By Alec Meer on May 21st, 2009 at 11:15 am.
Jim’s already done an extensive round-up of the more interesting mods for Stalker: Clear Sky, but me, I’m happy sticking to the original Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl. While the Oblivion Lost mod and its million features is the most renowned fan-tweak, there’s much to be said for retaining the game’s original structure rather than necessarily embracing such sweeping changes. With that in mind, I’m very much enjoying replaying SHOC with the Stalker Complete 2009 modpack. Primarily, it simply makes the game much, much prettier. How pretty? This pretty:
More shots below.
There is an argument to be made that we shouldn’t get so hung up about graphics, but in a game so based around exploring a unique environment, graphics are truly part of the experience. And this mod definitely improves that experience.
Despite the size of the overhaul (some 900 new textures, a whole new sky and weather system…) It’s impressively subtle – you’re not slapped around the face with new!new!new! but rather no longer feel as though you’re playing a game from 2007. It looks and feels fresh and modern. Lighting – the new day-night cycle’s particularly spectacular – and textures are what’s most lovingly touched by the hand of mod, but on the non-graphical front much of the in-game text gets a more grammar-friendly rewrite and the HUD receives a much-needed overhaul. There’s also a ton of bugfixes in there. So, perversely, it’s an amateur effort that makes the host game more professional. Highly recommended for Stalker vets and newbies alike. Go get.
Oh – and you can also ‘dress’ NPCs by giving them new clothes. Fashion parades in the Zone: whoda thunk it?
21/05/2009 at 11:18 Kastanok says:
Ooooh that IS pretty, indeed.
21/05/2009 at 11:23 negativedge says:
do we have a Pynchon fan, or is zone capitalized in this too?
someone could do a Gravity’s Rainbow video game, I swear. it would basically be Stalker with more drugs, sex and no hope of winning.
(well ok only part 3 BUT WHATEVER)
21/05/2009 at 11:25 Waste_Manager says:
This might just inspire another run through. That sky is much pretty.
21/05/2009 at 11:27 Lukasz says:
well. i guess it is time to reinstall stalker and play it again!
21/05/2009 at 11:28 Monchberter says:
Can we actually have some ‘clear sky’ now? The original Stalker’s weather was so oppressive it almost induced S.A.D. and i just gave up in fear of topping myself.
Fallout 3 manages the apocalyptic wasteland setting well without feeling like a miserable experience because at least the sun came out now and again and it wasn’t always pissing it down.
21/05/2009 at 11:31 sierse says:
Hehe, perfect! Just the excuse I needed to try out stalker on my new (old) 22″ crt : ) I’ll probably miss the 16:10 aspect ratio of the old lcd though… but I’m salivating to see how well he implemented the new weather system, having fiddled with it for far too many hours last year.
21/05/2009 at 11:34 Ian says:
That’s mighty pretties.
21/05/2009 at 11:36 MurrayHewitt says:
I guess this can’t be used in conjunction with Oblivion Lost due to the large list of changes both mods include. Which is a shame as I love the hardcore damage model you get with OL, plus the extra randomness of the anomalies, NPCs and mutants really shakes things up (obviously this isn’t to everyone’s tastes). Hell, I even like the random blowouts.
21/05/2009 at 11:40 mejobloggs says:
Hawt damn that looks impressive
21/05/2009 at 11:43 Mr Pink says:
I’m about to upgrade my machine. As soon as it’s done I’m installing this. Let’s see if I can finally “get” Stalker.
21/05/2009 at 11:43 teo says:
STALKER can be so pretty at times
21/05/2009 at 11:46 Uglycat says:
Anyone know if the mods screw up the Steam version?
21/05/2009 at 11:48 Davee says:
Wow! Looks like something I’d really want to combine with OL just for the eye-candy and better grammar (OL fails in that last matter). But just like MurrayHewitt a few posts up said; They’re most likely not compatibe… Sure hope somebody makes a compability patch ;)
And Uglycat: I think I heard somewhere that the Steam version could be freely modified whitout problems.
21/05/2009 at 11:49 Alec Meer says:
Uglycat: I’m using this one with the Steam version.
21/05/2009 at 11:58 Will Tomas says:
Does this mean that older computers that could cope with original Stalker wouldn’t be able to handle the stuff this mod is asking for though?
- in other words, does it up the system specs?
21/05/2009 at 12:05 The Hammer says:
Oooooh. I like the skies in these. Especially the first one.
21/05/2009 at 12:08 Dominic White says:
This mod is definitely one to keep an eye on. Upcoming versions are apparently going to start adding new weapons and such, just to round out the range of stuff you find.
It’s a really good effort all round. It also avoids doing that thing that apparently every other STALKER mod on earth does – making the guns extra damaging AND super-accurate. I think Complete 2009 tightens up the accuracy a little on the lower-end guns, but generally slightly decreases firepower, so that gunfights are long and dramatic.
21/05/2009 at 12:12 sfury says:
I was looking for an excuse for a second playthrough, now I know what I’ll be doing when I get back home. Thanks! :)
21/05/2009 at 12:15 Super Bladesman says:
Mighty pretty – I’ve got a new graphics card since I last slo-mo’d my way through the early stages of Stalker…
21/05/2009 at 12:20 MikeBiggs says:
Yay for shiny graphics! Downloading now :D
21/05/2009 at 12:21 Wirbelwind says:
Looks great, will be using it when I finally give this a playthrough.
Hopefully it won’t rape my computer hardware.
21/05/2009 at 12:35 Nallen says:
No clicky this picture for this picture but all up in your face sized? :(
21/05/2009 at 12:35 Andy says:
The main thing from stopping me getting into STALKER is I can’t get past the first mission. Do I really have to lower myself to putting it on Easy? The starter pistol you get is so puny it seems like I need about 10 hits to take anyone down? Any help would be appreciated.
21/05/2009 at 12:37 mrrobsa says:
Always thought the night sky texture in STALKER was beautiful, hope that it is the same or better in this mod.
21/05/2009 at 12:38 phuzz says:
@Monchberter: Glad I wasn’t the only person who felt that the zone was just a dreary, drizzly miserable place…
Any information of the specs needed to run this?
21/05/2009 at 13:02 Skye Nathaniel says:
This looks wonderful, but I’ve already modified a bunch of stuff that I don’t want to overwrite, like weapon damage and armor ratings.
21/05/2009 at 13:22 Heliocentric says:
I completed the first mission without firing a shot. Let your friends help. Thats like 2.5 more pretty than stalker, can i use the mod on a current play through though? I’d hate to restart until i get through to the end, me and marked one have been through alot. Mainly running away from dogs and bandits, mostly dogs.
I’d pay for a stalker mmofps, but i’d want the game to punish power gamers. Stalker’s isn’t a world you can really “win”.
/harmonica emote
21/05/2009 at 13:36 Freudian Trip says:
This has inspired me to give it another go. I played it on my old PC and the fact that it was unbelievably hard, grab you by the balls and force them into your mothers mouth hard, with it’s tediously long loading times I gave up very quickly.
Does this work for Clearsky?
21/05/2009 at 13:38 lumpi says:
Good thing.
I managed to get Gametap working (after THIS: http://support.gametap.com/selfservice/template.do?id=348 and half an hour of fixing the bugs caused by borked installs), and I have to say STALKER is as buggy and meh as everyone told me. I read in forums that you shouldn’t even touch the game without installing the community-made patch-mod before. And I guess they’re right. Of course you can’t do that with DRM-tastic Gametap, so another loose for them…
I remember the first time, I realized that when loading a save game, sometimes all enemies on screen suddenly look in your direction (even if you sneaked up from behind during the save), I had one of the most intense facepalm moments of recent weeks. Oh my.
21/05/2009 at 13:57 Meat Circus says:
Can this be installed atop Oblivion Lost?
21/05/2009 at 14:14 sfury says:
It seems some of you have not followed the link at the bottom – http://artistpavel.blogspot.com/2009/04/stalker-complete-2009.html
There is a Flickr gallery full of full-sized snapshots AND full list of the MODs used – bet you can put most of those at least on your already modded game. (and maybe even the whole MOD, dunno, just read the referenced thing and then start asking people)
21/05/2009 at 14:47 Rei Onryou says:
Just the mod I’ve been waiting for. Now I can go back to Stalker. Eventually. Other games come first…
21/05/2009 at 14:48 Anaphiel says:
@Skye Nathaniel:
Stalker Complete keeps most if not all of the weapons and armor at vanilla specs, so in theory you can just leave out the
/config/weaponsfolder to keep your tweaked weapons. The mod does make a number of changes to the weapon descriptions, but those are kept in a stringtable file somewhere else I believe. Suit specs are kept in theoutfit.ltxfile in the same directory and aren’t changed by this mod so you’re all set there.@Meat Circus:
Unfortunately it’s not easy to add pretty much anything to OL as it changes pretty much every file in the game. You can get a lot of the same look in OL by using the Argus Photorealistic zone textures plus an OL compatibility patch, the Sky4ce Skygraphics Mod, and the Panoramic Zone mod plus compatibility patch. Sorry to not provide links, but I got them all from Stalker.FileFront.com.
So far this has been my favorite large Stalker mod. It really adds a lot to the game graphically, and it makes a ton of very subtle gameplay changes and fixes that nevertheless keep the core gameplay experience intact.
OL, AMK, SuperModPack, etc. are fun but they push the game too far into sci-fi action movie territory for my laiking, and SMP is trying to do so much that for me anyway it isn’t always stable. And Stalker sure doesn’t need to be any less stable.
If I could somehow get the OL-style randomized anomalies into the game it’d be pretty much perfect.
21/05/2009 at 14:51 Anaphiel says:
Oh, and my favorite thing about the new weather system: the sun now rises in the east and sets in the west. Funny how the original game had so much environmental detail and got something that obvious wrong.
21/05/2009 at 14:58 Nero says:
I recently decided to finally finish it after not having played it in a while and I’m right at the end and I will try this out real quick when I’m done since right now I’m playing vanilla (with only edited carry weight and repair mod). Should be interesting to see the changes to this wonderful game.
21/05/2009 at 15:11 Malibu Stacey says:
Just looking at all the stuff this mod has integrated is actually making me drool. I had installed the Float32 mod (site appears to be down currently) when I first gave S.T.A.L.K.E.R a go last year (only got as far as the second map area) but I’m definitely playing from the start with this mod installed right to the end.
Damn nice find Mr Meer!
21/05/2009 at 15:19 Tim James says:
I think I read that this mod increases the difficulty of the shootouts in some way, so be careful if you’re sensitive about those things.
21/05/2009 at 15:28 Anaphiel says:
@Tim James: if the latest version of the mod is installed correctly it doesn’t really change anything in terms of difficulty… weapons retain vanilla values as do outfit protection, healing and bleeding rates etc. The AI tweaks actually make the AI less likely to spot you at night or at crazy distances, so my experience so far has been that combat is a lot easier. If you’ve played andy of the AMK/OL-based mods combat is dramatically easier than that.
I think the folks posting on artistpavel’s blog that are having difficulty issues are either referring to an earlier version with somewhat overpowered weapons or have a mod install that got goofed up somehow… it happened to me with the earlier 1.3 patch, where it somewhat surreally still thought I had 1.2 installed.
21/05/2009 at 15:46 rmtx97 says:
I became wayyy too frustrated with the difficulty of actually defeating enemies in STALKER. I tried the 1st mission of saving some guy held by 6 other guys in a warehouse and I just couldnt complete the mission. I know I can’t just waltz through guys (Oblivion) but still I was shocked that I died EVERY TIME. I just said F-this and uninstalled a week later. Maybe this mod and some encouragement will get me to try it again.
21/05/2009 at 16:06 Anaphiel says:
@rmtx97:
Stalker can be a little frustrating, because in the beginning the weapons you have available to you are inaccurate and underpowered, the leather jacket that you start with doesn’t stop bullets worth a damn, and the game really does require a more cautious, tactical style of play than most FPSs.
A hint that might help you get over the hump: it’s possible to get a mercenary armored suit in the village where you start out… I won’t tell you exactly where, but you can find that info easily enough, or just explore until you find it. That will make you a lot more survivable in the early game without completely unbalancing things.
Give it another shot; it’s really worth it.
21/05/2009 at 16:09 chequers says:
Can you drop this on top your oblivion lost and not have stuff break?
21/05/2009 at 16:41 Jim Rossignol says:
I assume you can use the mod manager to merge this with OL set priorities so that it doesn’t break too horribly.
21/05/2009 at 16:53 Malibu Stacey says:
I found S.T.A.L.K.E.R to be pretty much Nintendo Hard to start with but as Anaphiel says it’s only because you’re trying to take on decent enemies who have armour & SMGs while you’re toting only a pistol and a knife. Once you get a bit of decent kit (the first rifle you find will be your friend for life) it becomes a lot more “forgiving”.
That’s the only thing I can think of changing except for more bug fixes which this mod pack appears to do anyway. An SMG and something better than wet toilet paper to protect yourself with when you start out would help a lot of people be less frustrated with the initial difficulty. Having said that once you figure out how to use the map to locate the “hidden” caches and learn what to look for when you’re at the right spot you can get some really nice stuff.
I only stopped playing during the second area due to real life (and Team Fortress 2) taking over at the time. The first area is pretty much your average “tutorial” section compared to what comes next.
21/05/2009 at 16:54 moyogo says:
specs on the screenshot?
21/05/2009 at 17:18 Little Green Man says:
Uhm, people complaining about rubbish kit at the start evidently haven’t heard of the Basix Mods. These mods changed the earlier missions so that they would give you semi-decent stuff, and you could get unique stuff in the 3rd(?) mission if you asked one of the guys in game.
21/05/2009 at 17:34 Anaphiel says:
One other starting strategy is to ignore the first “kill the bandits at the car park” mission at first, make your way to the northern half of the Cordon area, and try to ambush a bandit toting an SMG or AK. There are usually just two bandits at the north-most checkpoint, and one usually has an SMG. That makes killing the eight or so bandits at the car park a lot easier.
A cheesier but quicker method is to attack the first bandits
along with Wolf’s crew, and stand back and see what happens.
If Wolf’s scouts kill a lot of bandits, great! Go in and loot the bandit bodies, maybe find a better gun. If the bandits whack the scouts, great! Loot their bodies and then mop up.
21/05/2009 at 18:05 TeeJay says:
I want to play STAKER or the first time but the number of different mods available is confusing me. Can anyone point me to a good condensed summary of what’s what?
21/05/2009 at 18:09 stormbringer951 says:
ObLost – most popular mod. best balanced i suppose. insane jump height and artefact carry. maker is a moron.
Priboi Story – different mod set after SHOC. you play a military guy. your framerate will plummet with their textures.
Complete – Prettiest mod award.
Zone Reclamation Project – made by the community as a bugfix + lite mod. You can tweak it yourself with a tool they made to suit your tastes.
ABC Inferno – fun mod, not realistic.
21/05/2009 at 18:10 stormbringer951 says:
Oh and AMK: mod that Oblivion Lost was “based” on (read: bloodily ripped off). Russian, there’s an english translation but they’re releasing a new update soon so wait for that if you like.
21/05/2009 at 18:22 Anaphiel says:
stormbringer gives a decent rundown, but I’d add SuperModPack, essentially OL plus a ton of other stuff, and also Rebalanced, which is another OL-based mod. Much less over-the-top than pure OL or AMK.
@TeeJay, for a first playthrough I would actually suggest this mod. Complete really adds to the experience of the vanilla game, but in very subtle ways. It pretty much just sands away some of the rough edges from the vanilla game, without making huge changes to balance or feel. And it does look purty.
21/05/2009 at 18:31 Freudian Trip says:
@LittleGreenMan Yeah, how dare those retards think the game was ridiculously hard at the beginning without thinking to mod the game to artificially make it easier. What idiots.
21/05/2009 at 18:33 James T says:
I felt a little coddled by the granting of the neato guns and equipment (even if it did make sense), but Basix was excellent, I loved all the minor variants of guns you could find (the Spetsnaz carried their own type of Abokan, for example), and remember liking the tweaked gun statistics and so on. The thing holding people back is probably (oh, I don’t know) the fact that the author never made a Basix version compatible with the final singleplayer patch. That didn’t exactly do wonders for its prominence — you’re the only other person I’ve seen mention it outside of its own pages on Filefront.com.
…Actually, he did do one version for the final STALKER iteration, but it was ‘Basix Spawn’, or ‘Basix Monsters’, or whatever it’s called, one of those fucking idiotic mods that floods the entire Zone with hordes of beasts like some Japanese bullet-hell shooter. Flushes the entire tone of the game down that high-res toilet Alec snapped.
21/05/2009 at 18:40 Joseph says:
I have never played any STALKER game but I have read about RPS’ love for them (or at least the first one) and they sound great. I am downloading the mod now and going to get SHOC and play it tomorrow. Hells yeah.
To answer some questions that have been asked:
Designed and tested for STALKER version 1.0005/1.0006. Starting new game is required!
Performance:
———————————————————————————
@ 1680×1050:
8800GT 512MB: 30-60 fps, some stuttering.
GTX 260 896MB: 60-100 fps, smooth.
^^
You need better hardware (a video card with plenty of memory) to run it on high settings because it has bigger textures.
Cheers!
21/05/2009 at 18:42 Evan says:
STALKER I didnt find to hard. I just moved slow. If they didnt see you coming you did way more damage. Some of those tweaks, like the repair thing and health give sound cool. Although more guns I dont get. I hardly used the 20 I had, esp the pistols. I’ll give it a shot, see how my 4850 handles it. Might have to upgrade to Crossfire now!
21/05/2009 at 18:46 Wedge says:
FUCK. I guess I’m going to have to give the game a go, AGAIN. And hope somehow I won’t end up with spastic game breaking bugs this time.
21/05/2009 at 18:51 Little Green Man says:
@James T
Yeah, I think the later editions ruined the actual mod, making it like EVERY OTHER ONE. Personally I can see why GSC took those Zombs out. They suck.
Freudian Trip: Yes, I know what I said sounds quite moronic, but I always felt that this game was only worth playing modded, and most people are, even if it is only the unofficial patch. Plus, it wasn’t ridiculously hard for me, but I know that a lot of people could have found it hard, and none of those people in this comments section said they then found a mod that fixed it. Basically I was trying to be informative but probably just came over a bit of a jerk.
Ahh well.
21/05/2009 at 19:13 jonfitt says:
Holy frijole, that’s pretty.
21/05/2009 at 19:46 Ralph says:
Thanks Alec this mod really is amazing and I’m sure I will play through this game start to finish at last this time.
21/05/2009 at 19:49 Howard says:
Gods damn you, Meer! I was just enjoying not liking Damnation. Now I gotta download this mod, install STALKER again and play that!
(secretly rubs hands gleefully – SQUEE! PRETTY!)
21/05/2009 at 19:53 Freudian Trip says:
Any answers on whether this works on Clearsky?
21/05/2009 at 19:58 Anaphiel says:
Freudian Trip, this is strictly for Shadow of Chernobyl. There really isn’t a comparable mod for CS, but the CS Enhanced mod (written about right here on RPS) covers a lot of the same territory.
21/05/2009 at 19:59 Freudian Trip says:
Goody, expand-alones how I hate you.
21/05/2009 at 20:55 Howard says:
Forgot to ask: how compatible is this with Oblivion Lost? Will they play nice together?
21/05/2009 at 21:00 Dr Gonzo says:
Clear Sky is prettier. After all the patches and a little tweaking I can play with all the lovely dx10 effects and its amazing looking, especially the rain running down surfaces.
21/05/2009 at 22:39 Brian says:
OH SHIT! ME PLAY! ME PLAY! :D
Lucky me I got it from Steam for $5 or $10, can’t remember :P
21/05/2009 at 22:44 Serondal says:
I liked stalker but I got rather far into it and found that my game always crashed after coming out of some epic kind of dungeon level later in the game. Nothing I could do could get me past it (I never tried starting over from the start of the game) so I just gave up and haven’t touched it since, the game looked fine when I played it the first time, so this isn’t gonna change my mind :P It’s a great game, just can’t finish it even though Iwant to. I just read on wikipedia how it ended and now I’m fine with never playing it again.
22/05/2009 at 02:28 Weylund says:
This mod eats my machine alive – it’s a 2.4 Ghz dual core with an 8800 GTS 512 and 2 gigs of RAM. This mod *starts* a new game already swapping to a page file. Turning down some settings and installing the Float32 mod helps a bit but that’s only because they *slightly* lower the base memory usage, thereby reducing page file hits and massive lag proportionally.
Is there any way to run STALKER with this mod without using 1.5 gigs of RAM and constantly swapping? The author’s own site was probably the most helpful I’ve found and I haven’t been able to solve the problem.
22/05/2009 at 02:57 Anaphiel says:
Weylund, STALKER is really RAM-hungry at best, and this mod and SMP make it even worse. You might get some relief from the stuttering by using the -noprefetch command on launch (append -noprefetch to the “Target” section of the launch icon’s properties). With that switch the game doesn’t pre-load as much data up front, keeping more RAM free at any given time.
I had the same problem with the mod with an 8800GT 512, and never really got perfectly smooth play until I ran the game under Vista 64 with more than 2GB RAM. I still have the same 8800GT though, so the problem seemed to be more about RAM than the video card.
The other big gain can be had by ditching the gamedata/shaders folder (uninstalling Sky4ce or Float 32, whichever you have loaded), but for my money that’s a big part of the visual appeal of the mod.
22/05/2009 at 03:39 rasmus says:
And the original game is available for free somewhere too now, isn’t it?
22/05/2009 at 04:44 Weylund says:
@Anaphiel: beautiful. I’ll try the command, or (gulp) ditching the shaders. That would suck.
I may just need more RAM – here and in general. Thanks.
22/05/2009 at 05:08 Justin says:
Priboi Story is worth a look, in part because it is similar to the storyline in the next Stalker release, and in part because it’s good. There’s a 1.1 release and a patch for that 1.1 release.
I’m about half-way through it, and it doesn’t suffer from the “everything and the kitchen sink” approach that Oblivion Lost has, but still has (different) blowouts and anomaly effects.
I don’t know if it’s Priboi Story or the SKyAce mod, but the thunderstorms are realistic and violent enough that I actually, in game, want to stay indoors. Whomever recorded the thunder did it pretty darn close to a lightning strike.
22/05/2009 at 08:12 ZeeKat says:
AMK needs more love – it’s great for stalker chat (uh, rss? twitter?) alone. During firefight with bandits at car park you see that some dude sent message there are assault sounds from the direction of the car park, then after finished fight you see aforementioned dude coming around and checking bodies for loot – none of the messages from chat are fake, they’re some actual NPC reporting about monsters around, fights or just expressing relief that fucking rain is over at last and it’s nice to see clear sky (no, not that one) again. Also there’s a cool feature that you can knock the weapon out of hands of the enemy with the good shot and leave them with just a pistol – works both ways, by the way – I’ve lost fast-firing AK that way once then found it again few days later in backpack of some bandit that found it (couple hundred of meters away from the place I’ve dropped it). Shame it’s shoddily translated in places.
22/05/2009 at 10:59 B-B-B-Brian says:
Hmm, all this talk of giga-normous STALKER:SC mods and no mention of Rebalanced? I’ve played through a good 70-80% of the game on both vanilla and with OL (possibly AMK got involved at some point) and Rebalanced is by far and away the best of the lot. Not only does it add a truckload of new features, it also sexes up the graphics somewhat and, crucially, it does all this while changing the difficulty and general gameplay for the better.
The original game veered wildly from facile to punishing while OL adopted a ‘kitchen sink’ approach that made the game unfair in the extreme at times. Blowouts at the most inappropriate moments, packs of pseudodogs roaming through the Cordon… mice were thrown in frustration. Rebalanced makes the game a notch harder (it can only be played on Master difficulty level) but your mistakes are always due to your own incompetence and lack of respect for the Zone, which is now a damn sight more ‘realistic’ and thus much more dangerous. No longer does anything take 10+ shots to put down, bleeding out and starvation are now serious threats, mutants are now a force to be reckoned with (bloodsuckers are scary again!), the broken A-Life system has been finally fixed… the list goes on. You owe it to yourself to at least give it a look; in my opinion it makes STALKER the game it was always meant to be.
Plus it has the best shotgun in any game I’ve ever played. Seriously, worth a try for that alone.
22/05/2009 at 12:27 damien says:
people continue to ask. please dont install any mods over Oblivion Lost unless you either:
a) understand how to merge, replace, rewrite and or edit out all of the conflicting (weather, mostly) script calls the two mods contain
b) really just want to be frustrated by stalker needlessly crashing on you whenever you try to run it.
if all you want is the textures of Stalker Complete 2009, they can be found at argus’s site:
http://www.argus-textures.ru/pzone.html
http://www.gsc-game.com/index.php?t=community&s=forums&offset=240 (forum thread).
http://stalker.filefront.com/file/Photorealistic_Zone_v10_for_Oblivion_Lost_22_Compatibility_Patch;99791
(link to a mod that seems to merge the overlap in config. files between argus’s textures and Oblivion Lost. – i haven’t used it as i dont play OL, but it seems worth a shot.)
artistbabel has done wonderful things with the weather with trojanuch’s and eggchen’s help (along with many others), so i’d really recommend trying complete 2009, tho.
22/05/2009 at 15:08 Anaphiel says:
ZeeKat, I’m with you: I like AMK more than OL, although I have to say that OL is more stable, and yeah there are some pretty shaky translations in AMK. My only real complaint with AMK is that it’s harder than a coffin nail… I like the unforgiving nature of combat in STALKER, but in AMK it usually boils down to who fires first. It’s like a Rainbow 6/STALKER hybrid.
B-B-B-Brian, Rebalanced is indeed pretty impressive and oddly overlooked. 1.05 is getting a little long in the tooth though, and while ShadowState at the time mentioned that it was the final version, it looks like he is working on an update that will use some of the newer sound, weather, and graphic mods and address some of the little quirks that are left in Reb. He took a nice approach with the mod, not being slavishly devoted to the original game but not going nuts throwing in new features either, focusing on fun. Probably my second favorite of the megamods behind Complete.
23/05/2009 at 08:34 tssk says:
Well I’ve tried this on a fresh intall of STALKER. Black screen. I’ve followed the instructions to the letter. Any tips?
23/05/2009 at 10:11 ZeeKat says:
Works on mine, Polish version with 1.0005 patch (makes funny things with localization, but works perfectly), have to run it with -noprefetch or it was nearly unplayable due to excessive swap usage (apparently 512 meg 8800GT isn’t that much for it). Installed latest patch to this mod as well.
Anaphiel: AMK was impressively stable for me, I can agree on difficulty level, though. Close encounters often ended up with me being instantly shot in the face (that swaying effect didn’t help too – even if you survive first hit you’re unable to fight back for a moment). AMK makes you damn cautious.
23/05/2009 at 17:23 Weylund says:
@Anaphiel: it worked. I still get stutters occasionally, but it’s great. Thanks.
Edit: I do wonder about the excessive memory usage I see from some engines. Remember Vietcong [sic] and its sequels? Their engine underperformed and used excessive amounts of RAM.
23/05/2009 at 22:48 Anaphiel says:
@Weylund, glad to hear the prefetch thing helped.
STALKER’s memory usage actually makes some sense to me, as the game is so AI-driven… there are literally hundreds of script files all firing off and working in tandem, lots of routines to keep in sync, etc. And mods like this add to the overhead with their own AI and weather routines, not to mention the much larger textures and bump maps. So while I doubt the engine is especially efficient or optimized, it’s also doing a lot more than your typical FPS so I cut it some slack.
24/05/2009 at 16:51 tssk says:
Getting further. A clean install now results in crashing instead of black screen along with an error message. I did install the mods in the correct order. Was there anything else I needed to install?
24/05/2009 at 17:02 Heliocentric says:
Tell me your specs, if you have a gpu with less than 512 ram(stalker doesnt understand cards having 320 and see’s simply “more than 256″) you’ll need to go without graphics on anything other than a low/medium. Even a high end card if you don’t have 512 memory you are screwed.
But that’s just 1 issue, state your os and rough specs.
25/05/2009 at 21:00 tssk says:
NVIDIA 8800GT with 512meg. XP of course.
26/05/2009 at 09:45 ReapeR says:
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30/05/2009 at 00:13 sinister agent says:
The main thing from stopping me getting into STALKER is I can’t get past the first mission. Do I really have to lower myself to putting it on Easy? The starter pistol you get is so puny it seems like I need about 10 hits to take anyone down? Any help would be appreciated.
That mission had me spitting blood, too, and my first instinct in any game is to spend ages carefully scouting and sneaking and isolating people before offing them as quietly as possible. Stalker makes that nigh on impossible, though, while simultaneously making direct assault useless as well. I’m looking for mods to change a lot of things about the game right now, because I’ve been playing it for two days getting more and more irritated by its brokenness.
For the start, though, I found that the best thing to do is to sneak upstairs (or run up there – it all amounts to the same anyway since the bandits are practically psychic and will find you however careful you are) in the building on the left. Kill the bloke on the balcony and then retreat up to the roof, and you should be able to pick most of the guards off from above as they mooch about trying to work out what’s going on.
Oh, and if you’re not two feet away, and can’t go for a head shot, don’t even bother firing – it’d be like spitting at a tank.
30/05/2009 at 00:20 Serondal says:
What I did was go to the military base and wait for the military guys to come out on patrol then hide behind trees and snipe them in the head with my pistol until all 4 were dead. At this point you gotta be fast , run up and get their assault rifles and I believe they’ve got greandes? Another patroll will be coming along any second so you gotta get out of there but if you wait just out of their attack range you can toss grenades and them to great effect and get a ton of ammo right off the start. With an assault rifle the first mission is cake.
31/05/2009 at 18:34 Joshua says:
I guess I enjoy breaking games that want to break me.
I’m surprised that no one’s recommended wiping out the town of Cordon and looting all the guns / ammo / medkits from the corpses before you proceed to the first mission.
You’ll earn yourself a shotgun with plenty of ammo and a rifle. Slam the rifle on single-fire mode and proceed to meet up with your friends at the waypoint.
From there, allow your teammates to distract the bandits. You’ll want to flank them while they’re engaged. There’s a hole in the building on the right, iirc, and I’ve found that to be the perfect spot to lean in and take a few life-ending pot shots.
Remember to crouch or walk as you set yourself up for an ambush. The AI in STALKER is not psychic. It will not cheat. It can, however, hear your character and prepare for engagement with you based on sound. The game designers provided you with a sound meter in the top-left of your HUD. Learn to use it.
If things go tits-up, just sprint out of the enemies’ line of sight and do your best to ambush them again.
PS – Quicksave abuse. Save when you’re in an advantageous position. Save after a stealth kill. Save yourself some frustration. STALKER is not a game for the impatient… try to think of each engagement as a puzzle and intelligently utilize everything in your inventory to put yourself on top.
27/08/2010 at 04:59 Matt says:
I think what I did was help kill one guy and then grabbed his rifle. Plus more ammo.
02/12/2010 at 23:50 phenom_x8 says:
AWESOME !!
its my second playthrough with STALKER (the first one was uncomplete3 years ago).
Starting with a new game and feels like very different game than what I have been played before!
Its trully like a new experience. Thanks for this article RPS, thats why I <3 YOU so much!
07/01/2011 at 12:17 Dark King says:
Played this mod, loved it. And I was one of the few (?) who really enjoyed STALKER on release, bugs and all.
This mod has been updated since this review was published, and an optional add-on released:
*changes to AI to reduce the RADAR-esque NPC ability to hear you at 1km away
*improved NPC AI for general stuff
*optional pack for realistic weapons (one-shot kills are a lot more common now, and headshots on just about any enemy from any weapon will be lethal)
Definitely worth having another look to see the updates.