The past week of my gaming time has been dominated by Stalker mods: downloading, testing, crashing, deleting, reinstalling, and even a few hours of playing. For Shadow Of Chernobyl there’s pretty much a one-stop shop for changes, which is the extraordinary Oblivion Lost mod. It’s a comprehensive, colossal piece of compilation modding, much of it done by the author, and the rest factored in from across the community. It isn’t to everyone’s taste, especially since the list of changes is immense, but it includes drivable vehicles, sleep, alcoholism, and reworked NPC behaviour. (And that means grenades, annoyingly.) Oblivion Lost is, given the difficulty of combining and over-writing various Stalker mods, a worthwhile download – but it also completes Shadow Of Chernobyl on a profound level. This is modding at its finest. The problem for me, however, was that the Stalker I wanted to return to wasn’t an augmented Shadow of Chernobyl, but a fixed Clear Sky, which I hadn’t played since the pre-release review version. Could it be time to go back?
The first thing to remember is that Clear Sky has been heavily patched since release. The Steam version, which I’ve been playing, is at the latest 1.5.08 version, in which most of the game-breaking bugs are fixed (although reported some minor crash bugs remain), and much of the AI tweaked. The opening NPC battles are now much more solid, with waves of Clear Sky consistently heading out into the wilderness to capture points across the swamps. Kick off a fight in any of the capture points and you can be sure backup will be on its way. You can easily track friendly NPCs via the map, too, so you can coincide your attacks with theirs. The NPCs even seem to use cover properly, which I don’t recollect from my original playthrough.
The other thing you’ll notice if you’re running the game in DX10 is that it is astonishingly, ludicrously beautiful. To make the most of this is perhaps worth consulting this tweak guide, from which I pulled a few tips. I gained a massive amount of performance while running DX10 by dropping a widescreen resolution size (down to 1440×900), and reducing the Grass Detail Density. By default Clear Sky seems to draw more vegetation than you’ll actually care about, therefore reducing your framerate. The other thing I removed from the “Advanced” options in game was the Depth Of Field option, which looks fantastic, but is badly implemented – you lose distance focus when reloading, so the gun comes into focus, meaning you either have a headache or feel like you need glasses after about five minutes of play. A shame, because it’s a great effect. I’d also reduce sun quality, and bump up Sun Rays to max. There’s a stack of other details in there, but those seemed to make the biggest difference. (Reducing sun quality improves performance without changing much visually, while bumping up the Sun Rays makes dawn and sunset look incredible.) Anyway, I played through the game with a few tweaks, no mods, and found it markedly improved. I then started to install mods.
Mods are added in via adding a Gamedata folder, and editing a line of text in a file in the root folder, fsgame.ltx This all works in Steam without any problem. All mods come with a readme to tell you how to do this, and it’s pretty straight forward. The first mod I tried was, of course, the Russian dialogue mod. (This needs recopying over some of the mods I’m going to mention later on.) This replaces the standard NPC voices with the Russian dialogue. It doesn’t remove the annoying “crazy” characters, as all the mission-relevant dialogue remains in English, which is a bit of a shame if you ask me, I’d like a version where all English dialogue could be replaced, leaving just subtitles and mission text in English. Anyway: this is a solid fix to the atmosphere-breaking bad-English that splutters from most of the random NPCs. {UPDATE: Full Russian dialogue mod here.]
The second mod I tried, Faction commander, was entertaining because it allowed me to spawn friendly squads on top of enemy encampments, but ultimately it broke the AI, stopped me from capturing areas, and didn’t feel complete. I can’t recommend it, and I had to delete my Gamedata folder and start again.
The next was another no-cigar moment, which was the Maps Mod. This increases map detail and adds names to all locations. Somehow it also removes the stamina-bar from your HUD. Weird, and annoying.
Then I found a couple of mods that were really pretty good for how I wanted to play the game. The first was a simple graphical overhaul, which tweaked the lighting and introduced a load of new textures. There’s one glitch I found, which was a missing shell texture on the hunting rifle – it just appears black. The other mod was this trader mod, which opens up all items for every trader character. Certainly a bonus when you just want to get yourself a particular setup. I could probably have left it there – with some graphical buffing, the trader mod, and the Russian voices. But there’s another option: the CS Enhanced pack by “Remco”.
This compilation of Russian mods is about as close to Oblivion Lost for Clear Sky as we’re currently going to get. It includes a mass of new features, including lots of fairly unnecessary changes like new item graphics in the inventory. Perhaps most interesting is the introduction of a sleeping back, to allow you to have a kip, and the inclusion of a mercenary mod, which allows you to hire soldiers from friendly camps. That’s a little under-done, however, as you’re given no idea how much you’re expected to pay to have some Stalkers follow you. A little more interface here and there, and this mod could really hit all the notes that Clear Sky missed. Other changes are numerous: traders have been reworked so they sell everything relevant to their faction, NPCs have a wider range of weapons equipped, there are new weapons, ambient noises, and textures. And you can also create your own stashes by dropping a backpack full of loot.
Anyway, I installed the CS Enhanced pack from scratch, and over-wrote it with the Russian dialogue and texture packs. This, I think, could be the best Clear Sky is currently going to get. I’m currently ten hours into my new game, and enjoying the game much more than I did when the vanilla version arrived last year. No show-stopping bugs, plenty of thrilling NPC-interaction, and a game that looks wonderful where-ever I turn. Niggles remain: the lack of true tactical or strategic game within the faction warfare, the lack of SHOC’s horror sequences, the terrible base characters (particularly at the Freedom Base), the grenade spam (which mods seem not to disable), and the grindy anomaly hunting. But it’s better than it was. It seems like this is, for the Zone-hungry like wannabe me, a reasonable time to return. Anyway, I’d better get back to it – more reports from the Zone when I have them, and please share your own Stalker mod recommendations below.
Update: Mod manager, full Russian dialogue and anti grenade spam mod.
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No one got a link to that texture mod? Like I said strategy informer seems to be down.
So is Stalker Complete compatible with Oblivion Lost? It looks like it’s just a graphics overhawl, an amazing one of course. Would love to go back to SHOC with OL in shiny newer graphics after I finish Clear Sky.
let me know when there’s a mod to remove the (oh!) em-gee nest guarding the pass from the swamps to the cordon, and another mod that removes the last 1/3 of the game.
i tried playing vanilla stalker with the oblivion lost mod – some parts were pretty fun, such as zombies and controllers in the starting area – but in the end i gave up because it seemed a little unbalanced and buggy. the scripted attack on freedom base with duty squad was especially ridiculous when both sides kill eachother and themselves with all the nade spam the mod enables, before duty breaches the wall.
oblivion lost also makes the night so dark that you can’t see at all – even with nightvision, a torch, and cranking the gamma up. a rather confusing move.
There’s a newer version of the mod manager here
http://www.smart-mod-manager.org/
I recently replayed Shadow of Chernobyl with the Oblivion Lost mod – it really is fun. I couldn’t get Priboi Story to work, or the huge OL + Arsenal mod, though as it is, my poor old computer is having trouble playing this smoothly. I want to upgrade just to see that Stalker Complete mod, though…
Anyway, I sure am happy to see more talking about Stalker. The mod community for it is astoundingly lively. An analysis of the “what could have been” based on what mod authors exposed would make a good article, as would a comparison of the Stalker mods vs. Half-Life mods – the idea of modifying a open world game based on the environment vs. a ‘rails’ shooter based on the engine.
Oooh! Find someone who can read Russian to explain all that Stalker activity – there’s a ton of Stalker stuff that never makes it to English.
There’s lots of pictures out there from people touring through the actual Chernobyl area – some actual pictures to compare to the game screenshots of Pripyat and the reactor would be an easy post. I have an image of the central square in Pripyat that, aside from the different ground cover, is a dead ringer for an in-game screenshot… I can’t find the source right yet.
I’m still surprised at how many people say they hated (or dislike, etc) Clear Sky. I loved it – not as much as the original, mind, but what is that even saying? “This fantastic prequel isn’t quite as good as the first one, so I hate it.” It’s not groundbreaking because it follows the same vein of the first one – which was ground breaking.
I used Oblivion Lost, but the ‘author’ (Kanyhalos) is a complete ass, and will blame anyone but himself when his mod messes up. He literally just took community mods, made them work together, and claimed most of the credit, with the rest going ‘to the community.’
Sleeping bag is awesome, food not healing is awesome, improved Night vision is really useful, more realistic damage makes the fire-fights a little more palatable (why is my assault rifle firing at a 45 degree angle out of the barrel?) and so on.
I really want to try that Stalker Complete 2009, christ that looks good.
I do wish some of these megamods were a bit less inclusive. I’d love anything that makes the game look better or have more cool interactions and such, but they usually also ratchet up an already steep difficulty considerably. I can barely get by in vanilla – I don’t need it to be harder.
Speaking of east European games, where’s Typrop/the Void?
Is it worth returning to Clear Sky now? I abandoned the game after two playthroughs were ruined by crash bugs. Was loving the game up until then, though it wasn’t as good as Stalker.
I’d like to try the AMK mod instead of oblivion lost, but it’s not on major mod sites. What’s worse is that the next big AMK 2.0 version is planned for “Fall 2009″ so it’d be a waste using the piddly current 1.4 version now
Stalker Complete 2009 is not compatible with ObLost, unless you want to do a LOT of tweaking on it. Priboi Sotry is very similar to Call of Pripyat, I agree. Maybe GSC is taking community ideas now :D
I was disappointed with Oblivion Lost: the blowouts added unwanted stress and annoyance I could do without; and the drivable vehicles perfectly captured the feeling of driving around in a giant cardbox with wheels – but it did add for hilarity when running over anomalties.
The graphics in Clear Sky … I don’t like it, really. Parts of it is outstanding, of course, but it feels poorly optimized and it doesn’t look good in the seams. For example, when going around in the first village, I see shadows moving awkwardly, small details disappearing suddenly; it’s like there are ants crawling on the textures in some places. It happened on all settings I tried, and I had the same problem with Crysis.
More STALKER is always good, even if Clear Sky wasn’t quite as good as the first game. The end fight for example, was shit. Few modern FPS’s do firefights as good as these games though. AND you can LEAN, something many modern FPS devs strangely think is a bad thing.
Is there a mod that fixes the fucking awful ending?
Bananaphone: If you’re talking about the original STALKER. Please tell me that you got one of the ‘wish-granter’ endings so that I might point and laugh at you. There’s so many people who got pissed off and angry for the game having a bad ending, when they managed to miss out on the entire final act.
Clear Sky was ok, but one thing I’ve noticed about practically all these Eastern European devs. If they make a good game, they will then make several sequals that don’t really particularly adress the main flaws of the original.
Indeed Clear Sky exasibated some of the flaws of the original while actually reducing some of the factors that made it great.
Still worth a pop though, but they really need to work on adding some life to the characters and story.
I got one of the abrupt, wish-granter endings. Does getting the ‘good’ ending involve doing very specific things all the way through the game, or is it one choice at one particular point? It seems something to aim for in a second go through, but not if the conditions are willfully obtuse.
It’s hardly obtuse. Just do the main plot missions that the game gives you. It’s hard to miss the main quest chain, what with it being in your PDA from the very start, narrated via your characters journal.
That doesn’t sound so obtuse, though I did manage to successfully miss it the first time through. Time to break out Oblivion Lost.
I loved the first blowout in S:OL, if only because I didn’t know what they were – a genuinely unexpected what-the-fuck moment.
Also, how vulnerable your character is at the start compared to the usual FPS hero. There I am, with a lousy gun, a torch that, if I switch it on, everything for miles around would know where I was, but barely able to see in the pitch dark without. At one point in the Garbage, I remember being delighted to stumble upon the fascistic Duty, knowing that I could sleep for a few hours without being attacked.
P.
@Dominic White
No, I’m talking about Clear Sky and the last few shitty levels.
Well, I was looking for something to waste time on, looks like I’ve found it. Never beat SoC, and the drive crash killed all my saves, so I’ll try some of the mods mentioned here. Not to mention CS.
I do concur that plot wise Clear Sky was pretty rubbish. I’m sure they could have dug a better prequel tale out of it than that. Would have been better to avoid the first game’s story altogether and leave just a few hints and characters.
I’m still playing Oblivion Lost over and over and over. It made STALKER into such a good game.
I followed the mod from it’s earlier iterations and it’s true that on the 45,687th asking of the questions “How do I install this mod?” and “It says I don’t have enough memory for the enhanced textures; what’s wrong?” the modders did start to lose their patience a bit. Early versions were very unstable and they spent literally months on bug fixes and releasing newer and newer iterations of the mod.
I’m using the version that comes packed with the enhanced texture and weather overhaul and a couple of add on mods that make important NPC’s invincible (which backfired once when I accidentally shot Seriy and now have an indestructable enemy) as well as faction wars (once you complete the main quest – as long as you get the true ending and don’t fall for the Monolith lie) and it runs bug free for me.
Here are some nice pics from a fellow OL player:
http://forums.filefront.com/s-t-l-k-e-r-soc-general-discussion/379832-my-trip-chernobyl-pictures-56k-ultra-death.html
Well, there was that time he bitched at MartenDee for trying to make a realism mini-mod on top of ObLost as ObLost apparently has significantly better AI than all other mods *sarcasm*…
On a tangent, a documentary on Chernobyl has just started (10pm) on More4 UK.
Just recently merged Oblivion Lost, Arsenal Mod (adds roughly 100 weapons) and repair kit (so I can repair my stuff in the field) mods for SoC, and it’s amazing. I’ve played through SoC many times, but aside from my awestruck, first-ever Oblivion Lost playthrough, this is the best. Only problem is an old one: memory. STALKER uses quite a bit of it, and more with Arsenal mod installed.
Also, I would recommend Gnomus’s scope retexture mod- changes the “scoped-in” textures to provide a much more immersive look.
What I’d love is a mod that lets you go back through the tunnel at Limansk instead of closing off the interesting part of the game. Freeform indeed… unless there is some great reason for it; my hdd died before I finished; only made it to the part with the chopper in the ruins of the building; although it was turning into a slog at that point.
Still, great game, even if it took longer for the patch to come out on the Steam version (must… play… now…) :)
RemCo, the same guy behind the Clear Sky Enhanced mod that Jim recommends, has also translated OGSM (Old Good Stalker Mod), probably the most ambitious Russian mod for Clear Sky.
That’s a lot of commas for one sentence, sorry about that.
The Mod consists of the mod, a patch, and a translation file, all of which are conveniently located at different URLs (and the translation is hosted on the obnoxious FileFactory).
There’s a forum post here that has all three links, as well as an exhaustive list of the many tweaks and additions. I’m just getting in to a test drive of the thing, but I like the sound of it.
In retrospect I may have to go back and put “translation” in quotes, as it’s a little choppy in places, but it’s possible to follow.
It’s funny, I started playing Clear Sky properly a few days back as well, I was half way through it when one of the patches rendered my savegames obsolete, that was when I thought about blowing up another nuclear power plant or never touching the game again… I obviously did the latter but had to come back because Stalker ist just too damned great. I don’t think I’m going to tinker with the game, the current version runs quite solid.
Apart from that, I find it funny how you can call the artifact-hunt a grind. It’s one of the best things in the game, imho. It’s so much fun sneaking up on a few anomalies to check if the detector gets a signal, and then finding a route that leaves you unscratched or rather the route that gets you the least scratches.
Gurrah, I couldn’t agree more. If I could have the STALKER: SoC game using the Clear Sky engine/UI/mechanics, I’d pretty much never stop playing.
My “perfect game” would be to take the STALKER Complete mod, add a couple of extra little mods to taste, and somehow graft on the Clear Sky weapon modification and artifact hunt mechanics.
I’m actually wondering if it would be easier to port over some of the mods that I use in SoC to CS, or gimmick up an equivalent to those two systems that works in SoC.
I hope nobody minds, but I was wondering if someone could answer the questions I asked here a few days ago. It’s nothing critical but I’m rather curious. One question was about Clear Sky and the other was about the US version of SoC. Thanks.
Hey guys, think this game is great so far (couple of hours into it)) as it is one of the most immersive titles I have played. Only gripe is with the weapon/combat system and the detail of the textures.
What MODS would you guys say make the most of this game both in mechanics and graphics (deffo need a texture overhaul)?
I have STALKER Complete also, not really played much of it but I will if it is compatible with Oblivion Lost. Can anyone confirm?
iDeal, STALKER complete isn’t compatible out of the box with Oblivion Lost, and I’m guessing it would take a ton of work to merge the two. You could probably get the textures and shaders added without much trouble, but the weather overhaul and the various gameplay fixes from SRP would be hugely time-consuming even if they don’t turn out to be mutually exclusive to the changes in OL.
Complete gives you an experience very close to the vanilla game, only much better (and much much better-looking); if you’re looking for the extra features that OL brings my suggestion would be to look into the SuperMod Pack mod, as it’s basically OL plus a lot of other stuff.
When you ask about recommended mods, are you talking about Clear Sky specifically? Inspired by this article I’m playing through using Clear Sky Enhanced, but I’ve also merged the Ballistics Mod v.5, which in the author’s words “de-nerfs” the weapons significantly. In terms of graphic mods, unfortunately there’s nothing comparable to the Argus Photorealistic Zone pack used in STALKER complete. I had installed the JacoX Graphics Quality mod linked in the article, but I actually prefer the stock textures to the SHARPER set that JacoX used. Your mileage may vary.
Guhndahb, yes Clear Sky has the same fireside singalongs (or at least acoustic guitar strumalongs) as SoC, and as far as I know it’s the same all over. I have the US version, and most of the background chatter and barks are still in Russian, with only the major characters voiced over in English.
If you add the Russian Audio Mod Full as well (linked in the article) it does add a lot to the immersion factor. There’s a similar Authenticity Sound Pack for SoC, but it requires an additional mod (InGameCC) to add in the necessary closed captioning for non Russian speakers.
Anaphiel, or anyone for that matter. Do you know how to turn off health regeneration AND radiation regeneration? After installing this my health keeps regeneration (at a slow pace) as does radiation…it is ruining the game for me. No point playing on Master difficultly if I can just heal by standing there.
The rest of the mod is fine. Please help.
(I am right in assuming that my health didn’t regenerate automatically BEFORE I installed this mod?)
iDeal, it’s been a looong time since I played either STALKER game un-modded, but as far as I know bleeding has always stopped, health regenerated, and radiation gone away over time in both games. The mod you’re using may have changed the rates, and of course different artifacts (and even some armors) can also increase the rate of healing.
Which game and mod specifically are you talking about? I may know what .ltx file to edit to reduce the rate if you’re not dying often enough :-)
Anaphiel, I installed the CS Enhanced pack, OGSM and a few texture mods. But I believe it is the CS Enhanced pack that is causing the fast regen and reducing radiation so fast. Also, I believe it has taken out bleeding altogether. It’s all so fast that it negates any need for med packs and anti rads. it’s at the beginning of the game so al the armout artifacts are default.
I have looked at the LTX file and tinkered a little, but clearly I have no idea what to change. I just want the game to be as realistic as possible. Cheers. :D
**EDIT** Just uninstalled the entire game/mods to see if there was regen and radiation reduction over time. And there is, it is however alot less than it is with the CS:E mod.
Further edit to above post. In Vanilla radiation does not reduce over time, but health does (albeit much slower, which is better). Sorry for the confusion.
Will you do an overview of Fallout 3 mods in the future?
“Will you do an overview of Fallout 3 mods in the future?”
Possibly.
iDeal, to edit the healing rate introduced by CS Enhanced, go to:
gamedata/config/creatures, open theactor.ltxfile, and look for the following lines:health_restore_v =.00001
bleeding_v =0.0
wound_incarnation_v =0.001
comment out the
health_restore_vline to remove the ability to heal without medkits or artifacts entirely.wound_incarnation_vcontrols either the rate of bleeding reduction (found in a tutorial) or the “speed of healing of a wound” (if you translate the dev comment next to that line of code).The odd thing to me is that in my
actor.ltxfile thehealth_restore_vline is only in the “when actor in sleep” section, which I figured would control healing when you sleep, but it’s the only place where it’s different from vanilla. However, inconfig/creatures/m_stalker.ltx(which controls the NPC stalkers), thehealth_restore_vline has been added to the regular condition area, which would seem to mean that the NPCs also heal over time. If editing actor.ltx doesn’t help, you might try commenting that line out inm_stalker.ltxas well and see what happens.On an unrelated note, how hard was it to merge OGSM with Enhanced? I’ve been meaning to try, but it seemed like it would be a lot of work.
Appreciate the input Anaphiel, fixed! :D
In regards to OGSM, I simply used the Smart Mod Manager and added all 3 OGSM/Patch/Translation into it and it hasn’t caused any issues as far as I know. If I come across any I will be sure to let you guys know.
Mods I am using:
CS Enhanced/OGSM
Clear Sky High Resolution Graphics Pack
Metal/concrete High Resolution Pack
CS S.H.A.R.P.E.R
NeilMC Terrain Pack
The reason I am using these is that the JACO Graphics Pack utilises all the above texture packs, but unfortunately does not let me run the game in DX10.1 so this is my workaround. So far so good. Had just the one crash since boot, and that was just now as I entered the “Dark Valley” (I think it’s called) after “The Garbage”.
Started a playthrough with a couple basic mods to get the game playing how I want… only problem I have is that with the full russian audio mod, there are no subtitles on the dialogue after picking up certain PDAs (may be other instances too but this is all I’ve noticed). Kind of annoying missing out on plot points this way, and I can’t seem to find a full subtitles mod nor see any ingame options to enable them. Anybody know a fix..?
noom, I’m not aware of any CS-specific fix for the lack of subtitles in some circumstances, so the Russian audio mod can be a pain on a first playthrough. You may be able to check your message log and PDA entries in your PDA to get the gist of what was a particular message said. For STALKER SoC there’s an InGameCC mod that adds closed captioning for everything, including some sound effects if you want that old-school Batman comic vibe.
iDeal, glad to hear that you resolved your problem. I haven’t tried using SMM to auto-merge complex mods before, but I might try it out. I had a look at OGSM and Enhanced with an eye towards a manual merge and while there are a ton of files to compare, they’re actually pretty similar (not surprising given RemCo both translated OGSM and built CS Enhanced). I’m guessing RemCo used a lot of OGSM in making Enhanced.
Anaphiel, thank you very much for the info.
Thanks for this post, I am throughly enjoying Stalker: CS with the mods mentioned above. I bought the game through the Valve sale right around Christmas, and never even installed it, :P
As much as I love Far Cry 2’s simplicity, I’m really enjoying the gameplay of Clear Sky… it almost feels like an RPG to me, with all the “quests” / tasks, and locating all the stashes. I’m finding myself obsessively tracking down all the stashes in an area before moving on, and it’s great fun for me, kind of like an easter egg hunt or something. I haven’t had this much fun in a game since L4D first came out, and the original Crysis before that.
Thanks again Jim!
The Redux mod for SoC was absolutely brilliant. Still waiting on a final Redux release for CS (it’s in some beta version now).
Redux for SoC really made the game complete.
There was an interesting solution to the language thing in polish version. They hired a proffesional narrator who did voice-over for the main characters, leaving russian in background. This actually added some extra charm into the game (since the man – don’t remember his name – usually is doing voice-over for movies).
I’ve tried to download the cs:enhanced mod but it wouldent work… well i enter the game it look different and there are a new song on an stuff, then i try to make a new game and in the loading it chrashes, and a error pops up and says there no disk in or some thing like that… so I need help!!! …. and sry for my bad english.