S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Series Megathread: "A Typical Day In The Zone" - Games

Still a CoC virgin, waiting on the real release.

I have 3 fully upgraded SKAT-9M's. That says [I]a lot[/I]. I will upload pics of my stash in the monolith centre of Pripyat. As Loner, it's a bitch going there, still made it my stash. You guys wont believe your eyes

[QUOTE=Heigou;48669543]Still a CoC virgin, waiting on the real release.[/QUOTE] It's pretty playable as-is, but it's definitely unfinished. Bandits don't really seem to have anywhere to go, everywhere's hostile except their base and you will get murdered moving from there to Army Warehouses. The ones at the container depot in Jupiter will treat you as Degtyarev, turning hostile if you walk in - not that there's anything there for you anyway - and the place where you'd go to settle Vano's debt is unoccupied. There generally needs to be more traders, technicians and places to sleep, preferably entirely neutral areas. I also wish that enemies weren't able to identify you the second they see you at 200m away (except if you're wearing Duty/Freedom suits), but it is what it is. A disguise system would be nice.

I was really surprised that 7.62x51PP in MISERY was so expensive. If it wasnt I probably would have used the mosin nagant almost until pripyat. Being pretty much the lowest tier historic rifle I would think it should have really cheap ammo.

[QUOTE=Morbo!!!;48669483]I just got to Red Forest and god damn it's a hell-hole; 3 bloodsuckers, 2 controllers, a million pseudo- and blind dogs and military out the arsehole. I don't think I'll have any armour to upgrade by the time I get to him[/QUOTE] On my first playthrough as a Freedom member it was a hell hole but now because I'm military it's a breeze to walk through the Red Forest. Those pesky helicopters don't care about me though, they still try and do fuck me up. :( CoC with AO3 is pretty damn dope too. No crashes thus far now that I'm avoiding getting followers completely. Apparently you get more money for guns if you separate their optics first before selling them. I saw it posted in the STALKER subreddit and it actually works!

I used the AO3 merge and got it working but all the UI icons for suits are fucked up now

Just reached the Cordon on Clear Sky, so far it plays like a slightly improved version of the first game, with a few conveniences added. The pistol animations seems to have gotten worse, somehow.

CoC again, playing as a Merc this time. I fight off some of the bandits in Dead City, get some gear and take my first mission - It's an assassination in the Bar. I thought, sure, all it means is killing through the Duty guys and getting to the commander, the loners should stay neutral, right? Wrong. 30 minutes later and Bar is a graveyard. "Get out of here Stalker", "I said come in, don't stand there", Barkeep, all the innocent loners and the Duty guards keeping the muties out, all dead. I'm a monster. The kicker is, the quest didn't seem to be actually tied to a target (My theory is the target despawned once I started murder-killing everyone), so I couldn't complete it. Oh well, I got an AS-Val out of it so it was worth-while. Also opened it up with probably the best grenade I've ever thrown in STALKER - the first checkpoint on the NW side of the bar is occupied by 5 guys, and knowing where it was I launched an F1 over a building, rounded the corner ready to start shooting to see that one of them had been flung up on the pipes, the others had been pancaked into the various walls and sandbags - they didn't see it coming. Freedom's next.

Just tried MISERY for the first time bcuz I wanted to try a mod that focused on difficulty and gameplay rebalance as opposed to the kitchensink mods I tend to play and I installed Les Miserables since I know the biggest criticism is its artificial difficulty. Now, the difficulty itself is fine, but it's full of SO MUCH arbitrary stuff that's hard to follow and understand. Looking at Beard's inventory and seeing probably 100 new items is really frustrating and doesn't feel like it improves the game at all. Guess I'll have to wait for Wormwood to get a good quality, difficult mod.

Misery's so bloated with bullshit it's not even funny. I like its atmosphere, I like the supply scarcity, but it's all for nothing when a bandit using a barely functional AK is just as capable of instantly zapping you from 300m away as a Spetsnaz dude using a sniper rifle. Anyway, I really hope someone will make Gunslinger compatible with CoC and Wormwood once each of them are released. The weapon models and animation in vanilla looked dated in 2007, and I'm sick of seeing them. AO takes a good stab at it, but the quality of its content varies quite a lot.

The FAQ for Gunslinger says they aren't using modified engine binaries but I think this is no longer true ever since they started using Shoker stuff, like real scopes. Even then I don't think Shoker was modifying the source code directly, they use assembly patchers which makes it even more unlikely to see compatibility with any mod that uses newly compiled or modified binaries. A lot of stuff in Gunslinger would be easy to replicate if it turns out not to be lua scripted (Which I have a feeling they are still using WolfKotto's eat/drink scripts). Adding new hud animations wouldn't be difficult if it is done in the engine, though. The new hand-held flashlight looks like my scripted method from Misery 2. The only thing that has me baffled is the real scopes.

[QUOTE=Morbo!!!;48675573]I really hope someone will make Gunslinger compatible with CoC and Wormwood[/QUOTE] Gunslinger uses its own not-OXR custom bins. It would be decidedly non-trivial even if Strifer releases the source, which I wouldn't count on regardless. Nothing wrong with good old STWP.

[QUOTE=GrudgeReport;48675442]Just tried MISERY for the first time bcuz I wanted to try a mod that focused on difficulty and gameplay rebalance as opposed to the kitchensink mods I tend to play and I installed Les Miserables since I know the biggest criticism is its artificial difficulty. Now, the difficulty itself is fine, but it's full of SO MUCH arbitrary stuff that's hard to follow and understand. Looking at Beard's inventory and seeing probably 100 new items is really frustrating and doesn't feel like it improves the game at all. Guess I'll have to wait for Wormwood to get a good quality, difficult mod.[/QUOTE] I think it's good if you're sick of dealing with things that are closer to vanilla. All I can really play now are mods like Misery, SGM, etc that actually add a lot of things because I can't take another Zaton start using the same default guns, even if they're re-animated.

[QUOTE=TKGP;48676794]Gunslinger uses its own not-OXR custom bins. It would be decidedly non-trivial even if Strifer releases the source, which I wouldn't count on regardless. Nothing wrong with good old STWP.[/QUOTE] I'd be plenty happy with just the guns, though even that's probably easier said than done. As with Ghost101, I'm not sure that even with all its other features I'd be willing to play through CoP's story any time soon after having done so a million times over already, and as far as I know Gunslinger doesn't have any changes to it planned. Also what's STWP?

Yeah, that's the thing about those nice weapon replacement mods or mods that mostly just mess with the balance. I might dick around with them for a little while but I'm not going to go all the way to Pripyat or possibly even Jupiter with them.

All I want is a nice old bolt action with good animations, and preferably the option for a nice scope.

idk why but I find I can still enjoy vanilla after playing it so much in ShoC, but not in CS/CoP

SoC has the better missions, I think. CoP's just get really dull after awhile.

The biggest problem CoP has is it has the biggest, most explorable maps of all three games but aside from stashes theres really nothing in them. Theres no reason to explore most of the buildings because loot from stashes is all localized in one spot, not spread out like in something like Metro. Also some areas are only there for one part of one quest and then you never had a reason to go back there and explore. If places like the office buildings around the Jupiter plant and the Ranger station had actual stuff in them to find, I'd actually want to explore them thoroughly.

I'm not sure anyone has truly been able to fill in really open zone maps correctly. The maps in CoC or Lost Alpha look great, but there's not really that much incentive to explore. It'd take a ton of work, but I think you just need lots of hand placed loot and encounters. And you need to make sure the A-Life can really spread out and completely fill every nook and cranny.

I love big levels as much as the next person but in the end they never really worked out for CoP. They were large, empty, and mostly devoid of things to do. The places that did have some potential were either never used or maybe had one mission/stash that involved them. I really liked SoC and CS because while the levels were kind of small aside from the Swamps they were chock full of things to do. There was meaning behind each little area and there wasn't much filler in between. CoP became dull to me after 2 playthroughs and the lack of mods in the beginning sort of ruined it for me. After SGM was released and other cool mods then it became somewhat interesting but even then the interesting mods were the ones that actually added new content to the levels instead of just changing the weapons up. Weapon mods are cool and all but they're useless if you've played essentially the same game 300 times already. What is a new gun going to do to make the experience any better?

Are there any good mods for Lost Alpha? Because I just can't find any.

Opinions on Zone of Alienation anyone?

It feels like my bullets are flying fucking everywhere and not where I'm aiming at in Clear Sky.

[QUOTE=Morbo!!!;48678913]Opinions on Zone of Alienation anyone?[/QUOTE] I've only got it's 1.07 version, not 1.07.2, but it's well worth it. It's kind of a pain reloading magazines but the immersion is great.

Yeah the whole magazine system is done kinda poorly, I understand it's probably working around limitations, but what'd be wrong with a context action "Fill this magazine with ammunition A/B"? Getting the specific ammo you want into a given mag is impossible far as I know Also the recoil on the AK is fucking [I]ridiculous[/I] while on the MP5 it's non-existent.

[QUOTE=Saphirx;48678964]It feels like my bullets are flying fucking everywhere and not where I'm aiming at in Clear Sky.[/QUOTE] Because they are, welcome to the zone.

[QUOTE=Morbo!!!;48679589]Yeah the whole magazine system is done kinda poorly, I understand it's probably working around limitations, but what'd be wrong with a context action "Fill this magazine with ammunition A/B"? Getting the specific ammo you want into a given mag is impossible far as I know Also the recoil on the AK is fucking [I]ridiculous[/I] while on the MP5 it's non-existent.[/QUOTE] lol you just press y when loading magazines to change the ammunition type.

[QUOTE=purvisdavid1;48680460]lol you just press y when loading magazines to change the ammunition type.[/QUOTE] i'm assuming zone of alienation has a manual magazine refill mechanic.

[QUOTE=purvisdavid1;48680460]lol you just press y when loading magazines to change the ammunition type.[/QUOTE] That was the first thing I tried, for whatever reason it doesn't work, kept loading the same ammo. Then there's the fact there's no indication of what you're loading unless you open the inventory I really want to like the mod but it's full of artificial difficulty, think misery x100 - invisible, randomly placed anomalies, same deal as with Misery regarding enemy accuracy (Which when firing a shot from an AK has you aiming at the sky for the next, is a fucking ball-ache), the tedium of using the magazine system, I don't know. Plus, it's full of bugs.