Actually, the megapercent health modifying artifacts effect your health regeneration rate, not your totals. I’m just sayin’.
Ah. I thought it was giving me more health. Damn.
Patch 1.04 is out, so I decided it was time for me to play through this. I got it when it came out and went through the first few levels. But there were some things about it that looked like they might be better after a patch, and it was too scary for me, so I put it aside.
So, is it in a good state now with 1.04 or are there some mods I should get? I see there is one mod which claims to fix bugs remaining after 1.04. And should I still get the mods with improved sounds and translations? And how about the floatingpoint32 shader mod? The game only lets me play in directx 8, so this one may not make any difference for me.
When I was playing before, the game didn’t seem to get any darker at night. I got a mod that fixed that, which also said it brought in different weather types. Are these in 1.04? I also had some problem with sound - everything sounded too close - but that might just be my computer.
I’ve started playing post 1.004 and I’d recommend the following:
float32 1.788b (improved lighting)
1.0004 Bug Fix Attempt (fixes bugs missed)
Raw Onion Revamp 1.03 (fixes up translation)
That’s a bug fixed vanilla install. float32 was originally going to be in the patch but the author decided it moved too fast, so it was cut. Good enough for a vanilla game for me.
Best place to find this stuff is stalker.filefront.com
Thanks. I found the raw onion thing and the bug fix attempt. It looks like this is only available in Russian and only through rapidshare, which is not cooperating with me right now. But I will persevere.
I found some forum posts saying that float32 doesn’t do anything for static lighting, which is what I am stuck with, although I would have expected my graphics card to be capable of better. So I guess I still need something for darker nights.
Do I need anything for, say, weather, enemy AI and quest timing, or are these fine?
Raw Onion is on stalker.filefront.com while the Bug Fix Attempt can be nabbed from the GSC forums.
I’m not sure on the weather front. If you want to change that take a look at StalkerSkies.
There was a mod which allowed the AI to pick up dropped guns as one of its components, but no idea where that is. Other than that, not really.
There are several mods which change or remove the timer on side-quests, but no idea which.
UHSF Smart Mod is the uber mod.
- We added a lot of cars everywhere (random places) in the levels (Cordon,
Garbage, Agroprom, Dark Valley, Yantar, Military Warehouses, Red Forest,
Pripjat, Stancia1, Stancia2)
- The cars have rusty textures… looks out much better
- You will see random Blowouts in the game…better to pack some antirads!
- We added Clean weather to Pripjat, so you can explore the city in daylight!
- We removed the Pripjat Stadium animation, so You can explore the stadium and
the city more! (we placed a car at the stadium too, beware of the soilders
equipped with RPG and gauss)
- Also took out some “electric shock” anomaly and now you can explore the city
deeper…
- edited the default weather file, and changed sky textures, and added new
ones too
- Removed the final Blowout at Stancia1, so now You can explore the whole area,
you dont need to hurry, because no timer will be there!
- Also added Clean weather to Stancia (to make the exploration more convenient)
- Removed the radiation from Stancia2 (true ending extra level) so now you can
walk on the ground and explore the area, we added some cars, and some new
zombies (in white clothes… you know the fellow workers at npp…hehe)
- Added Clean weather to Stancia2, so you can explore the level in daylight.
- Added new zombie textures, you will see some interesting stuff there :)
- Moved the level changer points to an other direction at BAR and at Pripjat
Stadium and now you can explore those levels a bit more :) Also added some
cars and monsters to those areas!
- cut out monsters and blowouts and psy emission (and teleports only at Cordon)
- sleeping (requested by users) (buggy with the blowout stuff, but you dont need
to use the sleep function)
- trader mod (requested by users) (edited a bit, only the freedom and eclog trader
sells everything)
- BTR windows are open now (requested, and optional too)
- Repair mod is also included (2.x version i guess)
- float32 mod for better and faster graphics (only in dx9)
- you can trade and repair in Pripyat (requested by users)
- you can use the artifacts as a gun, and you can cast anomalies with them
- you can put 10 artifacts in your belt now (sorry, but needed for the detectors)
- Detector Mod added, you can buy “cut-out” devices again!!!
Does anyone know if these mods will work with the Steam version of Stalker?
They should, just change the install dir to where Steam installs STALKER.
Well, I’m after things that polish the existing game where it needs it. This one sounds more ambitious than that.
Has anybody made a mod where you can go anywhere at any time? I’d like to give the game a second run through, but am completely uninterested in following the linear mission path.I just wanna explore, survive, and beef up my gear.
Even if I load up an old save game, the final areas were all time sensitive.
That’s supposedly GSC’s holy grail patch, V1.1.
Lenin knows when we’ll see it.
All I know is that demo video from Leipzig of STALKER: Clear Skies has me pitching a trouser-tent.
Free play will be included with Clear Sky.
/Lurks
Really looking forward to this and Far Cry 2. FPS just does guns so much better than swords, and yes, that includes Mount & Blade.
So… are there any mods that should definitely be installed before a play-through? I am thinking of picking this up and want an optimal experience. I really don’t have time to like, play once without and then with.
The realism mod is very good. I used it on my last play through and consider it must have. But get the gun names mod as well, else their names & descriptions will be in Cyrillic!
LOL WUT
Sorry to bump this, but has anybody gotten this game running on hardware that should, in all respects, make this game kick fucking ass?
As far as I can tell, Stalker is running on the shittiest codebase I’ve ever seen in a computer game and needs 2gb of RAM in order to make up for this inequity? I can’t understand why the hell a game like Crysis would run just fine on my system but Stalker just chugs ass for 5 seconds everytime an enemy fires a gun, or if I happen to point my window at the bar area in Garbage. The first zone in the game ran fine with -noprefetch but as soon as I hit Garbage the game is taking a huge dump on itself for moments at a time, making it unplayable.
After -noprefetch I tried Float32 with disabling -noprefetch (the modmaker says that Float32 optimizes the game anyways). After seeing that take a dump I said fuck it and I’m currently running the game at “textures look like crotchass no lighting or shadows and world fog is 20 yards away” detail levels and it STILL takes a dump every couple of seconds when I point my screen to the north.
The first zone looked and ran so great, and I was so excited to finally get it running smoothly, that I’m just really distraught. So I guess my final real question is: Has anyone with the exact same problem as me seen all the problems disappear after going from 1gb to 2gb of RAM?
I… wasn’t even aware XP would start without 2 gigs of RAM. Seriously I’ve been using 2 gigs for close to 4 years now and wouldn’t think of running any system stressing game made in that time without it. I don’t know how you survived all this time with less, your load times for games like The Witcher and Bloodlines must’ve been agonizing.