**The Official S.T.A.L.K.E.R Shadow Of Chernobyl Thread**

Flammy said:
The first thing I noticed was how I was jsut chucked into the game with little or no clue as to what was what.
To be honest, I don't even know what S.T.A.L.K.E.R. stands for, I was just found by god knows who, god knows where, and brought to the table in some basement and they called me "The marked one". No explanation to who I was before and what was I doing in the area.


What are the purple icons with the 3 little triangles on the map for?
Stashes.

What does the number underneath the minimap represent?
Number of named enemies in the area intercepted by your PDA. That's why when you point at them in the game they have names and ranks.

Where can I find artifacts, do I have to do something to the anomaly?
Some maps are littered with them, they appear in a radioactive glow, usually pink, after anomaly snoops through the area and they seem to be moving ever so slightly with time.

Will I need to eat or sleep?
That's what bread, sausages and tins are for. Fork and knife marker to the right of the screen means you are hungry. The more red it becomes the more severe your hunger is.

Why do things keep appearing on my map randomly?
Respawns usually mean that area is needed for some task. If you finish off all the enemies or animals while going through the area but then get contract to kill them again it would be silly to find nothing's there, so the game respawns some areas in ridiculous way for "future use".

Why does my PDA say it has new info when it doesn't?
It's always in one of the menus on the bottom, sometimes it's data from someone else's PDA when you search their boddies or stuff like that. I agree it's a mess.

WHats the point of the ranking system?
The one with the biggest pointage gets a holiday in Ural with Svietlana. Seriously though, I think it's just purely for bigdickism.

The reward is usually money, which I have yet to find a reasonable use for as no-one seems to have anything worth trading.
I agree, unless you are some kind of artefact freak and you just have to have some powerups (which are expensive and you would literally have to try and trade with every character in the game to find some of them) money has no value in that game whatsoever. I run around back and forth for ages gathering artefacts to try and get to firt 100,000 expecting for a barman to pull out some mighty quake rpg from under the table but it just doesn't happen.

Combat is frustrating. All the weapons I have used so far are INCREDIBLY inaccurate at range, but enemies seem to have the dreaded long-distance eagle eye shooting skills.
To be fair, at later stage you do find some pretty sweet weapons with scopes that shoot the monkeys with 2 bullets through the chest but at that stage their rifles and sills are just ridiculous - I've just sturmed the base where solders seem to be shooting through crates and cars I ducked behind and bullets keep hitting me even when I hide behind armed transporter, so it's laser precision and almost concrete piercing bullets. Which I wouldn't mind that much if it wasn't for the fact every time you quick load the game it takes flipping ages. If you have to reload the game 5 times for each square yard of the map before you figure out where the sniper is it gets pretty tiresome.

Having to shoot a baddie 5 or 6 times with a submachine gun in order to kill them isnt much fun either, especially in the sections where I had to kill literally about 30 bandits to get to the checkpoint.
It's hitzone gone wrong - if they are further than point blank aim at top of their head, it seems to be hitting them mostly in their neck, aiming at their feet often hits their torso. Single shots only, recoil of bursts always send your bullets through the air unless point blank.

Enemies seem to spot me crouching in a bush from 300 metres away too, so stealth hasn't really been an option so far.
So true, even when you make literally no noise on the indicator at all they just see you in the deepest bushes like you were wearing man united t-shirt.

Its buggy too, why is there a quicksave button (F5 I think), but no quickload?
F6 is quick save, either F7 or F8 is quick load. It's definitelly not F9 by default.


All in all, I'm getting tired of the bugs too, which is a shame, considering anticipation and possibilities. Sometimes you can see just how badly coded it is, it runs 30fps, then you move round the corner and for no reason at all at the first sight of some badly coded anomaly or sprites in field of view the whole screen starts jerking at 2 fps. And then tasks, mid way through getting there you get message "Defend (here name of the camp) failed", no explanation why, there was no time limit, you turn around, run to the same place, speak to the person and they give you the same assignement again. Sometimes you don't ever finish tasks because somehow the game doesn't register it properly, you get underground, you find Strelok's stash, find his pen drive thingy, get out of the underground but not the correct way and so your mission is never finished as "Find your way out of underground" is never acknowledged. Well, I'm out, I'm above the ground, am I not? Was I supposed to make it in a particular fashion or something? If so, why are there no details about it "you were supposed to find you way out of underground by jumping like bunny and dragging all corpses". Or something.
If you walk into a place sometimes half of characters want to give you assignments, and if you want to save some time the logical thing would be to get all assignments in one go, then go and do them. But by the time you finish second or third one half of the remaining ones just fail for no reason. So it would seem you are supposed to go, do one assignment 3 maps away, then come back, spending 15 minutes running though empty maps, get another assignment and so on, so forth. Mess. Just mess. If at least you could spend that money and buy yourself some vehicle, or something, you know, just drive through, or teleport yourself using some anomaly, whatever.
Next thing is AI logic. You do some assignment for some loners, they are yellow, you do another assignement for the same loners, they are still yellow, you run by their shelter chased by enemies and they don't even pull out their guns to help you. Eh? How about you do something for me bangholes. Here's a cookie and a can of Stalker.

I know I will uninstall it in a day or two. It's just too resource hungry, while looking like a bad graphics version of HL2 and loads too long (and I thought Battlefield 1942 load times were a killer)...
 
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Ulfhedjinn said:
Any card can do HDR+AA in this game because the AA is not real AA.

Come again :confused: The reason some games can use both has nothing to do with anything being "real" or not!

Put simply, there are different ways of implementing HDR. One of them uses the same part of most graphics cards as AA does, hence you can only use one at once. The other kind doesn't use that part and so can work together on any card.

v0n said:
All in all, I'm getting tired of the bugs too, which is a shame, considering anticipation and possibilities. Sometimes you can see just how badly coded it is, it runs 30fps, then you move round the corner and for no reason at all at the first sight of some badly coded anomaly or sprites in field of view the whole screen starts jerking at 2 fps.

I know I will uninstall it in a day or two. It's just too resource hungry, while looking like a bad graphics version of HL2 and loads too long (and I thought Battlefield 1942 load times were a killer)...

I think there is something wrong with your machine. My PC is not fantastic, yet it runs at a decent frame rate constantly, no matter what is going on. No graphical bugs to speak of, no jerking, no slow down. Also I think the graphics look pretty good. The people look a little strange at times, but on the whole I think it is pretty nice looking.

As for load times, again I think there is something wrong, unless you seem to think that any game can load a map the size of Stalkers in milliseconds. Mine takes about 15 to 20 seconds, which I think is awesome.

Sure the game has some annoying bugs, but damn!
 
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not sure what the loading issue is. i had major crashing at first until i took of dynamic lighting(8800gtx 3.5Ghz c2d, vistsa 64), the loading was pretty damn quick, talking 20, maybe 30 seconds sometimes less. since i put the "fix" for vista/8800gtx on i can now use dynamic lighting without any crashing but performance is shocking. loading levels has gone from sometimes 15 seconds to upwards of one minute, sometimes longer on a very good system. not a clue why, will look into it and see if anything can be done.

buggy stuff, yes, side missions that can be done in stupid orders which essentially make other missions even more pointless. lack of any, ANY reason to do side missions. i think one of the very worst things of the game is that your main mission is to kill stevlok, if you woke up with no memory and saw a thing saying to kill him, thats your only link to who you might be, surely your mission would be to find him and find out who you are, just a pet peeve, premise of main mission seems retarded ;)


errm, artifacts all over, once you find one you'll realise how obvious they "can" be and work out where to get them. theres utterly nothing to buy, nothing to gain from any side missions, though a few bugs mean you can finish missions and keep cool stuff, or well, it doesn't matter if you finish missions so get missions, go get stuff, guns, or whatever they want and just keep them.

stupidest thing, tunder s14 you CAN fire in BURSTS and at HUGE RANGE and have 2-3 bullets hit the target. almost every time i use that gun i fire two 3 round bursts at basically any range and target goes down. most horribly done targeting/damage system i've come across in games. doesn't stop the game being fun, but what bugs me is if i was incharge of this project it would have come out with a better story line, fixed side missions, side missions with rewards and reason that increase depth of storyline and affect parts of the game properly. also, if you go find the right stuff as soon as you can get to them, you can be semi invunerable with super accurate powerful weapons about 1/4 of the game in, and at that point the game is unbelievable easy, so i would also scale the difficulty level of the game way better.

if a mod group can fix all the stuff i said this game could, could have been game of the decade, unbelievable potential and almost completely wasted :(
 
also, afaik AA is simply broken, completely, i don't think AA works even with dynamic lighting turned off. tis retarded.

i get some issues, way more since the supposed fix for vista/8800gtx, where it will stutter, go down to very low fps randomly, maybe turning a corner to see a lot of stuff and some fancy lightning comes down and lights everything differently. however if i stand still the frame rate goes back up to 50-90fps depening on scene(1680x1050, everything utterly maxed out), then i can move and it will stay fine framerates even with lightning going, then randomly again framerate will drop. as the card can clearly do all the effects at higher framerate and doesn't do it while standing still i'm 95% sure its down to loading stuff into mem/from mem as you move as it preloads info for map you should be coming to. not sure if for some reason its doing it wrong, or whats going on. but different settings and it seems to work fine, so i think something in game, some setting is screwing with how its loading new bits of map into memory.
 
I have 0 problems running dynamic lighting and AA on XP, on a 7800GT no less. No lag, no stutter, no slowdown, no jerkiness, no problem :D Granted I am not at totally max everything, most are at the 3/4 or above though. With 8xAF and 2xAA at 1280*1024

Your problem can be summed up with one word. Vista.

Stalker does not support Vista. Most problems people are having with it are due to them using Vista. Use XP and it's great!
 
awww i dont wanna start again :'( noooooo ill play to the end then mebbe ill install the patch. But saying that Crysis is out in 3 days which is DX10 and supports vista :D mmmm what should I do :P
 
I'm angry..... i completed a few missions for the first level then i went to the second without finishing the mission ie talking to the person, now i'm in no mans land failing all the missions i've completed because time ran out and i didn't go to finish the mission. Sigh. Also i just came out of the tunnel to steal those documents and there's what 20 men around ? how am i meant to get to the documents ?
 
Dmack said:
Also i just came out of the tunnel to steal those documents and there's what 20 men around ? how am i meant to get to the documents ?

Get the shotgun out, run in, kill anything directly in front of you, don't start picking fights, grab the documents and run out.

Its not worth trying to fight off the military guys, once you get to the 100 rad bar, your get better armour/weapons.
 
bazza64 said:
Patch is out, but no save game compatability.. :rolleyes:

http://board.oblivion-lost.de/showthread.php?t=8540

Thats really frustrating, while i have enjoyed the game, there is no way i want to redo whats taken me the best part of 25 hours to do so far, iv been really careful not to fail any missions on master difficulty i have done a lot of the side missions, i have a small fortune in money and started to get some kick ass weapons and am near invinvible from radiation, lightning, chemical burns. I guess i will continue to play and complete it then upgrade and see if it makes a big difference.
 
No savegame compatibility pretty much does it for me - I'm going to put that game back in the drawer and wait until at least 5 patches are out - this is going to be another braveheart - every time they will fix the bugs you will have to start anew only because devs can't port savegames between patches. My time is too valuable to get jerked around by bad development.
 
dbmzk1 said:
Come again :confused: The reason some games can use both has nothing to do with anything being "real" or not!

Put simply, there are different ways of implementing HDR. One of them uses the same part of most graphics cards as AA does, hence you can only use one at once. The other kind doesn't use that part and so can work together on any card.
You're thinking of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion vs. Half Life 2: Episode One here, not S.T.A.L.K.E.R. :o

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.'s X-Ray engine uses deferred rendering and it doesn't support multisampling or supersampling full-scene antialiasing as we know it, at all. Instead, when you activate it, it adds a blurring effect to edges of most on-screen objects. This is why the antialiasing effect in this game looks crap, and doesn't even show on some things. :)
 
After playing some more I agree with most comments made about stuff about the PDA, the limited info waht everything means and the lack of (real) AA.

But I think I will keep on going as I do like the athmosphere of the game.

As for the very strong/accurate enemies, maybe it is intentional and the game is more meant as a survival game like Resident Evil than a FPS where you have to kill verything in sight?

Edit:
There are some good things in the patch, read this thread: http://board.oblivion-lost.de/showthread.php?t=8540

- Money is usefull now as you can buy stuff.
- Enemies don't have super hearing or sight so it is possible to hide.
- The game runs a bit smoother
- Lots more things, the full ist is on page one of the thread.

The only disadvantage is that save games do not work forcing you to start at the beginning.
 
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How about cry when Crysis doesn't appear in 3 days, as its months away yet. :D

Well ive patched mine, luckily id only done a couple of missions so wasnt that far in, only done the flashdrive, and that reprasentative one, i did have a canny amount of ammo, and a few decent wepaons like the machine guns etc... though, and a fair bit of money off trading stuff in, but must be a killer for all those who got pretty far into it, if id been far in id have just carried on unpatched, then maybe when id finished it off, patched it and started again.

Anyone noticed if its running better.
 
dbmzk1 said:
I think there is something wrong with your machine. My PC is not fantastic, yet it runs at a decent frame rate constantly, no matter what is going on. No graphical bugs to speak of, no jerking, no slow down.
It is definitely something related to the way the game loads sprites and textures in field of view, sometimes it's quick, but sometimes I move round the corner, to find few solders and cars and you just see that floppy icon flashing rapidly in the right bottom corner and frame rate just plummets. Some maps are well coded, like first map, there is only one line, as you move between loners camp and enemy border camp to the right on the main road, about half way through there is a slight slowdown as the game loads (I presume) the base and renders it out of the fog.
Very prenounced on some maps - I don't remember the name but there is a small map with a loner base in the middle, located in some form of railway garage, it's guarded from a wrong side by two loners while enemy attacks them from the other. Every single time you enter that map next to the rail tunnel there are enemies behind concrete barricade, and every single time the screen keeps jerking at 10 fps for about a minute after you enter the map while enemy is shooting at you...
Also I think the graphics look pretty good. The people look a little strange at times, but on the whole I think it is pretty nice looking.

If you compare it to - for example - HL2 Lost Coast, which in terms of HDR looks, facial and body expressions, landscape features and most of all - overall performance beats the crap out of STALKER at any given resolution - it's really nothing to write home about. In terms of graphics S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is effectively a 2004 DX9 game that is so badly coded it runs just about so-so in 2007 with everything set to 3/4's... I know it was massively delayed by developers and effectively rushed to the market just so they don't have to spend another 4 years coding it with DX10, but this was supposed to be the the game, the WOW of last year, and to be honest, it delivered something that looks like 6 months old alpha of HL2 mod with unfinished sprites, borrowed textures and bits like invisible enemies outside your field of view shooting through concrete walls from 200 yards away still all over the place. I'm talking game where your highly trained soldier was never taught how to go prone, where your stance has no impact on your shooting precision. Game where items magically appear in previously looted stashes, enemies have eyes on the back of their head regardless of your stealth and trees have a foot thick bulletproof invisible aura around their trunks through which enemies can initially shoot you but when the approach you they just can't see you reloading your two smoking barrels right in front of them. The game where you need to shoot someone from few hundred yards 10 times with sniper scope equipped AK47 just to discover after approaching them they almost killed you with a precise single shot to your forehead from what appears to be a pea shooter for squirrels. In other words, the game you would expect Eidos or Electronic Arts to release as beta testing at £39.99 a pop in retail stores. ;)

As for load times, again I think there is something wrong, unless you seem to think that any game can load a map the size of Stalkers in milliseconds. Mine takes about 15 to 20 seconds, which I think is awesome.
Definitely minutes here. Loading this, loading that, connecting. Running it as administrator seems to be accelerating things a little, but it's marginal difference. It might be Vista related mind you.
 
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I put all settings on max, except static lighting, and the crosshair's disappeared. The round crosshair is there when I'm unarmed, but equipping a pistol or rifle gets rid of it. Crosshair is enabled in the options. Help me? :(
 
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