PAST v1.0-pre5 Released: Full UC Vanguard Quest Support and more
With this version of PAST, the full UC Vanguard quest line is tested and supported for all potential combat resolutions.
You can find the latest package in the PAST #releases-latest channel of the GreslinGames Discord, available to Citizen role users. (If you don't currently have Citizen, please read the #read-this-first channel for instructions.) I've also released it here as a convenience for my Patreon subscribers.
You can see the full changelog here.
Features of this version include:
UC Vanguard Quest Support. This version is tested for full support of the UC Vanguard questline (Terrormorph branch). Crimson Fleet questline will be supported in -pre6.
Registration System Redesigned. Starfield brought a number of very nice upgrades to the Creation Engine, including tools that have allowed me to radically streamline how I've done AI registration in the past. The PAST Registrar now moves at lightning speed and with much higher reliability and less overhead than PANPC's version ever did (or ever will). Manager now actively tracks all registered AIs rather than relying on per-NPC self reporting.
Uninstall System Upgraded. The new Registrar upgrades meant that I could also significantly upgrade how I was handling safe shutdown. Now the new process waits for the AI scripts to self-report their shutdown, and if they do not, the uninstall forces them down. There is also now a feature in the Debug menu for doing a forced script shutdown/restart without putting PAST itself into a safe-uninstall shutdown state.
Logging System Upgraded. Oh boy, this was a long time in coming. The logging system (which was really just PANPC's logging system) was just this giant messy pile of accumulated individual log lines that I haphazardly threw into the code as I needed in order to test things. This time around I completely redesigned logging to be more coherent and to provide much better context for what was happening.
That in turn meant that suddenly I saw everything that was happening, in context.
Pretty much everything else in -pre5 are fixes and changes to address things I found in the new logs. The AI decision chains are now in much better shape than PANPC ever was, and I'm confident that pretty much everything works as intended. So expect -pre5 to include AI behaviors that either weren't working before at all, or weren't working the way they were meant to. That right there makes -pre5 probably the most significant version of PAST to date.
Companions are now PAST members. Companions, player teammates, and crew members are now registered as PAST members, even though they are currently not supported with scripted AI. This makes them legal targets, both for general combat targeting and overall threat assessments. So don't expect to be able to use them as easy meat shields anymore, doing the work while enemies focus on you. (If you don't want your companions to be idiots, be sure to also use my Companion AI Updated mod.)
Again, you can check the changelog for full details on -pre5 changes.
Finally, I've released another Starfield mod, Aim Model Edits. As I've been moving forward in PAST development, I've become increasingly aware that I really, really don't like the game's weapons. They all feel very generic, too similar. Shotguns act like rifles; bullpups act like snipers. This starts becoming obvious when you've redone the AI to change up NPC tactics depending on their weapon class.
So I went back and looked up the aim model data from Fallout 4, and reconfigured the Starfield aim models to be more in line with their FO4 equivalents. The Coachman, for example, now behaves like an FO4 Double-Barreled Shotgun. The Beowulf now acts like a scoped bullpup semi-auto rather than a cheap sniper rifle. The Maelstrom is now configured to play like a basic assault rifle.
If you'd like to give Aim Model Edits a try, it is available for download in the #aim-model-edits Discord, under the PAST channel category.
Have fun,
G.