Stalker: Call of Pripyat modding

Wholeheartedly agreed.

You could technically sprint a lot in SoC, but you had to know the area well or you ended up suddenly crushed into a ball the size of your fist which then exploded for seemingly no reason.
Also, Svarog detector was overkill.

I disagree with running back to trader with weapons, because in SoC they were worth very little while also pretty heavy. Armour was more worthwhile, but overall it was the artifacts that were most profitable, plus you could pawn off excess consumables and ammo you generally collected anyway.

I actually enjoyed the story of CoP much more. It might not have had a lot of twists (like the one with Strelok), but it actually attempted (and somewhat succeeded) to make the original reveal less derpy. It also didn't have cringe worthy sidequests with cringe worthy writing (seriously, mutant parts sidequests for scientists, I literally cried while reading dialogue).

Of course, lack of something like x18 sucked, but I guess the lack of feeling of mystery was mostly caused by zone not being especially dangerous. Ok, Zone in CoP is still a pretty harsh place - you have to wear protective equipment, you may end up eaten, gunned down or die in an area with distorted laws of physics, but if you stayed sharp there was little actual danger. Zone in SoC was a place where you were happy to just have came back alive, coming back with loot and no extra holes was downright euphoric, and hardened veterans routinely drunk themselves unconscious to just to forget about some things they witnessed *other* than majority of their friends and acquaintances in the zone having died horribly, because that was actually one of the things they could have got used to.

If you have money to burn or torrent at hand, then yes.

It's horribly broken, literally falls apart near the end (as in one guy threw the entire endgame together in one evening with the help of a crate of booze, then the game shipped without further testing or corrections), features inconsistencies, delayed game breaking bugs, lack of proper aiming with SPAS and grenade launchers (inherited by CoP), lack of proper aiming with pistols (fixed in CoP) and is very combat centric. It also has somewhat broken ballistics (most glaringly some projectiles just vanish past their designated effective range which is fucking short), homing grenades (with very limited blast radius) and selling guns is actually worthwhile.

Otoh it has effectively the harshest economy, artifacts are actually rare, anomaly fields are actually fucking dangerous , you can die very easily, and most of the area is SoC with improved (and often changed, but still consistent) area connectivity, plus two new excellent areas - swamps and Red Forest (different part).

Alas it misses any worthwhile dungeons (though Red Forest is definitely tense exterior) and ending areas are linear and mostly shit (Limansk has some interesting stuff - namely space bubbles - despite being linear, but it's still not particularly interesting, because it's effectively HL2 in an otherwise open game). Oh, bloodsuckers are annoying and suck. Poltergeists, OTOH, are ridiculously lethal (which is pretty cool) thankfully you may even avoid encountering any of them.

Visually it's about on CoP level.

 

You say Clear Sky is combat-heavy, but is it good combat? I complained about having to kill tons of bandits/mercs/military/Monolith in SoC, but truthfully I enjoyed a lot of it, primarily because of how much freedom the game offered in tackling the various objectives. So if the gunplay is good or can be made good with mods, and the map design works, I could give CS a spin. I still feel the need to play a "realistic" FPS, and don't see any alternatives. CoD and BF make me vomit with their linearity and extreme popamole.

 

From what I recall, gunplay is worse at the beginning, unupgraded weapons have shit accuracy plus buckshot and pistol rounds (pistols, MP5) tend to literally disappear into thin air while travelling.
Damage, however, is higher, so is penetration. Upgraded weapons are quite pleasant to use and heavier ammo can actually penetrate a lot of things you or your enemies may want to hide behind.

Also, it features cover system... exclusively on the AI side.
Problem, popamolers?


Apparently in soviet Russia moles pop YOU.

Do try it if you can live with it being even buggier than unpatched SoC and with it being blatantly unfinished and ending with atrocious linear shooting section compared to which rooftop sequence in SoC is pure, untainted pleasure (no, I'm not joking). Other than that and other mentioned stuff the game works pretty well, it also features nice faction system. It also has really costly upgrades and repairs, so with some artifacts being so rare you may only see one of them in the entire game it can be pretty harsh economically.

Upgrade mechanics is pretty limited as it essentially either forces you into one of two paths (CQB or sniper with weapons, combat or anomaly protection with armour), the alternative being inability to upgrade the item fully.

Ah, one more thing, you'll need to mod NV immediately to CoP or SoC standard because original NV is useless and atrocious (looks like in HL:OF NV, except it doesn't provide any help in actual low-light conditions) .

 

What would you guys recommend for a first time playthrough? At the moment I only have SoC, but will likely get the expansions in the future.

From what I've gathered Stalker Complete seems good for updating the graphics, weather and fixing AI and bugs without altering the storyline or adding retarded shit.

 

Since Call of Pripyat is the easiest STALKER game, play that first, so that you get a feel of the series. Then play the others.

 

I also enjoyed gathering the Pripyat squad (I got all the four men - Strider, Zulu, bearded Loner guy, and Ukrainian soldier). But the ending of CoP, I did not like.

It's a 1950s happy ending. Strelok becomes a researcher at an institute, lead hero gets the job, Zone becomes a tamed and domesticated place, and so on. This totally goes against the dark feel of the STALKER games.

 

No man, I meant what mods can I play that improve graphics, fix shit that's broken or was intended to be in there etc etc

Just make things better.

 

No, no, no. Never play Complete on the first run. It's a different game.

oscar
Get starter packs. They include all first-timer-friendly mods.
I'll repost the links here:
SoC: http://jumbofiles.com/puemst2zx800
CS: http://jumbofiles.com/lh6uylrnq5qs
CoP: http://jumbofiles.com/whrkhqqfmo1u

 

I'll take your word for it pipka, but from the feature list I couldn't see anything that radically deviates too much from the standard gameplay and those weather changes sound mighty impressive.

 

I'd have no problems recommending Complete for first run. Trying out SoC with it now (not sure why, thought I'd never go back to it after CoP) and from what I can tell it isn't changed that much, just way better shaders and textures plus few minor additions (like sleeping bag) and bugfixes. Now something like Oblivion Lost is definitely not for the first playthrough, even though it's way more fun than vanilla.

 

What's wrong with complete: weapons accuracy increased and damage decreased, NPC are suffering from myopia so you always spot them first (which doesn't do a good job at "making NPCs spot you from realistic distances"), sound greatly decreased (stealth is still shit, but you can pretend it's better than Vanilla), bandages are applied automatically when hp hits a threshold, you can bribe any faction(for pacifists, is shit since there is no faction wars).

The only good thing I found about Complete is the graphical modifications. There is this component only floating on the net. And if you can get it, go for it.

Wasn't it the point of your request? Or do you want something more "drastic"?

 

For the first playthrough?
ZRP if it can be found somewhere.

It's effectively vanilla++.

 

Just got CoP and I'm wondering what the essential mods are for it. Or is it best to play through vanilla first?

 

There are no essential mods for it, vanilla is good enough already. You can go for Atmosfear plus Absolute Nature/Absolute Structures texture packs if you want better visuals.
Also, Call of Pripyat mod threads seem to be all the rage these days.

 

I hope STALKER 2 will have the endless massacres of Shadow of Chernobyl combined with the peacefully buddy-building, open exploration, science-researching, and artifact-hunting of Call of Pripyat.

To a point, these two goals may be mutually exclusive, but I don't care. The closest and least imperfect balance between those two games is good enough.

I also hope STALKER 2 will allow the player to build his own Exoskeleton Suit from scavenged armour suits here and there, instead of shelling out life savings in rubles to get them. That sort of thing is fun by itself.

 

Installed the Complete Mod, and the game stutters whenever I try to run/walk for some distance.

This happened with the base game, but it was much rarer and not as noticeable.
But now its gets seriously irritating.

I read about the RAM problem, and tried the suggested patches, it didn't help.

I also tried turning down the quality and view distance, the stuttering remained.

My specs:
CPU
Intel Core i3-2100 Processor (3M Cache, 3.10 GHz)
Motherboard
GIGABYTE GA-H61M-S2H 1155 MATX
RAM
KingstonHyperX blu 8GB DDR3-1333
Graphics
GIGABYTE GeForce GTX 550 Ti 1GB
Hard Drive
Caviar Blue 500GB 7,200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5
OS
Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 64-bit OEM

I just built this machine recently with advice from the Codex:
http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/upgrading-my-pc.72116/page-2


Anyway, what could be causing Stalker COP to stutter?

Side Note:
I am also running New Vegas, and that game also has occasional stuttering, but it happens rarely.
Examples:
When I walk up a mountain and see a valley spread out the game some times start freezing up for a second.
Also happens when I'm walking around the NV Strip.

 

In my experience, lowering textures, shadows and grass helps with stuttering the most. "Complete" eats up more video RAM than vanilla. Considering annoying grass pop-in it's actually better to set it to minimum anyway, less distracting.

 

Had the same problem. Seems to be a serious (v?)ram issue. Guess that the game memory management (or my pc, has similar specs) isn't up to the task of the large Complete-mod textures.
Had also problems with fps getting worse the longer I played (again probably due to more and more memory being used up by the game). Restarting would yield decent fps again, but after an hour at most they would be shit again.

 

Yup, complete series is heavy overloaded with high-res textures. Lowering game resolution, should fixes stuttering (if it is caused by lack of video memory). Anyway, starting enjoying Stalker series with Complete is an average idea, imho, so better start with pure vanilla, taste it and then appreciate (or not) some of mod modification. "First naked, next clothed true beauty is showed" (or something...).

 

Uninstalled Complete and restarted the game, seems to be a 20-30% reduction in the occurrence of stuttering...

But it still happens irritatingly often, and I've already set the game to a lower setting, plus reduced all the stuff Multidirectional suggested!!

This is most disappointing.
It's "gameplay or graphics" for me, I built this PC with the goal of being able to run most Games on Medium-Low for the next 2-3 years.
Yet now it having problems running games that are 2 years old on lowered settings.

Does not bode well for the future...

 

Hm, otherwise, buy a SSD and isntall it on that drive.
Could help somehwat. Might anyway be a good idea (up on my list as well).

 

The plot thickens...

I run some monitoring programs to test if running Stalker puts a strain on the PC.

The Results:
CPU Usage does not seem to go above 30-40%
Memory Usage does not seem to go above 3GB



Any suggestions?

 

Bump...


Any Ideas how I can fix this?

To illustrate what I mean by stuttering:

(Not my Video.)

It's about at the same level by the I reach Yanov...

I tried the 4gb RAM patch, even did it manual with CFF Explorer.
No change.

As stated before, I've also tried turning the graphic setting to medium and low.
Its still stuttering....

 

I remember someone here saying that the stuttering (and fps loss) was caused by the game/mod looking for files in a language that you didn't have installed or something like that.