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

[QUOTE=The golden;43600382]They are neat in that aspect, certainly. I just wish there was either more of them or they added in more solo anomalies. Then again there really isn't any place to put some solo anomalies because the maps have almost no buildings. :v:[/QUOTE] SGM added random anomalies that represent a real hazard. Plus they show up in places that make sense, like electro anomalies clustered below a electrical transmission tower.

Unfortunately my SGM suddenly just started crashing every time I went to the swamps so I couldn't play anymore. Also, I'm probably alone in this, but am I the only one who doesn't really like burers? I mean, what they do is cool, but I don't really think they look intimidating at all, just like some of those trench-coated cheeki breekis got caught in one too many emissions.

[QUOTE=The golden;43600309]CoP's maps are hands down the worst in the series. To the point where it actually really harms the game in my opinion. [/QUOTE] I disagree entirely, but each to his own. The entire point of CoP's big open maps was to facilitate indefinite play. [QUOTE=The golden;43600309]CoP's maps are really limited in this department. The vast majority of Zaton and Yanov are completely empty and NPC's will not spawn, enter, or go into like 3/4 of the structures that are on these maps. They are totally abandoned and never used at all. Ranger Station? Used for one mission and then never used again by anything. Krugg Antenna Complex? Used for one mission and then never used again for anything. Waste Processing? Used for one mission and never used again for anything. This is the same story for most of the locations in the game. Even if they were used, there isn't very many of them. Zaton and Yanov are so empty you can see from one side to the other pretty easily. It's really boring. [/QUOTE] SoC does the exact same thing, hell, all of it's locations only exist serve the story. Cordon? You start there and that's about it. No reason to ever go back. Garbage? Half the map is piles of deadly radiation, only way into Agroprom. Agroprom? One mission, no reason to ever go back. Dark Vally? X-lab, connects to Cordon. Rostok? The bar is there. Other than that it's the connection to Yantar and the Army Warehouses. Wild Territory? Only connection to Yantar. Yantar? X-lab, and the mobile lab which doesn't sell anything worth making regular trips to it. Army Warehouses? Bloodsucker town. Only connection to Red Forest. Red Forest? Winding road to an X-lab. Prypiat? Connection to Chernobyl NPP. Chernobyl NPP? End of game.

^the big difference between cop and soc is that soc makes you want to explore the entire zone, whereas cop is more of "get it done so i can play with mods." although i do like cop's expanded pripyat map, it's just a shame that you really only utilize the lower half of it. also the jupiter station (i think) is a pretty neat area.

[QUOTE=Irespawnoften;43600857]I disagree entirely, but each to his own. The entire point of CoP's big open maps was to facilitate indefinite play. SoC does the exact same thing, hell, all of it's locations only exist serve the story. Cordon? You start there and that's about it. No reason to ever go back. Garbage? Half the map is piles of deadly radiation, only way into Agroprom. Agroprom? One mission, no reason to ever go back. Dark Vally? X-lab, connects to Cordon. Rostok? The bar is there. Other than that it's the connection to Yantar and the Army Warehouses. Wild Territory? Only connection to Yantar. Yantar? X-lab, and the mobile lab which doesn't sell anything worth making regular trips to it. Army Warehouses? Bloodsucker town. Only connection to Red Forest. Red Forest? Winding road to an X-lab. Prypiat? Connection to Chernobyl NPP. Chernobyl NPP? End of game.[/QUOTE] I do like CoP quite a bit, but a lot more does happen during SoC and CS in between, even if in SoC sometimes it's just bandit or military squads trying to fuck your shit. I see what your saying, but at the same time I think that still makes SoC feel more like you are in a real place - because there are roads you have to take (over the course of "areas") to get to certain places, whereas in CoP it feels more like something made to be a sandbox. I'm hoping Lost Alpha has a combination of the two - large maps with a lot to do in them, but also have certain places funnel you certain ways so you can have something that can be described like, "the hazardous road to the dark valley" and stuff like that. I don't know about side quests because I haven't tried the translation yet, but if the feelings I get from ORL2.0 is any indication, LA is probably going to be just what I'm hoping for.

[QUOTE=Pops;43600946]^the big difference between cop and soc is that soc makes you want to explore the entire zone, whereas cop is more of "get it done so i can play with mods." although i do like cop's expanded pripyat map, it's just a shame that you really only utilize the lower half of it. also the jupiter station (i think) is a pretty neat area.[/QUOTE] See, I had the exact opposite reaction. SoC made me not want to travel around because of all the constant loading, while CoP's maps made me want to explore every nook and cranny.

[QUOTE=The golden;43601005]That would be true if stuff actually happened in those open maps - but they don't. Like I said, most of the locations are not even used by other Stalkers or mutants. They are completely desolate. Most don't even have item stashes in them to look for either. What reason do I have to revisit these locations ever again?[/QUOTE] To explore. There was shit to find, groups of stalkers to bump into, bandits to shoot, side quests to complete, monsters to hunt, artifacts to collect. Did we play the same game? I was always finding things to do. My CoP was far from desolate.

The way SoC is made makes you want to go through each area, to check them out - CoP starts off the same, in that you can look at the map and be like "ooh, what's at this bubble" - in the same way you can look at SoC's different areas of the map and be like "ooh, whats in here?" - but CoP's bubbles represent landmarks more-so, and most of them don't have a lot of stuff going on, whereas in SoC every new map you arrive at is guaranteed to have something new. Almost makes me think of progression in something like an RPG or MMO - when you get to a higher level zone or something. CoP doesn't quite have that, between zaton and jupiter, the things you'll encounter are largely the same, there aren't any "regions" of the maps that would be easier, or wreck your shit, - except for somewhere like jupiter underground I suppose. Also with SoC's loading, I guess I just don't mind it because, at least for me, it's really fast. I find the intial load of CoP that takes ~1 minute (because of absolute nature) a lot more jarring, though that's my fault for using absolute nature/not getting a better HD/an SSD. As dumb as this sounds, that's probably the main reason I'm actually playing SoC over CoP with the mods right now, other than the fact that I just beat CoP - whereas If I want to play SoC I just load it up and load my game and it's done in a fraction of the time.

[QUOTE=Bloodshot12;43601050]Also with SoC's loading, I guess I just don't mind it because, at least for me, it's really fast. I find the intial load of CoP that takes ~1 minute (because of absolute nature) a lot more jarring, though that's my fault for using absolute nature/not getting a better HD/an SSD.[/QUOTE] I didn't mean it was slow, I just meant that to go anywhere you had to walk over here, load this area, walk over to there, and then load that area. It's really immersion breaking.

[QUOTE=Irespawnoften;43600857]I disagree entirely, but each to his own. The entire point of CoP's big open maps was to facilitate indefinite play. SoC does the exact same thing, hell, all of it's locations only exist serve the story. Cordon? You start there and that's about it. No reason to ever go back. Garbage? Half the map is piles of deadly radiation, only way into Agroprom. Agroprom? One mission, no reason to ever go back. Dark Vally? X-lab, connects to Cordon. Rostok? The bar is there. Other than that it's the connection to Yantar and the Army Warehouses. Wild Territory? Only connection to Yantar. Yantar? X-lab, and the mobile lab which doesn't sell anything worth making regular trips to it. Army Warehouses? Bloodsucker town. Only connection to Red Forest. Red Forest? Winding road to an X-lab. Prypiat? Connection to Chernobyl NPP. Chernobyl NPP? End of game.[/QUOTE] I played every game dozens of times with and without mods and I can say that CoP's maps are my least desirable out of the series. They're simply too big. Don't get me wrong big maps are a great thing, but when everything feels like it's spaced out and empty it just doesn't work for me. The beauty of SoC and CS was that the maps felt fairly large all while making the levels feel populated in the right spots. CoP would have been better if they focused more on detailed level design and populated it more. The apartment complexes in Pripyat had so much promise but there was only one mission that only partly utilized them. Then there was the Jupiter plant which was extremely disappointing. The point I'm trying to make is that CoP had lots of promise and in the end that's all it had. I'm only talking about vanilla CoP. Mods have made some miracles with the large levels but they it's almost as if they're too big to fill no matter the effort. It's because of this that I have replayed SoC and CS more than CoP. I just feel that more could be done with CoP, it felt fairly incomplete.

[QUOTE=Irespawnoften;43601085]I didn't mean it was slow, I just meant that to go anywhere you had to walk over here, load this area, walk over to there, and then load that area. It's really immersion breaking.[/QUOTE] Nah I got that, I was just saying that for me personally it doesn't really bother me that much because it's fast, and not as prominent as, say, fallout/TES games where it does annoy me(Except for Daggerfall because areas literally load instantly without a loading screen) To me, as long as it's fast it doesn't really hurt my immersion that much - at least I don't see it as that different from opening your menu, or your inventory and such. That being said, I do think it would be awesome as hell if all the maps could be combined into one, and the intermittent pathways be made as well so it's just one gigantic map with the same progression, but as an entire world instead of levels. EDIT: Also wtf is up with the knife in CoP? Why does the stabbing alt fire not fucking reach anything

Heated discussions here. Sorry for the people who've been trying to contact me :v: Like I said, I was gone for the weekend because of my birthday :v: So, what did I miss?

I streamed AA2, amazing merges, badass translating action and conversations about ShoC maps vs CoP maps. That's about it.

[QUOTE='[Green];43602895']I streamed AA2, amazing merges, badass translating action and conversations about ShoC maps vs CoP maps. That's about it.[/QUOTE] Ah, not so much aye. I did read your review of AA2. I agree on various points indeed. Also [QUOTE][B]dem particle effects[/B][/QUOTE] Thanks :v:

[QUOTE=The golden;43601127]I have about 140 hours in CoP and have beaten it several times siding with most of the factions. The vast majority of the locations do not contain anything worthwhile to return to and are not reused in quests. If a location is used for a quest then it usually is not used for anything else afterwards other than a building for you to stand in during emissions. As for your other points - all NPC Stalkers in CoP move around Zaton and Yanov along the major roads and always stop at pre-defined camps along the side of the road and start a campfire. These locations never change and it's usually the same faction that inhabits them give or take a few places. Very few of these camp locations are actually inside buildings with the exception of scripted ones. Also almost every Stalker you encounter will be randomly generated. They will have nothing unique or interesting to say to you and don't really do anything besides wander around until they get eaten by blind dogs. There isn't even any on-going faction conflicts because you are neutral to EVERYONE (even the bandits, wtf) and it actually takes quite a bit of work to make another faction turn completely hostile to you. And again, even if they are hostile they won't make use of any of the structures in the game so you'll just be shooting them along roads and in swamps. They also spawn in predictable locations and have predictable routes. I know this is starting to sound ranty a bit, but it's really not as interesting as you are making it out ot be. At least in my opinion.[/QUOTE] In Redux, I'm trying to address these issues big time. If you're interested in helping (and it's definitely something we can solve), wanna add me on Steam and we can chat about it?

Well, time to start working on merging Variation Mod with MSO. Wish me luck.

[QUOTE=Gatekeeper828;43603397]Well, time to start working on merging Variation Mod with MSO. Wish me luck.[/QUOTE] Beyond Compare is a recommended ally ...

Well shit, it's not like I wanted my free time anyways :v: [t]http://puu.sh/6rz0M.png[/t] I have to go through the merged character_desc_general at some point and fix up a bunch of errors too. [editline]p[/editline] Currently on line 9718/10306(this is more a note for myself).

[QUOTE=The golden;43601127]Also almost every Stalker you encounter will be randomly generated. They will have nothing unique or interesting to say to you and don't really do anything besides wander around until they get eaten by blind dogs.[/QUOTE] This sounds like an odd complain if you're just ranting about CoP since the same largely applies to NPCs in SoC / CS as well. In fact, this applies [I]more[/I] to SoC than CoP since the NPCs don't react to events, they don't update what they say, their dialogs are entirely dependent on what map they're on and sometimes they have dialogues that make no sense considering their faction. Also the NPCs in SoC are stuck endlessly in some remote gulag unless they've been spawned and they're traveling to one. A lot of the complaints you have about CoP are sort of valid but this one I disagree with, at least if you're asserting that it SoC / CS aren't at fault about it as well. [QUOTE=Bloodshot12;43599105]So do you guys prefer SoC's map design, or CoP's?[/QUOTE] Both have their upsides and downsides. The downsides of CoP maps have been pretty extensively visited in this thread so I won't be going over those right now but SoC maps have a terrible tendency to create chokepoints where all the action happens and then for the rest of the map there isn't anything going on. The SoC system doesn't facilitate a lot of unpredictability because while the NPCs can move between the maps, the chokepoints make it so that the NPCs that are spawned usually meet at pre-designed locations which kind of makes areas sort of annoying after the nth time. A good example would probably be Wild Territory with it's spawns : Most of the action in the map in freeplay happens in the corridor where Wolfhound's mercs ambush the player when they're making their way through the Wild Territory. You can't really go any other way than the narrow corridor and that's the same for the A-Life as well, they all have to squeeze into the level through the Rostok / Wild Territory changer and that means most of the action in the map happens there and it becomes very limited for chances of different factions to negotiate their way through the levels when there's usually only one connection from a level to another and that means opposing factions will meet at the chokepoints that form around the level changers and those places will become the only places where the action really happens on that map.

[QUOTE=Etcetera;43593991]Crank up the gamma/brightness?[/QUOTE] Doesn't help. ;_;

[QUOTE=Beacon;43603126]In Redux, I'm trying to address these issues big time. If you're interested in helping (and it's definitely something we can solve), wanna add me on Steam and we can chat about it?[/QUOTE] can i be an idea guy k thanks :)

[QUOTE=LEETNOOB;43603862]Doesn't help. ;_;[/QUOTE] The simplest work-around would probably just to mod your suit to have night vision, but I don't know how useful that'd actually be in pitch black.

Usually upping the brightness and gamma will just make the image flat-out white. Try upping the contrast as well. Experiment will different settings. Also, upping the contrast will make the game more colorful. [editline]20th January 2014[/editline] If all above don't work and you're too desperate, go back to the save prior to the entrance to the Lab. That's the only way.

[QUOTE=Beacon;43603126]In Redux, I'm trying to address these issues big time. If you're interested in helping (and it's definitely something we can solve), wanna add me on Steam and we can chat about it?[/QUOTE] You should do another dev stream! It was fun watching you make adjustments to the levels.

I was checking AP-Pro forums and found this beauty: [t]http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/3408398049023159349/40A0DB41A12FB58A5CBFC5619CDED433B0D8A4A0/[/t][t]http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/3408398049023163266/AC9433E6EA32214AD7658104D695BC9C5DCC1275/[/t] [t]http://cloud-3.steampowered.com/ugc/3408398049022859549/A7167602D42915A8E11F0FC9C16F842F8DBDACB2/[/t][t]http://cloud-3.steampowered.com/ugc/3408398049022868193/25751A0831C4A092478995DEDF80CF3CE840BE71/[/t] [t]http://cloud-4.steampowered.com/ugc/3408398049022872552/986C9E0B35CAD9DAA4DFBCAF6F1026486FEDEE8A/[/t][t]http://cloud-3.steampowered.com/ugc/3408398049022885335/11833C7666FA4F815EDECAD9EE8BE7C89F53028E/[/t] [t]http://cloud-3.steampowered.com/ugc/3408398049022876422/9478CC4BCB225BF704D49DA0CAAAADC8982F4DD9/[/t][t]http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/3408398049022880719/970C70D430DF7B26B60C0241166B867725B9EE5E/[/t] Oh yeah, winter mod for Clear Sky.

[QUOTE=Hammer7;43605180]-snip-[/QUOTE] I'm still wondering how's that new cave map like. Also, what's with Loner being banned when I get back home?

[QUOTE=Monolits;43605242]I'm still wondering how's that new cave map like.[/QUOTE] It's a SOUP like beginning. You need to escape from a frozen cave without any kind of equipment.

[QUOTE=Monolits;43605242]I'm still wondering how's that new cave map like. Also, what's with Loner being banned when I get back home?[/QUOTE] misusing spoiler tags apparently

[QUOTE=Hammer7;43605180][t]http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/3408398049022880719/970C70D430DF7B26B60C0241166B867725B9EE5E/[/t] Oh yeah, winter mod for Clear Sky.[/QUOTE] Featuring the most ~fabulous~ Siberian Tiger camo.

Looking at LURK again, it reminds me just how much I want 1.2 just for the weapons. Is Lurk the only mod with specular/normal maps on weapons in SoC?