Stalker thread

Heres your reply

Going to play Call of Chernobyl for the first time soon. Give me your wisdom, stalkers.

patch your game, use weapon mods.

patch your gayme use weapon mods and customize damage to your liking.

...

Ok brother.

I'm using CoC w/ Arsenal Overhaul, the increased AO damage mod from pavolpi (on strongest), Outfit addon, Smurth's dynamic HUD, DrX Questlines and DrX Dynamic Questlines.

This set up came from another user's thoroughly based recommendation and I'm enjoying it massively. Balance feels just right - weapons are deadly as hell and some sneaky play will reward you early on. Some slight companion AI glitches here and there (nothing game breaking) but other than that I'm feeling immersed and stalkan like never before. This one is shaping up to be a good run so far. Cant wait to get in the labs.

Right now I'm slowly working my way up north now after warming up in the southern regions. Will be heading into the Dark Valley probably later tonight.

fuck, dynamic factions I meant. what a tit.

One user here was working on Ray of Hope. Good to see they are making progress.

Man I remember on my first vanilla playthrough of Shadow of Chernobyl I reached the Dark Valley just after sunset and got my shit pushed in by bandits and feral dogs (couldn't see them coming, had to turn volume way up to hear their paws bounding towards me, which only made it scarier).

Any news about RoH? Last I heard they tested shit in August or September. Maybe mongol bro is reading the thread.

I remember hearing they'll have faction specific quest progression. How well it's implemented is to be seen.

Half a dozen attemps included trying to fight, sneak and sprint away, but all resulted in death, either by chimera, controller (at least two in near viscinity) or either of the previous ones combined with zombies or animals.

There's a lab, but I don't know if I can enter it and I don't think I'm equipped for that (nor what use it would be). I guess that leaves Jupiter underground, but I don't know if I can get through there either with just this starting gear. I'm loving this already.

Yes.

Not for a first run. Vanilla for first run, except for patches and stuff.

...

Oh, I thought he said Call of Pripyat. Never mind me then.

Is anyone else getting shitloads of crashes in CoC in the swamps? I'm going to try reinstalling tomorrow to see if it helps with this because it's getting really obnoxious. There's no useful error messages or anything. I feel like it's related to the chopper but even when they're turned off the CTDs still happen, just less frequently.

I don't remember for sure but doesn't CoC have the same error log system as the regular games? I think it just puts them in a folder in the install root folder. That's how all STALKER debugging happens.

Yeah, but it doesn't help in this case. At least not to someone who doesn't know what the memory addresses being logged actually refer to. There's no error message (besides the generic "unhandled exception") and the stack trace is all extremely generic low-level shit. I guess if it doesn't fix itself I'll have to talk to the dev.

Man, had a shitload of (exhausting and nerve wracking) fun already. It would've been a bit weird if I had been stuck in the Outskirts right from the start, so it made sense that Jupiter Underground was accessible with the starting gear.
> Zdravstvuyte stalker!
I fucking made it. At every point in the Underground I expected to face an obstacle I couldn't overcome (like the gas in CoP that requires the sealed suit, or a controller or something like that). The snork pack was almost that, but I lucked out and got through.

So that's my first task, Find safety done. Quite the prologue, I'm exhausted and ready to head to bed now.

I'm stuck in X 18 - every time the Pseudogiant does its stomp attack, it crashes the game. It might be something to do with the amount of debris that goes flying when it does the attack. Two Clear Sky bros who've been with me for most of my run so far are in there with me, and they're annoyed as hell too.

There's a story and quests. I can't give anything away, as it may have changed by now. Most of the work on the game is done by the Russian team. International team does piecework.

What do you mean by this? Why don't you just post the actually useful info if you're asking for help instead of going "oooh it doesn't work"? I've never seen a case where the xray_username.log file is actually empty and totally worthless when troubleshooting a crash.

eng nev er ev er version

что?

Gonna replay SHoC again. What mods should I install? I am thinking of using Amnesia 2 because its a compilation of various graphical, weapon, atmosphere changing mods and it would save me the time of cherry picking individual mods.

Also, how do you check game version? Is there a console command or something, because usually I would see it in the corner of the screen in the main menu but now it's not showing up?

Was there some convenient way to skip the whole hassle of having to download and install Call of Pripyat with CoC?

yeah, registry keys

Some guy's streaming his first playthrough of SoC on infinity.moe right now. If you can stand the furfaggots it might be worth chilling and watching.

Were you the user who asked about the breath sounds in masks?
I'm just wondering if my 2 minute fix had any bad side effects.

> Dunno if the lighting was actually bugged, the ground seemed way too dark
> Mission updated: Eliminate target
Spooky mysteries of the Zone.

Just started up SoC the first time yesterday, stopped playing after I got that flash drive from the bandit camp and then just fucked around for a few minutes until it was time for lunch. Kinda felt more like a Half-Life 2 mod than anything.

Does it get any better? I didn't really see much of the "atmosphere" some anons praise it for while I was out exploring old buildings and the enemies weren't really spooky.

Two hours well spent.

(checked)
The "atmosphere" really gets going once you get to the underground lab in the Dark Valley area, and in the underground tunnels in the Agroprom area.

tonyjew, is that you?

STALKER is very much a love it or hate it kinda game. Personally, the atmosphere was never the big selling point for me, it was the gameplay itself. Once you get used to the shooting and movement mechanics, it's actually an incredibly fast-paced game with a lot to offer, especially with mods. The atmosphere is just a bonus, and you kind of have to "let" yourself into it, though it becomes much more intense once you get into the Garbage and onwards. The starting area, Cordon, has its own kind of lonely, lost atmosphere.

holy fuck yes, i can finally edit .dds files in photoshop.
.dds viewer craps itself whenever its used and I finally found a plugin that adds .dds support to my pirated version of photoshop

It's a good day.
Now I can change the arsenal mod loading screen and pause screen.

whoops accidental reply.

stalker needs some new mosnters

Nice, user!
If you're ever having trouble with .dds support with photoshop in the future, GIMP is free and supports .dds natively. I slog through its unholy user interface to make autistic texture mods for World of Tanks.

I am always lurking here stalker

Sadly I do not have any specific new info. Nothing major yet, updates and more bug fixing on RoH.

That is of course if people forgot to keep me up on date which would not be the first time. Been busy my self so I am not checking RU side of the project that often.

...

Is CoC stable already? i heard its crashing like mad

Be grateful that you won't get a STALKER made by interns for consoles. It would have been the Fallout 3 of the STALKER series. Many former STALKER developers have said as much themselves.

I don't think I've had a single crash that's cause by CoC itself.
95% of my crashes are OOM.
Haven't had a single crash since .15 anyway but I've only played like 10 hours or so.

...

What a pleasant surprise.

new mutants never ever

Nitro I want a refund, these things cause pants shitting and death.

There's still the other guy in the base, so my trip wasn't entirely in vain. I wonder if I can snipe him from a distance, as I have no desire to try to attack the base head on. It did seem like he was also patrolling outside the base at some point, so maybe I'll just wait for that.

>spawn and get shot in the back of the head by monolith
>try again
>a couple mutants plus another monolith guy (I really need to up my spawn rates)

I was not aware that the chunks of flesh thrown out by a twirling-anomaly could kill you.

Theres addonz for that shit
Standalone ones

This series been sitting in my backlog for a while, and finally I've decided to dive in. Where do I start? Should I save the mods for a second playthrough? What mods are recommended, anyway? What am I in for?

Start with vanilla Shadow of Chernobyl (or just Zone Reclamation Project, it fixes a lot of the bugs and stabilizes the game without actually changing anything). After that, vanilla Call of Pripyat, then if you want to, clear sky, although clear sky is the worst of the three and definitely a love or it hate it game.

I've only used AMK so far and it was kind of shit to be honest, I liked the customization and changes to artifacts, but the difficulty was fucking stupid and I almost ragequit at the last part because it was nearly impossible, and not in a good way.

Try using Autumn Aurora and see what you think

And a female bandit mod if anyone feels like being a massive faggot

Many years ago I tried vanilla shadow of chernobyl but I was dumb and it kinda sucked. Then I got a free clear sky and I was still dumb and thought it kinda sucked.

Recently I played Call of Pripyat, it was great, so I decided to replay Shadow of Chernobyl since I am no longer a child. I didn't know I could unload ammo from weapons I picked up when I was a kid trying to play it. It has flaws.

Pripyat I liked better because you can modify and upgrade your weapons, game itself felt better. You can actually go sell things without having to hoof it across a couple maps. So I'd actually play it Pripyat -> Chernobyl -> clear sky

I also tried the Call of Chernobyl mod, but the first mission was so buggy I just said fuck it and went to go replay Shadow of Chernobyl

i agree, I tried SoC many times, but it was much more confusing, CoP has nice things like clear ways to upgrade weps and the like as well as slightly better explanations of things

Also: Where the fuck can I get a better detector? I've only ever seen the worse one for sale and rarely get better stuff (none this play) from drops.

Scientist should sell you Bear detector I think, I dunno under what condition trough.

If you feel lucky, loot some stashes.
I once unironically got a Svarog detector 15 minutes into a new game this way.

Where can I find tools in CoC 1.4.16? Random stashes still?

SOMEBODY ONCE TOLD ME THE ZONE WAS GONNA ROLL ME
I AIN'T GONNA CHEEKI EVER AGAIN

Does anyone have an accurate, high-res version of the Cossacks Vodka label in STALKER?

I want to make myself some authentic cheeki breeki gear.

That requires getting a stash location. Military doesn't get many quests.

I always find it randomly, or the shop keep will have them.
Honestly it's too much of a hassle I usually just give myself the kits through the debug menu so I can get on with enjoying the game.

Glad I picked up the game, it's been fun so far. Also actually got frightened by a video game for the first time in years going through X18.

Oh, forgot the image.

The uncertainty of what awaits in the labs just fucks with me to no end.
Every time I try a new mod that alters the story and shit it's just as hard to progress as the 2nd time I entered.

I wish actual horror games affected me like this.

I really hope RoH makes it.
I have 100/100 line and a spare PC to act as server ready to go.

glad you're enjoyin it. is that vanilla?

I wish that CoC had particle and weather effects as nice as AA2+AMK.

Might eventually be something under the addon section, pretty active community for CoC.

Also, does anyone have any idea on how I can make a can of energy drink like in pic related without simply wrapping paper around a can or painstakingly getting the typography perfect and drawing it with marker pen?

Find a vector, print it out, make a flexible stencil and then wire-brush a can of energy drink until the label is gone and apply the stencil with enamel paint.

At first I thought the satchel in that image was a butt

The only problem is how fucking iffy the SoC logo is for making a clean stencil.

buy ink transfer printer paper.
also you can use this pic to make ur own cossacks vodka

looking for monsters that might fit in the zone, was surprised to find resident evil monsters kinda fit the stalker feel

nah m8 they look like shit

Is there any way to get the red dot sight or any of the other sights to be visible in the dark? they act as textures affected by light when they should be independent. They are light diodes after all

The only good terrifying monster addition would be a mimic vodka bottle.

And so the cycle continues.

OGSE revitalized the game for me, so I have no idea what you are talking about.

Speaking of that, did that Russian nazi uniform and weapon mod for Stalker ever get discovered for DL?

Vanilla with ZRP and some graphics mods. Pretty much vanilla gameplay.

CoC works well for the most parte and it really changes the way you enjoy the zone. There are more polished mods too

What shader setting are you using? Sight from what mod?

The Rasklapanje looks like it might fit. Sort of melty-skinned radiation/anomaly victim similar to Snorks, but maybe suffering a more intense dose.

Pic related

You got fucked by the easiest mutant in the zone. They make boars looks hard to deal with.

You mustn't have played very many mods. Izloms are in almost every major mod out there, starting all the way from AMK and other 2008-2009 mods.

I don't. I'm fine with just playing vanilla Stalker.

I really haven't, to be honest. I'm completely content with just playing vanilla Stalker.

My first encounter with an izlom in the beam of my headlamp also caused figurative pants shitting.

Muh /k/ nigga.

Holy fuck, Adolf Satan over here.

No, but seriously, you might consider just applying the bugfix mods and playing along in vanilla. It's not a bad choice, but do be aware that vanilla is going to be buggy as all hell. Save often.

Should be used is a bit of a stretch. You can use them with full, partial or without co-witness with your iron sights, just like with any regular reflex sight.

...

What was that Russian mod in development that added all kinds of crazy shit like construction equipment brought to life?

The slavs have been working on it since SoC came out I believe. I'm cautiously optimistic.

That sounds scary as shit. I want to know about this.

I just remember like a year or two ago seeing some video linked in a thread that was all in russian and only like 20 seconds long. There was like a piece of a bulldozer or something missing and where it was there was a huge branch like appendage swinging around, if I'm remembering. It was night time ingame in the video and it may have been stormy too.

What would you guys think of a total conversion mod for SQUAD into the Stalker universe? It'd have to be a very pared down game, but it'd totally be doable.

I see no point to a mod like that if it doesn't provide full STALKER simulation, including mutants, AI factions, anomalies etc. Are there even any AI mods for Squad? How will they make chimeras, controllers, burers, dogs?

Which is why I said "find a vector".

Probably no, since Stalker doesn't do night-vision equipment properly.

Yeah, all it does is throw a post-processing effect over the screen. Rather disappointing, really. I think ARMA does nightvision pretty well, even the part where it's easy to get blinded by light while using it.

Seems that the Zone decided to help you out.

If I was to make accurate STALKER energy drinks out of cans of Red Bull, would anyone buy them, and if so, at what price?

I'd probably buy one just for the can

I'm about to try Clear Sky, are there any good mods that don't change gameplay?

I just tired to install that mod, but it doesn't seem to be able to find my COP install. Is this because I have the steam version/because my games are on drive D: and not C:? Has anyone else had a similar issue?

What version are you installing? There was a new release a week or two ago, and for a while now CoC has gone in its own directory. Not sure what to say to help, sorry.

1.4.12
I'm putting it in it's own folder, but they require you to have an installed copy for legal reasons. I'm just going to look up how to get around the restriction…

I think it'd serve as a cool little pared-down thing. The idea of having teams of loosely-coordinated gopniks and Russian military stalkers duking it out over things like artifacts or strongholds would be really cool. Giving each of the factions guns that they'd be seen with in the lore and adding in the element of vehicles (which Squad does infinitely better than either Arma or any of the so-called survival games you'll see) would just increase the fun factor.

An idea I had was to have one class on the Duty team be an Ecologist with more limited armaments than the Dutiers. The Duty players have to escort the Ecologist to set parts of the map to gather data while an opposing faction (mercs? monolith? bandits?) fortifies positions and carries out attacks against them.

All you should need is a registry entry for CoP. This is the file stolen from cuckchan, hope it helps
mega.nz/#!uoYinJ7I!Lqj2DNIAkaVkcFUa1PLZzj80cVhAFK5D-9zbU2Iy5KI

Much to my chagrin, I hadn't actually STARTED CoP on this computer, so the registry was wrong. I actually ran the thing and now it works fine. Derp. I guess I put in those 73 hours on the unmodded version a long time ago now…

Never played stalker, but wanting to get innit.
Is any one game the best? Are there any shit games in the series?

What's the game even about, beyond being a cheeki russian operator innawoods?

Alright I'll give you a tl;dr with no spoilers.

Shadow of Chernobyl is the first game in the series.

Clear Sky is a prequel to SoC

Call of Pripyat is the last game.

SoC is what you should play first. Most people don't like Clear Sky because it's more linear, but I still think it's worth playing. Call of Pripyat has the most developed mechanics but I think it's the least diverse of the 3.

Basically the game takes place in the Zone of Alienation. In 2006 there was another catastrophic event in the vicinity of Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the Chernobyl Zone of Alienation. All kinds of nuclear anomalies and shit pop up, and there's lots of mutated flora and fauna. People called "Stalkers" start venturing illegally into the Zone. It's a lawless land. There, they search for riches and adventure. Artifacts with miraculous properties are created around anomalies, which fetch a pretty penny. There's a lot of factions in play inside the Zone, and a lot of them will give you tasks in the games. Basically the plot of the first game starts with the main character Marked One being nearly killed and waking up with none of his memories outside of a PDA on his person telling them that he has to find and kill a man named Strelok. There's your primer.

I started two sentences with "basically" on accident and now that's irking me.

This, also,
-most atmospheric
-first game, so less mechanics than most(no fixing guns or upgrading them)
This touches more on the story of how the zone was made, so it's a good game for lorefags.
-New mechanics
-buggy fuckfest
-more linear story
I played it after the first, but, if you even want to play it at all, I'd recommend playing it before SoC. It'll be more fun, story-wise, that way.
-virtually no bugs
-last game, so it's the most advanced mechanic-wise
-not as immersive as the previous two, though still good
Either be a faggot and play this first, to immerse yourself into the series, or play it last, like you should.
-mod
-pretty good for extra breeky

And that's it. Remember to play on master and that VSS Vintorez is best gun.

I completely forgot this. The way stalker works is that difficulty determines how much health you have, but because of gopnik fuckery, the engine gives enemies less health too. So you play on the hardest difficulty for the most immersive firefights. A few shots can make or break you.

Also turn off the crosshairs and shit so you can't just headshot from the hip.

Incorrect, it's not the health that changes but the damage.
Both you and your enemies get a very good bump to it which leads to fast kills for both of you.

I don't exactly remember which one it was, but Sky Reclamation Project is essentially just a bug-fix mod that keeps vanilla stuff intact. Don't know if that's something you might want to look at.

From my own personal playthrough, there also appears to be impossible to complete random stalker quests every now and then when asked to retrieve items. If you want to keep your map and pda log clean, it would probably be good to save before accepting them to see if they're impossible to turn in.

The devs of Squad are apparently implementing a new inventory system soon.

Who's gonna lend their talents and develop the STALKER total conversion?

It would be great, the game handles big maps very well, looks very good and the gun play is solid as fuck. Not to mention vehicles and other shit.
The hardest part would be developing good AI and NPC spawning system; That's a big part of what makes STALKER good. It would also need some alignment and faction system to have a proper STALKER "experience".

According to the developers, there IS basic AI in the SDK, but it's not actually presentable.

As for factions, I was thinking a little bit less of a real stalker game and more just a conversion. Your faction would just depend on the map like the vanilla game.

Lots of guns in Squad were in Stalker, which helps. There's also already both Russian Army and Chechen(?) Militant skins, as well as Russian maps.

Pretty much anybody could make STALKER drinks if they had access to it's stencil, I'd say that selling stencil is a better idea. Red Bull is not the taste I'd expect in these drinks but more like Tesco value.

So the HD model thing went down
moddb.com/mods/call-of-chernobyl-hd-models-addon/images/hd-model-pack28

These look really nice.

My one big gripe is that the biggest hindrance to Stalker at this point is the engine. I'd love to see it remade in Unreal 4 or something.

oh nvm i guess its back up

> Hop on a car and pull out my Predator
Wew, that was quite something.

I think it'd be interesting to do a sort of thing like OpenMW but for Stalker. It'd be really cool if someone could write adapters for the differing content, so then you'd have one updated, open-source engine that could work with all of the games; It may be easier to settle on the first or something, though. Good luck to the person in charge of reverse engineering all that vodka-induced binary content. The scripting portion of the engine was already difficult to work with, and some of it was commented!

But Stalker is already open source?
github.com/OpenXRay/xray-16

Oh shit, cool. Is the multiplayer mod using this?

I don't follow Ray of Hope development, so I cannot tell you anything about it.

I'm genuinely interested, what is Stalker and what is its appeal? How much is it? I'm bored and looking for new vidya.

Read the thread and you'll know if it appeals to you. If it does, pirate the gog version and go download one of the top-tier mods for it, since Vanilla is 5/10 at best, but modded easily brings it to 9/10. DO NOT fall for the "play vanilla first" meme, you will fucking hate the game and you'll never finish it. Spergs are going to get ridiculously triggered by this and vomit out a bunch of non-arguments, but it is what it is

My personal recommendation for a first playthrough would be ArsenOL 2.2 on Master difficulty. It's your standard SoC experience with a fuckpile of cut content restored, and the damage profile balanced to be more of a mil-sim (think Ranger mode in Metro games) than the awful arcadey mess it normally is.

mega.nz/#!tdMkkJYL!Rg-_xWscvsQByjg0tidQliE6VcIuhtwrcV9M9qobI0Y

You can never truly appreciate the mods since you don't have anything to compare them to.
And lets be hones the mods dont suddenly make it more interesting to people who don't like this types of games.

If the vanilla is enough to turn people away I doubt mods will remedy that.

is this the mod to finally fix everything wrong with stalker? probably not but I'm not gonna play it anyway because the games are all boring as fuck

a first person walking simulator with shooting and bullet sponge enemies, bad design, terrible voice acting, neat ideas for enemies that are poorly utilized, a broken upgrade system that makes you a walking tank, making it a great example of why games shouldn't get easier as you progress.

it's not worth your time.

...

insider here. AFAIK the Russian coder for RoH is some kind of absolute wizard. He's managed to do a lot of shit never thought possible. Stuff like managing online shit in-game through the PDA menu.

Oh shit its an mspaint comic.
Looks like I lost.

Not an argument, and you know I'm right. Would you also recommend anons play through Bethesda games unmodded first, in order to "appreciate" mods? Of course not, because that's fucking retarded.

I recommend people play it unmodded at least to bar. Bugfix mods are okay for first run. No mod in existence would make a person who dislikes the base game suddenly love it entirely modded.

You played it with mods first, didn't you?

Did for me, and it did for other anons who strongly disliked the awful "balance" in the base experience, but fell in love once they tried the mods I recommended.

See, the problem is that the game has atmosphere in spades, and the foundation for the gameplay is rock solid, but the RPG-tier "weapon progression" and bullet sponge enemies clash HARD with the rest of the game and for those of us who want good gunplay right off the bat, it's not fun. Mods fix that, so you can get that top-tier experience right off the bat. Vanilla is shit, and there's no reason to waste your first playthrough with it. Again, it's like playing a fucking beth game unmodded.

No, I actually gave Vanilla SoC multiple tries over the years before I even knew the modding scene was a thing, and could never make it out of the Garbage because I just wasn't having fun with the comically unrealistic damage profile and accuracy. Eventually I stumbled across someone recommending ArsenOL 2.2, so I gave it one last shot… and immediately loved it after my first firefight with the bandits at the car park. I played through the entire game, and then immediately replayed it, which is something I don't do. Now I've put several hundred hours into the series across all three games. Modded of course :^)

Same here, maybe not with Stalker, I enjoyed it in vanilla even with all its flaws (I'm used to deal with flawed games); mods of course makes it better.
But for some games like Oblivion, mods can actually make it playable and somewhat enjoyable.

So you didn't played it in Master like everyone else told you to. Your own fault, mods don't fix stupid.

Compared to your enemies, you always have good gunplay at all times except when you aren't supposed to.
Back at the cordon, your weapons will be shitty revolvers and shitty sawn-offs but you'll be against bandits that use the same thing or against the soldiers that you aren't supposed to fight. After you pass that, you'll quickly fetch a better gun that your oponents are also now using as well.

I don't like the progression either in the sense that you don't get ammo for your weapon from drops unless it's the right area for that weapon, but gunplay is always okay for the area you're currently and it doesn't take long before you get somewhat decent weapons.

Oblivion is one of those games that you can't even understand anymore after you play it modded.
Just the change to the interface with all the information it shows you and the bigger list of things or even a mod that changes leveling to something that makes much more sense, like nGCD, you'll wonder how the fuck did you ever even manage to play the game before.
Same for Skyrim with SkyUI, playing without it is suffering.

I'm sure it's different when you do it.

Are you implying Master alters the damage enemies take, because if you want to go down this path, I've blown fags out literally every time this shit-tier excuse comes up in stalker threads.

I'm game, nigger, are you? :^)

Everyone knows lower difficulties make more bullets disappear.

You're in EVERY stalker thread trying to prove the game is "shit". This is some serious cuckholm syndrome in action.

It alters the damage everyone makes, you included. TTK goes severely down when you increase the difficulty levels and is much more noticeable for headshots.
You can complain all you want, but you're just gonna sound like you took 9mm against Monolyth and wondered why their armor stopped your bulelts.

But that's wrong. The lines you're referring to in the weapon.ltx files are actually one of the NPC accuracy multipliers. Go ahead and set them to 0, and watch as they have zero effect on your shots landed. Reals > Feels, and you're arguing with a modder who knows what the fuck he's talking about :^)

Now, if you have any other myths or misconceptions about the difficulty you'd like me to blow the fuck out, I've done this dozens of times as I've said, as there's always that one guy in every thread who still doesn't understand the mechanics, so go ahead, fire away.

The series is easily in my top 5 of all time once modded. Lying on the internet isn't going to get you anywhere, friend.

If it took more than one, you're not very good at this.

There's actor.ltx that applies to you if weapons.ltx doesn't have it set up and it also affects you. Higher difficulty has an higher "accuracy" meaning more shots will be registered as actually hitting, but it also changes the resistance to damage and the damage each weapon does.

You can brag about your modding experience you want (without showing any of your work, of course) but you're still arguing with people that played the game on Master and did not find the enemies to be bullet sponges unless you intentionnaly engaged them with shitty weapons. You can easily drop 4-5 monolyth soldiers with a single clip of most end-game weapons.

Nope, it only alters the player's damage resistances.
Wrong again, difficulty doesn't modify enemy damage resistance, bone strength, locational modifiers, ammo damage multipliers, or base weapon damage. All of those values are untouched. Go test it yourself, set your Fire_Wound_Immunity (located in actor.ltx) to 0 for the difficulty you're testing, which will make you immune to gunshots, take the starting makarov, and shoot a bandit in the stomach dead center. Do this on both Novice and Master. It will take 5-10 shots, depending on how many times you hit the 'spine' hitbox from the front, which cuts damage in half.
No complaints, just the facts.

Do note that you're arguing with a modder here, and I actually know what the fuck I'm talking about :^)

But it doesn't. If you're seeing anything but 1.0 hit_probability in your actor.ltx it means you're playing with a mod that did that as the "vanilla" accuracy in 1.005 is 1.0 which is 100%.
No it doesn't. Show me the proof, and I'll show you exactly where you're wrong.
You do understand that you're not actually forming a coherent argument that goes against what I'm saying, right?

What you're seeing is people playing more carefully on Master, which means taking your time and lining up headshots so you "feel" like you're actually doing more damage than just running around on Novice.

Again, reals > feels.

Is 5-10 shots really a bullet sponge, when you're going for torso shots anyway? I though by bullet spong you meant 5-10 shots to the head or 20-30 to the chest.

You're also testing it on a bandit, they have next to no armor so difficulty isn't likely to factor that much. Testing it on mutants, Duty soldiers or Monolyth would make for a better test, which honestly I'd expect a "serious modder" to understand…

Do note you are talking with the janitor of the company that made the game here and I wrote all the damage procs when nobody else was looking :^)

Are we talking SoC here? The other games changed that part but SoC only had 50% at Master and even less in others for accuracy.

You do understand you're saying the multiple empyrical trials that many players took playing the game completely invalidate everything you've been posting and your bad ability at modding, if you even do that, don't really trump that, right?

You do understand that using Bandits for testing purposes not only is useless, it makes you sound like an idiot, getting wrong results because you don't understand basic math?

Sure is, and the argument wasn't whether or not enemies are subjective "bullet sponges" but whether or not difficulty reduced TTK, which it does not.
Show me exactly in the game files where "difficulty modifies enemy armor".
Snark isn't going to save you from being wrong, sorry kid.
Obviously.
user, I'm dealing with actual game values and specific files. You can try to hand-wave it all away with this "empyrical trials" (it's empirical you uneducated twat), but you're still not posting proof.
Not an argument, but then, nothing you've posted has been an argument. You started running your fucking mouth about things you don't understand, ran up against someone who knows exactly what they're talking about and has the files sitting right here to verify, and now you're in full damage control mode.

Here, I'll clear this up right now: Show me exactly in the files where "difficulty modifies enemy damage" or shut the fuck up

If your next post doesn't contain the proof, you're filtered and we're done here. Better get to googling, kid.

pastebin.com/08yNF3PH
Here, go to line 119.

Weapons may have different HitPower for different difficulty levels, but most mods only use one value balanced for Master, so this is a featured not used very often except for Vanilla.
This also comes on top of the accuracy modifier that only SoC has with only half your bullets registering at Master and less on other levels.

the ironing

And yet posting none, making all your posts "my dad works at videogames"-tier argumentation.

Nothing you posted so far has been one either, it's just claims after claims with no backing, no files or code shown. You don't even point to any of your work or show an inch of it to prove you're an actual modder.

That must be the reason why you've been doing this dozen of times already. If you bury your head in the sand everytime you're proven wrong or you fail to convince people, of course you'll come back later, thinking you won an internet argument.

Also, here:
pastebin.com/7irjwms0
Line 473, and 1850, the difficulty of the game is used to change the accuracy of a weapon.

Sorry, "kid" but reals > feels

Since you are a modder what mods have you released for this game series?

Hahahah, fucking called it. Yeah, we're done here.

For someone that has constantly claimed lots of things, up to and including being a modder, you still haven't proven shit either. If anything, I'm the one that should filter you since there's nothing but whitenoise coming from your posts.

He probably made a few modifications to weapons that replace their accuracy with 1.0 and a single HitPower that's 10 times the vannilla value because "muh bullet sponge". If even that and he didn't just tweaked someone else's mod and call it his own like a nigger.

Posting a few non-functional lines that have zero effect in-game, like many of the lines in the game's spaghetti-tier code is not proof of anything other than you being a dishonest sack of trash and a font of disinfo.

The fact that you're still spewing the "novice eats your bullets :((((" meme when it would take you seconds to cap your accuracy, remove movement penalty, crank damage so you're getting one-hit kills on everything, and then counting how many times the game "eats your bullets" on novice shows how little you care about understanding the mechanics that you're googling.

Master does not increase weapon damage. Master does not increase enemy damage taken. Master has no effect on accuracy. What Master does do is modify the player's resistances, forcing you into a playstyle that is more conducive to slowing down, taking your time to aim, and getting headshots so you feel you're killing faster, especially once you progress out of the low-tier weapons with comically bad base accuracy.

Someone's getting quite mad, uh? Could have to do with someone mocking your attempt at invoking credibility without any proof behind it?

Why do you expect anyone to believe the "those lines don't really run" thing? Got anything to prove they are commented out or unused?
I'm currently away from my PC or I'd gladly try out these tests and even open the files on my own to post them here, I might even do that later on just because I'm curious about how stupid you really are.

Explain to me then why I have to land 5-10 headshots on people when playing in low difficulty but 2 are more then enough at Master even against heavy armored enemies?
Oh wait, that's empyrical evidence so that doesn't count because your feels trump my reals.

Awe, that's cute.
Because the game is full of similar non-functional lines of code, and we know through testing variables that your bullets aren't magically eaten based on difficulty, your accuracy isn't modified based on difficulty, and enemy resistance isn't modified based on difficulty. All of which you have claimed are true, despite all of the evidence and actual testing showing the opposite.
Do note that I've already gone through this with other anons, sometimes ones like you where your neuroses dictates you have the last word, even when you have nothing of substance to contribute to a debate, know you're wrong, and have backed yourself into a corner. I'm interested in seeing how you attempt to fudge the data after your "tests" prove me right, though.
Simple: You don't, and a "headshot" isn't a "headshot", as the head, neck, eye and jaw all have different damage multipliers and bone resistances. You would know that if you weren't just googling shit to try and build a foundation for your shit argument after the fact :^)

See you soon, love.

Passive agression is a very, very flimsy mask to hide how butthurt you are. It only fools you.

So because other parts of the game aren't run, those aren't either? Top tier argumentation.

Your test involved shooting a bandit and having the average being 5-10 bullets. That's 50% deviation error there, if you think that's an accurate test, you need to re-learn math. And hilariously, it concides with Master Difficulty 50% accuracy.

Out of which you posted none but still use it for your "argument". Did you knew the world is flat and the moon is made out of cheese? It's true, extensive testing and tons of evidence confirm it!

The irony behind this will hit you as soon as you press New Reply.

Says the guy making claims after claims after claiming being a modder and never putting anything forward but yet even more claims.
It's very sad that my "hastily googled code lines" are still the stronger proof posted in this thread since nothing else was posted to discredit them.

Says the guy that has dropped all pretenses of being a modder and doesn't even try to prove it anymore. :^)

I'm talking about sneaking from behind someone and shooting them in the back of the head. Sometimes I deal enough damage to even stun them, other times it doesn't even faze them. And I honestly doubt the multiplier for each part of the head makes the damage vary that much, but what do I know? You're the modder here and I'm sure you have a table with the multiplier for each body part ready to post in the thread, right? Oh wait, you don't do evidence, do you?

Maybe you're new to imageboards, so here's a tip.
You don't get to claim fuck all and stand behind it like it's a fort without backing it up with something at least.
Especially any kind or form of identity, that's the worst shit. Your attempt at gaining automatic credibility and perceived competence for being a modder do nothing for you if you can't actually prove you mod the game. In fact, refusing to prove an identity you claimed to have just makes you sound even more suspicious and stupid.

Kill yourself
Double for shitting up every S.T.A.L.K.E.R thread.

Keep feeding me those (You)s kiddo. I've got nothing to prove to a random child on the internet, this argument is for the benefit of others :^)

What was that you said about always having the last word? Don't you have some mods to do?

I told you I had you pegged.

You're the one into pegging, user.

I'm gonna have to play SoC soon anyway before I try CoC so I'll have the oportunity to try it.
Since you don't want to be a grown up here and post any of your work or actually bother to prove anything you say or disprove anything I said, aka actually debating, I guess you're right, we're done here.
Have fun being a passive agressive shitposter that will never get recognition for things he can't claim he ever did. Oh and by the way? I'm gonna play it Vannila and I'm going to enjoy it and there's nothing you can do about it :D

fuck me, construction equipment or other seemingly static things coming to life is an amazing fucking idea, make the environment even more uncertain, fits right into the theme.

It also sounds insanely hard to accomplish

Surely if I'm full of shit you'd have no issue spending ~2 minutes and running a simple test that would prove your "vanishing bullets" myth, right?

I await more comical personal attacks, backpedaling, deflections, and damage control for why you haven't already ran such a test and posted the results.

I'm at work, killing time. Got a few threads open I'm reading, this happens to be one of them. In about 4-5 hours I'll be back home and I'll give it a try.

Gonna make myself immortal, pick the shittiest gun and run to Duty to test it on them in 2 difficulties.

You're hilarious.

Oh surely you can do better than that, sweety. You're becoming quite boring.
Never said I wasn't a modder, but the specific projects I've worked on have absolutely no bearing on the discussion at hand and your sad attempts at doxxing me aren't going to work. My knowledge, however, is relevant and I believe I've demonstrated that. Of course, being the perpetually assblasted contrarian, you'll disagree, but that's okay.
You will need to correct for hitbox variation and user inaccuracies. Set all of the multipliers in m_stalker to be the same for each body part (1, 0, 1 for example). They will take the same amount of hits on average regardless of difficulty if you properly set the values.

Oh lookie here, we have a narcissist with a persecution complex here.

Do you have an argument hidden in there? If not, take your shitposting elsewhere.

Then why mention it? Why claim you are modder if that "has no bearing to the discussion"?
It was a bad attempt at your part to appear more knowledgable than everyone else that didn't worked because here, if it's not proven, it's autistic rambling.
I can say I worked with the original dev team and I know how the code was made and how it works. Doesn't mean anything unless I can prove that I actually did work with them.

You can just drop the name of your mod, that would be a start but you can't even do that and you're now goal shifting to "y-you're trying to doxx me, you meanie!"

You believe, but you actually didn't, and that's the problem. Until you show proof of your knowledge, you're the only person that believes you possess any.

user, what you're doing right now is known as Deflecting. You understand that your original argument has failed, and thus you are now personally attacking me instead of attempting to prove your case.

Embarrassing.

Kill yourself you waste of space

...

And what you're doing right now is pretending we all have agreed you were right and trying to shift the discussion to something else.

The original argument hasn't been proven right or wrong.
I've presented a few lines of code that support my point but don't prove it.
You have presented your unconfirmed experience as a modder that support your point and expect everyone to just believe you.

Until I give it a shot geddit or you prove those lines of code aren't really used, neither of us is right or wrong.
The difference however is that I have more to my argument then "trust me, I know what I'm talking about".

I mean, you've claimed multiple times to be a modder and this would be awfully easy for you to prove. If you can't even prove that, why should anyone believe you about anything else based on your word alone?

See, the difference here is that I've explained to you in very simple terms how you can test the possibility of the game eating your bullets based on difficulty, and how to completely rule that out in minutes, and how to consistently test how much damage you do based on difficulty.

I have personally ran these tests, and I invite you to perform them yourself.

All you have is "trust me, like some people totally did some tests or something at some point", and just googling random shit.

Here's, your argument, Mr. "Modmaker". The weapon damage values are not hidden in m_stalker.ltx, but in .ltx files for EVERY INDIVIDUAL WEAPON. It's hit_power.

Go ahead, take w_pm.ltx, modify its hit_power on different difficulties to wildly different values, and shoot some bandits in Cordon at different difficulties. Only thing to watch out for is that difficulties are reversed in that file, with master being first and rookie being last in the line.

I will concede one thing, though, and that's the fact that hit_power goes down with difficulty, not up. I have a feeling that this is some kind of oversight - the hit_power values scale up from left to right, as you would expect from increasing difficulties, but the difficulties IN WEAPON FILES are reversed for no apparent reason. So yes, weapons become a tiny bit less deadly (by a small amount) on higher difficulties. Point still stands, though, you were talking shit.

Which would blow thoroughly out of the water as I said from the beginning, and 100% debunks the "you do more damage on master" meme.

Also, most weapons have a single hit_power value. I'll have to test the individual values.

I never argued against that, I just took offense to you talking shit like you knew where difficulty modifiers are. I've been digging around in STALKER configs on and off since 2008, almost never professionally.
False.

Yes, you've given the modus operandi by which an objective conclusion can be extracted, and trust me I'll happily try it and post results even if they prove me wrong.

But you "personnaly running those tests" and yet not posting a Webm is no different then people telling you what they personnaly saw either.

All I have are lines of code that may or may not run and thus prove or disprove my point.
It's alot more than "trust me, I know stuff".

You said difficulty does not affect damage, you were debunked yourself by that.
And you've proven you know next to nothing in regards to math. If the accuracy thing happens in the game where Master sees half your bullets register while Rookie only has 20%, then for that weapon, Master corresponds to 0.325 while Rookie is just 0,15, despite their base damage being higher.

From what I read from other posters, most weapons ADDED BY MODS or RETWEAKED BY MODS only have one value that's used for all difficulties. Vannila has different values.

hit_probability is something that I myself am unsure about. I think it affects bullets at range only, because testing it at 0.01 in close to point blank range against bandits, neither I nor they missed very much at all.

I've also confirmed that the PMM does indeed kill bandits in a single headshot no matter the difficulty. It's hit_power of around 0.40ish is enough for a one-shot kill. For comparison, having set hit_power to 0.10, it took 8 bullets straight to the head to kill a bandit. I cannot test any further than that, damages.ltx has different immunities for different helmets, but I dunno how exactly it is calculated.

And again, I have no idea how hit_probability works.

From what I read (and it's ridiculous how badly this seems to be documented or talked about) it's a straight up RNG check applied to every bullet that connects with a collision box. If you have 50% odds to hit, everytime a bullet connects, it runs prob(50) and if it's true, it carries on, if it isn't, it's ignored.

However, it might be affected by distance playing a role in changing that percentage, though. Which would make sense for different weapons.

Testing damage is probably best to go for body shots instead. Since you need to shoot them more often to kill them, you can eliminate many bias errors. Aiming for the spleen should give more consistent results as well.

I'm also guessing here but I think the idea of increased damage but reduced accuracy for lower levels was to make nicely aimed shots for the player and the enemies feel rewarding but no great aim would be required to get them, it would be relegated to RNG.
The drop in damage came from enemies hitting you more reliably so they don't need a base damage that high anymore to pose a threat, as long as you yourself can also aim as well.

There is definitely some kind of formula involved, close range shots almost never miss. Moreover, I have a feeling this hit chance might only apply to the player being hit, at least seeing how actor.ltx is structured (hit_probability is coming directly after difficulty-dependent actor immunities).

Testing damage is probably best to go for body shots instead.

I set the PMM to 0.9 hit_power for Novice. I would 2-shot bandits to the chest with it. But hit_power is not linear either, 0.2 is not 2x damage of 0.1, because it also has to count other factors, like the armor layer.

To be fair, none of the content I modify makes use of different values in those slots and I had CoP values open in notepad++, all of which are flat by default. The Makarov is what I had been using to test, and since the values are so close in vanilla SoC; they resulted in identical TTK regardless of difficulty. I just modified the values to 0.10, 0.10, 0.10, 2.0 and was definitely getting 1-2 shot body shots on novice with it, so that does appear to be the difficulty modifier for player damage. That said, my original goal was to disprove the myth of hit_probability removing the player's shots (which I did, since when you're handing out 1 shots regardless of location, it's very easy to see if you're hitting) and to dispel the whole "if you think the game is bullet spongy, you weren't playing on master" meme, so that is all my tests encompassed.

The other "difficulty modifiers" being in actor.ltx, where hit_probaiblity doesn't do dick to the player's shots, regardless of range, and the obvious resistance multipliers.

Oh, forgot to reply to last paragraph. You do LESS damage at higher difficulties, and so do enemies. The difference is small, but it's still less. Most weapons have between 10-20% reduction in hit_power from novice to master.

You still haven't disproven anything though, and seeing how you had the CoP values open instead, when that game and even Clear Sky removed the hit_probability eating bullets, you're no longer a credible source of information.

The base damage is lower but if you account of accuracy, it's actually higher. As in, everyone including you hits for less damage but hits more often which offsets it increasing your overall FPS.

For instance, assuming 50% acc for Master and 20% for Rookie, using the data for the weapon you provided, you actually end up with overall 0,325 for Master and 0,15 for Rookie.

It's a strange way to balance difficulty since Rookies have to deal with larger wounds everytime they are shot but perhaps it's to ease them into the game since it doesn't happen as often.
Meanwhile, Masters will get shot a lot more often but for less damage, making cover more important and actually increasing difficulty without reaching EYE-levels of "one-hit kill from an headshot from the other side of the map"

Again, it doesn't seem like hit_probability applies to your shots. It only applies to enemy shots with some unknown formula. I mean, think rationally, once you get a weapon with good ironsights or a scope, how often do you ACTUALLY experience a situation where you see the bullet tracer fly towards the enemy head, only to do no damage? I think it's a placebo effect of people being frustrated at poor ironsights on, say, the AKS-74U, the PMM, some other pistols, and some shotguns. Some of those ironsights, when combined with an innately low accuracy of those weapons, make you feel like your shots go where you point, but vanish in mid-air, when what actually happens is, the bullets were never nowhere close to the enemy to begin with, because of a myriad of other reasons which are not a flat out chance for a bullet to poof out of existence.

bump

> Holy shit they're both outisde
Went exactly as planned this time. The previous attempt ended in an open firefight and me eating about 50 grenades. This time it took exactly one try and two bullets.