S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Series Megathread: Maybe someday mods releasing edition - Games

[QUOTE=Jrose14;52727220]I was playing CoC's beta and -sp-[/QUOTE] I walked in with grenades and a decently loaded AK expecting dogs. I left half dead with no grenades and only a few bullets left. There is no way that little Psi Midget should eat up so much damage. It didn't help I started Merc and everyone in Jupiter automatically hates my guts. Gotta murder minimum 5 more dudes before I can enter the station.

[QUOTE] ~ force guard and walk anims for zombied, they no longer look or act like normal stalkers on some gulag jobs [/QUOTE] No more squatting zombies. :disgust:

[quote]~ Texture loading is now done on separate threads[/quote] easily the best thing

Oops, Warfare isn't compatible with 1.5R5. I think it's the sim_board changes breaking it. I wish I knew enough Lua to fix it up :v: Or I can just wait for xarshi to update himself.

just btw hunting anything except people in misery is pointless, if you want quick cash just loot the stashes at the Shevchenko and gas station. There are 6 stashes between them which have like 4 repair kits an IED and an artifact. You can pretty much buy a sunrise suit in the first 10 minutes. Thats one thing I always liked about misery, you can loot stashes that you havent found the coordinates to yet, where in a lot of other mods it seems they will have nothing in them.

After watching Misery 2.2's beautifully made and well-crafted trailer, which goes into great detail about the new features and enhancements using actual gameplay footage, we had to up our game and release a teaser for 1.5: [video=youtube;coSCXD7gcY4]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coSCXD7gcY4[/video]

haha well done alun

What kind of crack-laden moonshine was the Misery 2.x.x team huffing when they though it was a good idea to include copyrighted music? It's not like it would affect the mod's viral spreading when gameplay videos get blocked by Sony :goodjob:

[media]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wJI5mtSqSM&feature=youtu.be[/media] Nothin' like a front row seat to some nice anomalous activity.

Gave MISERY(tm) a whirl and holy shit.. Died 10 times in a row to two boars that rush you right as you spawn... When I finally survived that I got ambushed by 4 fleshes, 3 cats, 2 dogs, and 2 bloodsuckers to top it off by the time I reached Skadovsk. This is truly some vintage suffering.. Gonna' have to see the end of this road, now.

Any way to up the performance in Misery? Or was it to install Absolute Nature? [editline]1st October 2017[/editline] Apparently it was to not use DX11

[QUOTE=alundaio;52729783]After watching Misery 2.2's beautifully made and well-crafted trailer, which goes into great detail about the new features and enhancements using actual gameplay footage, we had to up our game and release a teaser for 1.5: [video=youtube;coSCXD7gcY4]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coSCXD7gcY4[/video][/QUOTE] Oh lol :) TBH I've been doing completely different stuff than Stalker modding for the last 2 years or so and haven't even checked the forums or whatever. Since the guys managed to get pass through shitloads of work and finally wrapped the v2.2 for release decided to take a peak here and there. Good to see that proper ass pain is still there, strong and itching among you guys :) [B]@Alun[/B] Even after you guys managed to release CoC which - fully deservedy I'll add - achieved a tremendous success and universal acclaim and that's far beyond just the Stalker modding - you still feel it's worth your time and effort to pun the work of others? I mean wtf man after all these years lol... Also please note that as far as Misery page / forums go - CoC has always been supported as much as possible with multiple linking, mentions and praises we directed into it's direction. Knowing how much time and effort it costs to conjure a project of this magnitude, we would never allow ourselves to criticize a fellow project be it CoC, LA and whateve else, especially that they all work towards keeping the spirit of our beloved game alive and thriving among more ambitious gaming audience. You see - it's not only promotional material conjured by Nicolai that should be deemed 'proffesional' when it comes to Misery... [B]@all[/B] Anyways - again as a guy who always took full responsibility over the balance of Misery and the way in which all those systems and assets came togheter to form a gameplay that we see - I can only say that it makes me quite happy that it's a subject of such heated discussions after such long time. Even though a lot of feedback from the community actually ended up influencing the following versions that we released, I never really felt saddened or angered about all this 'stupid idiot who made bandits have steel skulls' or 'whoever balanced this should take his head out of his ass firts' kind of criticism ;) This is mainly because I was pretty confident in the decisions and directions that have been taken. You need to understand the truth that when you want to create something that'll last you just have to be confident in your vision and not bend it or change it completely just because a more vocal part of your audience would like you to die in pain ;) Misery is what it is - but it is Misery and there is nothing like it around :) Now after - 5+ year time from the original release and in light of the fact that Misery - even during extensive periods in which we've not released anything or even update the profile - has never once fallen below top20 at ModDB, you guys really claim that it's because of the marketing and hostile fan-boys? :) Let me tell you - if there really are some hostile fan-boys, it's because of your own vocality in attackin the project which did nothing else that having balls of presenting its own interpretation of Stalker and did on a scale and level of quality not really precedented. Remember - actions breeds reaction and karma always returns ;) Please know that Stalker will always be connected with Misery (as with L.A., CoC, OGSE, AMK and few others) and Misery is the only way in which a lot of ppl will experience what Stalker is. I am not trying to say something like 'time has proven that we were right and trolls were - as they always are - wrong' but I think that it's a good time to include a bit of respect even into the most criticizing comments you guys are so ready to come up with towards our now aging child :D

-snip- Just... Wow. Nice job proving what people have been saying :v:

get a load of this guy. anyway I just got Clear Sky for a a dollar. Might as well beat it and say I finally beat all the stalker games.

[quote][B] Please know that Stalker will always be connected with Misery (as with L.A., CoC, OGSE, AMK and few others) and Misery is the only way in which a lot of ppl will experience what Stalker is.[/B] I am not trying to say something like 'time has proven that we were right and trolls were - as they always are - wrong' but I think that it's a good time to include a bit of respect even into the most criticizing comments you guys are so ready to come up with towards our now aging child :D [/quote] Honestly I think that is part of most of our problems. Misery is [I]so[/I] publicized that a lot of new players think it's an 'essential' mod. Unfortunately, this actually sours the reputation of STALKER among new players - I've actually seen it happen personally. Misery is not exactly fun if you don't know STALKER well, and the brutal difficulty (whether you consider it 'artificial' or whatever) is very off-putting to newbies. A lot of this, in my opinion, is the fanbase's fault. You guys have a very, [I]very[/I] loud fanbase, and that's all well and good. But they practically evangelize the mod, and this can go from annoying to downright harmful for reasons I've listed above. Understand, I am (and others) are not hating on Misery because of what it is. Misery is a great project and one of the most cohesive mods for STALKER out there - right up there with the greats like AMK, CoC, LA, Priboi Story, etc. I just wish these other mods got more attention.

Misery and Complete both ruined STALKER for a few people I attempted to get into the game. They didn't listen when I said not to jump into those. One person considers Complete the essential STALKER experience. I no longer talk to them.

[QUOTE=Lyokanthrope;52735589]Understand, we're not hating on Misery because of what it is. [...] right up there with the greats[/QUOTE] I don't disagree with your main point, but as far as I'm concerned being popular is not Misery's sole issue, although hate would be a strong word for it. Speak for yourself, not for everyone else.

[QUOTE=trojanuch;52735415]*Miserable wall of wank*[/QUOTE] Marketing and fan-boys made Complete, popular too. When the intro exposition slide-show was replaced by some angsty [I]artsy[/I] video I groaned audibly and told it to fuck off, due to how pretentious it was. But seeing this post quite something on another level. And Mezzokoko summarized it quite well on the other page: [QUOTE=Mezzokoko;52713501]MISERY is what happens, when you misunderstand why other difficult games are held in high regard and try to imitate them with cheap and blatant, balancebreaking buffs in a misguided attempt to appear deep and challenging in a very superficial way.[/QUOTE] Hell the mod would probably have a big chunk of bullshittery diluted if the player's would be given a complete but worn mid-tier loadout which to protect or store til fixes are economically available. Instead of say a Major-ranked Sniper of the Ukrainian Secret Service getting sent to the zone with over a decade old weaponry, civilian clothing, not even a gas-mask and not to even speak of a sniper getting deployed without binoculars. Not to mention said Sniper and Survival Expert not carrying a lighter (and traders not selling them). I kinda get that dressing and equipping your agent like a rookie stalker would be covert, but fails in practice as your agent is now way more likely to kick the bucket. Now with the added bonus that whomever loots the fallen agent gets an unhealthy dose of "what-the-fuck?" apparently the secret service gets paid under minimum-wage and also have to buy their own equipment.

[QUOTE=trojanuch;52735415]Oh lol :) Whine[/QUOTE] Hahah my dude are you okay

Hehe first of all guys - as said I am as distanced from this whole affair as I've ever been. It's two years now since I've actually touched any ltx and barely even launched CoP - albeit our parting of ways with Stalker was not unpleasant or anything - I just felt at some point that enough is enough after 6+ years or so doing projects. Still - Misery took sth like 3,5-4k of work hours and that is only on my part, so yeah I still feel sort a connection, thus above post out of nowhere (and no - it's not a 'whine') ;) Anyways, we cannot really take responsibility for this effect of putting people off Stalker due to the fact that Misery is considered the only proper way to experience it or to start with. For me it's totally absurd from multiple angles. But let's cover this a little when we're at it: firstly never such claim has been vocalized on our side, nor put into any materials, posts or whatever that we've posted. On the contrary - I remember us stating on multiple occasions the very same mantra that existed in the community from the very beginning in the GSC forums time: 'play vanilla first' - it's such a deeply rooted tradition that it coudn't havee been otherwise :). Additionally - above 'putting first timers off' side-effect is sth tbh I've never fully realized until lately reading some of the last pages here. At least it has not really been brought up when the mod was in much greater spotligh than now and discussions were way more heated. Anyways even if that happened a few times that you know from your own experience - it has never been our intention. Finally - for God sakes ppl - consistently being the sole Stalker mod in the mentioned top20 on ModDB for the 5 or so years has made a tremendously better service towards keeping the games in the spotlight of the general gaming community (and thus all other modding projects for them) than the loss of those few friends who made some wrong 'which-mod-to-play' choices you mention above ;) In regard to the loud fan-base - I was not really aware that it can be viewed that way tbh, but yeah - we get quite a few of positive feedback messages or reviews on regular basis. Still - it always seemed to me that ppl hating Misery or some aspects of it are way more vocal (and - as said - never really gave a shit about it ;) ), but its actually cool to learn that it can be felt otherwise :) People in general like to defend their choices and after putting sth like 60h to play through the Misery, they don't really like to be told that it was a huge mistake on their part - this might be were it comes from ;) Finally - gameplay in Misery was always about restrictions and preventing player from doing certain stuff unless he's prepared / developed enough in terms of gear. This is tricky when you want your game to remain a competent, skill-based shooter - rather than a sort of 'single-player-MMO-in-fpp' (where you have levels for you, critters, weapons etc). Just check Borderlands and you'll see what happens when you don't have that sort of dilemmas and just go the 'full-MMO' way. Introducing an RPG-like progression for the player, without creating AK47 level 1 to 10 (with 10 doing 30x damage of 1 as the late-game critters have 30x more hp) or other similar 'hard-caps' is a bit of a challenge to say the least. So for me it as always about controlling the player development so that by the middle of the game he is not already a god with millions of RU and basically no more challenge ahead. That was the key dilemma - how to make the whole game feel like those sweet few minutes in every Stalker game where you actually have to struggle somewhat. I think that Misery achieved these goal and - in terms of gameplay - its one of it key stenghts. Could that have been achieved in a more elegant way here and there - maybe. I would maybe for example approach the trader prices a bit differently - at first I really wanted the sale/buy ratio to be more like real-life and less gamey and yet after tens of re-balances it ended were it is now. One of the reasons here being that you have to be somewhat generous in terms of loot you give as otherwise 'random' skirmishes (which you want the player to be motivated to get involved in) feel pointless. Still maybe this could have been re-thinked somehow I dunno. Key point is that progression-control works from start to finish while we're still pretty much a skill-based, competent shooter (with ppl finishing the game with starting gear and such) and that was the whole point to begin with. One last point in regard to the intro, promo-arts, artsy stuff etc. - there were multiple ppl involved into the project and the project itself has to also be considered a way for them, a medium onto which they could unleash their creativity and make their work visible to masses. We never denied anyone involved such right as long as the contributions were really worth-while. Also you woudn't guess how easy it actually was to get on board the project's development team - I think Misery Dev has always been way more open in this regard than any of the other 'major' teams. So yeah - we had an awesome guy who wanted to make a classy, rl-style intro as that was his thing. What he has shown was jaw-droppingly awesome (at least for me) - and yeah we have our intro there even though we've never 'commisioned' it. We also got a samples of footsteps as another guy just liked to stick an iPhone to his socks and walk around varous surfaces... ;) Hehe - I'll end here for now as this starts to become some sort of post-mortem on my part ;) Over and out (although I might be back still hehe)

Play nice now children, it'd be a shame if I had to feed your bollocks to the pseudodogs.

[QUOTE=TKGP;52735810]I don't disagree with your main point, but as far as I'm concerned being popular is not Misery's sole issue, although hate would be a strong word for it. Speak for yourself, not for everyone else.[/QUOTE] Sorry, fixed that.

No mod team has an obligation to put "PLAY VANILLA FIRST" on every dialogue of their installer.. If some of your dumb friends looked past all of the unnecessarily, for lack of a better word, "edgy" art and booted up stalker for the first time to get his ass kicked.. Well YOU failed him. They might, however, have an obligation to reiterate over and over just how obscenely difficult it is for new comers. I think this is hard for people to accept because STALKER isn't the most perfect engine for platforming so even "veterans" have no chance at playing without abusing the game as much as possible. In the end, you have to respect this smiley-face-abusing gentleman (and his team) for not bending to the will of the least-skilled, most-vocal portion of the community and keeping true to their vision.

If anything puts people off about Misery, it's how interesting and unique every other department in it is (visuals especially) and how hampered it is by the ham-fisted amounts of fuckyou balance that makes it such a slog that you put it down and spend your time doing something better. I can respect that they followed it through to the end and decided to stick with it rather than instantly 180'ing on the difficulty, but some of the decisions they stuck through are outright hostile to the player in artificial, bland ways. What I [I]can't[/I] respect is: [quote]Please know that Stalker will always be connected with Misery[/quote] Which is an absolute farcical, pompous joke. I'm one of the last people to put any praise on Brutal Doom, but there's a mod that got so connected with the game it likely influenced the next major official installment. Misery is known as "that one neat mod that's got the difficulty cranked in such a goofy way that you either don't bother or get a fan patch to fix it." It's not connected with the game. It's not the "way it was meant to be played." It's just another (big) mod with a cult following. And if I caught any one of my friends recommending Misery (or a mod of that style) to a friend for his first experience of that (or any) game without it being a cheeky joke, we'd have to have a little sit-down. :v:

Misery is just for torturing yourself, it does fairly good job at that and one masochistic part of me required challenge from stalker and i got it, but in NO WAY is it "definitive stalker experience" or a mod that you suggest to someone who wants to enjoy game. Misery is for those who know everything about stalker and want to try it on "nearly bullshit hard" -level difficulty. It is not for everyone and definitely not the first mod you should play. But it still is something you should try at some point is what i think.

I never really cared much for Misery because it touted itself as brutally realistic, when it isn't realistic. Stuff costs a shit ton of money which makes no sense, traders thrive on the artifact trading. How would they get artifacts if stalkers don't have the supplies to keep functioning in the zone? People take a million bullets to kill for no reason, I dislike mods that make certain guns feel like you are shooting with wet toilet paper. A sawn off shotgun should do good damage to unarmored people, but be outclassed by later shotguns by slight damage increase, ammo capacity and range for example. Or that they are semi auto or full auto shotguns. Also I really hate the color scheme they use in Misery. One of the things I like to have is have the zone look how it does in reality. The happy green grass and flowers are deceptive of the dangerous radioactive nature of the real zone, and the anomalous + radioactive nature of the zone in STALKER. [t]https://puu.sh/xNMez/ba39e7b154.jpg[/t] [t]https://puu.sh/xNMia/5f0e8928e6.jpg[/t]

[QUOTE=PaChIrA;52736614] People take a million bullets to kill for no reason, I dislike mods that make certain guns feel like you are shooting with wet toilet paper. A sawn off shotgun should do good damage to unarmored people, but be outclassed by later shotguns by slight damage increase, ammo capacity and range for example. Or that they are semi auto or full auto shotguns. [/QUOTE] I don't get this.. Ranger's sawn-off can kill anyone I've met at close range and a mosin-nagant at any range assuming you hit the head. I expect this to change when I run into exoskeleton mercs or something, but still the peasant bandit/loners are easily dispatched. [editline]1st October 2017[/editline] Like, SO FAR IN ZATON**, I feel like there's a good balance that anyone can kill anyone if they're caught flat-footed.

[URL="http://www.moddb.com/mods/call-of-chernobyl/addons/lost-to-the-zone"]http://www.moddb.com/mods/call-of-chernobyl/addons/lost-to-the-zone[/URL] has anyone tried this yet?

[QUOTE=WrathOfCat;52737073][URL="http://www.moddb.com/mods/call-of-chernobyl/addons/lost-to-the-zone"]http://www.moddb.com/mods/call-of-chernobyl/addons/lost-to-the-zone[/URL] has anyone tried this yet?[/QUOTE] I wanted to check it out but I'll wait for it come out for 1.5. 1.5 has too many nice new features for me to downgrade :X

Here I am just wallowing in the fact that Wormwood got shelved. When it came to realism, I liked Redux so much more than Misery even though it was so very much more simple and basic. Wormwood had so many neat concepts and its a shame to never see them realized.