going to replay-any good mods?

[Koki]

I suspect that AMK puts a bit heavier burden on the CPU, as the AI is supposedly more active, they allegedly collect and use items, trade and at least for me there is more of them.

I have never seen the "loading" disk showing in the bottom of the screen in AMK. I'd say that's the problem, loading on-the-fly got screwed up somehow.

[Rogue Keeper]

Neither did I actually. I use -noprefetch, but even with that I got some stuttering in vanilla, now with AMK it's very rare.

But now I regret that AMK is not compatible with Weather Overhauled. I have reinstalled AMK Rev. 92 and WO 2.1 on top of it and it screwed up a lot of things:

-No DNS messages
-No training messages
-Small dialogue glitch with random stalker (no exit dialogue option)
-Plus when storm came, it caused a serious performance drop. As soon as the lightings started, my framerate dropped to 3-4 frames! Can't say if this is purely a WO failure or it was caused by another interference with AMK. I think I chose appropriate WO user.ltx for my PC...

Otherwise WO looks very pretty, the storms are intimidating, sun lighting is nice to observe. But AMK is a priority for me right now. Oh well, I can't have everything.

[Koki]

Errr, there is a separate weather mod for AMK, so what's the problem?

I honestly can't tell the difference between them, well in WO the rain was much thicker which was nice.

[Rogue Keeper]

I know I know, I used it before, but I didn't like it's ambient lighting indoors, it's too bright. I'll stick to default AMK weather for a moment and I shall see...

The difference is obvious to me - transitions between weather stages aren't so sharp - just watch as the sky changes. Storms make the area dark as in the night - very atmospheric, if it wasn't dragging FPS down so bad for me. But perhaps it's required to have hi-res sky textures installed to have the best impression.

All weather mods seem to have some flaws, perhaps it's given by the nature and limitations of the engine and of course every weather modder has different aesthetic taste for it.

[faetal]

I'm just going through again using the following mods:

Patched to 1.0004
ZRP (which includes bardak's fix)
Raw's PLR and Rebalanced weapons mod
Stalker Weather Overhauled (matter of taste if you like the more sky-like skies, i personally feel that the mood is maintained, or even eerier, as the normal sky contrasts harshly against the dystopian ground level visual style and eerie noises)
Sky4CE graphics mod - for high end systems only - adds occlusion parallax rendering to the game, aka displacement mapping. Definitely adds more detail to surfaces, though some now look a *little* odd close up (kind of like a planar diagram of quantum fluctuations).
Sound overhaul - good mod
Ultra graphics mode 1.1 by Fan and Raff (not sure, but this may either conflict with Sky4CE or do the same as (it mentions parallax mapping) it, but I;m still experimenting

I did try AMK, but don't like the change in mechanics much.
ZRP is good as very customisable. I may want a play through with an overhaul mod at some point, but the mods I am using are great as they simply enhance some cosmetic aspects fo the game, while leaving it essentially the same game.

[Rogue Keeper]

Sky4CE - I tried it as part of Weather for AMK and I didn't notice any serious improvement in textures mapping, however it had small impact on performance. In fact textures in vanilla seem to have enough depth of it's own... I wish somebody provided me screenies for comparation.

[faetal]

Sky4CE - I tried it as part of Weather for AMK and I didn't notice any serious improvement in textures mapping, however it had small impact on performance. In fact textures in vanilla seem to have enough depth of it's own... I wish somebody provided me screenies for comparation.

There's no displacement mapping in vanilla stalker.
You can see it on surfaces as they look more textured. It's different to bump mapping, which is a 2d illusion (I know it's *all* a 2d illusion as it's on a screen, but I mean *within* that illusion ;P ), and actually adds differential bumps to the textures at the very small scale. Makes everything look a bit more realistic, but close up sometimes it can be a little odd.

It's only been used in a few games to date - Crysis being one.

[Rogue Keeper]

So, could you make some screenies please?

[suliman]

Is there a mod that makes it so you don't have to find the relevant PDA entry in order to loot a stash?

[Koki]

There was one, but all it did was to fill up all stashes with their respective loot when you started the game, so if you found the entry you got twice the loot.

[faetal]

So, could you make some screenies please?

Truck metal bumpiness.



Bumpy texture effect on pipe.



On wall.

[Rogue Keeper]

That's pretty, but still it doesn't seem to be significant improvement over the original.

[faetal]

That's pretty, but still it doesn't seem to be significant improvement over the original.

I'd agree, it's not *significant*, but it does make an overall difference and even subtle graphical differences can have an effect on submersion.

[D'Arcy]

even subtle graphical differences can have an effect on submersion.

You're playing underwater now?

[faetal]

You're playing underwater now?

Heh. I meant *immersion*, it was late.

[Malleus]

I finally got around finishing the game with the Redux mod (for 1.0004), and it was great. It doesn't change the gameplay significantly (like AMK), just rebalances stuff. Here's the feature list for those who are interested, and here's a download link.

[Tenkahubu]

Is it worth installing the redux mod for my first play?

[Koki]

Is it worth it? Probably, yes. Should you? No.

[mothra]

PRIBOI STORY 1.1 is out !!!!!
yeah, new features, bugfixes and rearranged inventory and document placement. replay one of the best total story-altering mods for STALKER: SOC

get the patch here:
http://priboi-story.extra.hu/page.php?id=22
and it wouldn't be STALKER without it: first fix for the fix:
http://rapidshare.de/files/40316349/...1_FIX.zip.html

my most beloved mod after AMK and OL is out.
the same team will do an "back to the roots" mod, going for old-school without the major changes OL introduced in e.g. the HUD or monsters.

that's enough game until ClearSky comes out.

[Duncan]

Cool, thanks Mothra. I could never get the original to work due to a start-up bug. I'll give this one a try and hope for the best.

[Duncan]

Bah! Pribio is still giving me the same troubles. It crashes to desktop after fetching the objects when starting a new game (clean install, v1.0004). Might have something to do with xp64 as others have reported the same problem. There is only so many times i will reinstall a game and have it crash. Oh well, it looked good, but back to AMK.

[242]

So is AMK overall the best mod for SoC out there?

[Duncan]

That will depend on who you ask

It is by far my most favored pick when it comes to mods. I don't think they have the balance quite right (difficulty will force the player to reload often, though some like that sort of thing), but i still find it very enjoyable. I usually play as far as Pripyat and then just "live in the zone". AMK is great for that.

[Koki]

Is there any realistic weapons mod for it yet?

[242]

I just installed AMK 1.4.1 and I'm impressed, especially with off-line A-life and news system. Some questions:

-How is difficulty if compared with original game, is it overall MUCH harder? Boars in Cordon seemed much stronger than in original, I wonder if the modded game becomes *too* hard later? I always play original SoC on Master difficulty and I'm used to such difficulty, should I choose easier one for AMK?

-What are safe places/ways to store my stuff? Considering stalkers now can steal.

-What respawn rate should I choose - 8-12, 12-24, or 24-30 hrs? I prefer it to be like in not modded game, but I don't know what it is in original.