NPC Chatter Control by NatVac, 2010/08/15

This is pretty much a rewrite of the original STALKER NPC 
chatter management software written by Stohe and Chugai. 

Why? Well, because most of the original chatter support is 
not properly used by the game. Despite the presence of 
minimum and maximum delays for folks like Mr. "Get out of 
here, stalker!" and Hunter and Snitch, the player is 
inundated with the trite repetition of the same phrases over 
and over during the same game session. 

Annoying sound fix (ASF) mods and other mods like the ZRP 
have workarounds to address the problem, but the workarounds 
are not really that satisfactory, usually because they go to 
the opposite extreme and you don't hear anything or you hear 
something less annoying -- yet the original quirky sound is 
gone. 

NPC Chatter Control implements working delays for those 
NPCs that sorely need it, and includes features like 
greeting probabilities for folks like Snitch and Voronin. 
There is also a logical reduction in available phrases for 
NPCs (there's no need to add Sakharov's "Hello, hello!" to 
every stalker's playlist, nor the AW crazy's ramblings, for 
instance), with about 60% fewer sounds to (not) play. 

This fix attempt is not compatible with ASF mods and may 
have issues with some sound overhaul mods. Any attempt to 
merge this fix with ASF mods is an exercise in futility; 
don't bother. You may have an easier time with overhaul mods 
that don't include ASF tweaks, or those that permit you to 
disable the ASF part. 

Otherwise, this rewrite should operate seamlessly with your 
current game. There may be minor issues with some choices, 
like the timing delays might be too long or too short for 
your taste, or a certain sound theme may be misclassified 
(e.g., as a soliloquy rather than a random greeting), but 
these are very easily corrected if necessary.