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

Is there some kind of an updated guide for the newest version of Stalker Soup, or is the 2010 Narodnaya Solyanka guide still valid? I saw a walkthrough which had a guy called Fanatic who replaced wolf during the collector mode, in the newest version, no one is standing there at all. When I play the regular storyline, everything seems completely normal and linear, I have no idea where all of the additional quests are, and how to access them. Also, the dynamic constantly changing nature of the zone only seems to be working in the collector mode, the marked one storyline appears to be static, I am not sure why that is.

Is there a fix for this (in Lost Alpha)? [sp]There is a scripted blowout scene after you meet the Monolith Patriarch in Radar. You need to hide inside a small wooden cabin. When I step inside the cabin, they begin to attack me.[/sp]

There is any good reanimation mod for the weapons on SoC that could be used on LA?

Also, am I the only one who thought that the cave level in Stalker Soup was awesome?

[QUOTE=KayoDuck;44730995]There is any good reanimation mod for the weapons on SoC that could be used on LA?[/QUOTE] [url]http://www.gsc-game.com/index.php?t=community&s=forums[/url]

Where does one find fuel? Or can I buy it somewhere?

[QUOTE=gudman;44731356]Where does one find fuel? Or can I buy it somewhere?[/QUOTE] Sid used to sell it at a 1000RU per can.

[QUOTE=Muukkis;44731377]Sid used to sell it at a 1000RU per can.[/QUOTE] Nothing there for me. Damn it, I saw a cannister somewhere, can't remember where, there might've been more. And I really really do need a car. Walking around takes assloads of time, and I can only move out during the day, for some reason evening and night kills the framerate with sun shadows on and sun shafts off (this way I get optimal FPS during the morning and day).

[QUOTE=KayoDuck;44730995]There is any good reanimation mod for the weapons on SoC that could be used on LA?[/QUOTE] [url]http://www.gsc-game.com/index.php?t=community&s=forums&s_game_type=xr&thm_page=1&thm_id=22614&sec_id=19[/url] Or [url]http://www.gsc-game.com/index.php?t=community&s=forums&s_game_type=xr&thm_page=1&thm_id=22373&sec_id=19[/url]

[QUOTE=gudman;44731356]Where does one find fuel? Or can I buy it somewhere?[/QUOTE] I remember seeing some on the ground in Agroprom's base, the one where you rescue Mole at. I remember seeing 2 total, but I didn't explore all of the base.

[QUOTE=gudman;44731482]Nothing there for me. Damn it, I saw a cannister somewhere, can't remember where, there might've been more. And I really really do need a car. Walking around takes assloads of time, and I can only move out during the day, for some reason evening and night kills the framerate with sun shadows on and sun shafts off (this way I get optimal FPS during the morning and day).[/QUOTE] there's one at the abandoned factory in the cordon i think. give it a look

[QUOTE=gudman;44729659]Hah, that was a load of garbage devs came up with to justify their inability to deliver on their utterly impossible promises. As far as I remember, and I followed the development of this game since the start, GSC first stated that their AI is going to be [b]so[/b] advanced it's gonna pursuit the same goal as the player, and player will have to interact with them, feed them false info, buy them over, convince to join your cause etc. GSC promised the game where you have absolute freedom with basically one goal, and the world around you will be living, breathing, parts of it interacting with one another on their own, so the player won't be the center of the universe. A few years later, as it turned out, the media didn't forget about their bullshit and held them to it (imagine that, gaming journalism wasn't complete and utter joke back then!), so one of the devs (guess who it was, I dare you) gave an interview where he told this very sad story, that absolutely happened, no doubt, for the first time: when they playtested the world - which was absolutely complete at that point, again, no doubts, - it turned out that the competing stalkers can reach the goal of the game on their own! And the player gets left out! I believe it was a Russian journal game.exe that died some time before 2005 that first published that story. Long story short, GSC, of course, decided, that the world is not yet ready for such advancements in AI and life simulation just yet (or rather, that players would not play the game where they can be left out, but it's the same level of "do they think we are idiots?!" so may as well be interchangable versions). But unfortunately, GSC were unable to just tone it down a bit and leave it in for some inexplicable reason (I guess, there were no Eastern European wizards around Ukrainian company's HQ at the time), so they scrapped the whole thing and "had to start over, and that's why the game we started developing like 4 years ago won't see the light of day for a year more," that then turned into two and so forth, the rest of the story is common knowledge and in the end we got what we got, hardly breathing buggy fucking mess of broken promises with bright, living spirit (atmosphere) inside of its barely beating heart. So no, it was never supposed to be like that, GSC knew they were lying in people's faces.[/QUOTE] CORRECT. This was all bullshit. They over exaggerated GOAP, one action is simply called "solve_zone_puzzle". A-Life is just a glorified STRIPS planner and the gaming industry is actually moving away from this method and going back to Finite State Machines.

[QUOTE=alundaio;44732089]CORRECT. This was all bullshit. They over exaggerated GOAP, one action is simply called "solve_zone_puzzle". A-Life is just a glorified STRIPS planner and the gaming industry is actually moving away from this method and going back to Finite State Machines.[/QUOTE] Could you explain your post in common terms? I am really curious what you mean.

[QUOTE=Zackin5;44731516][url]http://www.gsc-game.com/index.php?t=community&s=forums&s_game_type=xr&thm_page=1&thm_id=22614&sec_id=19[/url] Or [url]http://www.gsc-game.com/index.php?t=community&s=forums&s_game_type=xr&thm_page=1&thm_id=22373&sec_id=19[/url][/QUOTE] Oh cool, thanks. Also the MODB has a torrent link with an updated version of the mod or i need to download the mod and later the patches?

[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/WwjOJcS.jpg[/IMG] I'm confused

I still can't believe I fucked up and shot the helicopters down before talking to Petrenko, I'm not spoilering this so other people know not to do that before talking to him. Is there a script I can edit that will just bypass that mission altogether or something. [editline]5th May 2014[/editline] Yes the only true backup save I have was at X-18, I don't think i'll be doing all that again.

Goal-oriented Action Planning is a STRIPS-like planning architecture used in games like Skyrim, Just Cause 2 and F.E.A.R., in fact, I believe the guy who made F.E.A.R. was the first to use it in video games. [url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STRIPS[/url] STRIPS (Stanford Research Institute Problem Solver) is an automated planner. It's made up of actions that have preconditions and post-conditions. Each action has a goal state. In video games this allows for actions to happen dynamically and seemingly random ways when the conditions are met as opposed to a Finite State Machine, which has manually constructed outcomes that have a finite amount of states. However, GSC has misused their GOAP system as a Hierarchical Task Network. That's basically what schemes are. Here is an article that explains different AI approaches in video games: [url]http://aigamedev.com/open/review/planning-in-games/[/url]

One lucky stalker got rain in Lost Alpha just the second he started, I still haven't had a single drop in freeplay and only experienced my first unscripted blowout there [video=youtube;beqzV7flDlU]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=beqzV7flDlU[/video]

[QUOTE=alundaio;44732374]Goal-oriented Action Planning is a STRIPS-like planning architecture used in games like Skyrim, Just Cause 2 and F.E.A.R., in fact, I believe the guy who made F.E.A.R. was the first to use it in video games. [url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STRIPS[/url] STRIPS (Stanford Research Institute Problem Solver) is an automated planner. It's made up of actions that have preconditions and post-conditions. Each action has a goal state. In video games this allows for actions to happen dynamically and seemingly random ways when the conditions are met as opposed to a Finite State Machine, which has manually constructed outcomes that have a finite amount of states. However, GSC has misused their GOAP system as a Hierarchical Task Network. That's basically what schemes are. Here is an article that explains different AI approaches in video games: [url]http://aigamedev.com/open/review/planning-in-games/[/url][/QUOTE] That's actually pretty cool to know. My knowledge of X-Ray's internals just grew a little more. Thanks!

How about someone just ports LA's maps to Call of Pripyat, adds some more sidequests and A-Life, and be done with it. Because between the crashing, shit cutscenes, laughable writing, emptiness of the maps, bugs, lack of difficulty, and pretty messed up story progression of "go here to fetch quest something to progress the story for some reason" honestly make Lost Alpha a huge disappointment. The maps are awesome and the early game is too, but like Bloodshot12 said, after you go to X-18 the whole mod falls apart completely. I just can't bring myself to play it. Nothing interesting happens beyond the main plot, and the main plot itself stops being interesting the minute you see the shoddy animation of screaming Russian scientists in Lab X-18. [sp]Or maybe it is when you see the full sized Jawa mind-kill people at the Bar.[/sp] Once again I feel Lost Alpha's failure is the lack of a "sandbox". Despite the massive maps, the game is still somehow [I]more[/I] linear than Shadows of Chernobyl. There isn't any reward for exploring because there is nothing of interest to do. Sure, you can find loot, but you won't fucking need it because the downright retarded AI and high damage bullets means the game is piss easy. I would almost bet all my rubles that you could beat the game with the starter pistol [I]with ease.[/I] I mean, I don't like the downright sadistic shit like Misery, but this is way to easy for a STALKER game. And the lack of an A-Life and sidequests (you can't even join Freedom for fucks sake) just enhance the boredom factor. I am beginning to see [I]why[/I] so much of this stuff was cut. Not only was it time-consuming to make, but it sure as hell wasn't worth it. GSC understood what Dezowave has not. They knew the cars were finicky bullshit that handled like a pissed off rhino with hemorrhoids. They knew the main story called for too many cutscenes and that X-Ray cannot do them. They knew the game was too linear. They knew that the maps were to big and they were a hassle to trek through. They knew underground areas had to be separate maps for them to have the proper ambiance. They knew the story had to much backtracking. Don't get me wrong, I really do appreciate what Dezowave has done, but I cannot deny that Lost Alpha is another disappointment. I don't think it was worth the 6 years.

Man, I'm real glad I jumped on the LA hype train. Although the experience of LA is kind of disheartening ATM and I'm going to wait for a few patches, it got me back into Stalker. I've been playing Soup for a few days now and really enjoying it, loving the gunplay, etc. Hopefully this will become something that I'll keep going back to, since I've been really lacking a good single player game for a long time now. On the topic of Soup, does anyone feel that shotguns are too strong? Or are they on par with other guns, I'm not sure since I've been mostly spamming it and the range is quite decent. Also, what do the artifact cases and tactical vest do?

[QUOTE=WTF Nuke;44732826]Man, I'm real glad I jumped on the LA hype train. Although the experience of LA is kind of disheartening ATM and I'm going to wait for a few patches, it got me back into Stalker. I've been playing Soup for a few days now and really enjoying it, loving the gunplay, etc. Hopefully this will become something that I'll keep going back to, since I've been really lacking a good single player game for a long time now. On the topic of Soup, does anyone feel that shotguns are too strong? Or are they on par with other guns, I'm not sure since I've been mostly spamming it and the range is quite decent. Also, what do the artifact cases and tactical vest do?[/QUOTE] Yeah it also got me back on the hype train. But I'll try to play it when the community says it playable AND enjoyable (IE not messing around with settings/downloads to have a workaround). For now I'll stick to Lost Word Origins which as it has been said, its a poor man's LA and its awful translation. Man, I gotta start learning russian ASAP

[QUOTE=BananaFoam;44732748]How about someone just ports LA's maps to Call of Pripyat, adds some more sidequests and A-Life, and be done with it. [/QUOTE] A very well known SDK expert in the French community has said it would be more trouble then it is worth to port LA maps to COP. He claims they did some amatuerish stuff, but I wouldn't know since I'm a LE noobie. Apparently, you would be better off using existing build 1935 maps. It probably won't stop someone from doing it though. I wish early on they decided to make LA for COP instead of back porting COP features into SoC X-Ray. They spent waaaaay too much time re-inventing the wheel. They should have stuck to making a good mod using what the community has already done instead of cherry picking and re-writing stuff GSC and other modders have done. Most of the Dez0wave team has played very little other mods or the other games in the series (ie. CS/CoP); It shows. I do have to state though, there is a reason GSC cut all the stuff you see in L.A. (Huge maps, vehicles, etc.) It just doesn't work. These beautiful maps and level design go to waste if there is no reason to explore these areas. It's like a giant empty MMO.

[QUOTE=Doom14;44728761]For as much as I'm enjoying LA, it's more for the new levels and quests, and less for the fucking abomination of a story and all these terrible cutscenes. I want a vivid A-Life, freeroam, no barricaded anything version of their main map, and nothing else. Well, maybe more weapons, but that's about it. It's just nice to have a change in scenery rather than playing the same god damn Cordon dressed up twenty different ways.[/QUOTE] I'm kind of done with stories in general in the STALKER games. I just want to free-roam and do the odd job for people.

Welp, it's really sad to read all these comments about LA. I wonder what would have been of the game if the leak didn't occur. Would it be the same or they just didn't put more effort into the quests? Somebody has to make a better Alife and fix the balance and it's all set.

I have a feeling it probably wouldn't have been all that different. Stuff like the A-Life feels more like a design decision than necessarily lack of time.

What does A-Life even mean

[QUOTE=Cutthecrap;44733025]Welp, it's really sad to read all these comments about LA. I wonder what would have been of the game if the leak didn't occur. Would it be the same or they just didn't put more effort into the quests? Somebody has to make a better Alife and fix the balance and it's all set.[/QUOTE] Honestly, don't take my opinion. I respect all the work in L.A. and some of the members are legendary in the community (Cromm Cruac, U3taker, Skyloader) but I see nothing but poor game design choices and I'm also strongly biased against the entire SoC community. :smile: A lot of veterans of the community sit and stay with SoC X-Ray like it's the holy grail, 1.6 X-Ray is far superior and would be better to add stuff that was good from older X-Ray to 1.6 instead of backporting into 1.0003. Even the Russians sit there and hack SoC instead of adding all that awesome stuff to 1.6. The game leak as an excuse makes no sense to me. If the mod wasn't done and all they cared about was making a good mod then they would have continued. Only reason to stop was losing the deal with GSC which means no money. These guys didn't originally intend to make a mod for money, iirc. I think it the deal was always "IF" the mod was good enough. I feel it isn't good enough and 2 more years wouldn't have made it good enough to be another STALKER game in the series when all it is, is a re-telling. Also, I feel strongly against making a mod for money especially when I see such an amount of unprofessionalism in how the project was managed which isn't the fault of those who put the years of effort into L.A. That is just my opinion, maybe you all might feel differently about them making money. Think of how great the mod would be if they just wanted to make a good mod, they wouldn't have cut tons of stuff that was not 100% original, they wouldn't have wasted time re-creating Xstream and Rulix's AI schemes, etc.

[QUOTE=Cutthecrap;44733025]Welp, it's really sad to read all these comments about LA. I wonder what would have been of the game if the leak didn't occur. Would it be the same or they just didn't put more effort into the quests? Somebody has to make a better Alife and fix the balance and it's all set.[/QUOTE] Get rid of the cheese from the story sandwich too.

Well, X-18 in Lost Alpha is certainly confusing. [sp]Ran around in circles for half an hour, found two documents that didn't complete any objectives or give me any useful information, found a computer that I don't know the password to, killed a midget, and found a cutscene once where the free camera didn't activate and one of the NPCs got stuck on me so I had to load save.[/sp]