The Gamer's Quarter

[Scratchmonkey]

Alright, so I guess I bumbled into writing this up when I'd much rather be boosting my post count in the Dwarf Fortress thread, which nobody reads anyway (I kid, I kid).

Firstly, I don't think we should go the route of the SA Let's Play thing. For one, it's what they do and aping it seems like we're biting them pretty hard. For two, that sort of thing doesn't really work with Stalker (also I refuse to type out the acronym other than the title of this thread) because where do you draw the line? "Hey guys, do I shoot this guy?" "Which area should I go to next?" It's a bit muddled. For third, you really need a forum with a large user base where people are constantly posting. Maybe it's just me; I don't really have the time to slowly rotate in my office chair for several hours waiting to hear if somebody cares whether I should go into the manhole or try and follow that group of bandits that are marching off somewheres.

Instead, I propose that a bunch of people play Stalker and post screenshots and stories about their game so far. If people want forum folks to make decisions for 'em and do something closer to the Let's Play ideal, that's cool too (I just don't think it's the only thing that should be going on). Hopefully we get enough people doing this and we start to get a sense of different choices and how the game plays out, especially if we get people who have played through the game straight-up before and are down for some experimentation (Cycle? dhex?).

I'm not going to post anything beyond this because 1. I want to see if people hate this real bad and want to do a straight-up forum-guided playthrough and 2. it's late, cold and I'm debating about taking a bath before bed (the debate involves not only bath vs. no bath; also bubbles vs. no bubbles and bubbles vs. aromatic powder).

[Cycle]

I'd like to partake in this, but I'm going to be busy for the next few weeks.

Also the game looks pretty ugly on my computer.
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[dhex]

i will post some teaser shots.








i'm also curious to see how this game effects newcomers. i think beyond being the best of '07, it's one of the more interesting experiences in gaming recently. people seem to really love or really hate it, as opposed to something like portal, which everyone at least likes, if not loves.
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[Shapermc]

I played for like 15 minutes last night because i was pretty much just testing the game. I had some major audio related issues (the voiceover would cut out early, take to long to start, or skip to the next audio track too quickly: "I'd like to know if -cut- Don't go out there alone."). So my initial experiences have been a little jarring. I died pretty quickly after getting in a fight because A) the weapons work differently than many games, B) I couldn't tell how much weapons were hurting me, and C) I couldn't tell who were good guys and who were bad from a distance.

I'll play a bit more when I can take some screens. What's the default SS button? Also, dhex, what resolution are you playing on?
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“The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932

"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!"

[dhex]

1280x720

screenshot is something or other...i don't remember. f5?
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[Shapermc]

I got to "the next level" and, well, I had a great journey to get there. The only thing that seems to escape me is that I feel like I should be able to sell/buy stuff but haven't found a way to do this yet (please only tell me if i've missed something completely obvious, otherwise let me find out).

Anyways, I took a bunch of lovely picture, but have NO IDEA where the hell they got dumped to! It's irritating because this is like the third game that had a screenshot button but I don't know where the screens were dumped to.
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“The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932

"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!"

[Cycle]

You can actually sell stuff to the guy who saved you at the start of the game. He is one of a few merchants.

I don't know where the screens are!
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[Shapermc]

[ee_emm_ecks]

so ronreee

[dhex]

screenshots go into whatever your shared docs folder is (my documents --> my games is the default on xp iirc)

as for how far you should go, do some local missions first, or just wander around. the zone is yours!
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[Scratchmonkey]

Dude this game is full of mutant dogs to keep you company, to keep you warm at night.

I'm still stalled out at the first underground section -- there's too many friends around for the holidays for me to justify much game-playin'.

[Harveyjames]

[Scratchmonkey]

I guess this thread might as well be merged with the old Stalker thread then. Although I think people posting screens of as they go through the game would be a bit different than what we normally do in terms of discussing games; however, it doesn't really seem like people are that interested in it (or doing a traditional Let's Play for that matter), so there you go.

[simplicio]

I'd love to! But STALKER killed my last computer after a few hours back in April, and I haven't rebuilt it yet. : (
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"Worlds turn the new machine to thee. To thee. Though, thine the new machine space."
-Kurt Schwitters, 1919

[Shapermc]

Found the screen shots!

Before my first job I heard a noise I wasn't expecting and when I looked around I found a man playing a guitar. It isn't ever day you find someone just randomly playing a guitar singing songs in russian, so I took a picture.

After my first job the entire crew I went with was dead. Looking around to loot any corpse I could find I ran across a barn wall with something hanging from the side of it. Ravens flying overhead here seem fitting for a noosed up skeleton. (unfortunately this image scaled poorly and ... I saved over the original. Sorry if it's difficult to make out as I'm using GiMP since my copy of photoshop is on the laptop)

I was tasked with getting some info and had to pass the railways to do so. I found what seemed like the way I was supposed to go, but there were some interesting (and deadly) electric anomalies. I went to scope out an alternate route but it was blocked off by military with much better guns and supplies. (aside: while snooping around where I took the next shot I fell out of a train car over this area in the above photo. When I did I was instantly getting shot at, but I fell right into their cache of supplies. I quickly grabbed everything and tried to hide from the military but they hunted me down and killed me, even thought I took one out with some well placed headshots using my pistol.)

This was a just wonderful looking vista near the collapsed train bridge. There are some really tall trees way out there in the zone.
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“The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932

"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!"

[Scratchmonkey]

Once you get a decent SMG (should be bandits with a Viper around the other side of the embankment) it's relatively easy to take out the military at that post, which will not only give you a free passage to the next area instead of sneaking around through the hole in the fence (it's to the east); it'll also give a better SMG.

[Harveyjames]

[Harveyjames]

Oh shit

I didn't realise SA had a whole Let's Play forum. They've got that poo poo down to a fine art. Seriously, I don't think any of us would be up to doing something on that level. You can take that as either a throwdown or a blunt statement of fact.

Also: HOLY CRAP

[Scratchmonkey]

From shortly inside the first underground section:



I am about to get a nasty surprise*.

The green glowing stuff is some sort of new anomaly. I'm still not exactly sure how to deal with anomalies that have artifacts in them as I seem to die as soon as I get the anomalies themselves, which you would have to do to get the artifacts. Do you need to use anti-rads somehow? Do you have to wait for later to get some other kind of protection? Am I just doing it wrong?

The reddish light down at the end of the room is actually a rotating red light that has sort of a clicking sound to it. The effect is very uh, effective, in that it makes me want to poo my pants and run back upstairs.

* - To my horror, this was not the nastiest surprise that this underground section was to offer.

[Cycle]

[simplicio]

Yeah, I remember jumping about at the end of that section in both terror and delight.
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"Worlds turn the new machine to thee. To thee. Though, thine the new machine space."
-Kurt Schwitters, 1919

[Scratchmonkey]

The worst part is that I couldn't figure out how to get to the stash which you're supposed to get to (I missed the ladder/stairs/sign saying "GO HERE DUMMY" so I figured I had to backtrack after going up a bit later in the level, only to have it uh, not work out that way), so now I get to revert to an earlier save and go through the section again.

That screenshot was also taken shortly before I tossed the Viper-5 to the curb and just started rolling with the AK74. Putting it on single-shot and using crouch and lean while hiding behind cover is quite effective against the military guys.

[dhex]

ps stalker is now 23 bucks on steam until jan 1.
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[dhex]

also the artifact in question if you go back the way you came you will see how to get it.
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[ryan]

I shall join you gents shortly! I bought Stalker, super jazzed about it, then kind of forgot I even owned it. I'm going to have to start abusing flickr, I see.
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Come to me, Mordel. We shall depart.

[Redeye]

[dhex]

i always walked around the anomaly myself.
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[Shapermc]

After getting near the Garbage it started to storm pretty bad. (aside: I can't describe how hard it is to time a ss to a lightning strike.)
When I got into the STALKER area of the Garbage they alerted me to a small bandit problem which I was graciously asked to help with. Considering that I snuck a peek to see about a dozen of them coming in the back door I decided it was best to help.

After this I went further into the Garbage to find out more about this fellow whom I'm to kill: Strolnek or something of the like. Apparently the person who has more information is in some sort of abandoned factory which is over-run by bandits (where are all these damn bandits coming from anyways?). Luckily I snuck around the back door, on accident, and came up behind all the bandits conveniently distracted by the other stalkers at the front of the building. I took'm out no problem then got the information I was looking for. Apparently the Mole has better info though, so I'm going to look for him next.



When nearing El Topo's location I was informed by a passing Stalker that the military has decided to over run the plant. The mole sends out a broadcast that he's cornered and needs desperate help. A couple grenades later and we're running off the compound into a "safe" area... the underground sewers.



I'm still not sure how some parts of this world get electricity or why there's maintence in these tunnels, but honestly I'm not too sure about what's going on yet at all. I know that I need to be light footed to sneak around these tunnels though, so I try to dump some excess weight.



Dumping 700+ rounds of 9mm pistol ammo was quite the relief. I took care of some of the bandits down in this area and then decided to explore around a bit.


Apparently I knocked some poor bandit backwards from across the area. I hope it hurt.



I descended a spiral stair case that lead to some nice looking green anomolies. I decided to poke around the back a bit and see what was in there when I came to an opening with some sort of large containers in it.


As soon as I poked into the room with the large containers I heard a guttural cry in the dark that was very unnatural. As a brave ass stalker I decided to snoop around anyways. About halfway into the area I saw what looked like a man hunched over looking at something so I pulled out my binoculars and tried to see if it was more bandits. It was something wholly unnatural though.


Scared out of my wits I fire on it from a safe distance, but it turns translucent and runs. I could only see it's eyes after that, but then I even lost those. I knew it was hiding somewhere in the dark so I decided to grab one rock that I saw and hoof it out of there. When I went to go grab the rock I turned around to see that the creature had snuck up behind me and was poised to kill! Frighting to be sure.

Needless to say I escaped, and finally put some of those weird stones to use (I originally died from trying to use one because it had +5 radiation! so I thought I would need to find a rradiation suit to use them. I guess I wasn't really paying attention after that.

Anyways, I really need to find somewhere to sell stuff. Also, I keep finding all these hints for hidden loot, but I have no idea how to use them, or even look them up after the text fades.

ASIDE:

I had two crazy glitches this game. The first (pictured above) happen when I was blown into a wall by a shotgun blast. I could see the outside of the models and thought it interesting that they put trees over the manhole opening so that when you're looking up it looks like you're looking outside. A nice little way to cover up the intersections.

The other thing that happen was that when I went outside after escaping from the damn monster seen above, the Mole guy ran through his whole speech from the point that I first found him. So he was like: "Lets find a safe area before reinforcements come!" then rand around in a circle for 30 second and stopped to say "Ok, this place looks safe..." then the game crashed out to windows. Also, while this was happening very very odd textures kept filling random polygons, including open air.

THOM: I'm not reading your story as you're obviously ahead of me, and I don't want to spoil/influence my game. I'll get to it when I'm all done.
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“The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932

"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!"

[Scratchmonkey]

Actually, we're at the same dang point. My screenshot is from that same room with the tentacle-y looking motherfucker. I got lucky and when he turned translucent, he ran straight for me, allowing me to plug him right between his glowing red eyes. The thing you're looking for isn't that far away from that room.

My most recent save is inside that complex still. I need to keep playing; I'm a little freaked out though.

[Scratchmonkey]

So, I managed to pull myself together long enough to get out of the first underground section. Although I think he was talking about situations later in the game, dhex's suggestion of legging it whenever possible works really well for getting yourself (at least temporarily) out of nasty situations.

Then I moved onto the next segment of the main storyline, leading to me pissing off the military and have all sorts of the bastards descend upon me. I now have a fair amount of ammo for the AK74, which makes me happy. After killing off some squads, I busted ass back to Cordon to finish up some quests, including the pseudodog quest, which I thought was bugged, as it was, I wound up getting ambushed by three of the fuckers outside of the Duty checkpoint in the north of the Garbage and one of them had a tail that I got by hitting Take All even though there was nothing in the inventory to the naked eye.

Here's a shot of a flock of crows as I head back through the Cordon:



I blew all my money on a Merc suit before setting out, which I'm kind of regretting because there's some nicer (although more expensive) gear up at the Bar. I figure if I start doing some sidemissions/hunting around on my own, I should be able to get cash more readily though.

Then I headed off to the Bar, with some minor scrapes along the way. Be forewarned, the dog packs get worse:



These bastards (there are at least two pseudodogs in this pack) tore me apart a number of times before I figured out that you can get around them by skirting along a cliff at the edge of the zone, which has enough of a slope to allow you to jump over a fence that will keep the pack from getting to you. If you go into the group of buildings that the Bar is part of, you will eventually find a stack of duct sections that will allow you leap back over the fence just behind the guardpost that keeps the dogs out.

Inside the Bar:

[Redeye]

[Scratchmonkey]

[Scratchmonkey]

[dhex]

man i am tempted to stalk some shit up myself.

where was that hammer sickle ting?
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[Scratchmonkey]

Just south of the Duty checkpoint guarding the Garbage-Bar transition. It's between the checkpoint and those two huge towers, off to the left of the road.

[Cycle]

Well, I finally decided to start playing this again!

Unfortunately, it still runs like shit on my system. Which is dumb because I can get every other game to work smoothly with some tweaking, but even lowering everything in stalker doesn't help that much. That floating point thing helped a litte, I think, I can't really tell, and I'll have a look at that tweaking guide but I doubt it will help.

BUT, the game is still awesome, especially all patched up. It's so much more balanced and stable now, feels much more polished and generally I'm having a much better time than when I first played. I've just gotten through the part that buth monkey and shaper were talking about. I haven't really stopped to do any side missions, just ones that come my way during my journey... I seem to be doing fine so far like this, though I should go exploring to find more and better artifacts.

So yeah, good times.
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[Cycle]

p.s does anyone know what causes sticky keys? you know, when you press left and the guy will still keep going left when you stop pressing the button. its really annoying.
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[The Great Unwashed]

Don't you turn sticky keys on in Windows by holding down Shift for five seconds? Maybe that's somehow translated into the game? I... don't... somehow?

Man, I want to start playing STALKER again.
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[Cycle]

really? well that's it then! it only happens when i hold shift (to sneak)

now to figure out how to turn it off...
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[parkbench]

initiate sticky keys by pressing shift five times in a row, then when the dialog pops up tell it to FOAD and never come back again.
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ich bin aber eine mensch maschine

[Cycle]

huh, i looked it up and apparently it's not on. maybe it has something to do with my new keyboard...
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[Shapermc]

I had this problem with Quake on my Laptop. I was told that some keyboards just create lag with the OS sometimes and there's really no way to get around it. You can try using a different keyboard, but it's probably a combo of many different things.
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“The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932

"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!"

[Harveyjames]

[ryan]

The mutant pictured above scared the crap out of me. I unloaded an entire clip going after that fucker, and then I broke out the trusty shotgun and finished it off. That was a satisfying kill.

Then those damn soldiers killed me. The first time I actually took about 5 down, refilling my health with the food off a dead soldier near one of the doorways, but then the rest flanked me and killed me. The second time I only made it to the second or third before they got me.

I'm glad my previous saves work with the new version, but I did have a hard crash once. Still, I'm glad this thread came about, I forgot how good the game is.
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Come to me, Mordel. We shall depart.

[Six]

so i'm playing this now. it's pretty great!

i had to crank the resolution all the way down to 800x600 for it to not feel jerky, but it still looks decent -- i think the dynamic lighting and textures go a long way towards making it visually appealing. float32 seems to be helping performance a bit.

even with the latest patch some things still seem really bugged. stashes aren't supposed to be empty, right? and they should disappear from your map once you discover them?

[Shapermc]

[Cycle]

I just found that rifle myself. It's a little tricky!
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[Redeye]

Stashes get cleared occasionally, ostensibly by other stalkers.


But they are also bugged.


Also some are quest-tagged.

So they are empty until the quest-flag is thrown.

I don't know if opening them before quest-tag activation ruins them for later.
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I felt sheer anarchic joy when I ran over my first pedestrian.

[Cycle]

Anyone found the little Half-Life easter egg?
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[ryan]

I've ran into a problem where rain looks like shit. Up until approx. viewing size until the ground it looks great, but when you level the view to look forward it turns into these giant blue shapes that appear everywhere - like giant trapezoids. During the quest to meet some guy in a hangar, I was getting lost and shot because I couldn't see. The effect even appears when I'm inside a building. Time to investigate!
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Come to me, Mordel. We shall depart.