STALKER: Clear Sky

[Sentura]

ign gave it a 7

meh..

Buy it and decide for yourself. Don't let some random number make your decision for you.

i agree. ýou can't say "i don't like it" without the i.

[Buddy]

6th this month on Steam

Let's just hope it stays that way.

Won't move!

[Jetsetlemming]

Just installed a couple of mods for STALKER, the most significant being this:

Night time Before:

ss_owner_09-03-08_16-37-00_(l03_agroprom).jpg[/attachment]

[attachment=0]ss_owner_09-03-08_16-41-30_(l03_agroprom).jpg[/attachment]

I actually had no idea it was night time when I saved and quit last time I played, so when I first started it up after installation I thought the mods fucked up. Played for about 15 minutes, scariest gaming experience since Afraid of Monsters. I met my first bloodsucker, in Agropom, and then met a second which I had to kill with my pistol after using every single bullet for my primary in a panic trying to kill the first.

Currently hiding in a building, cowering, waiting for dawn.

[dux]

Whats going on with your gun in the first pictures

[Jetsetlemming]

Whats going on with your gun in the first pictures

All my primary weapons (that I've seen so far, at least), and about half the pistols are invisible, the gun hand flickers in and out of existence, most of the time not there, and about 1/3 of the polygons average on character models and monsters are invisible. It's a glitch from running STALKER through 3dAnalyzer and forcing it to run on a below minimum requirement video card (because GSC half-assed DX8! ).

I've played a full 24 hours ingame with the SWO (Stalker weather overhaul) mod, and holy shit does this look better in every way than default STALKER, and with not a single performance issue, to boot! As far as I can tell they pretty much recalculated the lightmaps everywhere for every time of day to fit the new settings, and it looks amazing.

Here's the same picture as above, last one I posted, 12 hours later:

ss_owner_09-03-08_20-13-37_(l05_bar).jpg[/attachment]

Sunset at Garbage:

ss_owner_09-03-08_20-28-50_(l01_escape).jpg[/attachment]

Train depo:

[attachment=0]ss_owner_09-03-08_20-54-25_(l02_garbage).jpg[/attachment]

[dux]

What type of museum worthy machine do you have?

[Jetsetlemming]

I'm gonna assume you mean what I'm gaming on now, though I do have a number of very old PCs in the attic such as a Pentium Pro

Pentium 4

1 GB DDR

PCI Radeon 9250

WinXP

I paid a whole $200 for it three years ago, gaming strong ever since!1!!1

[dux]

Stalker runs on that ancient beast? Fair play to their programmers, that's pretty impressive.

[Steppenwolf]

umm wasnt it dark as shit in the nights without a mod?

[Sentura]

radeon 9250 in our day and age? jesus.

[Buddy]

None of Lightmaps needed recalulating i guess Stalker weather settings are pretty flexible and you can modify all this stuff with variables. Nights in Clear Sky are almost as dark as those from the mod you mentioned and they last longer (full 24h cycle).

It seems that 3DA has even disabled mipmappings there

[Jetsetlemming]

None of Lightmaps needed recalulating i guess Stalker weather settings are pretty flexible and you can modify all this stuff with variables. Nights in Clear Sky are almost as dark as those from the mod you mentioned and they last longer (full 24h cycle).

It seems that 3DA has even disabled mipmappings there

But there are new static shadows for everything depending on the time of day. Before the only difference between the times of day were the sky at night it got a bit darker like with color correction or something.

Time in Clear Sky is real time? :monocle:

*checks* Apparently ATI Tray Tools was forcing Mipmaps into "High performance mode" *changes that to "Quality"*

[Buddy]

Time in Clear Sky is real time? :monocle:

Nah, its just full 24h day time ingame where every minute takes 6 seconds.

[Jetsetlemming]

Isn't that the same as STALKER 1 then?

2.4 hour cycle is pretty good though. Nice and long. I think Pathologic had the same time scale. Makes each day feel significant and lets you enjoy the sights without watching the sun visibly fly across the sky.

[robert.briscoe]

So, its release day for stalker in Europe, and where the fuck is it in sweden? or more specifically, stockholm?! Went around various stores today to try and grab a copy and nobody has any in yet and has no idea when they'll get them, checked webhallen and its also the same situation! Has anyone else in Europe experienced mysteriously missing S:CS syndrome?