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sea of losers posted:squirting water emoji This is different from Ray of Hope, right?
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Oct 23, 2019 21:31
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Didn't know what xrMPE was, so I did some googling. Best most illuminating comment I've found, so far:quote:it's a handful of rookies attempting what Ray of Hope couldn't accomplish in years with a large team.
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Oct 23, 2019 21:51
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Not to take a bullet for an unreleased mod but Ray of Hope a)is a much bigger undertaking, and is more of a TC in addition to a multiplayer solution and b)also looks like it works so that quote's not really accurate?? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2hZfk30qi0
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Oct 23, 2019 22:20
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I stand corrected. That looks really impressive. I wonder what sort of issues they're still encountering?
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Oct 24, 2019 00:40
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null_pointer posted:I stand corrected. That looks really impressive. I wonder what sort of issues they're still encountering? Games syncing up with each other? ~*Just netcode things*~
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Oct 24, 2019 02:57
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ray of hope is also rewriting the engine to support streaming, meaning all the levels will be combined into one large level. this is definitely an impressive undertaking, but projects of this ambition and scope rarely seem to survive to a playable state. think about what a massive undertaking it is to re-write the xRay engine to support tech on the level of GTA5 or far cry 5 and that's what we're hoping they accomplish with only a small team and a few hundred $ a month through patreon. that's why i'm excited about xrMPE: it's simply a mod that allows another player to join another player's campaign and cooperate with them. no complete rewrites of the engine or netcode, conversion of gameplay to a hybrid MMOFPS, or massive overhauls (all things that ray of hope is doing). it seems more likely to succeed, and if it can succeed in allowing for STALKER co-op then that's impressive and fun all by itself. ray of hope is offering the moon, while xrMPE is just like "how about that STALKER co-op huh?" i'm still rooting for ray of hope, but i feel like we'll see playable releases of xrMPE sooner. who knows tho. sea of losers fucked around with this message at 06:22 on Oct 24, 2019 |
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Oct 24, 2019 06:13
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i imagine that even if ray of hope's technical aspects are all working fine it's still gonna be a while before they're finished filling in their gigantic map, and the game doesn't even cover all of the existing shadow of chernobyl maps
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Oct 25, 2019 02:06
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Does anyone have a link to what all of the k_ values are for ammo? I was thinking of doing some adjustments after playing around with shotguns a bit, but I don't want to touch the numbers until I'm sure of what I'm doing.
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Oct 25, 2019 02:45
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On a similar note, someone mentioned upping "bullet damage" to 1.5, but I need to know what to look for in the .ltx files.
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Oct 25, 2019 03:10
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are you looking for configs/items/weapons/weapon_ammo.ltx ?
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Oct 25, 2019 04:08
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I know Clear Sky isn't exactly relevant anymore, but I decided to replay it last weekend, and I had a few thoughts to 1) SoC wasn't exactly a pinnacle of storytelling in gaming, but it still captivates me to this day. The atmosphere of the game, the tension in the labs and the lonely melancholy if the open areas is unmatched to me, even from the Metro games (I haven't played Exodus though). That atmosphere is critical to game selling it's narrative, because without that atmosphere, I'd more easily notice the flaws in the story. For example, you're not able to actually read the flash drives or documents that you retrieve from the labs, they're just summarized to you by the mission givers in dialogue screens. But I still found the story engaging because of the atmosphere presented. CS doesn't have that though. The biggest problem is that the zone is surprisingly populated and active, due to the Faction War system (more on that later). The second problem is that the labs that helped the spookiness of the Zone in SoC are gone. There’s a section in the Agropom underground, but it’s set up to be more of a sprint than a careful dive into a dangerous, abandoned laboratory. I don’t think there are any other underground sections in CS, come to think of it. The third problem is that the story just isn’t well constructed. The basic set up is that a mercenary named Scar somehow survives a massive emission at the beginning of the game that has somehow damaged his nervous system. Lebedev, leader of the Clear Sky faction, tells him that a stalker must have entered the center of the zone, and this made the Zone cause an emission to defend itself. This stalker needs to be stopped from entering the power plant again, because if they do, then the Zone will retaliate and generate an emission so large that the entire Zone will be in danger. It’s never established why Lebedev has reached this conclusion. I realize that this question could just be handwaved away with some justifications, but none are presented in the game itself, and the most important thing is that Scar never asks why Lebedev thinks this. Normally, a player could ask that question, because they’d want to know, but I think GSC just assumed that everyone playing would already know about the whole C-Consciousness business, and just didn’t bother. But it doesn’t make sense that Scar wouldn’t ask that question. It also bothers me that roughly a third of the stalkers I talked to in game seemed to think the same thing; that a stalker had made it to the center, and that the zone was retaliating for it. I can’t remember them thinking this in SoC, so I don’t know why they’re suddenly worried about it now. As a side note, it’s important to mention that the fact that Lebedev worked for the Group that became the C-Consciousness isn’t revealed until CoP; it’s not mentioned in CS, or if it is, it’s either buried or I just completely missed it. The second problem is that Clear Sky doesn’t make sense as a faction, and doesn’t fit in the setting of STALKER, or even the narrative of the game named after it. Clear Sky couldn’t be too heavily involved in the shaping of the Zone before SoC, or else people would ask why they weren’t mentioned. GSC’s solution was to nestle them in an isolated swamp and have absolutely no impact on anything until the end of the game, when they capture a bridgehead, get slaughtered in Limansk, destroy a pillbox in the Hospital, and get their brains exploded at Chernobyl because Lebedev is secretly a massive idiot. The excuse in game is that they don’t want to be involved or something, but it never explains how they’re able to cross the zone at the end with large numbers of soldiers with high-end, expensive weapons and armor without leaving any kind of footprint, or why Scar couldn’t walk through these same pathways that somehow hide a small army. This leads to another point: multiple times in the game, your goal is to chase Strelok in person. How come Clear Sky never sets any ambushes to prevent Strelok from getting away? Lebedev seems to know what you’re seeing and what your location is at all times, and also knows when you’re chasing Strelok. Stopping Strelok is his main goal, so why didn’t he use his army and intellect to set ambushes at any of the whopping two spots that Strelok could get to Chernobyl from? And why doesn’t Clear Sky do more to help you? It’s not like they’re doing anything else in the Swamp. I guess moping around in the middle of nowhere is more important that accomplishing their goal. I have other quibbles with the story, but they’re problems of a technical perspective. CS just uses lazy writing techniques, but this write-up will be long enough as it is, so I’ll move on. 2) The Faction Wars is an excellent concept that is broken in game, and damages the gameplay, setting, and narrative. To begin with, even with patches and fan patches, the Faction Wars is a broken system; not in terms of bugginess, but in execution. The system works by letting you join a faction that is at odds with another faction; once you join, the factions will go to war. To win the war, a faction will send squads to take and hold certain strategic points on the map, the most important of which are listed in your PDA as objectives. The ultimate goal is to take over the enemy’s base; once you do this, your faction’s leader will give a little speech about achieving ultimate victory over the enemy, and you can head back to the leader and get a nice reward for winning. It’s actually pretty nice, at first. Okay, let’s dig into this: First, you can’t actually win a faction war, at least not in the way you expect. Once you leave the map that has the captured enemy base, the enemy can just retake it with no fuss. This really ruins the impact that the characters and their speeches have, not to mention rendering all the allied stalkers’ sacrifices moot. It really diminishes the impact of your actions when they can just be taken away like that, and if you don’t personally handhold your faction after that, they’ll constantly win and lose the enemy base again and again as you go through the game. They’ll make announcements about it even as your marching on Chernobyl itself. Second, the player has little influence over the war itself. You can take out strategic points and defend them, either with or without a squad. And that’s it. You can’t control a squad, you can’t decide where your faction will send them, you can’t help upgrade your faction’s weapons or armor, you can’t even capture the enemy by yourself. Even if you kill every single in an enemy faction’s base, you must wait to for your faction to actually send a squad over to hold it. And the key word is wait. I’ve literally waited for half an hour for a Loner squad to come and hold the bandit base, or for Freedom squads to come hold footholds in Agroprom. I wouldn’t be surprised if other players have had to wait even longer! See, the problem that causes that problem is that faction’s actually have resources: strength, and resources. Strength dictates how many squads a faction can send out at a time, and resources dictate the actual quality of equipment. The problem is that I have no idea how these work. Strength goes up as you take over areas, but I never noticed an increase in the number of squads being sent out. I don’t actually know how to increase a faction’s resource, just that it goes up sometimes. It’s never explained in game, as far as I can tell. The final issue is that there aren’t many benefits to actually partake in a war. You get some nice rewards, but most of them can be found or bought with time and effort. In fact, if you alienate a faction, it will do more harm then good, because then you piss off their members, and factions like Duty and Freedom inhabit some plot relevant locations. Pissing off the most powerful factions wouldn’t make sense to a mercenary like Scar I think, and it doesn’t really make sense to me. You also lose access to the faction’s traders and mechanics. 3) This leads to the third issue I have with the game: upgrading equipment at mechanics. First of all, I think it’s important that it’s here. It lead to the system implemented in CoP, which I think is an excellent part of that game, and that idea of stalkers upgrading and customizing weapons to suit their preferences makes sense in this setting. Unfortunately, it’s implementation here is completely botched, because any assault rifle can be upgraded to either be a relatively accurate bullet hose, or a ridiculously accurate automatic sniper rifle. Whatever difficulty the game has can be broken over your knee if your wise with your spending money. There is a mitigating factor though (in theory): some upgrades are locked. To unlock them, you have to: 1) purchase a tip to the stash they’re in (or find them by chance) 2) actually get the flash drive from the stash 3) take the flash drive to the right mechanic (or hope you didn’t piss off the faction, thus rendering the upgrade lost forever) There are 18 of these flash drives scattered about, and finding them all and turning them in means you can’t engage in the Faction Wars until your done. Some the upgrade restrictions don’t even make sense; the egregious is that a SEVA suit cannot be fully upgraded unless the bandit mechanic does it. Not a mechanic from Duty, or Clear Sky, or even Freedom, the supposed technologically advanced factions. Nope, it has to be from the bandit in the middle of the garbage dump. Yes, there’s a convenient backstory that explains his technical prowess, but it’s just too silly for me to accept that bandits have the one tech in this part of the zone who can install advanced psi protection in the SEVA suit. Or you could just ignore all of that, because as it turns out, the game is actually pretty easy even if you don’t get the ultimate upgrades. Again, maybe the CSRP affects the AI in some way I’m not familiar with, or the Alternative Ballistics makes the game substantially easier besides removing the damage debuff from silencers (which I made little use of anyways), but soldiers in this game love to line up in rows convenient for sniper fire, and then stand still when you start killing them. Enemies won’t seek cover unless they’re already behind it when you start shooting, and if you’re far enough away, they might not even respond to you killing their comrades. The only dangerous enemies were Monolith, and that’s mostly due to level design. 4) And I guess that brings me to the final point: the ending. The last three maps (Limansk, Hospital, and the power plant itself) are abysmal. I’ve read Limansk being compared to Call of Duty, which is frankly insulting to Call of Duty; at least CoD games had a lot spectacle and excitement. Limansk is a long corridor where you fight three or four groups of enemies with Clear Sky squads (who are all proficient at dying), avoid about four anomalies, and then go to the next map. I mean, it does have a couple houses to explore, and the construction site is pretty winding, but it’s still designed to funnel you down one path. Next up is the Hospital, which is… a long corridor with some stairwells. It… looks appropriate, I guess? It’s home to the most egregious scripted sequence of the game though: one hallway is covered by a sniper and a machine gun nest. Even though both of them could be easily sniped by the player, the enemy sniper is actually invulnerable from the front, and killing the MG guy will corrupt your save file(!). Instead, you have to navigate the winding stairwells around the hallways, and then kill the groups of Monolith soldiers who spawn in from the sides. Eventually, you get around the back of the sniper and can then kill him, and then you have to wait for five goddamned minutes for the Clear Sky squad to meander over while you cover them and let them drop a grenade on the MG guy. Fun fact, the grenade didn’t even detonate in my game, the enemy just decided to stop shooting. And then, there’s one last bit of sheer bullshit: the final room of the hospital is covered by another machine gun nest. You might think that you have to wait again for a Clear Sky squad to come take it out, and maybe that’s the intention, but what actually happens is that you kill the MG guy so that you can hide behind his turret, because a fuckton of Monolith will spawn in and starting flooding the room. Even an upgraded exoskeleton does little to help while you wait for the Clear Sky squad to come and shoot rockets at the monster closets so that Monolith stops flooding then. Finally, they blow up the MG nest, and you go through to enter the massive network of dangerous labs under Pripyat. Actually, that level was cut, sorry; GSC ran out of time here, I guess. You’re actually dumped at the power plant, given a I’ve always been kind of baffled by this game, or more precisely, the reaction to it. It’s commonly either defended as an underrated gem or said to be worth playing even if it’s not as good as the others. But is it really? Every time I come away from it, I just feel frustrated with it, and everything it did well has been done better by now, either with mods or with refinements in Call of Pripyat. I didn’t really touch on the narrative itself, mostly just the beginning and ending, but there aren’t any startling revelations or insightful characters that somehow re-contextualize things in a new light, like say Metal Gear Solid 3 did for that franchise at the time. Clear Sky doesn’t add anything. We learned nothing new about Strelok, Clear Sky is specifically written to be an underground actor in the zone and is ultimately forgotten. Ultimately, Clear Sky is important for how it paved the way for Call of Pripyat, and whatever inspirations that game led to, but otherwise, I can’t say I plan on playing again. Which is kind of a shame, since the conceptual Clear Sky armor looks pretty cool.
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Oct 25, 2019 05:31
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I always found Clear Sky to be full of interesting ideas but just not fun to play, and as many good ideas as there are, there are a lot of bad ones too. Their iterative design approach did end up with Call of Pripyat eventually so I don't fault them overall but Clear Sky felt like a mish-mash at the time and has not gotten better with age, despite some mods to help it out, at least in my opinion.
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Oct 25, 2019 13:47
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I still really like it but I have to just accept that i'm not going to get all of the flash drives and that faction wars are kinda broke. You know what annoys me? Invisible bloodsuckers being literally invincible so the best way to fight one was to sit in a corner with a shotgun out and wait for it to go for you. zzzzzzzz
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Oct 25, 2019 14:53
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drkeiscool posted:Spiel.
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Oct 25, 2019 15:13
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Good things about Clear Sky - Red Forest - That bit in the Red Forest where you find a tank and MG then get attacked by a ton of mutants - Freedom's tannoy banter - Some of the new shotguns were ok - Scar turns up as zombie in CoP Bad things about Clear Sky - The numetal soundtrack - The Swamp - Getting your weapons/ cash stolen by bandits multiple times - Most of everything else That said, I did enjoy it, but I'm not sure I'd ever want to play it ever again. ShoC is a much better Stalker game and CoP is a much better refinement of the series, even if the central conceit - anomalies move after emissions! - could have been learned from almost anyone in the zone, making the whole thing kinda pointless since the UA could have moved in at almost any time.
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Oct 25, 2019 16:43
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yeah i concur with this assessment When it first came out, i was extremely suspicious of Clear Sky because it was released maybe one year the first one. March 20, 2007 for SoC and August 22, 2008 for CS. This was after SoC was in development for like a decade. Sure enough, CS was hastily cobbled together from reused assets. Totally perfunctory. But i guess they added the ability for the AI to lob grenades, that definitely spices things up
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Oct 25, 2019 18:52
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tight aspirations posted:Good things about Clear Sky you forgot about the bandit music
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Oct 26, 2019 01:58
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Helianthus Annuus posted:But i guess they added the ability for the AI to lob grenades, that definitely spices things up It also makes Limansk more or less broken.
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Oct 26, 2019 02:07
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tight aspirations posted:- Scar turns up as zombie in CoP drat, he does? I missed this. Where is he? Also, I have to admit that even though Limansk and the Swamps are both kind of obnoxious, as least they were new maps. I don't even hate Limansk, as it seems more like a lab in terms of pacing to me than an open level.
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Oct 26, 2019 02:19
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I never had a problem with clear sky for the most part. At least with the clear sky complete mod it kept it pretty vanilla with mostly bug fixes. The cool things they added like npcs firing from cover were fresh (ignore grenades). Yea the faction war was gibbled from the get-go but i played it more for the story anyway. Limansk onward was fine since it was a “no going back” point in the game. I kinda disagree with the “clear sky knew the route already” theory since you can basically view it as them using you as the driving force to get there. Although the whole “why is clear sky better armed than some countries” is never addressed. The CNPP loving sucked tho, eat poo poo that you gotta shoot strelok so many loving times and getting a headshot didn’t seem to make it easier. And god help you if you quicksaved at any point during the CNPP routine, pretty much guaranteed to break the script. Beating clear sky was just a big gently caress you, its done. Beating SoC (the first time you get the canon ending) was actually emotional. That was a strange feeling, probably the only time a video game provoked actually feelings from me.
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Oct 26, 2019 02:36
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Anomaly question: what tool do I need to disassemble guns and where can I get it?
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Oct 26, 2019 02:57
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null_pointer posted:Anomaly question: what tool do I need to disassemble guns and where can I get it? Multitool, every mechanic sells it
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Oct 26, 2019 04:06
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Thank you, very much!  In other news, wow, does Anomaly just let you march off to your own gleeful doom, without you even realizing it. I headed into the Darkscape, for the first time, just to explore. Pretty boring level: wide open, no stashes, nothing interesting. Heard gunfire from what looks like the only building on the whole level, figured I'd sneak over and gank some bandits. Ended up walking into a firefight between a bunch of dudes in exosuits who promptly curb-stomped me. Like, I'm pretty sure my pistol and shotgun weren't even piercing their armor. Reload, fast travel back to Cordon. I'm in the Great Swamps, right now, not sure where to go.
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Oct 26, 2019 16:04
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A rookie wandering into the wrong part of the zone, getting in way over his head, and barely escaping with his life (if at all) is perfectly on-brand for The Zone.
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Oct 26, 2019 18:19
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aniviron posted:drat, he does? I missed this. Where is he? I'm pretty sure he doesn't, scar is just in the naming pool
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Oct 29, 2019 02:17
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Harminoff posted:Anyone pick up Chernobylite? i picked it up recently but probably won't install until it's further along in early access. trailer looks incredible, game play looks a bit iffy
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Nov 3, 2019 13:19
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I'm crosspostin' here!Mordja posted:I decided to install the STALKER Demofsen mod on a whim. The main reason I know of its existence is that its titular creator was spamming the Anomaly moddb page a while back, accusing them of stealing.
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Nov 9, 2019 20:05
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So basically, Call of Chernobyl is the current "vanilla+" standard, and Anomaly is the bastard offspring of OGSE and Misery?
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Nov 9, 2019 21:28
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Ceyton posted:So basically, Call of Chernobyl is the current "vanilla+" standard, and Anomaly is the bastard offspring of OGSE and Misery? Anomaly's more vanilla+ than CoC I'd say, it has more content in every respect and isn't just an empty sandbox - I played both and it feels like a sequel more than anything. The Misery flavour of the month is Dead Air or Last Day (can't remember which), haven't played either so can't comment on how joyless they are
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Nov 9, 2019 22:32
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Anomaly builds on Last Day, which is itself built on Call of Misery. Last Day was an unholy mess of mods the guy threw on top of CoM and never really cleaned up or had a vision for in my experience - well other than moar hardcorr!! Anomaly seems to clean all that up a lot while adding a ton of new stuff of its own on top, using the engine source. I haven't had the time to play it yet, but it's certainly looks q long step forward from the mods it's based on with a lot of new additions of its own. Dead Air is based on CoM but also adds its own engine tweaks and new mechanics. I played that in beta and it's a hard mod. Not hard like Last Day's turn up all the spawns and numbers hard, but a considered yet still very difficult kind of hard game.
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Nov 10, 2019 02:57
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I'd say the only really bad part of Anomaly is the repair/crafting systems and their associated 1000 items. It's not even that the repair system is bad in and of itself - each weapon and armour is made of a set of components which can be swapped out to repair (eg you can pull a pristine 5.56 barrel out of an otherwise damaged L85 to repair an M4 with a worn barrel) - there's just so much other poo poo that clutters up your inventory: 4 different types of gun oil, 6 different kind of sewing sets, various tools like hammers, steel wool, grease etc. Otherwise, it's mercifully free of the kind of mod jank that fucks up Misery, for example.
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Nov 10, 2019 06:23
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Okay, so at the strong recommendations of a friend and also this thread, I'm finally getting off my fat loner rear end and installing Anomaly. I've seen people talking about some jank or some stupid poo poo Anomaly does; are there any mods I should install before I head back into the Zone again? E: I picked up Control Volume's mod linked upthread, anything else? Radio Free Kobold fucked around with this message at 19:07 on Nov 11, 2019 |
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Nov 11, 2019 18:59
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Radio Free Kobold posted:Okay, so at the strong recommendations of a friend and also this thread, I'm finally getting off my fat loner rear end and installing Anomaly. I've seen people talking about some jank or some stupid poo poo Anomaly does; are there any mods I should install before I head back into the Zone again? Soundscape addon and whatever in here that sounds like it will preemptively avoid annoying bullshit. There are plenty more good addons (the soundscape guy has a couple other sound addons that are excellent) but those are the only ones that I would consider necessary.
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Nov 11, 2019 23:03
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Still haven't really played Anomaly, waiting for 1.5 final for whatever reason.
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Nov 11, 2019 23:24
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That's a really nice addon. They should make it the default: quote:1. Remove all fake mutant sounds from the ambiance 2. Repurpose those effects to real distant mutant effects to increase situational awareness and immersion Fake mutant sounds are so obnoxious and it actually does have an effect on ~* my immersion *~.
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Nov 12, 2019 00:01
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Mordja posted:Still haven't really played Anomaly, waiting for 1.5 final for whatever reason. it really is worth it in its current state
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Nov 13, 2019 12:06
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Mordja posted:Still haven't really played Anomaly, waiting for 1.5 final for whatever reason. It's good man, play it. I'm currently slumming around Cordon clutching a battered old SVT-40 feeling like a rookie for the first time in a while. I shot two bandits yesterday; got the first one by surprise (SVT is robust!) but I didn't see his buddy. So his buddy starts blasting at me with a handgun of some sort, but I can't see him through the rain and all the foliage. So I go prone behind a stump and occasionally poke my head up to see if I can catch sight of the bandit, right? But on my third peekaboo he manages to graze me with a bullet, gently caress, now I'm bleeding, man I only got like two bandages. So I back off and take cover behind a tree, snagging the fallen bandit's shotgun (pump action!) as I run; once there I take a moment to bandage myself and, right as I finish, that loving dumbass bandit (who i still couldnt see until now) skylines himself on a small rise in the terrain. And, well, that was the end of that. Such is life in the zone.
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Nov 13, 2019 12:22
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Hey is the abr mod good for call of pripyat? played a bunch of anomaly and I'm looking to actually play CoP
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Nov 16, 2019 16:16
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Started a new game in Anomaly. I'm loving it but what do I do with all this broken gear I loot off people? It's too damaged to sell and I can't afford to repair it. Should I just disassemble everything? I had to spend all my money just to buy the multitool.
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Nov 30, 2019 19:13
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| # ? May 9, 2024 13:11 |
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Just leave it. If you disassemble everything you'll end up with piles of components you'll never need (and most of them are in too bad of condition to be worth salvaging). I think you can look at the details screen of items to see what components it has and what condition they're in so you know if it's worth bothering with.
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Nov 30, 2019 19:43
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