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

[loomer]

SVD makes game a little too easy. Except today, unlike most days, my game was laggy as fuck so I couldn't aim. Which made it a little on the hard side.

[Resinence]

The stuff not being there is actually something to do with the engine, I'v noticed that if I break something and it's empty then save and reload, the stuff appears. It's like it's not loading the new area or something, that HAS to be a BUG.

Like have you ever run through an empty area, but on the way back it's packed with dudes? It's takes too damn long for the game to load new areas.

[lazerus]

Okay, I just got the "good" ending.

...seriously, what the fuck? How did that even make any sense? And what was up with the face in the grass? Does anyone else understand this?

[CaptHawkeye]

Stark, many of your prayers have been answered.

Doesn't change the AI much, everything is a hell of a lot more expensive, traders actually carry a big inventory, and medical supplies aren't near as effective as they used to be.

Note: Someone complained about the mod's head bob on the forums of the website. Keep that warning in mind.

[Tolya]

Okay, I just got the "good" ending.

...seriously, what the fuck? How did that even make any sense? And what was up with the face in the grass? Does anyone else understand this?

You're treading spoiler grounds here...dont spoil the fun for those who are still playing

[lazerus]

Okay, I just got the "good" ending.

...seriously, what the fuck? How did that even make any sense? And what was up with the face in the grass? Does anyone else understand this?

You're treading spoiler grounds here...dont spoil the fun for those who are still playing

I'll put up a new thread.

[Stark]

The stuff not being there is actually something to do with the engine, I'v noticed that if I break something and it's empty then save and reload, the stuff appears. It's like it's not loading the new area or something, that HAS to be a BUG.

Like have you ever run through an empty area, but on the way back it's packed with dudes? It's takes too damn long for the game to load new areas.

I've noticed the little 'disk' icon in the bottom right: maybe it is streaming stuff for some time (a legacy of the free-roaming area perhaps)? Not only have I noticed the game seem to 'catch up', but I've noticed things carry over between save/load: for instance, you can shoot at a guy - agro'ing him - the load it (say you got killed). That guy will not be at his 'rest' position, and will often already be on his way to kill you. Loading near people who died in a fight often involves them pulling guns out and waving them at random, or them loading crouched into the position they were in when they died. I've been killed by bandits who used movements from a previous save to reach me earlier or flank me - things don't seem to be perfectly reset to the save when you load.

Hawkeye, thanks for the heads-up. Not sure how much I'll enjoy mking things even more expensive (ie if a whole mission lets you buy a single mag that's stupid) but I like the look of many of the other changes (ie people actually selling shit you might want to buy). I hate the 'buy for 60k, sell for 200' economy, though. Also does this mean the GSC forums are back up?

EDIT - ZOMG, the idiot comments on that link are hilarious.

EDIT2 - Great, the mod can't see my savegames and can't start a new game. Huzzah!

[CaptHawkeye]

Tried the mod, the bad news is it doesn't work with the current patch, so you have to reinstall your game to get it work. Maybe if the mod had come out on the day the patch was released I could understand this, but it's been close to a week by now, and they didn't take the time to optimize it for 1.0001?

The good news? It kicks ass, gun fights are much more frantic now, the guns actually sound real, and demonstrate realistic accuracy. The prices are challenging but make for more reason to partake in side quests. They also make looting everything you see more important.

All in all, the economy isn't all that much harder to work with. Artifacts are still worth lots of money considering how common they are. Although ammo is absurdly expensive.

The head bob is going to take a little getting used to, it can induce motion sickness in some people.

[Stark]

Has it replaced the 'swoosh' change gun sound?

Where did you find the mods? The Stalker sites I dug up don't have active forums and GSCs still seem to be down.

[CaptHawkeye]

Has it replaced the 'swoosh' change gun sound?

Where did you find the mods? The Stalker sites I dug up don't have active forums and GSCs still seem to be down.

Right from the "STALKER Files" website. The forums and mod directory are listed on the left side menu about half way down.
The "swoosh" sound? You mean that panzy sound the sawed off made? That's been replaced with a nice, meaty, roar. You can clearly hear the silenced pistol's reciever making most of the noise as well.

Of course I have to start a new game, again. Fucking lovely. They better fix this new game crap fast.

[Stark]

It seems to be related to the 'fsgame' file - at least, changing it makes your saves not work.

And I mean the 'put away/pull out' noise. Have a pistol? *swoosh* Now you have a rifle! *swoosh* Now you have binocs! Yay for non contextual 'put away/get out' sounds.

EDIT - Jesus, the current batch of mods are fucking appalling. Let's change the scopes to something totally different to what the scope image looks like! WITH BLOOD ON IT! Lets change the load limit so you don't have to make decisions!

[CaptHawkeye]

I already forgot, I think it's still in though. Because you know, I just NEED to have a sudden breeze blow through to tell me that I ripped out my AK.

Also, grenades are easier to come by so far. That first fight at the garage gave me 3-4 as it was. Now if only the AI was smart enough to actually use those grenades.

Edit: I just love how people are complaining how difficult the game is. Making all sorts of mods to make it EASIER. Once again a developer has chosen to create a game that doesn't just hand itself to you on a platter with a side of fries and sour cream, and the fanboys will whine. Oh how they will whine.

I find it kind of funny that I was playing games like Delta Force, Rainbow Six, and Combat Flight Simulator all at max difficulty when I was a kid.

[Stark]

Yeah, looking around that mod forum it's almost exclusively 'get the awesome guns more' and 'add miniguns lol' and shit like that. I'm far more interested in tuning the existing game a bit than adding even more overpowered, game-breaking guns and armour that protects too much. NPCs that use nades and health would improve the game more than any number of gauss rifles.

Or they're retarded style things - like the 'scope image with blood on it' I mentioned. Or changing the scope image to something else, even though everyone knows what a SUSAT or RPO1 scope image looks like.

[DPDarkPrimus]

How about a fix for my problem, so I can play the goddamn game? Any mods for that?

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

I don't use that patch, but I tweaked the protection value of "kevlar" to be much lower.

A rifle bullet at point blank now = hole on the other side of you.

As it should.

The outfits.ltx file has the armor values in it. In my opinion, tweaking the actual armor which is too high at default is less game fuxxoring than "omg all guns do 4312654319513563151239 damage!". If you go the damage route you fuck up the ballistics system that GSC have put so much effort into making.

The ballistic arcs of the weapons? Why should the damage affect that? Anyway, lowering armor values won't affect the paltry damage on unarmored folk, will it? When I shot an unamored bandit multiple times at point blank range and he didn't die, I immediately quit the game and went looking for a mod to increase damage. That's one thing about otherwise realistic games that I just can't tolerate. Lowering the armor values seems to me that it would actually make the game less realistic, as real life armor is not useless.

[Stark]

The ballistic arcs of the weapons? Why should the damage affect that? Anyway, lowering armor values won't affect the paltry damage on unarmored folk, will it? When I shot an unamored bandit multiple times at point blank range and he didn't die, I immediately quit the game and went looking for a mod to increase damage. That's one thing about otherwise realistic games that I just can't tolerate. Lowering the armor values seems to me that it would actually make the game less realistic, as real life armor is not useless.

I don't really agree with this. Stalker isn't SWAT 4: it has a *health bar*. It's not up there realism-wise. Frankly, if it shipped vanilla with 'realistic' damage there'd be even MORE people complaining about the game's difficulty.

I think the 'equipment levelling' contributes to this bit of 'balancing', however - the later pistols are far, far more effective than the piece of shit PMM, but mysteriously nobody near the start (near the damn outside world of gun dealers for fucks sake) has anything but a PMM, MP5 or shotgun. I'd be happy with higher gun damage if all armour was in a higher, narrower range - the current 10/20/30/40/50/90% range for armour is too wide and stupid - even a crap bulletproof vest is going to do more than 'reduce damage by 10%', and this would allow the game to have more powerful weapons (and more natural limb/headshot damage) without making the early armour steps useless. It makes sense for guys in armour to laugh at pistol rounds, but people without armour should take serious damage. However, I don't think STALKER is ever going to be SWAT4 in Chernobyl.

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

But what you describe is much better than what we got. And the fact that it's not intended to be as realistic as SWAT 4 or Operation Flashpoint doesn't change that. Increasing the damage with a mod that leaves everything else the same does make the game too difficult, but if it were built more realistically in the first place, they could have compensated in a variety of ways to keep the difficulty the same, and the game would have benefited. I simply can't fathom that I'm in the minority when I say I'm turned off when I see someone take enough lead to kill an elephant and be seemingly unaffected, so I don't know why designers keep these Wolfenstein damage and health systems when they spend so much effort on making every other part of the game feel real, right down to the way bullets are affected by gravity.

[CaptHawkeye]

So far i'm liking the mod. Medical supplies are hard to come accross now. The AI seems more comftorable in the extra damage enviornment, the weapons are realistically accurate and actually sound like real guns.

Only thing is, ammo. It went from easy to find, to more common that fucking dirt. Every dead enemy can leave upwards of 50 rounds on him when he dies. Why do we need that tracer crap anyway?

[InnocentBystander]

I'm going to pick Stalker up tonight, assuming one of the two Gamestops on the way home have a copy. Would you guys suggest using any mods from the get-go? (like this one you're talking about...)

[CaptHawkeye]

The Realism Mod should be used only by those disappointed by the challenge of the game later on. The game itself, even when it become laughably easy, is still fun.

Play the standard game first.

[Darwin]

I'm going to pick Stalker up tonight, assuming one of the two Gamestops on the way home have a copy. Would you guys suggest using any mods from the get-go? (like this one you're talking about...)

Yeah, I would say don't mod it right away. just install the patch and go.

[DPDarkPrimus]

My game now magically works again...

The patch for the game fixes some of the "too easy" complaints by toning down the amount of money you get and making armor take damage.

[Mr Bean]

Ok just got the game, have an hour into it. Good to know that pistols are useless missing PoS's, but how come the enemy is three times as accurate as I am? Using the same guns as I am, he's blazing away a half mile away with his pistol getting hit after hit on me. While I go through six clips wiffing him, he puts 20 collective bullets in me, requiring me to use up all the wonderful heath kits I had stored up.

Frigging Russians, my life for a K98! Hell anything with any kind of accuracy. Anyone know of anything that can hit targets in the first hour or two of the game?

[Stark]

Ok just got the game, have an hour into it. Good to know that pistols are useless missing PoS's, but how come the enemy is three times as accurate as I am? Using the same guns as I am, he's blazing away a half mile away with his pistol getting hit after hit on me. While I go through six clips wiffing him, he puts 20 collective bullets in me, requiring me to use up all the wonderful heath kits I had stored up.

Frigging Russians, my life for a K98! Hell anything with any kind of accuracy. Anyone know of anything that can hit targets in the first hour or two of the game?

I can headshot at 20m with the lameo PMM. The MP5 is half-decent, but until you get full-size rifles you're pretty much stuck in miss-land. I don't find the AI are very accurate, unless you could seriously injuring me with a sawnoff at 50+ meters. Just think, once you get things like the G36 the game becomes a laughably easy series of headshots.

Your problems are probably body shots. If you go for headshots you only need one hit to kill, unlike the half a dozen (or more) in the chest. You still miss like a madman, but hey. And ditch the PMM: you should find a Fort-12 early on, and the larger magazine is a great help.

Then again, if you're using health kits in PMM fights, maybe you should think about hiding and cover.

[Mr Bean]

Ok just got the game, have an hour into it. Good to know that pistols are useless missing PoS's, but how come the enemy is three times as accurate as I am? Using the same guns as I am, he's blazing away a half mile away with his pistol getting hit after hit on me. While I go through six clips wiffing him, he puts 20 collective bullets in me, requiring me to use up all the wonderful heath kits I had stored up.

Frigging Russians, my life for a K98! Hell anything with any kind of accuracy. Anyone know of anything that can hit targets in the first hour or two of the game?

I can headshot at 20m with the lameo PMM. The MP5 is half-decent, but until you get full-size rifles you're pretty much stuck in miss-land. I don't find the AI are very accurate, unless you could seriously injuring me with a sawnoff at 50+ meters. Just think, once you get things like the G36 the game becomes a laughably easy series of headshots.

Your problems are probably body shots. If you go for headshots you only need one hit to kill, unlike the half a dozen (or more) in the chest. You still miss like a madman, but hey. And ditch the PMM: you should find a Fort-12 early on, and the larger magazine is a great help.

Then again, if you're using health kits in PMM fights, maybe you should think about hiding and cover.

Hey now, I did the very first mission, that Garage one, I used exactly nine bullets, head shots all on Veteran thanks to that wonderful silence pistol you get. I had enough left, counting their PMM's to go crazy on ammo, sell everything and then buy/trade for mad amount of medkits.

And then I ran into that bastard on the bridge, using a PMM blazing away at me from near max range and he puts twenty shots into me, to my zero into him. Trust me head shots are not the problem for me, but I hate having to sprint to knife fighting range just to have some sort of accuracy with guns.

Besides this is Russian, there should be an AK-47 in every pot! But I've checked! Sixteen pots, not a single Kalashnikov anywhere! Damn those other Stalkers, they must have taken them from the pots before I got there.