On The Lookout

Chasers vs Runners for PEAK. Every leg, a few scouts become chasers and hunt everyone else up the mountain. Runners have to make it from campfire to campfire, and finally to the peak, without getting caught. A runner's best defence is to turn around and look at a chaser to freeze them in place.

New in 2.0.3: the scout cannon is banned. On cold-night ascents (Ascent 5+), runners get a faerie lantern and chasers a regular lantern (1/3 weight) at the start of every leg in the first three biomes. Runners get a sports drink at the start of the Kiln leg. Each use of the chaser gem also heals every negative status by 5%. See the changelog for earlier versions.

Recommended difficulty: PEAK. The mode is balanced for PEAK's base difficulty, but it isn't limited to it: on harder ascents everything still works, the runners just have a tougher climb.

Everyone in the lobby needs this mod (same version). The host runs the game: roles, freezes and captures are all decided by the host and synced to everyone.

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How a game works

1. In the airport, press - to choose RUNNER (pre-selected) or CHASER for the first leg. Chasers are drawn at random from the players who chose CHASER.
2. Wake up on the shore. Nobody can move or interact until everyone has woken up and loaded in, and interacting stays locked through the role reveal (no grabbing items before the roles are out). Runners can interact the moment their head start begins.
3. Roles are drawn and revealed. Each player sees CHASER (red) or RUNNER (yellow) in the middle of the screen. Everyone is frozen during the reveal. Chasers are picked at random from the airport volunteers, one chaser for every 4 runners at most; if nobody volunteered, one random player is the chaser.
4. Head start. Runners are turned to face the next campfire during the role reveal, then released with a 25-second head start with a big countdown, invincible the whole time (like fortified milk), and a 10-second speed boost at the end of it. Chasers stay frozen and blind the whole time; their screen fades back in near the end.
5. The chase. Chasers hunt the runners up the current biome.
   • A chaser captures a runner by looking at them and holding interact for 0.45 seconds, the same way a hungry scout eats another one. The chaser has to be close to the runner (1.75 m) and looking at them, with the centre dot on the runner (anywhere on them, whichever way they face); without the dot on them there's no capture, however close they are. Their backpack, fanny pack or stuck thorns, arrows and cactus balls never get in the way. Once started, the hold keeps going while the runner moves, unless they get clearly out of reach, drink fortified milk or reach a safe zone. Chasers can't do anything else to a runner: no carrying them, no opening their backpack or fanny pack, no pulling thorns or arrows out of them. The runner sees the same progress bar under their crosshair, so they know how close it is. A runner under fortified milk can't be captured at all. The runner dies with a bang.
   • A runner freezes a chaser by looking at them within 26 m, from outside a safe zone. The chaser can't move, act or fall and is blinded for 8 seconds, then is immune to freezing for 8 seconds.
   • The fog, the rising lava in the Caldera and the rising gloom work as in vanilla (PEAK's own start timing and speed). The fog never hurts chasers.
   • From 1 minute after the head start, a mandrake is dropped at every runner outside a safe zone every 45 seconds, in the first three biomes only. Mandrakes disappear 10 s after they appear, never make runners drowsy, and make chasers only 90% as drowsy as in vanilla. No mandrake is ever left in a safe zone: any lying in one is removed, and one carried into one is taken away.
   • Solo play only: playing alone you're always a runner, so with no chaser mushroom zombies hunt you instead, from 5 minutes after the head start (one wave at a time, 2 minutes each, 2-minute cooldown between waves). With other players there are no zombie waves.
6. The leg is won.
   • Runners win the leg when every living runner is in the next campfire's safe zone (15 m around it: no captures there, and runners inside can't freeze chasers).
   • A glowing yellow wall marks the edge of every campfire's safe zone, the whole run long.
   • The peak is a safe zone too, with the same rules, and has its own yellow wall where it begins.
   • Chasers win the leg when every runner is dead (passing out doesn't count).
   • Runners also win the leg when every chaser is dead: everyone is brought to the next campfire, the dead revived, for the next leg's role draw.
7. Role window. Everyone, the dead included, is brought next to the campfire (within 5 m; anyone who didn't make it is brought there once more before roles are drawn) and frozen for 10 seconds. Press - to choose RUNNER (the default) or CHASER for the next leg. Food is laid out so everyone gets something to eat.
8. Next leg. The campfire lights itself, clearing everyone's negative statuses, and new roles are drawn: chasers are picked at random from the players who chose CHASER, one chaser for every 4 runners at most. If nobody volunteered, one random player is the chaser. (The host can set an exact number of chasers instead; volunteers go first, then random players.) Everyone's items were removed when the leg ended (hands, hotbar and backpack with its contents; anything picked up during the role window is removed at the leg start too), and everyone gets their new role's items. Then the reveal and head start start again.
9. Win the game.
   • Runners win when every living runner reaches the peak. The chasers are brought up there and turned to stone.
   • Runners also win when every chaser is dead on the last stretch.
   • Chasers win when every runner is dead on the last stretch, with no campfire left to go to.
   • The losing side is turned to stone, everyone sees a rainbow GAME OVER! with who won (4 s), then RETURNING BACK TO AIRPORT IN... counting down from 15, and the game goes back to the airport, where everything starts over for the next run.

Roles and choices

• Your choice in the - menu is private: only the host's game receives it. It stays until you change it, and resets to RUNNER when a run ends and everyone is back in the airport. There are no odds: the chasers are a random pick from the volunteers.
• The menu opens in the airport (for the first leg) and during the role window at the campfire (for every leg after that).
• Switching roles: a runner who becomes a chaser drops every item and their backpack, then gets the blowgun and the chasers' scout gem. A chaser who becomes a runner drops the blowgun and gem, gets the runners' dash gem, gets a backpack if they have none, and gets the leg's runner item (and biome item) if they haven't had them yet.
• A chaser carries one blowgun and one scout gem at most; a second can't be picked up. The cooldowns belong to the chaser, not the item.
• Scout statues are switched off: no revives and no items. The dead come back at the campfire after each leg instead.
• Back in the airport the round and roles are cleared, so the airport plays like vanilla PEAK (only the role menu and its hint are there).

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Chasers

Perks

• 15% faster than runners, and 6% faster climbing (walls, ropes, vines).
• Blowgun with unlimited darts (72 s cooldown, counted down above its hotbar slot). It can't be dropped or thrown, and takes 1.65× as long to fire as in vanilla. A dart doesn't knock the runner out: it adds 20% drowsiness. Darts don't affect other chasers. Each shot costs the chaser 3% petrification.
• Scout gem boost: chasers carry Scout's Initiative (a scout gem) whose own power is never used. Using it gives, 1 second later, a 2.25-second energy-drink speed boost plus unlimited stamina (the rainbow stamina bar; no drowsiness), and the gem goes back to its slot so your hands are free. It also gives 1.65 s of x-ray vision: every runner within 200 m shows through walls, terrain and anything else, blinking red with a solid red outline, on your screen only. It then has a 20-second cooldown, starting when the effects wear off (counted down above its hotbar slot). Each use adds 5% petrification and heals every negative status you have by 5%; each capture takes 5% away again, and makes the gem's speed boost 1.7% stronger and its effects last 0.25 s longer for the rest of the leg (2.25 s → 2.5 s → 2.75 s …; back to 2.25 s each leg, since roles are redrawn). Using it makes every runner give off flare smoke in their own colour for 3 s.
• Morale boost: each capture gives the chaser the Scoutmaster's bugle morale boost (the MORALE BOOST text and the bugle's extra stamina), for that chaser only.
• Tough: only half of every negative status (injury, cold, poison, drowsiness, …; 75% in the Caldera or the swamp biome), only 1/3 fall damage (still scaled by the ascent; a big fall still knocks them down), immune to fog, ignored by mushroom zombies. Hunger works the same as for everyone.
• Clown luggage is theirs: only chasers can open it, and it's full of food and healing items.
• Their body glows red for everyone, so they're easy to tell apart (PEAK's own status glow, like milk's yellow invincibility glow).

Drawbacks

• Can only pick up and use food and healing items (plus their blowgun), dynamite, mandrakes and cactus balls, and never energy drinks, lollipops, shroomberries or the Roots fungi (Bounce, Cloud, Shelf, Warp; the healing Remedy Fungus is allowed).
• Can only open clown luggage.
• Can't see ghosts, since a ghost floats around the runner it spectates.
• Can't see runners' name tags.
• Frozen and blind during every head start.
• Can be frozen by any runner who looks at them: they pulse icy blue so everyone can tell, and they're blinded (PEAK's blue-flower blindness) for as long as the freeze lasts. Frozen in mid-air, they don't regain stamina.
• A snowball thrown by a runner blinds a chaser for 3 seconds (and pushes them 10% harder).
• Can't use snowballs.

Runners

Perks

• Freeze chasers by looking at them (26 m, 8 s; no stacking, 8 s immunity afterwards), but not from inside a safe zone.
• Head start at every leg, invincible for all of it (like fortified milk), with a 10-second speed boost at its end.
• Safe zones (15 m) around every campfire.
• 40% faster stamina regeneration (once PEAK's usual wait before regen has passed: 1 s, or 2 s after running dry).
• A backpack (worn) at the start of every leg if you don't have one, one random item at the start of every leg (a snowball, a brown berrynana or a fortified milk), plus a biome item: a heat pack in the Alpine, a sports drink in the Caldera and the Kiln, a faerie lantern in the Gloom, aloe vera in the Mesa. On ascents with cold nights (Ascent 5+) every runner also gets a faerie lantern at the start of every leg in the first three biomes; faerie lanterns weigh half as much during a round.
• Dash gem: runners carry Scout's Ambition (a scout gem) in their hotbar, whose own power is never used. Using it dashes you 7 m horizontally where you look (walls stop it; not while climbing) and lifts you up a little (half the height of Scout's Initiative's jump), and the gem goes back to its slot so your hands are free; dashing in mid-air also lets you float for 0.65 s. 32-second cooldown, counted down above its slot, and 3% petrification per dash. Each dash also heals every negative status you have by 12% (injury, hunger, cold, poison, drowsiness, …). Dashing while falling fast cancels 80% of the fall, and from 0.5 s after a dash you take no fall damage for 1 s. Each dash makes every chaser give off flare smoke in their own colour for 5 s, so you can see where they are.
• Snowballs blind chasers they hit, and every thrown snowball pushes 10% harder. A stone a runner throws does 10% damage to the chaser it hits (their half damage doesn't apply). Snowballs and stones thrown by a runner go straight through other runners.
• Runners can't use the blowgun or the chasers' scout gem (chaser items), and chasers can't use the runners' dash gem.
• Regular luggage can also hold fortified milk, snowballs, brown berrynanas, energy drinks and stones, and a little less often a faerie lantern, anti-rope cannon or anti-rope spool, every leg; only runners can pick these up or use them. Runner luggage is never empty. Flares, compasses, pirate's compasses and warp compasses never come out of any luggage, and there is no flare at the peak on any ascent.
• Fortified milk protects you from being captured while it's active (milk is twice as heavy and its invincibility is 65% shorter than vanilla).
• Leg and biome items are dropped at your feet and picked up for you, straight into your hands; if your slots are full they stay on the ground.
• A runner with a chaser closing in hears PEAK's own Scoutmaster chase music.

Drawbacks

• Fog, lava and gloom rise as in vanilla; the fog only hurts runners.
• Energy drinks last as long as in vanilla but make you 1.5× sleepier when they wear off.
• A blowgun dart makes you 20% drowsy.
• Mandrakes start dropping at your feet a minute into the chase, every 45 seconds (only in the first three biomes). They vanish after 10 s and never make you drowsy.
• When a chaser uses their gem, every runner gives off flare smoke in their own colour for 3 s.

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Rules for everyone

• Removed from the game: amulets (incl. Scout's Honor), gems, rescue claws, jetpacks/rocket packs, gliders, the golden Bing Bong, the scout cannon, world blowguns and hidden test items that never appear in normal PEAK.
• Dynamite and mandrakes can be used by everyone.
• Shroomberries can be eaten (not by chasers), but their effects only last 1 second; the hunger they cure is the same as vanilla.
• No Scoutmaster. He would hunt the runner who's furthest from the group.
• No revival curse. Revived players don't get the curse or extra hunger.
• Hunger grows 30% slower than in vanilla (still scaled by the ascent). Runners in a safe zone don't get hungrier at all.
• Cooldowns refresh every leg: the blowgun, the chaser gem and the dash gem are ready again when a leg starts.
• Petrification is cleared for everyone after each leg.

HUD

• Role reveal and head-start countdown in the middle of the screen (translucent, in PEAK yellow, for runners).
• Leg result and the role window countdown (with the - hint) at the campfire.
• Role hint at the bottom left, above the stamina bar (and above the host's + tip): your role's abilities in a few lines. It shows for 5 s at the start of every leg, then fades; press P to show or hide it any time. A small "PRESS HOTKEY (P) FOR YOUR ROLE HINT" tip always shows during a round.
• Luggage glow (runners): every unopened runner luggage on the map glows a faint green through walls and terrain, fading out as you come close and gone within reach; opened luggage stops glowing.
• Chaser list in the top right, under the ascent label. Frozen chasers show in ice blue with their remaining time; dead chasers are crossed out.
• Blowgun, chaser gem and dash gem cooldowns in seconds above their hotbar slots.
• A capture bar for a runner who is being captured.
• For the host: PRESS HOTKEY (+) FOR HOST CONTROLS above their stamina bar.
• Short notices for captures.

Host controls

• + (the =/+ key, or numpad +): host menu. A PEAK-style menu with:

  • Restart at the airport: everyone goes back to the airport, where PEAK plays like vanilla, and the mode starts over completely (roles, role choices, cooldowns, captures, timers), exactly as if the game had just been launched.
  • Restart at previous campfire: everyone back to the last lit campfire (or the start), the dead revived, statuses cleared, and a fresh leg begins. Roles are kept.
  • Teleport everyone to next campfire: moves every living player to the next unlit campfire.
  • Settings: change the editable settings below with - and + (saved, and sent to everyone at once; they apply from the next leg). CHASERS sets how many chasers each leg has (AUTO = one per 4 runners). Reset to defaults puts them back.
  • Map: random / today's map: with RANDOM, a new game started at the airport kiosk loads a random map from PEAK's map pool (never the same one twice in a row) instead of today's daily map. Off by default. The airport's "today's biomes" board still shows the daily map.
  • Debug hotkeys: on/off (see below).

  The two restarts and the settings reset ask you to click again to confirm. Press = or Esc to close.

• F10: the same "restart at previous campfire" as a direct key.

• Debug/testing keys (F6 swap own role, F7 start/restart round with new roles, F8 freeze yourself, F9 freeze the player you look at) are off by default. Turn them on in the host menu.

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Installation

1. Install with a mod manager (r2modman / Thunderstore Mod Manager). BepInExPack_PEAK is installed automatically.
2. Every player installs the same version. The host is told when a player has no OnTheLookout or another version; a player with another version is also told on their own screen which version the host has.
3. Host a lobby and start a run. The round starts by itself once everyone has woken up on the shore.

More players: works with lobby-size mods such as PEAK Unlimited (not tested together yet). Chaser count scales with RunnersPerChaser, or set it with ChaserCount.

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Configuration

The host changes these in the host menu's SETTINGS page (during the game), or in BepInEx/config/codesycamore.OnTheLookout.cfg / the mod manager's Config editor with the game closed.

• Only these settings can be changed. Everything else in this README is built into the mod, so every host and player runs exactly the same rules for a given version.
• Only the host's values matter; they're sent to everyone when they join.
• Every update starts fresh: when a new version of the mod first runs, the config file is reset to that version's defaults (your old values are not kept).

Setting	Default	What it does
HeadStartSeconds	25	Runner head start each leg (chasers frozen and blind).
RandomMap	false	New games from the airport load a random map instead of today's (host menu: MAP).
HeadStartBoostSeconds	10	Runners' speed boost (no drowsiness) at the end of the head start, in every biome. 0 = off.
RunnersPerChaser	4	At most one chaser per this many runners (1 in 5 players, 2 in 10). Drawn from the CHASER volunteers; nobody volunteered = one random player. Always leaves a runner. Used when ChaserCount is 0.
ChaserCount	0	Exact number of chasers each leg (host menu: CHASERS). 0 = AUTO (RunnersPerChaser). Volunteers first, then random players. Always leaves a runner.
ZombieStartDelaySeconds	300	Solo play: zombies start coming this long after the head start ends (each leg).
ZombieWaveDelaySeconds	120	Cooldown after a zombie wave is gone (killed or expired) before the next one can come.
ZombieLifetimeSeconds	120	How long each zombie lasts.

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Notes

• Built for PEAK v2.6.b (build 25739797). A PEAK update can break mods; if a part of this mod can't hook into the game after an update, only that part switches off and the log says which ([OTL] lines).
• Bug reports: please include your BepInEx/LogOutput.log.

Credits

Made by codesycamore. Inspired by the hide-and-seek idea of Hide and PEAK by glarmer (no code reused). Built on BepInEx and HarmonyX with the PEAK modding community's project template.