STALKER

Anders · Post by **Anders** » Fri Mar 23, 2007 2:28 pm 0

Performance is pretty crap here. Despite having set everything to minimum, it still lags like a motherfucker at times. Love the atmosphere so far, though.

What I've seen of the AI seems alright.

A pack of wild dogs were eating a dead guy. I fired my gun at them and they ran away. A little later they picked up courage and attacked me, but after two of them received bullets to the heads, the rest ran again.

I came upon some sort of guard post in the wilderness. I could only see one guy there and I rather fancied his AK47, so I shot him in the head. A couple of his buddies then came out of camouflage and started shooting at me. They took cover behind rocks and rubble, like I expected them to do.

I think there are way too many "anomalies" floating about, though. I've barely stepped a kilometer into the game and I've seen around 8 already.

HGFB · Post by **HGFB** » Fri Mar 23, 2007 2:41 pm 0

According to the Stalker guide the amount of anomolies changes as time progresses. Once it gets to a certain level you get a Zone blowout. I quite like that there's a lot of them. It stops you just zooming around in sprint mode without paying attention

Jonesey · Post by **Jonesey** » Fri Mar 23, 2007 4:06 pm 0

Pre-ordered too late for a Friday delivery - it'll arrive tomorrow no doubt. From all of comments so far it deffo sounds intriguing...

ddraig · Post by **ddraig** » Fri Mar 23, 2007 4:24 pm 0

Anders wrote:Performance is pretty crap here. Despite having set everything to minimum, it still lags like a motherfucker at times. Love the atmosphere so far, though.

Yep same here, by occasional slowdown I meant the game will literally freeze and stutter for a few secs sometimes as new things come into view, though I don't have everything turned down to minimum. I noticed a lot of anomalies too, the first one I saw just behind the first camp took out one of those hog beasts, very gruesome. That looked like it might of been scripted, but maybe not. Thats cool about the anomalies having weather patterns, zone blowouts sound mental.

Anders · Post by **Anders** » Fri Mar 23, 2007 6:20 pm 0

I played around with the config file a bit and it performs fine now. This game is seriously hard, though...

ddraig · Post by **ddraig** » Fri Mar 23, 2007 6:40 pm 0

I gather this config is worth checking out:
http://boards.gamefaqs.com/gfaqs/genmes ... c=34287187

Haven't tried it yet since I'm still at work.

Mr Anderson · Post by **Mr Anderson** » Sun Mar 25, 2007 2:20 pm 0

Well, they sure took their time but it was worth it in the end. Anyone else think this plays something like a cross between Counter Strike and Fallout? (which of course is a very, *very* good thing). Runs fine on my PC (Athlon 2800+, 1 Gig RAM, 6600GT), admittedly without dynamic lighting.

As far as FPS/RPG hybrids go it's firmly in the FPS category (with the most rock hard gameplay I've seen since Project IGI too I might add, another bonus in my book). The RPG elements aren't that well developed but the game does do a nice of job of creating atmosphere and the sense of a living, breathing world waiting to be explored.

Add to this some decent (though not extraordinary) AI and the usual tip top graphics you'd expect from a cutting edge FPS and you can colour me very impressed. Anyway, enough chat, got some more S.T.A.L.K.I.N.G. to do....

noodles · Post by **noodles** » Sun Mar 25, 2007 6:46 pm 0

I'm going through the garbage zone at the moment and enjoying the overall experience pretty much.
Stuck for the night in the hangar repelling bandits and trying to find
a way past them.
Was a bit shocked with the toughness of some of the mutant creatures.
Some RPG elements are thrown in like reputation etc which definetely add to the experience.
Two levels of crouching seems not to work (?). One would have been enough.

It's a bit like Oblivion mixed with a soviet times radioactive decay theme.
Very pretty and easy to get into. The opposition is hard but not
unbearably so. This is a damn good FPS which has had it's gameplay well
tweaked in keeping the player keen.

Excellent art direction and sound.
I like the russian voices (even singing!) a lot, really puts you in the place.

Well worth getting.

Overall so far : 17/20

Barra · Post by **Barra** » Mon Mar 26, 2007 5:21 am 0

Can anyone confirm if it works on Vista or not?

Cheers

ddraig · Post by **ddraig** » Mon Mar 26, 2007 2:09 pm 0

Loving it so far, haven't encountered any glitches I've noticed yet. I made sure I got to know how to read the PDA & it's map better so I'm catching all the submissions. I'm enjoying immensely the AI & the battles and the general style/feel of the game. It is more Counterstrike meets Half Life meets sort of Oblivion, except its not as open ended as Oblivion, which is ok with me since I'm liking the progression towards the Zone, but I'm only at the Garbage a.t.m.
Not sure if it has problems in Vista since I use XP, I would check the developer's site.

WhiteSpy · Post by **WhiteSpy** » Mon Mar 26, 2007 4:42 pm 0

Loving it apart from: stuff sounding as if its on top of me when its 20 yards away. The awful crouch movement. The wobbly walking. The wire fences - open environment my arse.

Anders · Post by **Anders** » Tue Mar 27, 2007 12:06 pm 0

The first patch has been released. A bunch of bugfixes and tweaks to improve performance (according to some, I haven't tried it yet). The patch is not compatible with your current save files. You will have to start over from scratch.

http://www.fileplanet.com/175762/170000 ... obyl-Patch

http://stalker.filefront.com/file/STALK ... Wide;77221

1. Buttons remain "pressed" and value changes on its own in Options
2. Players can kill teammates with the knife when friendly fire is set to 0
3. Game crashed when client player types a server command in console
4. Game crashes when entering a MP game after dying in SP
5. Multiplayer map names will appear in debug text format when voting to change a multiplayer map during gameplay.
6. The game crashes while attempting to purchase an item, after pressing Buy button multiple times from the Buy Menu.
7. The game crashes when the user triggers an anomaly after the anomaly time is set to 0.
8. Purchased affordable weapons fail to be in the inventory when one item purchased exceeds the user's monetary amount.
9. The player will lose the weapon he has stored in his inventory as well as the equipped weapon when the equipped weapon is dropped in MP.
10. The host is able to pause the game during an MP game.
11. Players are able to duplicate other player names by using the "name" command in the console.
12. The user is unable to view a fly-by cutscene if their PDA is open while triggering the cutscene.
13. The user can speed up time with the * key on the numpad in SP
14. Players can damage and kill other teammates while friendly fire is set to 0.0
15. The starting weather in-game does not accurately reflect the starting weather set by the server host in multiplayer match
16. The corpse created by a user switching teams remains in the game when playing multiplayer team deathmatch or artifact hunt.
17. Options "show weapon" and "NPC identification" fail to function
18. The up and down function for the look feature are inverted through out the game.
19. The server will crash when the players vote to change maps, but don't select a map to change to.
20. Players will take no fall damage when friendly fire is set to 0 on the server
21. The player dies when trying to exit out of the skin menu back into gameplay
22. Death by an anomaly is not recorded as a negative frag when playing Team Deathmatch.
23. Game Crash when opening buy menu from certain spot in Artifact Hunt mode
24. The prompt for the buy menu and entry via pressing the spacebar appears when in spectator mode during any network game.
25. Professor Kruglov sometimes can't open the door to the mobile science lab
26. When player stands close to a wall and shoots grenade launcher, the grenade falls out of the map without damaging anyone.
27. Possibility of killing enemies through the roofs and walls
28. When killing Wolf before completing any of additional quests given from him, these quests doesn't change status from "Active Tasks" to "Failed Tasks" in PDA.
29. Problem with quest: "Kill gang leader" when piece of text in PDA is directing user to kill leader in Dark Valley. Quest is completed after kill this bandit on Garbage level.
30. Disappearing piece of scroll belt in Main Menu when the player changes resolution to 800x600
31. Anomalies were not appearing when turned on in server options menu.
32. Game crashed when creating a Team Deathmatch server with spectator on.
33. Problems with Ã¢â‚¬ËœSlugÃ¢â‚¬â„¢ artifact.
34. Possibility to take the decoder through the Wall
35. Issue with cash in inventory on MP build
36. NPC called Seriy has 3 different names: Seriy, Gray and Grey.
37. Problem with price of weapon in inventory
38. Game crashed when vote for kicking a player ended
39. Rare game crash during multiplayer match, after players choose a team.
40. Exploit with update rate command
41. Wood in barrels is flickering, although there's no fire there.
42. Player can jump between 2 stalkers and table inside the bar and become stuck.
43. Two side quests from Sakharov have wrong description.
44. After playing in multiplayer mode and then starting single player game, Sidorovich has one of multiplayer nicks instead of his name.
45. Game crashed when player fight with pseudodogs on red forest.
46. The game crashes to a non-responsive state (task manager) when attempting to host multiplayer game a second time with an invalid CD-key.
47. On Win 2000 PCs, the Windows Desktop cursor has no functionality when minimizing the game (Alt+Tab).
48. The game will result in a soft crash when a player dies from radioactive poisoning, then immediately falls into the tunnel well that leads out of the Agroprom Underground level.
49. The arrow buttons remain depressed when clicked and dragged off the boxes, thus making the value increase or decrease indefinitely in the options menu of network games.
50. Game crashed during map rotation. This issue occurs several times while playing with maps (Vehicle station, Desolated Village and Deserted Factory)
51. Game crashes when entering an MP game after dying in SP
52. The Host will crash and all Clients will either return to the main menu, crash to the desktop, or the program will shut itself down and return the user to the desktop, when attempting to drop a player while users are In-Game
53. Users are able to pick up an opponent's grenade after it has been thrown and then use it themselves.
54. The players name switches to a random player's name with a _1 after it in multiplayer if no name is entered in the network games menu.
55. Players fail to be kicked, after unanimously voting to remove them, during network gameplay.
56. Player is unable to ban other player, everybody vote for, line "voting succeed" appears and nothing happens. Player that was supposed to be banned still can play and do whatever he wants on the server.
57. The starting weather in-game does not accurately reflect the starting weather set by the server host in multiplayer match
58. Saved game are over written when attempting a second save uses the first saved game's name followed by a "space" and any other word or number during single player campaign.
59. The artifact is unaffected by gravity when dropped during an artifact hunt game.
60. Players take no explosion damage when the friendly fire damage option is set to 0 in the server options of a team deathmatch game.
61. The game will crash, halting progression when transferring from Station to the Sarcophagus.
62. When player wants to reload a weapon, and start fast shooting, he can't do that because weapon continues reloading.
63. The game crashes when a player is killed immediately after they are re-spawned into the game.
64. The weapons fail to scroll when using the mouse wheel after all the grenades have been used during single player gameplay.
65. Minor text bugs.
66. Various balance issues in Singleplayer and Multiplayer.
67. Various known exploits/cheats.
68. Various other issues.

ddraig · Post by **ddraig** » Tue Mar 27, 2007 8:48 pm 0

cool, that patch looks like it has some critical bugs fixed. I'm not that far into the game yet so I may start over.
I got to see the AI in full effect during a gun battle with a bunch of bandits near a railway tunnel, they flanked and took cover just like you would expect a human might. The teamwork they used was very impressive, its like they communicate together to negotiate around obstacles to get at you.
There was one left who ran up the hill above the tunnel and behind some bushes, and every time I went up to shoot him he ran down the other side to escape

That went on twice until I sprint-charged him with my shotgun almost to end up dying.

teamonkey · Post by **teamonkey** » Wed Mar 28, 2007 4:53 pm 0

I've still not got my "preordered" copy yet, but I see it's coming soon on Metaboli. I think I'll send my boxed copy back and download it in a few weeks instead.

tentaclesex · Post by **tentaclesex** » Wed Mar 28, 2007 5:11 pm 0

ddraig wrote: The teamwork they used was very impressive, its like they communicate together to negotiate around obstacles to get at you.

According to people who understand Russian, the battle chatter is relevant to the action, which adds to the illusion.

GRAW 2 is good with that. I love it when one of your squadmates shouts out "two... no three contacts by the red car!" or "They're retreating!" It's very convincing.

It's too bad I don't understand Russian.

In spite of its many flaws, I do find Stalker very compelling. If it keeps getting patched and modded, it will be incredible someday.