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STALKER
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antitype
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PostPosted: Fri May 25, 2007 6:23 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I just started playing and I'm really enjoying it! I'm not quite acclimated to using the PDA for tracking missions and I just end up kind of blindly following the grey arrow in my HUD, occasionally getting sidetracked by interesting happenings, but this seems to work well enough so far. I get killed a fucking LOT, though. I seem to be doing a bit better since picking up a saw-off shotgun.

I patched the game to 1.0003, but I haven't bothered to install the dual core patch for XP yet. I'm already having no trouble running the game at high detail in native resolution and getting smooth frames. Haven't bothered to try the noprefetch fix or anything like that. This game looks really nice!
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dhex
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PostPosted: Fri May 25, 2007 7:14 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

cycle: what?
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Redeye
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PostPosted: Fri May 25, 2007 12:22 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote


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PostPosted: Fri May 25, 2007 12:25 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

is ctrl alt del supposed to be funny?
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PostPosted: Fri May 25, 2007 12:31 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

No.
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dhex
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PostPosted: Fri May 25, 2007 12:32 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

i'm pretty sure it's some kind of convoluted argument for not teaching art in middle school.
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Scratchmonkey
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PostPosted: Fri May 25, 2007 12:35 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

It's been around so long that people sort of assume that it's accumulated some sort of humor, like uh, that other, more Linux-based comic.

Last edited by Scratchmonkey on Fri May 25, 2007 5:31 pm; edited 1 time in total
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Cycle
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PostPosted: Fri May 25, 2007 5:05 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

dhex wrote:
cycle: what?


i had a bad day and stalker did nothing to help ok

in other news, the huge plot revelation (ok, the second one) is kinda weak. it was way too fantasty sci-fi and kinda ruined the world for me.
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dhex
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PostPosted: Fri May 25, 2007 5:22 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

i could see that.

the ending sequence is pretty amazing though.
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PostPosted: Fri May 25, 2007 5:33 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I liked how they handled the endings though, even if it could have been implemented better. like, for the most part, the main plot seemed like a macguffin to keep you moving forward, and the real story happened when you explored the world around you. and when you finished the game, you got an ending depending on how you played the game, rather than just an end to the story. of course, if you played the game to actually find out who you were, you'd get the option to get the two best endings and also understand why the other endings aren't terribly good. so yeah, i liked that.
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Redeye
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PostPosted: Fri May 25, 2007 8:45 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

dessgeega wrote:
is ctrl alt del supposed to be funny?


I just threw it in there for the hell of it. I still haven't figured out what that page is supposed to mean.
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dhex
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PostPosted: Fri May 25, 2007 8:55 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

i think it's a variation on "this game is nothing like real life!"
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antitype
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PostPosted: Fri May 25, 2007 9:05 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

This game is fucking hard. I'm wondering if I'm moving out of my depth too quickly — a firefight in a scrapyard full of buses and helicopters alongside four dudes and against maybe ten bandits is punishing me over and over. Seriously, I can't take more than two or three hits before it's game over and my sawed-off is practically useless. What really irks me is that on my second attempt I ran around to the left and snuck up on a few of 'em, took each one out with a single shotgun blast, then sprinted back to reload and take out a few more. Collected my reward and everything, and then a few more bandits showed up and started firing on the guy. I thought, Hah! I can take these guys. They nailed me in one shot. I dunno, maybe I was being too reckless and my health was lower than I'd taken care to notice.

So now I'm on my umpteenth attempt and I'm about to let these guys fight their own fight. I guess there's other stuff I can do instead, huh?
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PostPosted: Tue May 29, 2007 9:07 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

combat is really hard until you get some decent guns and some decent armor. also the 1.003 patch really speeds up the armor and weapons degredation making the game somewhat harder (in that i'm stashing armor for the beginning of the end)

headshots are your friend, as is hiding behind stuff.

the shotgun is, with the exception of fighting mutants, pretty useless. even the cool combat shotguns you get later on.
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antitype
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PostPosted: Tue May 29, 2007 9:33 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Yeah, I've made a bit of headway since that last post. Got an AK, which with the zoom makes firing much more accurate and effective. I've found a couple of more powerful automatic rifles since then, too, but the excellent handling on the AK47 makes it a better weapon — the recoil on the bigger guns makes it really difficult to aim.

I'm at a point where I go back into a military camp after night has fallen and it's already fortified again. Taking on so many by myself is laughably difficult (even hiding and trying to pick them off from the rooftops), and I'm having trouble finding a way to sneak to my goal without getting caught and gunned down by five or six of 'em. I guess I could just move on to the next thing on my PDA.
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PostPosted: Tue May 29, 2007 9:52 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

i think i know where you are. you have a few choices. you can run for it (finding an artifact which helps increase your endurance, btw, is a key to being able to outrun things like dogs and bloodsuckers, as well as slow-ass army dudes) or you can climb up in one of the towers and take your precious time. remember that while the AI is pretty good at tracking you down (and very good at flanking) they're also not so hot at night. the great thing about headlamps is that you always know where to shoot...

i must say that stalker is my favorite game of 2007, and the most engaging experience i've had since playing through fear on the highest difficulty level. it's a fucking mess in parts but i can't put it down. (i'm saving up for a really cool suit right now before heading on to the north)
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The Great Unwashed
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PostPosted: Tue May 29, 2007 9:15 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

The one consistent thing I've found about Stalker's AI is that if you ever want to take out an entire military base, just sound the alarm, and run into a defensible dead-end corridoor. The soldiers will just run in at you one at a time and you can pick them off. They will continue this until all of them have been shot by you, in the face.

A room also works, but be careful to make sure there are no firing points from the windows, because the AI will take advantage of that, and shoot cho' campin' ass.
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antitype
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PostPosted: Sat Jun 02, 2007 10:40 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Played for a bit more tonight, and I think I'm finally getting the hang of killin' dudes. What I did was I killed one guy at the top of some stairs at the end of a hallway, grabbed his gun, and took off running back to the other end of the hallway where I would hide and peek around the corner, waiting for all the men who'd heard the gunfire to come snooping around. They all did the exact same thing: came up the stairs and aimed their guns/flashlights up where I'd just been, so I was staring at the backs of about seven of 'em. A few quick bursts caught two, and the rest scattered and took positions up and down the stairs. I just sat back and let 'em come down the hallway to me, usually one at a time. If I shot one, they'd all take cover again, and then I'd switch sides at the end of the hallway. If I'd just killed someone from the left side, that's where they'd go, straight into a corner, and I'd get the headshot from the right side before they even saw me.

A couple of things I'm a bit lost on, though:

I'm looking at my PDA and it says an item I'm looking for is a rusty chest on a rooftop, and I'm standing right where it looks like it should be and there's really nowhere else I'd imagine it would be (I mean, I doubt it's inside the building since the PDA says it'll be on the roof, and I can't see a way inside anyway). So what am I missing?

Also, isn't it possible to sell stuff somehow? I haven't come across any opportunities to do so yet, as far as I know, and I end up leaving so many guns and shit behind that I feel like I really ought to be pawning as much as I can.
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PostPosted: Sun Jun 03, 2007 2:37 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Look harder! I think I know which one you're talking about, actually. It's probably not worth it anyway.

You can trade with other STALKERS but it's uh, not very useful. Your best bet is to go to the traders to offload all your stuff. You met one at the start of the game, he's the guy who saved your life.
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antitype
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PostPosted: Sun Jun 03, 2007 8:04 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Well, there was another item that I was supposed to find stashed in a pipe nearby, but there wasn't anything there either. Then I realized that there was more that I had to do in that underground area where I encounter my first cloaking mutant (bloodsuckers, they're called?) — so maybe once I've completed that the other items will magically appear, or something. Now it's just a matter of killing the mutant without getting blown away by the bandits that hear me shooting.
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antitype
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PostPosted: Sun Jun 03, 2007 11:09 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Yeah, blah, I'm at a total loss. I've found Strelok's little hideout where you take a ladder up a pipe to find a small room with some new items in it, and then the game tells me I'm supposed to find Strelok's stash, which I'd found before (up in another room where you see a bag thrown in a corner, sort of on top of a big pile of rocks), and it was empty... so I go look again, and it's still empty. And then I run around in confusion until I get the "Task failed: item not found" message.

What the hell? Am I supposed to be looking for something else?
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PostPosted: Sun Jun 03, 2007 2:05 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

OK, so I found what I needed to find (those other stashes I was looking at weren't anything I needed for the job I was on, they were just some random empty stashes), and I've moved on to the Bar. Picked up a fast-firing AK and a scope for it along the way, and headshots are much easier now. At this point I'm trying to make my way through a building to free a Dutyer from prison, but the place is just crawling with bandits and it's giving me some trouble. I get a little bit sick of quickloading after a dozen times or so.

This game is really great, though.
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PostPosted: Tue Jun 12, 2007 9:11 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

i'm thinking of using my current save to keep enough money for the power armor or whatever it's called and then declaring war on both factions. i want to see if i can actually kill everyone in the damn game.
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PostPosted: Tue Oct 30, 2007 9:55 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Remember to check STALKER for Halloween easter eggs.


Do Ukrainians even do Halloween?
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Scratchmonkey
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PostPosted: Fri Dec 21, 2007 10:03 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I've just started playing Stalker. After clearing the farm of bandits, I discovered a hole in the fence over the railway embankment, allowing me to sneak through. I helped out Fox on the other side of the tracks and got the information I need in order to go north. However, I only had one bottle of vodka and was overall confused about how the whole anti-radiation thing works, so I went back to the beginning area and noodled around for a bit before returning to the Trader to get some more food and some anti-rads. Oh, on the way back across the railway embankment, I noted that some stalkers had begun a firefight with the military, who had moved away from the embankment, allowing me to run through as well as grab an SMG off of a fallen military man.

On my way out, I spotted a new group of stalkers underneath the road and stopped to check in on them. Then a group of about 10 bandits came over the nearby hill, taking out one of my new friends and pinning his down in a brutal firefight that required re-loading twice and involved a bunch of chasing each other around bushes. Eventually they were killed off and I had a load more SMGs, which I promptly went and sold off.

Finally, I made my way across the railway by sneaking across the top again, sadly found Fox's corpse and a truly large amount of those damn dogs. I'm about to take some anti-rads and hustle my ass to the Garbage. Overall, I'm pretty damn impressed. The graphics and sound do a great job of imparting the desolation and grittyness, while I agree with Mike that they really should have kept all the audio in Russian and just gone with subtitles.

I have the Steam version, so I have no idea how that works in terms of patches or applying future mods/tweaks, plus I don't have a paper manual, so things are more than a bit touch-and-go. Of all the games that I've been trying out on my new PC, I have to say that this is the most intriguing.
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PostPosted: Sat Dec 22, 2007 2:14 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Scratchmonkey wrote:
I have the Steam version, so I have no idea how that works in terms of patches or applying future mods/tweaks, plus I don't have a paper manual, so things are more than a bit touch-and-go.

I wouldn't mind hearing how that goes. I completely forgot about Stalker -- I get the feeling a lot of people did, actually -- but now that I have a computer that can run it, Steam is lookin' like a mighty convenient channel.
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PostPosted: Sun Dec 23, 2007 1:17 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Well, I've only had two crashes so far -- the latest one wiped out about 30 minutes of mindless questing for the guys in beginning area. On one hand, boo, on the other hand, it doesn't really set me back that much. Haven't been able to figure out what "version" it is or whether I'm supposed to patch it or how. One would think that Steam would automate these sorts of things.
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PostPosted: Sun Dec 23, 2007 4:17 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Scratchmonkey wrote:
Well, I've only had two crashes so far -- the latest one wiped out about 30 minutes of mindless questing for the guys in beginning area. On one hand, boo, on the other hand, it doesn't really set me back that much. Haven't been able to figure out what "version" it is or whether I'm supposed to patch it or how. One would think that Steam would automate these sorts of things.


Lower left corner of the title screen.
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PostPosted: Sun Dec 23, 2007 4:48 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Danke.

And yes, it's the most recent version of the patch. I've been having trouble lately with the game "hitching" -- it'll freeze for a couple of seconds and then continue on, every 10 minutes or so. I've had it crash back to the desktop on one of these hitches already. Not quite sure what's causing it -- it could be Stalker itself or it could be my computer, which has been giving me errors when trying to load Windows on boot lately.
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Redeye
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PostPosted: Sun Dec 23, 2007 4:58 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Scratchmonkey wrote:
Danke.

And yes, it's the most recent version of the patch. I've been having trouble lately with the game "hitching" -- it'll freeze for a couple of seconds and then continue on, every 10 minutes or so. I've had it crash back to the desktop on one of these hitches already. Not quite sure what's causing it -- it could be Stalker itself or it could be my computer, which has been giving me errors when trying to load Windows on boot lately.



I have huge freeze/lag problems due to stockpiling.

Too many items stored in a container.

Usually the freezing will happen in the same spot repeatedly.

So I guess there are load-zones within the areas.
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PostPosted: Sun Dec 23, 2007 5:18 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Ah, there is a crate in the military chokepoint at the embankment that I've been using as a storage container, so that might be the issue, since I'm around there all the time.
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dhex
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PostPosted: Sun Dec 23, 2007 10:01 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

yeah hitching becomes an issue with stockpiling. one of the major faux pas made by the game. (the other being the respawn rate)
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PostPosted: Mon Dec 24, 2007 1:02 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

when i get back from christmas, i expect a LETS PLAY STALKER thread.

i was gonna do a WATCH ME PLAY DAIKATANA thread but decided i'd rather write some real articles first.
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PostPosted: Tue Dec 25, 2007 10:34 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

OK, so you guys know that this is on sale on Steam for only $23 right?

I bought it.

Are there any non-crashing fan patches for this shit yet?
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PostPosted: Wed Dec 26, 2007 2:40 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

shaper we should play through it together. we can hold hands and stuff.
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PostPosted: Wed Dec 26, 2007 3:19 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Cycle wrote:
shaper we should play through it together. we can hold hands and stuff.



?

Does the campaign support multiplayer?

No.

You must mean IM/email/phone/etc.
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PostPosted: Wed Dec 26, 2007 3:22 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Shaper and I share a psychic connection.
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PostPosted: Wed Dec 26, 2007 8:57 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

shaper and everyone else

http://www.thefloatingpoint.org/main/news.php

i've only posted this about a billion times, bruh.
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PostPosted: Wed Dec 26, 2007 11:35 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Cycle wrote:
Shaper and I share a psychic connection.

This is totally true. But it's still downloading. I was going to start soon otherwise.
dhex wrote:
http://www.thefloatingpoint.org/main/news.php

I don't know what the hell this is... Is this a patch or a program you need to run in the background? There's not much instruction for those out of the loop.
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PostPosted: Wed Dec 26, 2007 11:39 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

jesus fucking christmas people. (holy shit that's time sensitive and actually works in this context!)

google is yer friend!

it's a patch/graphical overhaul that improves performance and stability for many users. myself included on my old rig. (the new one is so stable as to be insane)
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PostPosted: Wed Dec 26, 2007 12:31 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

also just saw this:

http://www.tweakguides.com/STALKER_1.html
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PostPosted: Wed Dec 26, 2007 12:34 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

dhex, are there any mods that make the bullet-spray system less flaky and more precise? I hated that aspect, along with how much dmg enemies could do to you in proportion to how much health they actually had. change those two aspects up about the game and I'm set. hopefully the patch doesn't break all the mods Sad
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PostPosted: Wed Dec 26, 2007 12:55 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

not that i know of, but by the end of the game i was headshot city, population all those poor motherfuckers who got in my way. only the very very end was rough when you had guys shooting rockets at you.
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PostPosted: Fri Apr 25, 2008 6:04 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

This is/was the most active Stalker thread I know of, so I'm bringing it back for my own purposes. I recently built a new computer, and Stalker was a very high priority, so I bought it on Steam for a paltry $20 and set off to do some research on patches and mods while it downloaded. I found out that Steam had provided me with the 1.005 or whatever patch, and while I would have preferred 1.004 I stuck with it, not seeing any way to change it. After much reading, I decided to play the game first with the Rebalanced mod, which includes a lot of other mods and aims to polish and improve the game without deviating from its creators' vision.

Unfortunately, the mod is not perfect. It unnecessarily changes the title screen (and its music) and brings in acoustic renditions of metal songs (I think) for the campfire loners to play. Mostly, though, I'm very happy with the mod, and I'll talk later about the few changes I'd like to make (though I don't know if I can, I might try eventually) as well as the ways in which the modded game does not go far enough.

What's important for me to note immediately is that Stalker is easily one of my favorite games ever. It walks a good many paces down the path toward being one of my dream games. As such, I'm extremely excited to see how GSC refines it in the upcoming Clear Sky as well as the Stalker game that comes after that. I also look forward to contrasting it with Fallout 3, with which I expect it will have much in common.

Stalker represents validation for me because it proves that the combination of MMORPG factors with an immersive first-person action experience can work extremely well, which is something that I have thought for some time. And if it were taken a big further and actually made into an MMO game, it would probably be the most exciting thing ever right there. I wait for the day, etc.

I haven't beaten Stalker yet. I've just gotten through lab X18, which was the scariest thing I've ever experienced and another good argument in my arsenal for making a Silent Hill game from an uninterrupted, first-person perspective.

I'm going to copy some notes I sent to a friend:

So for the last week I've been playing Stalker, and it might be my favorite game ever. It has some problems, but they're few (at this point) and I'm overwhelmingly impressed. This game is a masterpiece. How far did you play before stopping (and why did you stop?)? I just got done with lab X18, whose entrance is in the Dark Valley, and it was the scariest fucking thing ever. Scarier than Silent Hill. It was brilliant. I cried tears of fear. The snork and the burer and the red-tint and whine of bad psychic vibes that makes me tense up and the fucking crates and metal objects that float in the air and then come flying at me and the horrible sounds of very large things moving around somewhere and the clattering in the pipes and the almost music-like sounds of the place itself--Stalker has some of the best sound design of anything ever.

I'm hoping to find a better shotgun than my Winchester soon, but I'm very pleased with my AN-94 Abakan automatic rifle with its attached silencer, scope, and grenade launcher. Now that I have those attachments, it's better than the Enfield rifle I've been saving and that I've finally found ammo for. Actually, some of these weapons might be from my mod, so maybe you don't know what I'm on about, but the point is that weapon management and thinking about what I bring with me and choosing a good primary and secondary pair and making use of weapon features within environments by gaining high ground or employing night vision are all so damned satisfying. And there's nothing like a successful flanking maneuver.

I haven't managed weight well, though--I realized at one point that the fifty hand grenades I had with me each weighed like .20 kg and dropped almost all of them in a pile somewhere in Agroprom. And I'm so very thorough in my exploration and looting, but I bring back so little of what I find. Not that I need to make the sales--I've got over 100,000 rubles. It just makes me a little crazy to leave valuable weapons or armor or other salables behind.

Also the day-night cycle is beautiful and at a perfect scale; time moves neither too fast nor too slow, and I actually find myself thinking about how much time is left in the day or what I'll try to get done in the morning or when would be a good time to start my raid or is now a safe time to come up from the underground. And it starts to genuinely feel like you're living in the Zone. I can remember when I did yesterday on Zone time. I have things to get done and people to see, and I make mental plans and schedules to get them done. It's so fucking great, but it's also kind of exhausting after a long time, which is interesting.

The Stalker "Rebalanced" mod eliminates the time limits on quests you were talking about. Really, there are very few problems at all remaining with STALKER with this mod. There's the occasional buggy mission, though very rare: I have currently a camp defense mission that DOES have a time limit shown of one day, which I think means I need to defend for one day, but fuck if I'm going to just stand there for that whole time. So I fight off the guys who spawn in (and it's right by a travel point, so like six military guys will literally appear out of thin air in the middle of the camp) and use my sleeping bag. Sometimes I'll wake up and another wave will come in a few moments, but usually the mission will fail and reinitiate even though there's no new baddies or any change to the friendlies around. Also, about the friendlies, I'm supposed to be defending a Duty detachment, but there's just two Loners in the area. I eventually said fuck it and left. It was a mission that kind of got assigned to me automatically, so I don't think I can go to the barkeep and say "I'm not doing this" like you can with other missions. So it'll always be there. That annoys me. The other buggy one is a camp of bandits I'm supposed to wipe out, except there's no camp of bandits at the marker--there's actually a sizable camp of friendlies right fucking there. So I'll probably cancel that mission. There's also a permanent marker on my PDA map for this prisoner in the Dark Valley who walked into an Electro anomaly and died after I had saved him, presumably on his way to leaving the map.

Anyway, other than those weird things, the only other problem is that enemies can uh fucking shoot through cover, I swear to god. But hey, you learn to live with it. Otherwise, it's a perfect game with this mod. My dream game is an mmo of Stalker with players acting as gunsmiths and putting out contracts and a single, persistent world without borders between areas. One thing that bugs me about the game is that groups don't 1) push forward and establish new bases, so you don't get a very good sense for the factional power struggles, and 2) make smart use of the structural features of bases they do have. I really want to say to a group of Loners, alright, I've cleared out the bandits, now I want you to take seven men and set up an outpost over there. Place sentries here, here, and here, and repair this ladder so you can keep a lookout at the top of this structure here. And then a few days later I can come back and say, alright fellas, I've scouted a large enemy base to the north. It has two weaknesses that we can exploit: a sewage pipe that will put us in a flanking position at the rear of the compound and a tunnel that will give us an entry point to the middle of the base so we can come in shooting. We're not going to abandon this outpost, but I need three squads of volunteers to attack these two points as well as the front gate. We'll synchronize our attack by radio communication. Wolf, get these men together; we're leaving at sundown. This will be a night operation. Keep your lights off and shoot when you see theirs; bandits don't have night vision.

And etc. The game teases you with the possibilities of factional warfare not only with its missions but also with some little things you can do. For example, at the rookie village, Wolf asks you to provide improved weapons to his men, who can't afford much of anything because they're all n00bs. So I gathered a bunch of AK-74s and other weapons that are a lot better than the MP pistols they had and dropped them on the ground in front of each guy so they would pick them up and equip them. This is the kind of thing that makes me yearn for the ability to take on a more significant role in leading the group. So yeah, for this reason in particular a Stalker MMO is my dream game because you're just not going to be able to do that stuff with AI NPCs. And I love the idea of having players craft and modify weapons and gear. You find unique weapons in the game as it is that mention some Freedom gunsmith who drank too much vodka while working on this AK, so it's permanently set to full auto but has a ridiculous rate of fire. I like that. And the Stalker suit description says it's made by "folk craftsmen" by combining radiation protection with a bulletproof suit. I mean, the game tickles me with its huge amount of equipment--there isn't just night vision, for crying out loud; there are actually different generations of night vision, which produce results of varying quality. That's so awesome! Plus, of course, with its mission structure, the game is basically an offline single-player MMO. And I have mixed feelings about that in principle, but goddamn are the results phenomenal here. I can't wait to see what they do with Clear Sky and the next one. I kind of think they do intend to make a Stalker MMO at some point just from how much the game already feels like one.

Oh, awesome! I just checked out the website for Clear Sky and the features shown include "global war of factions" and "ability to join any faction and lead it to victory"! Yes! More reading reveals that there will be RTS-like features to the global faction war thing, with resources, control points, etc. Man, August 29th is a long ways away, but I can use that time to finish Stalker and then play it a second time.

End notes to friend!

So the rebelanced mod, as I mentioned, doesn't go far enough in some ways or goes too far in others. Its only available difficulty is Master, which I take to mean that Master was the starting point for all the rebalancing, not that the mod is supposed to be very hard. And it's not. I've done a lot of dying, especially early on, but it's not hard. It should be harder than this. One problem is that this and many other mods drastically increase the number of artifact slots, so I have like eight Stone Flowers equipped, making me very bulletproof. My primary concern when I get shot is the damage to my suit's condition. Also, weight has been completely removed for foodstuffs and some other things. Artifacts, bandages, canned food, vodka, and more are totally weightless. I have more than 100 each of bandages, bottles of vodka, and cans of food. I almost never have to use medkits because my natural healing rate is very high, so I have more than fifty regular ones alone. I have more than one-thousand rounds for my primary weapon (I think they are 5.35x.45 rounds--the ones used by assault rifles), so I don't think that surviving the zombie wasteland is going to be quite as intense when I get there. I've dropped huge numbers of basic pistol ammo clips and hand grenades to prioritize weight--in other words, those things are too abundant. As mentioned, I have over 100,000 RU--mostly from questing--and I've almost never spent anything. I do more hoarding than selling, though I try to sell when I am in an area near loners with weight to spare and can just push over some bandits and sell their arms. Armor is rare to come by, and I'm pleased with that.

I want to fix these things and make the game harder. I think the best thing to do would be to make it so that bandits and military men don't return to areas from which you've wiped them out for at least three days, if not more. Less people to kill means less places to take resources. I remember how satisfying stashes were in the beginning of the game, but they've all-but lost meaning to me now. I want to cut down on the resources available to me. Another thing is to reduce the artifact slots back to five, of course. I rarely bother to eat or use medkits because my healing and endurance are so high. I want to maintain the earliest impressions that I had of how difficult mere survival is here. Does anyone have suggestions for other changes or for how I might implement these? I figure that adding weight to some items won't be that hard. I also want to return the guitar songs and title screens to their originals.

These are fixes. There are also ways in which I would like to further change the game. I want to have an even wider variety of weaponry and other equipment lying about; I'm sure the weapon models are already out there, but I'd have to find a way to incorporate them into the game. I wouldn't mind having gunsmiths here and there who can modify weapons (raising one attribute at the expense of a logical opposite) for money, but I don't know how such a thing would be implemented. I want to change some writing, especially "See you!", which bothered the hell out of me in the beginning of the game. We're not meeting each other in the fucking mall here. "Okay, see you in class! Have fun with Josh; tee-hee!" I'd like missions to come from a wider variety of dudes, which is one change planned for Clear Sky. I'd like there to be women in the game. =( WTF. The only lady Stalkers are in fan art.

It's way too ambitious, but I'd like to have loners actually move forward and take locations that are emptied of bandits or whomever. More feasibly perhaps, I would love to have cover fixed so that enemies can no longer fire at me through concrete walls and columns. I'd like to have that tunnel in the starting area that goes to Dark Valley become two-way after its first use.

My favorite idea would be to have lots of maps and blueprints and schematics and satellite photos that the player can/has to cross-reference in planning routes or finding ways around. But that's the kind of thing that would certainly need to be designed into the game from the start, and anyway I always wish for that sort of informational empowerment in every game.

Anyone have any other wishlist items for the game--or any suggestions on how I could actually go about modding some of these things in?

Obviously, there are all kinds of futuristic game features that could improve Stalker. For example, it would be nice if sleep deprivation caused blurred vision, shaky hands, and hallucinations. It would be really, really nice if FPS games didn't require you to have only the two options of pointing your gun straight ahead or having no gun equipped, providing instead a new and mind-blowing ability to hold a weapon in a lowered position when around allies. And naturally, the game could benefit from writers and much more interactive and distinct NPCs. And the mini-zone layout of the game world is a shame. But what's here right now, while incomplete, is very, very compelling.

By the way, this is the first time I tried turning off crosshairs in a game (because every weapon has an iron-sights or scope view), and I absolutely love it. I still fire "from the hip" sometimes, and it's great with no cross-hair. I kept the cross-hairs off when I got Call of Duty 4, too, and it's great there, as well. By the way, I think the weapons feel better in Stalker than in CoD4, which is kind of amazing.
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jjsimpso
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PostPosted: Fri Apr 25, 2008 10:08 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I didn't read your entire post internisus, but I completely agree on X18 -- far more creepy than anything I've played in an actual survival horror game. Also, when I went through that section I was home alone. It was one of those moments where I was so engrossed in the game that I didn't notice it was getting dark outside, and thus I was playing alone in a dark house without any lights on.
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Scratchmonkey
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PostPosted: Fri Apr 25, 2008 12:20 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

RE: The bugged bandit attack mission, I'm guessing it's for the Loner group that's hanging out in the factory-type building on the West side of the Garbage -- the bandits that attack there tend to spawn around the railway tunnel to the west of that, sometimes a little south, in those concrete slabs. They often get into fights with Flesh and Dogs, so you have to wander out there and find them to get that mission to resolve.

In any case, you shouldn't get too hung up on getting 100% on your missions, since the game is so incredibly buggy that pulling that off is going to be near-impossible.
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shrug
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PostPosted: Fri Apr 25, 2008 2:40 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

internisus, I wonder how you'll take to the end game.

Actually I'd be curious to know how the last few hours of the game with rebalanced running compare to vanilla STALKER. I actually tried going back and playing with Rebalanced after I beat the game, but couldn't squeeze acceptable performance out before getting distracted.
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Scratchmonkey
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PostPosted: Sat Apr 26, 2008 11:46 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Six wrote:
Scratchmonkey wrote:
I have the Steam version, so I have no idea how that works in terms of patches or applying future mods/tweaks, plus I don't have a paper manual, so things are more than a bit touch-and-go.

I wouldn't mind hearing how that goes. I completely forgot about Stalker -- I get the feeling a lot of people did, actually -- but now that I have a computer that can run it, Steam is lookin' like a mighty convenient channel.


I have now successfully applied at least one mod via Steam -- and I know intern has done this as well with the Rebalanced mod. Basically if you go into Steam\Steamapps\Common\, there's a Stalker folder, in which you can apply the mods (since all the ones I've seen have been zip files that you're just overwriting with).

I just got back from a trip to the Lake and man, the respawn is pretty horrific, I had just cleared out an area and on my return trip I got ambushed by a bloodsucker, two snorks, three mega-dogs and two of those little rat fuckers as well. I spent probably too much time sitting on top of that big construction area picking them off with the GP 37 rather than run around on the ground with them.
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Scratchmonkey
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PostPosted: Sat Apr 26, 2008 1:40 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Scratchmonkey wrote:
I have now successfully applied at least one mod via Steam


Unfortunately, this is not true. Applying the mod now crashes the game when I try and load saves made after applying the mod. Saves from before application appear to be okay. Right now it seems like my only option is to backup my saves and then reinstall. Bugger!

(Either that or try and play through the game without quitting.)
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Worm
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PostPosted: Sun Apr 27, 2008 9:43 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

If the bullet damage still scales up toward the end of the game it hasn't fixed anything.
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