely too bright/simple : I prioritized animation/model over it, thats why 👍

As for the model, I'm gonna wait for more feedback ✍️

[mellow linden]

I agree, the model is kinda too bright for it to be a somewhat stealth entity

[radiant stone]

I've darkened a lot the colors + did some modifs on the texture : thanks for the feedback !

(I mean, update soon.)

[mellow linden]

also I feel like the men stalker has problems with pathing
when he walks in place (like on the screen) and causes lag spikes every ~0.5s when it happens

[radiant stone]

I... Don't know how I can help on that : I have a poor understanding of how this game's (or Unity's) pathfinding work

[mellow linden]

it's okay, I know you're unexperienced that, but I love the unique aspect of that entity and my friend resembles it to an alien which he afraids of lol

it's probably some issue that he starts to blocking into the wall when he enters the stalking phase, if he has roaming phase

[radiant stone]

It's up : Darkened the texture by a lot, and added some details.

[mellow linden]

now I can imagine he'll look much better

[radiant stone]

The difference for those wondering, should be enough !

[mellow linden]

yeah, that should be it

[tame sluice]

Can my boy walk now?! 😄 I will sneakily add him in my modpack

[stoic dove]

small question, how do you handle destroying this enemy? i saw your class inherits from EnemyAI, but i didn't find any destroy functions. i'm asking because another mod (EntranceTeleportOptimizations) could potentially be getting stuck in an infinite loop during takeoff, because something is not being removed from the enemy list correctly. i don't want to make the assumption that it's just your mod causing it, but i didn't find any instance of base.OnDestroy();, which would be the proper way to destroy your enemy on round end

at least i think, i heard it from DiFFoZ, and i probably didn't transcribe it properly

[radiant stone]

Hello ! Nope, never used such function. Is most likely the problem then

Unfortunately I'm on a trip and I don't have access to my computer for 2 whooping months. So yeah, can't fix it for a while 😕

[stoic dove]

Sorry, it was as i was worried

I didnt understand how this all work

Since you're inheriting EnemyAI and don't have an override for OnDestroy, your mod is probably fine

The issue is with mods that do override OnDestroy and don't include the base.OnDestroy(); function call

So false alarm, and sorry for concern

[radiant stone]

Is all good, I'm just happy people care about my stuff ! 👍

[merry jetty]

@radiant stone This mod breaks with v73. I think that it should just need a recompile with the new netcode patcher.

[radiant stone]

Got it. Thanks.

[radiant stone]

Deprecated for now... i'll un-deprecate it when the mod will be properly up and running, getting help from the modding community for now

[mellow linden]

See you soon men stalker 🫡

[lavish coral]

ahh okay

i got scared imma be real

i need me my men stalker it's too good

[radiant stone]

Yea i'm essentially throwing tomatoes at the wall and see what sticks. WIll take some time, but it will be done ! Hopefully

last update really broke everything for me...

[merry jetty]

What's issues are you running into, if you don't mind me asking?

[radiant stone]

I did a tinkering too much so I now I have a new problem : but the "previous" problem was "[12:00:33 ERR] Failed to patch (menstalker_yaboiduckisnickerbar.dll): System.ArgumentNullException: Value cannot be null. (Parameter 'type')" . Been scratching my head for ages because of this so now i'm trying something new but it doesn't look exactly all that good

Output log, if it helps

[merry jetty]

Could I see your .csproj file?

[radiant stone]

sure ! ill past it after

[radiant stone]

there !

[merry jetty]

I'm unable to confirm since I don't have the rest of the files, but it could be related to your nuget references. I know other people have been able to get nuget working, but you could try switching your nuget references to local files, so that you can make sure they are up to date.

[radiant stone]

i'll see ! thanks

[merry jetty]

@radiant stone Were you ever able to figure it out?

[radiant stone]

Haven't touched it for a few days, busy with other things, I'll look at it today

[radiant stone]

Forget what I wrote. It seems I just didn't update the dll for Unity.Netcode.runtime. Build was succesfull. Darn...

i'll test it

[mellow linden]

I think I never sent that clip of me (muted) freaking out when this fucker approached me
I felt like I had a spider on my face + chills for some reason

[radiant stone]

Seems to be working... Thanks for the wait... I'll keep an eye out for now if it ever bugs out

[mellow linden]

Take your time, I'll be looking forward

[rocky ice]

I never realized he looks like a tall cornerfolk

from the monument mythos

[radiant stone]

For whatever reason the store isn't putting the correct version on the front page... i'll see what its about

[mellow linden]

Ah yeah
It was shown on #thunderstore-releases but never actually released

[radiant stone]

Weird... The launcher still can detect the update despite this weird front-page problem

It now seems to be properly updated ! Weird stuff

[mellow linden]

Yeah, it showed up 2 minutes ago

I will add him today as the update gotta be available at the time I return home

-# and let know if somethings gotta be wrong with him

[serene mantle]

I just have reverted back to v2.0.6 too see, after an encounter with the men stalker in v3.1.0 and I gotta admit that I like the old model more it looks way creepier and gives spine chills in the distance.. The new v3.0.0 model look really weird and is almost not creepy to see, i mean to me and my friends at least

I mean like I reverted not because it was annoying or because it was bugged, I did it just to remember the old model

[mellow linden]

I'm considering removing him of how he spooked me couple of times by just passing me by

[serene mantle]

We encountered him two times cause we didnt play a lot lately, first time he stalked us successfuly and then he rushed up angry and my dead friend asked me "Who tf is that big hay man?" and I didn't know what he was talking about, and tonight we just encountered him again and we got him cornered and my friend told me "That's the hay man" and I was like what that's the stalker

lol

My friends knew about the stalker before cause we had an old encounter with him where he killed us all and it was the old model, I heard all of them screaming getting evicerated lol

Just thought I'd drop a word here, I find it cool that we can have older versions of mods at our liking, I really like the men stalker both new and old :)

[radiant stone]

I could try to upload a second mod that is exactly the same thing, except with the old model (Btw I haven't updated the mod despite the bug report because I didn't feel it to be damaging enough to make me move and update it).

I guess it's a case of the remaster curse : technically better execution, but the "soul" of it is gone (at least according to you lads)
New model has better topo and the animation are less "comical", but it did become less creepy.

Might consider it

[dawn yew]

Same for me

[serene mantle]

It's really all up to you, me and my friends do not mind having an older version, it's all up to you and the community depending on how much people like / dislike the new model. My point wasn't to diss you or anything of course hah just sharing a feedback
I believe that if more people had "issues" with the new model, more people would have shown up saying it

I mean that I wouldn't want to give you more work just cause me and my friends do not like the new model, that's what I mean first

[radiant stone]

Yes I understand, thanks ! For now I'm not sure if its the general opinion that the new model is bland-er compared to the first one. I did find the older model file mostly intact so I could try something with it if it fancy me : if I do, it will most likely be uploaded a separate mods from the current one

[tall saffron]

I prefer the old model imo but I can understand that can be very annoying to make a a new file only for the model !

[carmine nymph]

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

[merry jetty]

[00:06:18.7734570] [Error : Unity Log] MissingMethodException: Method not found: UnityEngine.Transform .EnemyAI.ChooseFarthestNodeFromPosition(UnityEngine.Vector3,bool,int,bool,int,bool)
Stack trace:
Menstalker_ybdkSKB.Menstalker_ybdkSKB.DoAIInterval () (at C:/Users/Kaiji/Documents/GameDev/LethalCompanyModding/Dust stalker/LC-ExampleEnemy-main/Plugin/src/Menstalker_ybdkSKB.cs:531)
DMDEnemyAI::Update?869727434.Update (EnemyAI this) (at <0371ccfa509f4e079591bc2e8d301c70>:IL_03B2)
DMD<>?953487506.TrampolineEnemyAI::Update?530996058 (EnemyAI ) (at <9ca4d1a43c0f4a7baffd8c3efb4a1f7b>:IL_0025)
CodeRebirth.src.Patches.EnemyAIPatch.EnemyAI_Update (On.EnemyAI+orig_Update orig, EnemyAI self) (at ./src/Patches/EnemyAIPatch.cs:107)
DMD<>?-956675072.HookEnemyAI::Update?-1163929556 (EnemyAI ) (at <0c5219fe7a864a45a62a9152ca8b25c6>:IL_000F)
Menstalker_ybdkSKB.Menstalker_ybdkSKB.Update () (at C:/Users/Kaiji/Documents/GameDev/LethalCompanyModding/Dust stalker/LC-ExampleEnemy-main/Plugin/src/Menstalker_ybdkSKB.cs:209)

@radiant stone

It seems to broke in v81

[radiant stone]

i'll look into it, i'll try to fix it by the end of the week.

[mellow linden]

"by the end of the week."
It's monday

[radiant stone]

I know 😞

[radiant stone]

Bizarre stuff, did a quick check : should be fixed ???

i' ll upload it

As always, thanks for the update : I don't really play the game anymore since ALL of my friends moved on from it. Ever since i've longed moved on to something else, hard to keep tab of the state of the game.

[plain sierra]

We about to be men stalking it with this one! 🗣️ 🔥

https://tenor.com/view/stalker-nut-job-darkness-gif-12010794