S.T.A.L.K.E.R Released

[Stark]

LOL Oh. They're worse than a lot of Ukranian developers. I don't know how they stay in business with the constant problems and the way their developers quickly stop supporting games. Guild2 isn't even playable yet, and they're bringing out an addon.

[salm]

Yeah, or the bugfest that is Gothic 3. They´re regularily critisized in big gaming magazines but somehow i doubt that they´re going to change their policies.

[Xon]

I have a 2gb/3200 AMD64/6600GT, and on 'medium' with static lighting and middling ansio/AA etc my system runs fine. Are you using a major performance setting (highlevel lighting, heaps of grass, etc)?

The leap from 1gb -> 2gb of ram can make a big difference if the harddrive is thrashing.

[DPDarkPrimus]

I wish I knew Russian so I'd know the battle tactics they're communicating to each other.

[Stark]

***SPOILER WARNING****


okay hint time

'granaten' = grenades!

'ha ha ha' = that was a joke!


***END SPOILERS***

[Xon]

'granaten' = grenades!

Wait, they use those stupid genades you get by the dozen?

[Resinence]

Post you're gear time!

TRS301 (An LR 300 IIRC) Modified for single shot accuracy with a scope, m203 and silencer, semi auto. Firing AP rounds.

"Big Ben" (A desert eagle) rechambered to fire rifle rounds.

The SEVA Suit.

Image

[Xon]

TRS301 (An LR 300 IIRC) Modified for single shot accuracy with a scope, m203 and silencer, semi auto. Firing AP rounds.

Rapid-fire AKm 75/2, with scope & grenade launcher.

I'm thinking of switching to something else, NATO issue, since I figured you can do a save & reload cycle to trigger a respawn of the shop's items. Which makes stocking up on ammo possible.

However, I'm thinking of using this gun instead linky, 3-4 times damage, but a clip of 20 and 3 times to bullet pack wieght over the AK.

The SEVA Suit.

The quest reward for Ghost's suit is a better version of that sucker. It is also green

[CaptHawkeye]

Just got it from the local Best Buy. MP is worthless, but that's ok, i've never much cared about it.

Pros

-Wildlife and AI is amazingly smart. They flank, supress, panic and flee...

-Game looks good. It always did, but the morons on Gamespot complaining the game doesn't look as good as Gears of War really need to go fuck themselves.

-Plethera of weapons and equipment, different ammo types, weapon customization.

-Lots of interaction with people in the zone.

-Vehicles are gone, which is good, I never cared for them in the first place.

-Atmosphere is incredible. Feels like a great horror movie with lots of guns.

-Game looks open to mod community, I'm just drooling thinking of all the potential fixes, addons, and conversions that could potentially come out for this game.

Cons

-Zone is much smaller than originally advertised, instead of one big, OFP style game world, it is scalled down into large, level based "areas". This isn't too jarring, but disappointing still.

-Weapons for you are woefully inaccurate. But apparently every enemy in the game is Dirty Harry.

-Every one of your enemies are also the Marines from Halo, in that they never run out of ammo to spam you with, but when you collect from their corpse, they have only a few rounds.

I managed to get into the game fairly easily, but you'll find that difficulty increases quickly. Money is actually very easy to come accross, I find dog tails to be the most lucrative of adventures thus far. Worth lots, virtually anyone will take them, and the dogs themselves are not overly threatening enemies so long as you don't underestimate them. The buildings and locations are extremely cool, and the established atmosphere is divine.

Maybe it's just that i'm getting started, but I haven't had any problems with weight yet. Even when i'm carrying a huge haul of weapons, ammo, and food. (My personal first rule of RPGs, LOOT EVERYTHING.)

I hope the zone gets a lot bigger as I go along. At the very least, the mod community could probably expand it.

[Tolya]

Okay, finished the game - one of the negative endings. I want to go for the real ones, but unfortunately all I did was quick save... and the last autosave is already in the inner sarcophagus. Can anyone send me a save upon entering Pripyat? PM me for my mail @ddress. Thanks.

[CaptHawkeye]

Ah hell, looks like another negative just reared its ugly head. Bugs. The game does the wierdest shit sometimes, and does anyone else experience a GPU bug during late night thunderstorms that just makes your video card spaz out?

Oh yeah, another annoying bug was some kind of time cycle. I went through 2 entire nights and days in all of about 5 minutes. Unless of course, that is an anomaly.

[Tolya]

To be honest, the only bugs I've encountered were weird graphical glitches during rain (only in the beginning tho, it later disappeared) and some side quest bugs (like completing an unknown objective etc.)

[CaptHawkeye]

To be honest, the only bugs I've encountered were weird graphical glitches during rain (only in the beginning tho, it later disappeared) and some side quest bugs (like completing an unknown objective etc.)

Ah, so i'm not the only one experiencing that? Good, that means I can look forwards to a fix in future patches.

[Stark]

Explain that logic. *You* are only experiencing one bug, so that's the one the devs will fix?

[CaptHawkeye]

Explain that logic. *You* are only experiencing one bug, so that's the one the devs will fix?

I didn't understand the glitch at first, but upon Toyla's description is was unmistakeably the same. We are both having the same graphical glitch that occurs during rain in the game. Isn't that fair enough to assume that if it's happening to two of us, it is probably happening to more? Thus it is an issue the devs may address?

Of course it's not the only bug the devs will address, and it's not the only one i've experienced. I'm just saying it will probably be one of many fixes in the future. Whenever a graphical bug occurs, I tend to think it is the fault of my computer alone, not the game. This time it isn't, thank god.

[DPDarkPrimus]

The rain glitch seems to happen randomly to people.

They had better streamline the engine a bit in the next patch, because it's a totally different looking game with DX9 lighting on compared to DX8, but I can't get it to run in DX9 on my machine worth crap.

[Anarchist Bunny]

I too would like to throw in the con of woefully inaccurate weapons. By the time I seem to get the handgun in range that it can reliably hit a bandit, his shotgun becomes a killbutton.

I encountered a problem with weight early on but that was due to my own fault. Apparently your suppose to avoid that military checkpoint at the train bridge(atleast they seem to give you that option with the Journeyman), and I got up above them and put them all down with a little effort. Carried something like 11 AK74 back to hawk then came back for something close to 20 pistols.

[Resinence]

TRS301 (An LR 300 IIRC) Modified for single shot accuracy with a scope, m203 and silencer, semi auto. Firing AP rounds.

Rapid-fire AKm 75/2, with scope & grenade launcher.

I'm thinking of switching to something else, NATO issue, since I figured you can do a save & reload cycle to trigger a respawn of the shop's items. Which makes stocking up on ammo possible.

However, I'm thinking of using this gun instead linky, 3-4 times damage, but a clip of 20 and 3 times to bullet pack wieght over the AK.

The SEVA Suit.

The quest reward for Ghost's suit is a better version of that sucker. It is also green

I'll have to go back and grab my green suit from where I stashed it, didn't realise. Though it looks retarded.

If you want hitting power, get the VSS. It uses the same rounds as the thunder, I'll grab a screen later. It's also silenced, super accurate... and has a sniper scope.

[Xon]

I too would like to throw in the con of woefully inaccurate weapons. By the time I seem to get the handgun in range that it can reliably hit a bandit, his shotgun becomes a killbutton.

What armor do you have? My armor can take ~2 shotgun hits and still have enough health to heal from. Make sure you are strafing too, the AI aims fairly slow with a shotty.

Also with a handgun with reasonable accuracy, you should be able to score a headshot on someone who is in shotgun range in 3-4 rounds. And I can unload a 15-clip AP mag into someone faster than they can fire 2 shotgun rounds.

Hell, I've taken out entire solider squads and bandit groups outfitted with AKs & SMGs with nothing more than a handgun and a few hundred rounds & ~20 bandages. The trick is to get as close as posible and then aim at the head, crouched when posible and unload untill you get a headshot or they drop. Reload & repeat.

This takes vastly less ammo than simply aiming at the torso and hosing them untill they drop. For example, it takes 1 round to the head from a handgun to drop a zombie. Or 50 to the chest.

Firing 5-6 rounds at thier head and having all but 1 miss is vastly better.

If you want hitting power, get the VSS. It uses the same rounds as the thunder, I'll grab a screen later. It's also silenced, super accurate... and has a sniper scope.

Ok, give me a location for that. Damage is nowhere near as important as accuracy. But I'm now consistantly going up against elite soliders & crap, I need more stopping power than the AK with bullets I can buy can provide.

Super-accurate + scope is damn important, because I like being able to 1-shot people with headshots at +200m with a scope. Thats the major reason I'm still using my super-AK, high accuracy + scope is teh win for headshots. Most of the time I have it in single-shot mode, and just click really fast when needed.

However, the TRS301 you have with scope is damn nice (much more accurate when using the scope).

[SylasGaunt]

Been playing this a bit slowly but playing it. I've gotten to taking missions from the bartender and I got a G36 and a buttload of ammo from helping Duty raid the freedom bandits.. but after doing some arena matches I want to get a scope and one of those rifles the Duty boys are toting with the GLs, thing keeps slamming the people I shot with it off their feet.

Oh and damn that scope on the G36 makes it a huge improvement over my old AK.. I do single shot most of the time to.

[Pablo Sanchez]

Been playing this a bit slowly but playing it. I've gotten to taking missions from the bartender and I got a G36 and a buttload of ammo from helping Duty raid the freedom bandits.. but after doing some arena matches I want to get a scope and one of those rifles the Duty boys are toting with the GLs, thing keeps slamming the people I shot with it off their feet.

The Thunder is pretty good, as it does massive damage quickly and I've found it's not as inaccurate as the inventory breakdown suggests. On the other hand, the 20 round clip is a handicap when you're used to 30. Currently I'm running with a Thunder for close-in work and a scoped M4 for precise work. I'm not that adventurous so I haven't gotten around to finding anything higher end. Does anyone get any use out of the shotguns? I've found them to be basically worthless compared to assault rifles, even the SPAS-12.

EDIT:
I'll second the request for a location on the VSS. That and the Thunder would give me lethality at all ranges and allow me to carry a single type of ammunition, which would be excellent.

[Sephirius]

On the other hand, the 20 round MAGAZINE is a handicap when you're used to 30.

fixed

[Resinence]

VSS
You can find it in the freedom base, the northwest most part of the northwest most barracks building near the destroyed train tunnel. It's just sitting on the ground inside waiting for you to grab it

This Thing
Thats actually better than my M4, and the scope has better zoom than the G36 (it's sniper rifle zoom, and it uses normal 5.56 rounds). Although I can't find a silencer for it at the moment, but you can get it by killing one of the freedom base front gate guards, both of the non-exoskeleton guards have one.

Also, you can find the M4 if you head to the merc camp north of the bloodsucker village in the same zone as the other guns, its near the north wall on the ground.

You can get multiple M203 attachments + rounds for them by doing quests for freedom, repeatable. Theres also a weapon repair guy there who will trade vodka for AK scopes with sniper rifle level zoom.

Big Ben is in a small metal box where you find the family rifle. It fires those Thunder S14 rounds and blows faces apart.

You can get an AK with a grenade attachment from the bandit base in the dark valley, upstairs on the veranda in the foyer.

The neutral stalkers west of the freedom camp have a shotgun with less spread and an L86 with a sniper scope/silencer.

That's all I can remember for now, someone said somewhere that there is a standalone silencer at the base near agroprom but I dunno where yet. If anyone knows where to find a piccitini rail scope thats NOT already attached to something (most of those already attached ones can only be attached to a different weapon of the same type. Ie you take it off a 301 it can only be put on a different 301.) would you be kind enough to tell me?

[Vympel]

If someone could help me out here it'd be appreciated- as some of you probably know due to my bitching, I'm getting thrown back to desktop randomly when I attempt to play. My latest xray_user.log (in the Shared Documents) says:

[error][ 1455] : The paging file is too small for this operation to complete.

I found this on the tech support forums:

I have spent hours searching forums, and actually found something!!
this might not work for some of you .but after doing this fix , stalker has not hard frozen since.
you need to open your registry and do this:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetControlSession ManagerMemory Management]
"PagedPoolSize"=dword:ffffffff
"PoolUsageMaximum"=dword:00000028

By "pagedPoolSize" right click the number all the way to the right and "New Key" and 8 times the f.
then right click on "Default" and add new dword. type PoolUsageMaximum and hit enter.
right click the number all the way to the right of "PoolUsageMaximum"
and "NewKey" enter 00000028.
or just copy and paste the numbers.

and:

but ill do a tutorial here:
ok in winxp.
push start>run and typ "regedit" (without the " )
click on HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE , then "SYSTEM", then "CurrentControlSet"
then "Control" , then "Session Manager" ,then the folder , "Memory Management."
look for the word "PagedPoolSize" and right click it. click "modify" under "valuedata" put in ffffffff
Right click on REG_DWORD (any of them in the middle)and NEW>DWORD Value.
a new value will show up at the bottom of your list.
right click that value and rename it PoolUsageMaximum.
after you renamed it right click it again and click Modify.
under ValueData put in 00000028
and thats it your done ..
like i said before it might not work for everyone.

What is the effect of this modification? I'm loathe to fuck around with my registry unless I have to in order to play with no problems.

[Resinence]

Looks like it's just increasing the size of the pagefile, you don't need regedit to do that...