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 1.7.1: the runner dash goes 4.3 m for 5% petrification, the head-start boost lasts 4 s, and the mandrake timings are fixed. 1.7.0: runners get a dash gem (Scout's Ambition: 3.2 m dash, mid-air float, 70 s cooldown), captures need the chaser practically touching the runner (0.45 s hold, works from any side), the gems never use their original powers, and only 11 settings can be changed; every update resets the config to the new defaults. 1.6.0: chasers carry Scout's Initiative (a scout gem) instead of the napberry for their boost, captures take 0.75 s and the runner sees the capture bar, milk-protected runners can't be captured, regular luggage holds more runner items (milk, snowballs, brown berrynanas, energy drinks), snowballs push harder and are runner-only, role choices are re-sent so none get lost, and the host sees a hint for the host menu (+). 1.5.1: mandrakes scream 0.75 s after appearing. 1.5.0: a new role every leg (volunteer as chaser in the - menu at the campfire), captures by holding interact on a runner, the campfire lights itself after a 10-second role window, scout statues are off, chasers carry a reusable napberry boost, snowballs blind chasers, mandrakes start dropping at runners late in a leg, and plenty of balance changes. See the changelog.

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

How a game works

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.
Wake up on the shore. Nobody can move or interact until everyone has woken up and loaded in, and interacting stays locked for a few seconds after (no grabbing items before the roles are out).
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.
Head start. Runners are released and get a 20-second head start with a big countdown, and a 4-second speed boost at the end of it. Chasers stay frozen and blind the whole time; their screen fades back in near the end.
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 practically touching the runner (1.4 m), and then it works whichever way the runner faces; their backpack, fanny pack or stuck thorns, arrows and cactus balls never get in the way. 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 10 seconds, then is immune to freezing for 8 seconds.
- The fog (and the rising lava in the Caldera and the rising gloom) starts 5 minutes after the head start ends, and rises 2.5× faster than vanilla.
- From 3 minutes after the head start, a mandrake is dropped at every runner outside a safe zone every minute.
- If no chaser is alive (all dead, or none at all, e.g. a host playing solo), mushroom zombies hunt the runners from 5 minutes after the head start (one wave at a time, 2 minutes each, 2-minute cooldown between waves).
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).
- Chasers win the leg when every runner is dead (passing out doesn't count).
Role window. Everyone, the dead included, is brought next to the campfire 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.
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. Then the reveal and head start start again.
Win the game.
- Runners win when every living runner reaches the peak. The chasers are brought up there and die.
- Chasers win when every runner is dead on the last stretch, with no campfire left to go to.

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).

Chasers

Perks

15% faster than runners, and 6% faster climbing (walls, ropes, vines).
Blowgun with unlimited darts (30 s cooldown, counted down above its hotbar slot). It can't be dropped or thrown. A dart doesn't knock the runner out: it adds 18% drowsiness and marks them with flare smoke in their own skin colour for 7 seconds. Darts don't affect other chasers.
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). It then has a 1-minute cooldown, starting when the effects wear off (counted down above its hotbar slot). Each use adds 8% petrification; each capture takes 5% away again.
Capture rush: each capture gives a short +1% speed boost (5 s; each further capture during the boost adds +0.5%) and a full morale boost (extra-stamina bar).
Tough: only half of every negative status (injury, cold, poison, drowsiness, …), 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 runners.
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.
A snowball thrown by a runner blinds a chaser for 2.5 seconds.
Can't use snowballs.

Runners

Perks

Freeze chasers by looking at them (26 m, 10 s; no stacking, 8 s immunity afterwards), but not from inside a safe zone.
Head start at every leg, with a 4-second speed boost at its end.
Safe zones (15 m) around every campfire.
18.5% faster stamina regeneration.
A backpack at the start of the round, 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, an early worm in the Gloom, aloe vera in the Mesa.
Dash gem: runners carry Scout's Ambition (a scout gem) in their hotbar, whose own power is never used. Using it dashes you 4.3 m horizontally where you look (walls stop it; not while climbing); dashing in mid-air also lets you float for 0.65 s. 1 min 10 s cooldown, counted down above its slot, and 5% petrification per dash. Every runner who is in the safe zone when the runners win a leg loses 3% petrification.
Snowballs blind chasers they hit, and every thrown snowball pushes 10% harder.
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 and energy drinks, every leg.
Fortified milk protects you from being captured while it's active (milk is twice as heavy and its invincibility is 65% shorter than vanilla).
First runner into each campfire's safe zone gets a fortified milk (not when the chasers won the leg).
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 2.5× faster (starting 5 minutes after the head start); the fog only hurts runners.
Energy drinks last 65% less and make you 1.5× sleepier when they wear off.
A blowgun dart marks you with smoke and makes you a bit drowsy.
Mandrakes start dropping at your feet late in a leg.

Rules for everyone

Removed from the game: amulets (incl. Scout's Honor), gems, rescue claws, jetpacks/rocket packs, gliders, the golden Bing Bong, 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.

HUD

Role reveal and head-start countdown in the middle of the screen (translucent for runners).
Leg result and the role window countdown (with the - hint) at the campfire.
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 and rewards.

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. The next run starts a fresh round.
- 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.
- Debug hotkeys: on/off (see below).
The two restarts 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.

Installation

Install with a mod manager (r2modman / Thunderstore Mod Manager). BepInExPack_PEAK is installed automatically.
Every player installs the same version.
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.

Configuration

Settings live in BepInEx/config/codesycamore.OnTheLookout.cfg (or the mod manager's Config editor). Change them 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`	20	Runner head start each leg (chasers frozen and blind).
`HeadStartBoostSeconds`	4	Runners' speed boost (no drowsiness) at the end of the head start. 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.
`FogStartDelaySeconds`	300	Fog, rising lava and rising gloom start this long after the head start ends (each leg).
`FogSpeedMultiplier`	2.5	How much faster the fog, lava and gloom rise than in vanilla.
`ZombieStartDelaySeconds`	300	With no chaser alive, 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.

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.