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

So in AA2 I pretty much ran out of ammo in X18 when I got to the pseudogiant. I had 4 rounds of .45 acp for my colt, and that was it. I ended up killing it by getting it to knock the explosive barrel that was up top of something down to the floor and luring it over to that one and another

[QUOTE=Bloodshot12;43607079]So in AA2 I pretty much ran out of ammo in X18 when I got to the pseudogiant. I had 4 rounds of .45 acp for my colt, and that was it. I ended up killing it by getting it to knock the explosive barrel that was up top of something down to the floor and luring it over to that one and another[/QUOTE] By any chance are you MacGyver?

MacGyver makes things, I make things[sp]die[/sp] I got really lucky, somehow did it in one go without a load, then went to get the documents and ran for the cabinets full of ammo & supplies [sp]because there's no way I was gonna try to take on the military with only a knife[/sp]

In Shadow of Chernobyl, do the artifacts that supposedly give extra health do anything at all? I notice no difference myself.

[QUOTE=brenz;43608947]In Shadow of Chernobyl, do the artifacts that supposedly give extra health do anything at all? I notice no difference myself.[/QUOTE] They don't actually increase your health as in the digits of health you can have at most. Instead, they affect [I]health regeneration.[/I] It's confusing, I know. It's not that useful though since excluding some mods you can just spam medkits.

[QUOTE='[Green];43608970']They don't actually increase your health as in the digits of health you can have at most. Instead, they affect [I]health regeneration.[/I] It's confusing, I know. It's not that useful though since excluding some mods you can just spam medkits.[/QUOTE] What I like the most is the Moonlight artifact. Infinite sprinting? I'll take it.

[QUOTE='[Green];43608970']Instead, they affect [I]health regeneration.[/I][/QUOTE] Plus some of them make you actually more vulnerable to gunfire while wearing them so using them during combat is ill-advised. They're useful to heal up with after the gunfight is over but not recommendable to wear them during one.

[QUOTE=brenz;43609052]What I like the most is the Moonlight artifact. Infinite sprinting? I'll take it.[/QUOTE] You found a Moonlight? Congratulations, endurance artifacts pair well with -rad artifacts. Eye, Fireball and Crystal all negate radiation at the cost of endurance. Pair those with Sparkler, Flash or Moonlight artifacts and you got -rad and infinite sprint. Easily the best kinds of artifacts. [editline]20th January 2014[/editline] [QUOTE=Muukkis;43609056]Plus some of them make you actually more vulnerable to gunfire while wearing them so using them during combat is ill-advised. They're useful to heal up with after the gunfight is over but not recommendable to wear them during one.[/QUOTE] Not if you have 2 Mama's Beads, but even then it's worth more to use Mica or Slug to mitigate bleeding.

[QUOTE=Muukkis;43609056]Plus some of them make you actually more vulnerable to gunfire while wearing them so using them during combat is ill-advised. They're useful to heal up with after the gunfight is over but not recommendable to wear them during one.[/QUOTE] So THAT'S why I got literally one shotted while battling those hi-quality assault rifle wielding dudes. I was carrying like 3 of those. Never realized it before. Thanks for the info.

[QUOTE=The golden;43610071]Really wish the Cordon/Swamp parts were not mandatory to make it to the vanilla CoP storyline. They are fucking terrible.[/QUOTE] Doesn't 2.1 come without Cordon / Swamps and just is the relatively same package but without the two extra levels ?

[QUOTE=The golden;43610253]From what I read it changes your start location, yes, but many things have been changed between the two versions.[/QUOTE] Quite a bit had been changed, like some quests have been changed, the biggest and my most hated one is that those nice new(and horrifically OP ones, a Wish artifact removed 10-12 rads per second methinks) artifacts, but i think that was just an addon.

You can patch 2.2 to start in zaton [url]http://www.mediafire.com/download/q2n4lurt8k822wo/Zaton-Start_SGM2.2.rar[/url] I wonder if I'd be able to avoid the crashing issues with the swamps I had by doing this. But I want to play the game with OWR god damnit.

I need to ask, is there a way to merge particles.xr files? I really want to run PPX with SWTC, but i apparently need to merge the particles.xr files. I heard of manually merging with the SDK but that sounds like an immense pain in the ass. I found PE tools, but it crashes on startup, so i may have to resort to the SDK.

[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. STALKER shines it's best when you're crawling through some dark hole without knowing what the hell is around the next corner. It could be a mutant wanting to eat your eyeballs or an anomaly that will blow your tits off. Ruined villages, abandoned tunnels, old labs, military facilities, thick swamps - all good stuff. 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. Another issue with CoP's maps is that all the anomolies were stuck together into big clumps. You know, things like the "bitumen anomaly" or the "oakpine anomaly". These clumps pretty much accounts for all the anomalies in the entire game. CS and SoC had these too but they also had anomalies that were solo in unexpected locations such as trailers, closets, and other random locations. They were in places that made getting to the end more difficult. The amount of this that CoP is pitiful at best. SoC and CS's maps have a much more detailed "hand-made" look to them. They have a ton more stuff crammed into their smaller spaces. They look and feel more real and thus more immersive. NPC's make use of most of the world space and in CS many locations can actually change factions throughout the game. It makes the world seem more alive. I know some people like the lonely feeling of CoP and I can see that it could be something that adds to the immersion but in my opinion it's fucking boring. That's my take on it.[/QUOTE] I disagree. Call of Pripyat took the series in a better direction than SoC in virtually every single department. With all due respect to GSC - SoC took far too long to make even considering their circumstances and the amount of roadbumps during the development. Bigger, more polished games have been made in far smaller time frames. SoC had way too many humans in it, and people seem to forget this. For a place that was supposed to be a cornered-off hell-hole that is virtually impossible to get into (and once you did your life expectancy supposedly dropped to basically nil), there were Stalkers in literally every single place you arrived at. From Cordon, to the Garbage, to the Bar, To the Military Warehouses, etc. Sole exception being Yantar and the labs. Absolutely packed with human stalkers having their own tiny all-out wars and you spent 80% of the time shooting at other humans instead of mutants or other monstrosities of the zone. This eliminates the fear-factor from the game because you are fighting a familiar enemy, it is very common, very normal. Even the Monolith, which are supposed to be this fanatical, mystical and ruthless clan are at the end of the day, humans that behave like humans in a gun-fight so you're basically at-ease. And the reason this is bullshit in STALKER is because the main theme of the game is the unknown, alien, hostile Zone. Mutants, mutants and more mutants should have been the main enemy through the game. Regarding anomalies - it is best that anomalies were clustered into familiar, concentrated places in CoP. In SoC one looks like green goo and other like static electricity and another distorts air around it but they all work exactly the same way and they are all harmful to the player and should be avoided. Pretty unimaginative and annoying because they are placed at the most random points on the map that look like the developers made the map and then randomly sprinkled anomalies all over the place without care of thought put into it. Almost every anomaly field in CoP is part of the level geometry rather than just a bunch of deathtraps lumped together or scattered around. You could say that the downside of this is that you can just run around everywhere and not worry about accidentally stepping into a vortex in the middle of nowhere, but I can't say walking everywhere constantly throwing bolts in front of you until you memorize position of anomalies along most frequented paths was a great gaming experience anyway. You say maps in CoP are used once and then never used again, which if false because there are many side-quests that involve you crawling around those very same abandoned locations several times over and it makes it all the while more interesting and spooky. The Jupiter plant is the best example, place is absolutely fucking empty and the first time I walked into it, I didn't know what to expect. It was alien, it was probably hostile, it was on the edge. I was on my toes ready for something terrible to appear but nothing happened and that's the beauty of it. I shot a couple of dogs, grabbed the documents, and walk right outta there as fast as I could because the place gave me chills. If the same Jupiter plant was to be included in SoC, it would have the military, the monoliths and other random stalkers having a chaotic shoot-out with RPGs flying around and gauss rifles or some other bullshit like that, which is simply not interesting or frightening. By making the world much more open and 2/3 of it accessible right from the start, the devs are freed from the constraints of designing an artificial progress meter. Not every place needs to have dozens of stalkers walking in and out of it, or having a shootout willy-nilly over every insignificant corner of the zone. I could go on, but it'll be an even bigger wall of text. Point is, you guys hold SoC for all its merits to a far higher degree than you do CoP, which took the STALKER series in the absolute best, most stalker-like direction than either of the previous games. Once you look at SoC from a critical point of view, you'll realize the game is far more flawed than you think it is.

[QUOTE=The golden;43610657]That patch caused me to start behind the Sawmill in Zaton. I talked to the NPC and made my way down the road and took a wide path around the Sawmill to avoid the zombies. I wanted to go back to base so I took that bridge that goes over the ravine and was instantly killed by a landmine that was in the bridge. What the fuck. Reloaded my quicksave and went to inspect the bridge to see if the landmine was even visible and sure enough it's completely invisible. I'm done with this turd of a mod.[/QUOTE] if to annoys you that much you can turn the mines off, but its not the true Russian way

[QUOTE=The golden;43610657]That patch caused me to start behind the Sawmill in Zaton. I talked to the NPC and made my way down the road and took a wide path around the Sawmill to avoid the zombies. I wanted to go back to base so I took that bridge that goes over the ravine and was instantly killed by a landmine that was in the bridge. What the fuck. Reloaded my quicksave and went to inspect the bridge to see if the landmine was even visible and sure enough it's completely invisible. I'm done with this turd of a mod.[/QUOTE] I thought that mine was in the original CoP, since mines are invisible in vanilla, but SGM mines are visible. I know there was a smaller bridge I went over and randomly got blown up in both my first and second CoP playthroughs.

Thought i merged those mods together, game launched fine, but loading took forever, and the game shot over 3GB of ram use and crashed. I only merged OWR, PPX, MSO and SWTC.

You know, vehicles actually handle pretty well. Almost makes me wish they weren't cut, though the maps wouldn't be the greatest for them. Something like the RMA mod has where you are chased by a heli in the darkscape map, would be pretty rad to have as an actual part of the game.

Maybe it was a different bridge, because I know there is one bridge that I avoided specifically because of that.

[QUOTE=zombini;43611129]Thought i merged those mods together, game launched fine, but loading took forever, and the game shot over 3GB of ram use and crashed. I only merged OWR, PPX, MSO and SWTC.[/QUOTE] I'm getting 3 minute load times with the same kinda setup so I think it might be SWTC but I am not sure. I am also running a shit rig so that should be factored in. As for the crash itself, could you ctrl+v the error if you have one here?

[QUOTE=Bloodshot12;43611183]You know, vehicles actually handle pretty well. Almost makes me wish they weren't cut, though the maps wouldn't be the greatest for them. Something like the RMA mod has where you are chased by a heli in the darkscape map, would be pretty rad to have as an actual part of the game.[/QUOTE] Cars are still really buggy. Hit springboard, you're now in Harry Potter.

Still, they seem pretty ok as long as you don't hit annomalies - which I think is a pretty big priority regardless of whether you are in or out of a car. Though the front doors have a tendency to fall off

[QUOTE=Gatekeeper828;43611328]I'm getting 3 minute load times with the same kinda setup so I think it might be SWTC but I am not sure. I am also running a shit rig so that should be factored in. As for the crash itself, could you ctrl+v the error if you have one here?[/QUOTE] SWTC gives me out of memory errors all the time, even with the 4GB patch enabled. You can ignore the included xrGame.dll (which increases the distance that grass is rendered) and the user.ltx (which increases the density of the grass), which frees up some RAM, but it's still gonna be a bitch to load and run reliably.

CoP is giving me this [IMG]http://i.imgur.com/Al53sYR.png[/IMG] Tried a few fixes, none seemed to work. Also tried to delete my exe and verify, but steam wouldn't even notice it was gone. [editline]21st January 2014[/editline] I'll try to change the external drive (on which steam is installed) letter back to what it used to be before I formated my PC. I think that'll do it.

I think I might just stick to AtmosFear for the merge. SWTC seems like it's going to be a real pain in the ass with memory. On a slightly offtopic note, I think I understand most of the stuff I need to do for the MSO/Variation Mod merge. It's just going to be long, tedious, and boring as fuck.

One thing I'm noticing across a lot of mods is a lot of them make the weapons do more realistic damage, and while I don't mind it for the most part (except weaker mutants) something I liked about vanilla is that I felt more of a need to use AP ammo. Especially in SoC, I always carried AP ammo to deal with the numerous well armored enemy types, but in a lot of mods for all the games (maybe because I always go for headshots) AP ammo just ends up being extra ammo for the ammo pool.

[QUOTE=The golden;43610791]I saw the option in the mod customization menu but it didn't work. Mines still remained. And to be honest I don't really care anymore. I've removed the gamedata files for it and gotten rid of it.[/QUOTE] Ever heard of reloading the game? Very rarely do mods let you instantly toggle things on and off without reloading a save of some sort. The amount of mines spawned in SGM is absurd, and there is no way that they will instantly disappear when you screw with some settings. The mines themselves are NOT invisible, and can be seen sticking out of the ground by about a mere inch (which is big enough for you to shoot it, and detonate- yes, you can detonate mines by shooting them). You really gave up too easily. It just takes some patience...

Mines at Swamps are quest related. Once you done the military cargo quest - they'll disappear.

[QUOTE=The golden;43613299]They kill you instantly when they explode. No shit I've reloaded my saves. About 20 times. I even restarted my game. I also tried reloading a save before I even entered the swamps and disabled it then. They were always present. The mine on the bridge was invisible (I even approached it and looked at the spot where it was to confirm it) but I couldn't tell you about the ones in the swamp because they were under grass and foliage. They are also brown and so is the ground. I would have to move across the swamps at the speed of a slug while analyzing every patch of ground in order to make to my destination - and that is not my definition of fun, sorry. I play all my Stalker games and mods on Master (or Veteran is the difficulty is wonky) and I am no stranger to hard Stalker games. The unforgiving nature and you're-not-a-hero aspect is great. The thing is though, it's hard but it's also fair as well. For the most part, anyway. Mods like SGM and Misery are made artificially hard by being unfair and dickish. They will totally screw you for no reason other than to be ~hardcore~ because apparently being a dick to the player means difficulty. You might find enjoyment from this but I personally do not. I have little desire to play mods/games that waste my time by screwing me.[/QUOTE] I remember shooting a mine to make it blow up, then walking over it to have it blow up again

The scariest thing in SGM has got to be running into a mine while not paying attention. Especially at night.