S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Series Megathread: The Zone will stop the Russians - Games

[QUOTE=Uncle Yar;41703898]Can someone link a copy of normal fsgame.ltx? I think I messed up something in there and saved it, Doom's merge is crashing when I get to the menu. [editline]3rd August 2013[/editline] for SOC [editline]3rd August 2013[/editline] also is the TFW you guys are talking about The Faction War or Total Factional Warfare? I've tried the latter.[/QUOTE] They're both the same it's just I think the developer wasn't much of an English speaker at the start or something so the name of the mod's kinda developed a bit over time.

[QUOTE=Sgt Doom;41707351]Describe how you installed it in detail. If you downloaded the 2-part version, did you make sure to place the textures in the right place? I doubt it, it sounds more like ui_icon_equipment.dds is missing, and it's defaulting to the vanilla version of the file.[/QUOTE] I downloaded the 2gb all in one version, installed and played, inventory item icons were messed up. Tried again with 2 part version, placed the textures folder into gamedata folder, had the same problem

[QUOTE=tatsb;41707294]I just installed Misery 2.0. Everything went quite well but the inventory item icons are messed up. I can't distinguish them and have to read their discriptions. How can i fix this?[/QUOTE] You can't. There's so many items and variants that the devs simply gave up trying it seems. Can't blame them, that's a lot of icons to implement. [QUOTE=Araknid;41706847]oh man it looks so much better like that[/QUOTE] You could have made it look like that with Absolute Nature lite already!

So Loner mate, can we get an explanation on the apparently cracked .exe distributed with Misery? It would be good to get some kind of clarification on that.

[QUOTE=Beacon;41707645]So Loner mate, can we get an explanation on the apparently cracked .exe distributed with Misery? It would be good to get some kind of clarification on that.[/QUOTE] What's this about cracked .exes? The patched exes for STALKER that I have hosted on my site are all based on cracked versions except the Steam version.

I don't mean to be horrible, but are there any plans on fixing up a load of the item tooltexts on Misery? A fair number of them are bloated (and pop off my screen, as I only have a 1440 x 900) and have pretty atrocious grammar. If they were condensed a bit, it'd make it much easier to pick out the important info, and it might help them fit on smaller screens. From memory, the tin opener (or was it swiss army knife?) is a prime example. Also, that greener Zaton looks awesome.

[QUOTE]Ok, so here's my initial thoughts on Misery 2.0, in blog-wall-of-text form: [url]http://alexkane.co.uk/misery-2-0-initial-thoughts/[/url][/QUOTE] Thanks for these Beac - red all carefully. And of course patch is almost done by now :) I'll only comments on this: [QUOTE]- Suit protection values now use ‘real-world’ units of measure for determining your resistance to electricity, radiation etc. Most of the time, this just doesn’t work, in my opinion. A lot of these units are very arbitrary and have absolutely no point of reference, meaning you have no idea how much actual protection you’re getting from a suit, or how much energy restoration you’re getting from an item, etc. I guess this is an example of going for realism for the sake of realism? Using KCals for food is cool, but about the only place this works.[/QUOTE] Hehe - it would be pretty pointless without refference of course but its not the case. Just move the mouse over protection bars in inventory and popups appear - this should make the thing perfectly clear to you :) Please know that we have actually calibrated the values to perfection - we had a mathematical formula established to cound exact protection values of each item in comparison to anomaly strenghts which we deliver in mentioned popups. It revolved aroun: 0. making the stopwatch ready 1. going to anomaly fields naked and measuring exact survival time 2. equiping item x and measuting survival time again Based on that we were able to set very exact values in units for each item. It was actually as if we were doing actual research for scientiscs in the Zone ;) [editline]4th August 2013[/editline] @Loner1 [QUOTE]Hello everyone. LoNer1 here, MISERY staff (Particles, some texture work and Lead PR/HTML-CSS) How's everyone doing, apart from the few misery players with some minor bugs and glitches here and there and the usual complaints about misery being too 'brown' [/QUOTE] This looks very well - I am sure many of our users will love this change :)

Does anyone has a link for Arsenal mod for SoC other than the ones posted of GSC forums?

[QUOTE=trojanuch;41707854]Thanks for these Beac - red all carefully. And of course patch is almost done by now :) I'll only comments on this: Hehe - it would be pretty pointless without refference of course but its not the case. Just move the mouse over protection bars in inventory and popups appear - this should make the thing perfectly clear to you :) Please know that we have actually calibrated the values to perfection - we had a mathematical formula established to cound exact protection values of each item in comparison to anomaly strenghts which we deliver in mentioned popups. It revolved aroun: 0. making the stopwatch ready 1. going to anomaly fields naked and measuring exact survival time 2. equiping item x and measuting survival time again Based on that we were able to set very exact values in units for each item. It was actually as if we were doing actual research for scientiscs in the Zone ;)[/QUOTE] Hey mate, looking forward to the patch :) To respond to your point, I'm glad you guys spent time doing that! :) The problem is it isn't obvious at all, for example the protection bars are not scaled down to match the increased/realistic values you use for suits and weapons - it was another point in my blog post. It just makes things incredibly confusing, even to a veteran like me! [editline]4th August 2013[/editline] 57 people reading the thread, gee whiz

So, wait with Misery 2 until patch then?

So I started a new game of TFW and I load up the train depot and every faction member in the bar starts blasting each other not knowing that they can't actually be killed. I get caught in the crossfire and die. [thumb]http://i44.tinypic.com/35lw3rc.jpg[/thumb] Such is life in a bar.

[B]Redux Dev Log Time![/B] [url]http://alexkane.co.uk/redux-dev-log-04082013/[/url] Now with [I]pictures[/I]!

[QUOTE=LoNer1;41706683]Before going into detail, Hello everyone. LoNer1 here, MISERY staff (Particles, some texture work and Lead PR/HTML-CSS) How's everyone doing, apart from the few misery players with some minor bugs and glitches here and there and the usual complaints about misery being too 'brown' Don't worry, it's being worked on; [URL]http://media.moddb.com/images/members/1/366/365208/ss_kevin_03-03-13_00-05-39_zaton.jpg[/URL] [URL]http://media.moddb.com/images/members/1/366/365208/ss_kevin_03-03-13_00-06-03_zaton.jpg[/URL] [URL]http://media.moddb.com/images/members/1/366/365208/ss_kevin_03-01-13_21-33-48_zaton.jpg[/URL] [URL]http://media.moddb.com/images/members/1/366/365208/ss_kevin_03-03-13_00-07-34_zaton.jpg[/URL] EDIT; Sigh, Ninja'd Beac, you... I salute you on the ninja[/QUOTE] Now that's how the Zone is supposed to look like, great work. I'll give Misery a playthrough when you guys finish the patch!

Colorful and depressing. Lovely.

I am smacking my lips at those sexy screenshots. I've been working on a little something something. Sexpect to see it sometime soon~

Not played Misery yet but the colourful screenshots look much better than the brown ones imo. Will wait for a patch.

[QUOTE=Beacon;41707645]So Loner mate, can we get an explanation on the apparently cracked .exe distributed with Misery? It would be good to get some kind of clarification on that.[/QUOTE] I will quote AoXo's reply from the team and then react with my stance on this whole 'misery delivering cracked .exe's for money' thing. AoXo:[I]"Here's the thing; Misery isn't what they'd be paying for: in fact people wouldn't be paying for anything really (at least, not a tangible product). They'd be [B]donating[/B] money to a team for their time: Nic, out of courtesy, emailed GSC to make sure that this kind of thing would be legal/that the set up is understood so no immediate and unnecessary legal action is taken). MDT could theoretically work on other projects for other games in other engines, or design T-shirts or bake cookies using these donations. However, in order to do any of that, including Misery, MDT needs the time, and to get the time it needs money to support it during that time. And that time would just happen to be spent working on Misery. To play Misery you don't have to donate at all - [B]MDT is not monetizing Misery[/B] nor is it making a profit off Stalker. Therefore you are not paying for Misery at all, let alone a cracked version of the game which MDT doesn't conduct doing so."[/I] AoXo completely reflects my view and the teams view on this whole situation. You could ofcourse say:"It's all cool or at least should be when MDT is doing it for free. It might pose some problems if the mod's going commercial though." But fact is is that MISERY doesn't go commercial. Saying this will imply us making our fans and players have to pay to play, which we aren't doing. We're offering a free service to every- and anyone, regardless if you donated money or not. Another point by AoXo; [I]"[U]Going Commercial[/U]; That's the misconception as far I'm aware. It's not going commercial. No one will be paying for Misery. If people who haven't paid for Misery can play it then I don't particularly understand how it is "going commercial" as a commercial transaction implies an exchange. Misery for free = [B]no exchange[/B]. Donating money to a group for their time is separate, as far I'm I'm aware, to the (free, non-commercial) product or service they're providing. I think people should stop referring to Misery as "going commercial" because that's giving the wrong impression. Free product, no associated costs = not commercial."[/I] Any more questions? I'll be happy to answer them :) Also, thanks [B]Troj[/B]! Guys, you should know, this add-on is made by me and comes with both new vegetation textures as well as new particles which match the environment a bit more (more leaves in anomalies, leaves burning up in heat zones, increased fog distances etc.) All custom made for MISERY. ETA is a month or 2, if not slightly less.

ok so that's the donation thing, personally there's a lot I could talk about there, maybe it's worth another blog post, or maybe just a skype conversation with you or something, I don't know what does 'let alone a cracked version of the game which MDT doesn't conduct doing so.' mean? A clear explanation of what happened there would be great :)

I think he meant 'condone,' as in "MDT does not condone cracking STALKER."

I do not think I would personally feel justified if I donated to a team that ended up with a product not dissimilar from the current state of Misery. It may just be my preference, but I do not think anybody really accepts making enemies bullet sponges and creating an absurd economy as legitimate means to make the game "more hardcore" or realistic, or imersive for that matter. There are other issues, such as a lack of optimization and bugs/oversights that point in the opposite direction of "extensive beta testing," and they all add up to a lack of inclination for me to donate, if it were an option. Perhaps if the team was receiving donations, the quality of products released would increase, but as it stands I'm unsure if I'd be willing to donate at all. Then again, there are a lot of people who seem perfectly content with the mod in its current state. I have no doubts that these people would donate willingly, but considering the drastic changes (for better or for worse) and the impact they have on the community supporting the mod (doubtless there are more people upset with 2.0 than 1.0) I doubt that constant development would retain the current number of supporters, judging from the quality of Misery 1.0, its patches, to 2.0. [editline]4th August 2013[/editline] Redux, on the other hand...

[QUOTE=Beacon;41708852] what does 'let alone a cracked version of the game which MDT doesn't conduct doing so.' mean? A clear explanation of what happened there would be great :)[/QUOTE] [B][U]This is coming from [I]me[/I]; I by no means represent the official opinion of the team.[/U][/B] I think and believe that using cracked .exe's which allow for easy .dll editing (grass distance changes, shadow drawing changes etc.) aren't such a big problem in the STALKER community. I believe that someone who truly loves stalker just like the way you and I do will definitely buy the game and not use a cracked .exe because he/she doesn't want to buy the game. I personally bought all 3 games over 2 times, I bought SHoC 5 times, actually. Every time my CD broke I'd go out and buy a new one, both for my dad as myself. (Yes, I left my CD in my PC because I've played the game every single day since release. Prolly over 4k to 5k hours in SHoC alone) And with that line I meant the team doesn't want to help people with pirated software nor we support people having cracked exe's already. We won't provide help to these people and Cromm has been witness of this as well. There's several ways for someone to check wether their copy is legit or not :) And You could say:"Buy you're now handing out cracked one's" We're not talking about the STALKERCOP.exe, the game launcher, but the one in BIN folder. [B]And I just received mail, indeed, condone as in not cracking stalker yes. [/B][QUOTE=DeeCeeTeeBee;41708883]I do not think I would personally feel justified if I donated to a team that ended up with a product not dissimilar from the current state of Misery. It may just be my preference, but I do not think anybody really accepts making enemies bullet sponges and creating an absurd economy as legitimate means to make the game "more hardcore" or realistic, or imersive for that matter. There are other issues, such as a lack of optimization and bugs/oversights that point in the opposite direction of "extensive beta testing," and they all add up to a lack of inclination for me to donate, if it were an option. Perhaps if the team was receiving donations, the quality of products released would increase, but as it stands I'm unsure if I'd be willing to donate at all. Then again, there are a lot of people who seem perfectly content with the mod in its current state. I have no doubts that these people would donate willingly, but considering the drastic changes (for better or for worse) and the impact they have on the community supporting the mod (doubtless there are more people upset with 2.0 than 1.0) I doubt that constant development would retain the current number of supporters, judging from the quality of Misery 1.0, its patches, to 2.0. [/QUOTE] I completely understand your perspective here, but to clear some things up; MISERY was thoroughly tested by over 10 people in different area's and different 'time zone's'. We had teams Alpha and Beta. They tested all features in the most absurd ways and reported back with bugs. We managed to fill up over 150 pages in our private forum of bugs, inconsistencies, weird things like sounds, weather, everything. But, in our latest build some things accidentally slipped through, like the flashlight. We are humans as well and our previous claims were actually true, that it was the most stable MISERY build, but the final build was just what caused all this havok. And I also understand the whole view on donating and misery seemingly trying to make profit from it's 'hyped' stance in the community, but we really aren't trying to do this. We're in no way trying to gain something from MISERY, in fact, we're trying to give the rest more but nothing is free in live. Trojanuch spend the time he should've slept behind notepad, creating new features and I did PR till 4 AM almost each and every day, laying out contacts to people and doing promotional stuff for the mod along with Nic. And then there's a load of other people who gave us advice, people who served in the Military, Navy, even SAS, not to talk about the 7 modellers waiting on a list of weapons for MISERY 3. They all voluntarily helped us create misery better and we thought, with V3, we wanted to top everything. But again, this is not at no costs, sadly. I as a 17 year old can permit some time to modding, but the rest of the team has a job, a wife, a dog and maybe even kids and bills to take care of. Hence the donating, which makes life so much more easier for Nic, Troj, Alundiao and others who do have to pay the rent etc. (I wouldn't want a penny from the donations, I dont need it) [QUOTE=kaukassus;41708951]I am really curious on whats the reason Misery 2.0 ships with those executables, and what they modified on them, since I heard that they don't have the "large address aware" flag, and an explanation on why they decided to ship a cracked version of the executable.[/QUOTE] It does. We've purposely set it to 4GB but the unoptimised textures indeed take quite the bite out of any PC's RAM. Cromm linked me to a tool which he used to optimise his textures with in the A.N. and A.S. packs, might give it a shot now.

Well, with all this ~drama~ over Misery, I kinda want to try it. What's the most recent "unfuck" patch?

I am really curious on whats the reason Misery 2.0 ships with those executables, and what they modified on them, since I heard that they don't have the "large address aware" flag, and an explanation on why they decided to ship a cracked version of the executable.

[QUOTE='[Green];41708622']I am smacking my lips at those sexy screenshots. I've been working on a little something something. Sexpect to see it sometime soon~[/QUOTE] You just made me cringe a bit. Colorful Zone is much better than [I]Brown[/I]. My hope is for an actual optimization for textures. Cause right now it's stuttering hell with settings above DX9 even on top-end PCs.

[QUOTE=JoeSibilant;41708941]Well, with all this ~drama~ over Misery, I kinda want to try it. What's the most recent "unfuck" patch?[/QUOTE] I'd recommend waiting until the Misery team releases the Patch for 2.0.

ETA/features on said patch? Don't really care about everything getting fixed, I just heard that the "fan patches" (so to speak) fix big things like enemy accuracy and health.

[QUOTE=JoeSibilant;41708982]ETA/features on said patch? Don't really care about everything getting fixed, I just heard that the "fan patches" (so to speak) fix big things like enemy accuracy and health.[/QUOTE] These sometimes make the game crash because some people just change a line here and there which works, until F.E. the dynamic levelling system comes into place and the game gives an error because X value doesn't correspond with Y value anymore :/ Also, Monday, hopefully. @The rest, [B]I've expanded upon my reply above a bit[/B]

Oh, that soon? I'll wait then. For all the (justified) criticism of the mod, I think there's some really neat stuff here (especially explosives--the remote-detonated ones in SGM were tons of fun) that I want to try.

[QUOTE=JoeSibilant;41709036]Oh, that soon? I'll wait then. For all the (justified) criticism of the mod, I think there's some really neat stuff here (especially explosives--the remote-detonated ones in SGM were tons of fun) that I want to try.[/QUOTE] There's loads of more features to be found in the game. I also found it funny to receive reviews from people 2 hours after they tried the game out. Gives kind of a weird view on the situation because they haven't even reached Pripyat yet. It get's really 'funny' when you get there!

[QUOTE=JoeSibilant;41708982]ETA/features on said patch? Don't really care about everything getting fixed, I just heard that the "fan patches" (so to speak) fix big things like enemy accuracy and health.[/QUOTE] [del]I'm not sure, but I heard something about next week, but don't take my word for it.[/del], Monday confirmed I haven't had the time to Try out Misery 2.0, but I heard the Unofficial patch fixes things like the need for multiple headshots to kill an enemy (for example a bandid), and other stuff. Honestly I'd currently wait before playing Misery 2.0, the current state is a clusterfuck. Random people fixing things that the mod changed, and the Misery team working on an official patch aswell. I'd wait until a few days after the official patch is released, and install Misery + the official patch, and if really needed some community patches for some smaller things. But keep in mind that the community changes can make the game unstable.