Little dissapointed with S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

[vicaphit]

I am playing STALKER for the 3rd time now, and I still love the game. It sounds to me like the people who play STALKER and hate it are expecting an arcade shooter like Halo. I would have to say that the multi-player doesn't sound fun because the learning curve would be really steep.

To the guy who said the ending of HL2 was bad. I have to say that we haven't seen the ending yet. Play through Episodes 1 and 2 and find out how awesome the story is.

 

[Chombo]

I am playing STALKER for the 3rd time now, and I still love the game. It sounds to me like the people who play STALKER and hate it are expecting an arcade shooter like Halo. I would have to say that the multi-player doesn't sound fun because the learning curve would be really steep.

To the guy who said the ending of HL2 was bad. I have to say that we haven't seen the ending yet. Play through Episodes 1 and 2 and find out how awesome the story is.

No, the difficulty was fine. The problem was the bugs.

 

[nodle]

I think i am going to try this again with all the mods you guys posted. I could never really get into it the first time around.

 

[Spare-Flair]

For those that want to play...all you need is

1. The actual game
2. Latest patch (1.0005 or 1.0006)
3. S.H.A.R.P.E.R. Textures
4. Float32 (http://www.thefloatingpoint.org/main/news.php) - fanmade rebuild and enhancement of game engine, improves bumpmapping and makes framerate faster by up to 40%
5. One of the big overhaul mods like Oblivion Lost (what I would recommend), Zone Reclamation Project, Faiakes Mod, etc. I like Oblivion Lost because the game is still hard and realistic. Faiakes Mod makes it totally unrealistic. Weapons and armor don't degrade or get damaged anymore with Faiakes, and your character carries ridiculous 300kg in his inventory which is silly. You can also buy everything from traders which ruins the point of scavenging and finding rare things or working hard in the game to progress to areas with more goods. Stick with Oblivion Lost.

Don't mix any of the big mods together, they can make or break the game experience by unbalancing it. I did this once and all the soldiers ended up wearing some super-armor that was worth 80,000 rubbles and so it was too easy and I ended up with too much money which ruined the game. This game is so good especially because it is so hard. You really have to play well and smart.

Once you are comfortable with understanding how these mods work, you can start editing them yourself or blending them together. This game is one of the easiest to mod. I have Oblivion Lost with some of my own custom textures, AI behavior, custom sounds, custom flashlight, and some other stuff like replacing the hands, etc. I also didn't like how Oblivion Lost tried to be more realistic by having everybody speak Russian. Since the game has no subtitles I had no idea what people were saying so I deleted some of the Russian speech and the game reverted to the default english with Russian accent that the stock game had. Oblivion Lost also replaced most of the campfire guitar music (which was beautiful) with Russian campfire songs which I didn't like either so I also deleted them. Oblivion Lost also removes the original head-bob and sway which I really liked, especially when running. That was great for immersion so I put it back in.

 

[Artificiary]

...there is another mod where all the stalkers play acustic versions of metallica songs...

...I might give it another try though whats this mod called?

I wasn't sure if anyone answered this but the mod is called "Acoustic Metal Stalker Minimod":

http://stalker.filefront.com/file/Acoustic_Metal_Stalker_Minimod;81001

It is also included in the Faiakes package, which I'll agree is not well balanced but does a good job at enhancing the vanilla game.

 

[Koko56]

I, for some reason dislike all the graphics "enhancements" IMO they just make the game look unbalanced...

STALKER is a niche game after all... so jut take it one step at a time and go along with it, instead of trying to force the fun out of it.

 

[Spare-Flair]

I, for some reason dislike all the graphics "enhancements" IMO they just make the game look unbalanced...

STALKER is a niche game after all... so jut take it one step at a time and go along with it, instead of trying to force the fun out of it.

What do you mean? After many mods, Stalker looks amazing, it looks and feels better than Crysis to me.

How do graphics enhancements make the game look unbalanced? It's just the graphics.

Float32 increases bumpmap precision and every texture looks way more realistic, especially when everything is as worn out as it is around Chernobyl. Add in S.H.A.R.P.E.R. which adds a sharpening filter to the default textures and the game is bloody wonderful. When you add in the dynamic lightning effects from the added weather and sun/moon features as well as other effects (blowout) from Oblivion Lost, the game is pretty much the most beautiful game I've ever played.

 

[nodle]

What do you mean? After many mods, Stalker looks amazing, it looks and feels better than Crysis to me.

How do graphics enhancements make the game look unbalanced? It's just the graphics.

Float32 increases bumpmap precision and every texture looks way more realistic, especially when everything is as worn out as it is around Chernobyl. Add in S.H.A.R.P.E.R. which adds a sharpening filter to the default textures and the game is bloody wonderful. When you add in the dynamic lightning effects from the added weather and sun/moon features as well as other effects (blowout) from Oblivion Lost, the game is pretty much the most beautiful game I've ever played.

Do you have a link to all of these mods? It's to bad they just don't make them in one big 'pack'.

 

[Spare-Flair]

Do you have a link to all of these mods? It's to bad they just don't make them in one big 'pack'.

float32 1. http://www.thefloatingpoint.org/main/download.php?view.24
S.H.A.R.P.E.R-Textures 2. http://nekomoon.online.fr/stalker/S.H.A.R.P.E.R-Textures.v.0.95.rar
Oblivion Lost 3. http://stalker.filefront.com/file/Oblivion_Lost;89584

Oblivion Lost already includes many of the separate mods all combined into one. Bugs are all fixed. Game has never ever crashed on me, most stable game in my system. Runs silky smooth at 4x AA. Use the in-game AA which is deferred shading, it's similar to the EdgeAA of Crysis for smoothing foliage, etc. You can use that in conjuction with standard AA by forcing it outside of the game but make sure the slider for AA in the game is at least at the 3rd setting, it makes everything beautiful.

 

[nodle]

float32 1. http://www.thefloatingpoint.org/main/download.php?view.24
S.H.A.R.P.E.R-Textures 2. http://nekomoon.online.fr/stalker/S.H.A.R.P.E.R-Textures.v.0.95.rar
Oblivion Lost 3. http://stalker.filefront.com/file/Oblivion_Lost;89584

Oblivion Lost already includes many of the separate mods all combined into one. Bugs are all fixed. Game has never ever crashed on me, most stable game in my system. Runs silky smooth at 4x AA. Use the in-game AA which is deferred shading, it's similar to the EdgeAA of Crysis for smoothing foliage, etc. You can use that in conjuction with standard AA by forcing it outside of the game but make sure the slider for AA in the game is at least at the 3rd setting, it makes everything beautiful.

Thank you sir i appreciated it!

 

[Surly73]

I've recently switch to using STALKER Weather Overhauled v2.0 as my only mod. It includes S.H.A.R.P.E.R., float32, Stalkerskies (with additional development) and more. I haven't been interested (yet) in any mods that radically alter the rules of gameplay or story, and SWO leaves these aspects alone.

I'm a little torn about SHARPER and float32 - in some situations, mostly indoor, I think the result actually looks worse than the original, but I'll give them a shot.

 

[Spare-Flair]

I've recently switch to using STALKER Weather Overhauled v2.0 as my only mod. It includes S.H.A.R.P.E.R., float32, Stalkerskies (with additional development) and more. I haven't been interested (yet) in any mods that radically alter the rules of gameplay or story, and SWO leaves these aspects alone.

I'm a little torn about SHARPER and float32 - in some situations, mostly indoor, I think the result actually looks worse than the original, but I'll give them a shot.

Are you using the in-game deferred shading AA? I think it looks beautiful. Rememer to tweak your brightness and contrast settings. It can make the difference between stand-out textures, washed out colors, or too sharp details.

 

[miskari]

whats the performance decrease if im gonna use S.H.A.R.P.E.R-Textures 2? any drastic differences? and do these mods (Float32, S.H.A.R.P.E.R, Oblivion Lost)work well with the 1.0006 patch? is there a huge difference in gameplay w/ oblivion lost? i just dont wanna ruin my game!

 

[Spare-Flair]

whats the performance decrease if im gonna use S.H.A.R.P.E.R-Textures 2? any drastic differences? and do these mods (Float32, S.H.A.R.P.E.R, Oblivion Lost)work well with the 1.0006 patch? is there a huge difference in gameplay w/ oblivion lost? i just dont wanna ruin my game!

No performance decrease with SHARPER textures, it's not really a high resolution pack but a sharpening filter applied manually to the textures and tweaked. Float32 if anything will give you a 20-40% boost in framerate anyway and it's bumpmaps will look great with SHARPER. Everything works with 1.0005 or 1.0006. You're probably not going to be able to load old saved games though if you install Oblivion Lost or some other mods that add (or add back) a lot to the game.

 

[Surly73]

Are you using the in-game deferred shading AA? I think it looks beautiful. Rememer to tweak your brightness and contrast settings. It can make the difference between stand-out textures, washed out colors, or too sharp details.

I'm running on a G92 GTS and I have everything turned on or maxed in game settings, brightness and gamma bumped up one step from center. I have the Steam version so I'm still at 1.005. I haven't over-ridden anything in nVidia control panel. I'm displaying 1600x1200 on a Sony GDM-F520 CRT which has been colour calibrated and profiled. The colour response of my display is probably a large part of my opinion (my "rusty oranges" probably don't look like yours unless you have the same setup).

The detrimental effects I'm talking about is more of a case of being "overdone". Increasing saturation and sharpening the heck out of something doesn't always make it better. Ditto with enhancing HDR (kind of like CM7 on HL2 in some places) FLOAT32 seems to increase contrast too, sometimes to the detriment of the image. I didn't tag the page I was looking at that compared stock, float32, float+sharper, and sharper only to reference now, it showed a particular indoor bricked hallway scene with and without mods. I thought the unmodded looked the best.

If I find it, I'll post again and add it to the thread. I'll state for the record that I'm expressing personal preferences. The work that some of the mod developers put into their mods is truly astounding. The mods are their artistic expression, and I wasn't charged a penny, so it's not a "complaint".

 

[Koko56]

I've recently switch to using STALKER Weather Overhauled v2.0 as my only mod. It includes S.H.A.R.P.E.R., float32, Stalkerskies (with additional development) and more. I haven't been interested (yet) in any mods that radically alter the rules of gameplay or story, and SWO leaves these aspects alone.

I'm a little torn about SHARPER and float32 - in some situations, mostly indoor, I think the result actually looks worse than the original, but I'll give them a shot.

Spare-Flair - I think that's what I meant by making the game look unbalanced. The indoors looked horrible with float 32 for me... I tried to adjust the contrast/brightness but never got anywhere where liked really...

...saying that, I am downloading those mods that you gave links to right now! I will give them a go.

 

[cpt.whistlepants]

I'm running on a G92 GTS and I have everything turned on or maxed in game settings, brightness and gamma bumped up one step from center. I have the Steam version so I'm still at 1.005. I haven't over-ridden anything in nVidia control panel. I'm displaying 1600x1200 on a Sony GDM-F520 CRT which has been colour calibrated and profiled. The colour response of my display is probably a large part of my opinion (my "rusty oranges" probably don't look like yours unless you have the same setup).

The detrimental effects I'm talking about is more of a case of being "overdone". Increasing saturation and sharpening the heck out of something doesn't always make it better. Ditto with enhancing HDR (kind of like CM7 on HL2 in some places) FLOAT32 seems to increase contrast too, sometimes to the detriment of the image. I didn't tag the page I was looking at that compared stock, float32, float+sharper, and sharper only to reference now, it showed a particular indoor bricked hallway scene with and without mods. I thought the unmodded looked the best.

If I find it, I'll post again and add it to the thread. I'll state for the record that I'm expressing personal preferences. The work that some of the mod developers put into their mods is truly astounding. The mods are their artistic expression, and I wasn't charged a penny, so it's not a "complaint".

One thing I will mention about Float32. The past releases have left something to be desired. Especially if you have the hardware to run [H] settings. Indoor settings need to be more, I agree. The author mentioned the next release is going to leave some people behind. Those still playing on old cards. The author is going for max details with good performance in the next release.

The work that some of the mod developers put into their mods is truly astounding. The mods are their artistic expression, and I wasn't charged a penny, so it's not a "complaint".

This needs to be realized by many more. the modding community for Stalker is amazing and they do this without a true single player SDK. Free content for Stalker is on a legendary level and when CS arrives we will get the Sp SDK; its hard to imagine what the modding community will come up with when they get the tools.

 

[BioSergeant]

I wasn't exactly dissappointed (I still found plenty to do in the game) but I was shocked at how different it was from what I thought. The different region were seperated using games and loading screens was the biggest shock. Not as much from as I thought. A Life wasn't that great if you're talking about non combat situtions. The missions were far too linear. The side missions were all thes same. The list goes on. Even after all those cut backs, they still came out with a decent game. Not bad for a amatuer dev team like GSC.

 

[Spare-Flair]

I wasn't exactly dissappointed (I still found plenty to do in the game) but I was shocked at how different it was from what I thought. The different region were seperated using games and loading screens was the biggest shock. Not as much from as I thought. A Life wasn't that great if you're talking about non combat situtions. The missions were far too linear. The side missions were all thes same. The list goes on. Even after all those cut backs, they still came out with a decent game. Not bad for a amatuer dev team like GSC.

Clear Sky should be back to what the game should have been without the delays and cutbacks they were forced to make to get STALKER out the door. GSC is like a team of like 30 people, tiny compared to most other companies.

I'm using SHARPER and Float32 and I don't have many other games that I could possibly rank as having better indoor appearance. Maybe I will grab some screenshots because I don't see what people are talking about. Then again my LG monitor has a "movie" preset mode that I play on and wow, it makes even bad games look amazing and photo realistic and cinematic and moody. This feature is worth more to me than any shader or filter.

 

[MrMetal_53]

Spare-Flair, that first shot looks amazing! You are just running those two mods?

 

[Surly73]

See now, that's a little of what I'm talking about.

I think that 2 and 4 are possibly a little "over done", maybe 5. A little too orange/red. The walls in #2 are trying too hard to show little details and bumps that really don't need to be there. I haven't been to Chernobyl but most concrete tunnels I've been in are smooth and don't look like they are made of blown-in foam insulation. They're trying to make things look so "realistic" they overshoot.

When I was running FLOAT32 without SHARPER, it seemed to cause some of the over-contrasty rust tones. SHARPER is probably "responsible" for over-doing detail like some of the walls.

At the same time, #1 looks blurry to me.

I still haven't had a chance to dig up the article I saw with 4-way comparisons of a number of different scenes. Maybe later...

 

[Spare-Flair]

See now, that's a little of what I'm talking about.

I think that 2 and 4 are possibly a little "over done", maybe 5. A little too orange/red. The walls in #2 are trying too hard to show little details and bumps that really don't need to be there. I haven't been to Chernobyl but most concrete tunnels I've been in are smooth and don't look like they are made of blown-in foam insulation. They're trying to make things look so "realistic" they overshoot.

When I was running FLOAT32 without SHARPER, it seemed to cause some of the over-contrasty rust tones. SHARPER is probably "responsible" for over-doing detail like some of the walls.

At the same time, #1 looks blurry to me.

I still haven't had a chance to dig up the article I saw with 4-way comparisons of a number of different scenes. Maybe later...

Those are parts of the game filter and shaders. 1 is blurry because it's during a blowout. All this stuff looks much more dynamic in the game. I love the detail in the walls and how pitted and dilapadated everything looks. Then again, I prefer things to be overdone when I am playing games because it helps hide the fact that it is a game. The more detail and dynamic lightning and bump mapping there is in something, the more my brain accepts it as interesting and with real depth whereas most games that go for the subtle approach just feels flat and 2D and lifeless to me with everything washed out.

I play at maximum contrast with my monitor bringing out deep blacks in movie mode with the Nvidia Digital Vibrance on high.

You're right, wood probably wouldn't look like that in real life, not as bumpy and pitted as the metal of the trailer which looks like it's been sandblasted from the inside. But I would vastly prefer this eyecandy to a more subtle or flatter texture because it jumps out at me and fools my brain into thinking this is all rendered at much higher resolution and detail and complexity than it really is.