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

[QUOTE=Lyokanthrope;52763035]Why have screenspace sun shafts when we already have superior true volumetric ones? I'm not a fan...[/QUOTE] These are DX9, I should've clarified. Volumetric sunshafts / fog is for DX11. This is DX9 in RADIUM: [t]http://media.moddb.com/images/mods/1/26/25940/done2.png[/t] [editline]9th October 2017[/editline] A little outdated, we've added SSR on water with OGSE's code since

[QUOTE=LoNer1;52763810]These are DX9, I should've clarified. Volumetric sunshafts / fog is for DX11. This is DX9 in RADIUM: [t]http://media.moddb.com/images/mods/1/26/25940/done2.png[/t] [editline]9th October 2017[/editline] A little outdated, we've added SSR on water with OGSE's code since[/QUOTE] ...Er, why? X-Ray already supported true volumetric sunshafts on DX9 just fine. Seems like a step backwards. SSR is cool though, something I'd like to see implemented in other forks of the engine

[QUOTE=LoNer1;52763810]These are DX9, I should've clarified. Volumetric sunshafts / fog is for DX11. This is DX9 in RADIUM: [t]http://media.moddb.com/images/mods/1/26/25940/done2.png[/t] [editline]9th October 2017[/editline] A little outdated, we've added SSR on water with OGSE's code since[/QUOTE] Kind of a tangent but that updated foliage makes Stalker look [I]so[/I] much better.

Man, I'll never get over how you modders can take this janky ass eastern bloc lump of coal engine and turn it into such a diamond

XRay seems like a really versatile and surprisingly capable engine, it's a shame it was never used for anything else.

[QUOTE=Grenadiac;52764413]XRay seems like a really versatile and surprisingly capable engine, it's a shame it was never used for anything else.[/QUOTE] Metro 2033 in a way. Its engine is derived from Xray, and an early build of the game ran on Xray and used STALKER assets.

The reason no one else used it is because it's a bitch to use and half of the things in it only make sense to the people who wrote it.

Considering all the weird ass bugs and just general slav magic I'm not surprised most people wouldn't touch Xray with a ten-foot pole except fellow slavs.

[QUOTE=download;52764735]The reason no one else used it is because it's a bitch to use and half of the things in it only make sense to the people who wrote it.[/QUOTE] Sounds like exactly what happened to cryengine

I have to say of all games I played so far I'm most impressed at the X-Ray engine. Everything feels like it's held together by duct tape, vodka and wishful thinking, but when those three elements align just right, man is it a joy. Until the green bug shows up

In today times, where we have Unity, UnrealEngine, CryEngine, Source Engine etc. X-ray look like a piece of crap in terms of usability, but look at any other closed engine and you will see that XRay is not that bad. It have its weird solutions, stupid ideas, lack of easy access, but its normal. It was build to make Stalker, and it was used by people who made it. Of course it will look like duck-taped rock bathed in vodka if you compare it to UE, Source or Unity. Those engines where designed to be sold and used by other companies and people: Quick, easy access for people that have their own already made assets and they want to use them in game. Not to mention that Xray engine have its years, compare it to any other engine from that time period and you will see that its still big pile of rocks, but it have few elements that are easy to modify even without touching SDK: easy and simple config files, annoying to make but nice textures with additional thm files that make some modifications easier to make, pretty simple scripting, and few other smaller things that you can make with just notepad and any graphic program. What I personally hate in Xray engine is its model/animation system... I fuc#ing hate it. It give so much troubles it lack compatibility with anything, its annoying to make it work with game, you need 4x more work with it compared to anything else... For past years I could make massive amount of new models, but everytime when I wanto to implement them to game, something is not working, format is bad, SDK crash or dont see bones.... nothing more than hell...

[QUOTE=paranoiia;52765016]In today times, where we have Unity, UnrealEngine, CryEngine, Source Engine etc. X-ray look like a piece of crap in terms of usability, but look at any other closed engine and you will see that XRay is not that bad. It have its weird solutions, stupid ideas, lack of easy access, but its normal. It was build to make Stalker, and it was used by people who made it. Of course it will look like duck-taped rock bathed in vodka if you compare it to UE, Source or Unity. Those engines where designed to be sold and used by other companies and people: Quick, easy access for people that have their own already made assets and they want to use them in game. Not to mention that Xray engine have its years, compare it to any other engine from that time period and you will see that its still big pile of rocks, but it have few elements that are easy to modify even without touching SDK: easy and simple config files, annoying to make but nice textures with additional thm files that make some modifications easier to make, pretty simple scripting, and few other smaller things that you can make with just notepad and any graphic program. What I personally hate in Xray engine is its model/animation system... I fuc#ing hate it. It give so much troubles it lack compatibility with anything, its annoying to make it work with game, you need 4x more work with it compared to anything else... For past years I could make massive amount of new models, but everytime when I wanto to implement them to game, something is not working, format is bad, SDK crash or dont see bones.... nothing more than hell...[/QUOTE] this - it does some things really well, and the other bits it doesn't do well weren't expected back when the engine was being made so it's not really surprising one day perhaps we'll get S2 with an updated WYSIWYG X-Ray 2 engine and editor a man can dream

[QUOTE=TKGP;52763433]Dynamic anomalies Blowouts(?) Random news and events Artifact transmutation That one inventory layout [sp]Electrochimera[/sp] Probably some other stuff.[/QUOTE] The much loved npcs stealing from your stashes Backpacks to create stashes Expanded Offline npc activity in general The much loved death from alcohol poisoning The much harder to trigger alcohol addiction and withdrawal effects Anomaly decay over time Anomaly redistribution on blowout The much loved too awake to sleep again timer (from sleep and energy drinks) Breathing effects on masks Flamethrower Lots more I'm sure. The alcohol poisoning one gets a lot of folks. It kills you a while after you have the fatal drink and you won't know why if you missed the news message that told you you'd fucked up. In the meantime you've played on, not knowing you're doomed for drinking 5(?) bottles of vodka in a 24 hour period. [QUOTE=Lyokanthrope;52763590]I've honestly never seen another mod besides freeplay start implement random anomalies like AMK did I loved that feature to bits and I wish it made its way to other mods[/QUOTE] Agreed. I love that AMK anomalies are persistent and preserve location while gradually decaying away until the next blowout which clears them all and creates new ones in their stead. Many later mods derived from AMK did away with that level of detail and just randomly spray anomalies around each time you visit a level. CoP's static anomalies are cool and introduced detectors to hunt invisible artifacts in fixed locations. But AMK's anomalies that require you to keep an eye out are still my favorite.

[QUOTE=Beacon;52765274]this - it does some things really well, and the other bits it doesn't do well weren't expected back when the engine was being made so it's not really surprising one day perhaps we'll get S2 with an updated WYSIWYG X-Ray 2 engine and editor a man can dream[/QUOTE] Someone has actually been working on creating a WYSIWYG editor for OpenXray based engines, I believe. I've seen screenshots for it floating around on gameru.net. [editline]10th October 2017[/editline] [QUOTE=paranoiia;52765016]In today times, where we have Unity, UnrealEngine, CryEngine, Source Engine etc. X-ray look like a piece of crap in terms of usability, but look at any other closed engine and you will see that XRay is not that bad. It have its weird solutions, stupid ideas, lack of easy access, but its normal. It was build to make Stalker, and it was used by people who made it. Of course it will look like duck-taped rock bathed in vodka if you compare it to UE, Source or Unity. Those engines where designed to be sold and used by other companies and people: Quick, easy access for people that have their own already made assets and they want to use them in game. Not to mention that Xray engine have its years, compare it to any other engine from that time period and you will see that its still big pile of rocks, but it have few elements that are easy to modify even without touching SDK: easy and simple config files, annoying to make but nice textures with additional thm files that make some modifications easier to make, pretty simple scripting, and few other smaller things that you can make with just notepad and any graphic program. What I personally hate in Xray engine is its model/animation system... I fuc#ing hate it. It give so much troubles it lack compatibility with anything, its annoying to make it work with game, you need 4x more work with it compared to anything else... For past years I could make massive amount of new models, but everytime when I wanto to implement them to game, something is not working, format is bad, SDK crash or dont see bones.... nothing more than hell...[/QUOTE] I'm personally still a huge fan of X-Ray graphically. It was truly ahead of its time when the DX9 renderer was written back in 2003-2004, and honestly even in 2007 it was still pretty fucking fancy - in particular the lighting. The STALKER games have some of the best, most effective lighting I've seen in games - all while being fully dynamic. Also the hemispheric ambient lighting is fantastic looking and relatively simple.

Just released second version of Stalker Two-K Tested on all popular mods, so if someone have crashes... bad luck, I checked everything, double checked it actually with help of friend, works with misery, cop, coc, sgm, com... And of course it contain bunch of new textures... [URL="https://goo.gl/9PbHWF"]Stalker Two-K Second Release[/URL] PS. dont mind that rant in description, I had crappy month and I had relieve steam somewhere... -_-

Personally back in 2012 the first thing that drew me to STALKER was how impressed i was from the lighting engine looking at videos, I saw a CoP blowout storm with all the volumetric light and the only game i ever saw do that kind of light at the time was Crysis, and even there it wasn't as good.

[QUOTE=paranoiia;52766767]Just released second version of Stalker Two-K Tested on all popular mods, so if someone have crashes... bad luck, I checked everything, double checked it actually with help of friend, works with misery, cop, coc, sgm, com... And of course it contain bunch of new textures... [URL="https://goo.gl/9PbHWF"]Stalker Two-K Second Release[/URL] PS. dont mind that rant in description, I had crappy month and I had relieve steam somewhere... -_-[/QUOTE] Gonna install and check this out right now!

[QUOTE=Lyokanthrope;52763590]I've honestly never seen another mod besides freeplay start implement random anomalies like AMK did I loved that feature to bits and I wish it made its way to other mods[/QUOTE] It's lovely until the modder forgets to add no anomaly zones and you end up having a whirligig anomaly right in the middle of the Duty door which guards the access to Bar from Garbage Asking you guys who know a lot about engines (Alundaio and his teammates must know a lot about this question): Is the XRAY engine ahead of the rest in AI terms? I've never seen a single player FPS with the type of AI found in STALKER. More so if we're talking about mods like CoC or OGSE. OGSE as I said a couple of months ago had some ARMA alike stuff, like the military being the only ones to move in the open in formation, keeping space between them and crouching as soon as they engaged you. While the bandits were cheeki breekin all over the place and just falling to F1 grenades. Some other mods configured the AI in a very annoying way. Zone of Alienation for example for some reason included sprinting into their combat logic so the bandits at the car park almost behaved like quake players. I remember they sprinted up to me and blasted me in the face with their sawn off.

^ Interesting read about the AI system used in STALKER and a handful of other games: [url]http://alumni.media.mit.edu/~jorkin/goap.html[/url]

[t]https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/900972024221734491/11B9588AC82CA98DD0C0A3F7B758B3DA895A9D20/[/t] One of my own screenshots, I still remember how impressed I was at the volumetric lights in CoP. Don't remember if this vanilla or with Atmosfear or something.

[QUOTE=Recurracy;52767388][t]https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/900972024221734491/11B9588AC82CA98DD0C0A3F7B758B3DA895A9D20/[/t] One of my own screenshots, I still remember how impressed I was at the volumetric lights in CoP. Don't remember if this vanilla or with Atmosfear or something.[/QUOTE] The skybox is stretched, it's vanilla :v:

[t]https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/227320884149354496/365584311543398400/xrEngine_2017-10-05_21-09-07-19.png[/t][t]https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/227320884149354496/365584009675276298/xrEngine_2017-10-05_21-26-00-76.png[/t][t]https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/227320884149354496/365584008203206656/xrEngine_2017-10-05_21-38-32-57.png[/t] Pretty And I'm not even running everything maxed. Textures are at half rez and some stuff it turned down a fet notches since my 770 does not like those higher settings a lot.

Anyone tried playing with global illumination? Default settings are a bit crappy, but sometimes with some patience and testing you can get damn nice results. Sadly with EFDL it have some major bugs in closed spaces(buildings) but sometimes it give really nice results in open spaces and with tweaked sun/light/bloom effects.

[QUOTE=paranoiia;52769259]Anyone tried playing with global illumination? Default settings are a bit crappy, but sometimes with some patience and testing you can get damn nice results. Sadly with EFDL it have some major bugs in closed spaces(buildings) but sometimes it give really nice results in open spaces and with tweaked sun/light/bloom effects.[/QUOTE] X-Ray's 'GI' has been broken since before release of SoC, it doesn't really work properly and creates a [I]ton[/I] of flickering, and most of the time doesn't even work at high photon levels. Also, just saying, it doesn't affect sunlight. It only affects certain static and dynamic lights like your flashlight, muzzleflashes, and certain statically placed lights in maps.

I know its broken, that why its hidden in command, but really you can get some nice effects with it. especially for screenshoots.

in the newer games ive gotten ssgi working nicely through reshade

[QUOTE=WrathOfCat;52769606]in the newer games ive gotten ssgi working nicely through reshade[/QUOTE] Oh yeah, Reshade's SSGI works okay. I'm not a fan personally, it looks pretty ugly 9/10 times.

have you tried mxao yet? idk what you didnt like about the ssgi/ao you tried, but maybe mxao addressed it :v. I remember having little luck getting reshade 3 to work with stalker but it works great on other games. [editline]11th October 2017[/editline] Also here are some screens I took a while back going through yantar, pripyat, and radar. [t]https://i.imgur.com/JwDoUX0.png[/t] [t]https://i.imgur.com/WDOHbIv.png[/t] [t]https://i.imgur.com/mQNy7EA.png[/t] [t]https://i.imgur.com/Wo5S8Nl.png[/t] [t]https://i.imgur.com/D21zq41.png[/t] [t]https://i.imgur.com/NWXaKhs.png[/t]

Yeah, I last tried it using MXAO. Eh, my biggest issue was that it's still a screenspace effect. Still lots of ugly artifacts and weird halos on objects. Not my thing.

[QUOTE=WrathOfCat;52769858]have you tried mxao yet? idk what you didnt like about the ssgi/ao you tried, but maybe mxao addressed it :v. I remember having little luck getting reshade 3 to work with stalker but it works great on other games. [editline]11th October 2017[/editline] Also here are some screens I took a while back going through yantar, pripyat, and radar. [t]https://i.imgur.com/JwDoUX0.png[/t] [t]https://i.imgur.com/WDOHbIv.png[/t] [t]https://i.imgur.com/mQNy7EA.png[/t] [t]https://i.imgur.com/Wo5S8Nl.png[/t] [t]https://i.imgur.com/D21zq41.png[/t] [t]https://i.imgur.com/NWXaKhs.png[/t][/QUOTE] Damn that look amazing, especially that room with window, It seriously can beat most of new games in terms of photo realistic look -_- I would kill Chimera with my bare hands just to use that. But for most of time Im playing on laptop, and even if I can max out everything, every time when I use any shaders in Stalker I have 10fps and messed up main menu... weirdly in other games, like skyrim I dont have such drops :cry: