STALKER Shadow of Chernobyl Mod Thread

[jebsmoker]

i might do non-gunslinger OGSR next, since the gunslinger fork shares a fair amount with it

 

[Baron Dupek]

Finished Golden Sphere OGSR version. At this point I consider OGSR a blight similar to modern remakes of old games - looks fancy, but it mess up the content, almost like Complete Mods... I feel like those old mods were not balanced for 1-hit kills fiesta in OGSR (playing on Veteran).
Still ended with bad karma for some reasons, at least that's what my "reputation" in PDA tells me. Sometimes the doll scolds me for shooting enemy agents (armed with zombifying gauss prototype) by surprise from long distance?

Started the game, dropped my gear near the fallen tree and got captured. Forgot to take some note (they're harder to spot now, you have to stomp on them to notice) and managed to leave the barracks.
But here comes the problem - for some reason escaping without setting the alarm gets you killed by the sniper, every single time. Tried to start the alarm near the fallen tree, still died a lot to mines and sniper. I don't remember this part being that hard in the original, or my first experience with OGSR, before getting my hand on new GPU awhile ago. Good thing "demo_record x" with Enter works like a charm, or I had to drop the mod.

There was a quest in Dark Valley to bring chest from trapped farm. Had to do it in perfectly - as modder intended - without bricking the quest, not sure if it was perfect but whatever. Had to open the box when NPC plays his animations, doing it earlier bricks them - they're immortal and quests cannot be completed.

Also - every time NPC was on his knees they would hover away without standing up. Don't remember this problem in the original.

Another bad moment was with some invisible skeleton in the Agroprom, which traps me and one guy in a loop. The clues are in the footstep sound, but I've never managed to catch him. Maybe my sound setup is not perfect? Maybe living in loud enviroment is not perfect condition for gaming? Had to bring assault rifle with underbarrel grenade launcher and blasting him without dying after ~50 tries. At least loading times on SSD are short, with exception of Outskirts, where you have to help military or marauders. For some reason it took like a minute, still better than classic STALKER mods experience on old HDD, but it didn't make it any better.
Speaking of the Outskirts - I've worked for the military, had to take documents (from outside observators, UN maybe?) located in the safe on the fire station roof. Had to check some video playthrough to clean some confusion. Turns out you have to find the key behind Lenin's head, which is for the safe found in the basement (stated in the description), which contains rusty guns and some note.
Thing is - that safe in the basement if for those working of marauders and doing their questline. There's no other way to open that safe on the roof iirc.
really weird

Anyone reached CNPP in in OGSR edition? Can anyone confirms that mini tornadoes (that shreds your suits by ~5% every few seconds) are invisible? Had to use spawner to drop more repair kits to get through. Also there is some artifact that's supposed to save me from radioactive storms but it does jack shit.

What's the point of getting new suit when it's gives you jack shit, maybe with exception of marauder's suit with +75kg of additiona cc? What's the point of getting exo when two bites and one bullets means "try again harder, suka"? Seems like some form of progress is a foreign concept for some people...

also - USAS12 (automatic shotgun with magazine) was better than Protecta (it takes eternity to load)

Time to test NZK mod, which combines NLC, Dead Air Revolution, AMK. I remember trying to run old version, had to find old version of Anomaly to boot and still crashed a lot. Then dropped due to immense swarms of enemies on default setting, including Big Fucking Spiders from That Insane CS-Mod Called "Reborn".

 

[jebsmoker]

i finished my work with ogsr gunslinger a while ago, and i'll probably be done proofreading and revising goldsphere from top to bottom in less than a month. after i'm finished with goldsphere, i'm actually considering doing a experiment: i'm going to translate dester's classic arsenal mod, but with the assistance taim's compass tool, which uses openai's translation algorithm. i am getting sick of translating descriptions for ak's and such by hand, so i wanna see if i can take a shortcut and save my brainpower for dialogue

dester's arsenal mod was the talk of the town at the amk-team.ru forums 15 years ago and it has a ton of historical value in the world of stalker modding, so i think it's worth doing this little experiment

 

[Seigneur Locklear]

Had a S.T.A.L.K.E.R. itch to scratch so I tried my hand at GAMMA for some novelty, the last time I've played and completed all three games was at their respective release dates. Holy fuck, am I getting filtered by gunplay, I really miss my teenage reflexes. Mildly related - it was funny to learn that a surge in mod's popularity due to some YouTuber showcasing the mod has managed to lightly ddos moddb a few months back.

 

[GrafvonMoltke]

Who has more drama: modders or codexers?

Also, was GAMMA actually worth playing, filtering aside.

 

[Tacgnol]

Who has more drama: modders or codexers?

Also, was GAMMA actually worth playing, filtering aside.

Many codexers are modders.

Also IIRC quite a few codexers played GAMMA and weren't impressed, saying it was just Anomaly modder Tarkov autism on steroids.

 

[Seigneur Locklear]

Like others have previously noted, the primary appeal of the mod seems to first and foremost target the Tarkov fans - I can see why the gun nuts would adore it. Me? I'm not much of a gun nut, never was - it seems overwhelming but kind of in a good way still, because the customization aspect does appeal to me. As for the general experience, I've barely dipped my toes in the game, I'm trying to brute force my way through hard + survivalist difficulty with campfire only saves, but it's been brutal and unforgiving and I haven't been making much progress, leading me to restart runs at least several times by now. But it's still fun, the atmosphere is there, the game does look gorgeous for what it is and fortunately enough I'm having next to zero performance issues.

 

[GrafvonMoltke]

Alright thanks bros I ain't touching that shit with a bargepole.

 

[Seigneur Locklear]

Honestly, you've got nothing to lose by trying it out, since pretty much nearly every single aspect of the mod pack is customizable so you can tailor it in accordance to all your preferences. Just be ready to download 50gb and deal with occasional performance issues, assuming your PC might be a bit lacking.

 

[GrafvonMoltke]

Performance wouldn't be a problem at all, and I guess I could check it out given that there's nothing to lose, but idk I'm still not wild on playing Tarkov-lite. Thanks for the recommendation, though!

 

[Ali Assa Seen]

Long shot but does anyone know the old music/radio mod (from circa 2013 maybe?) which included a bunch of STALKER themed acoustic tracks? I found an old playlist file deep in the depths of my PC but the actual tracks seem long gone.
Best I can find these were two of the tracks and a bunch of the others have muzico.ru in their file names but that isn't leading me anywhere:

 

[Gerrard]

The ground fog is the single best graphics feature added to the game.

 

[Baron Dupek]

soon

 

[razvedchiki]

will they finally randomise the spawns on the maps? killing the same dude on the same exact spot gets really tiresome.

 

[Tweed]

That's the sound of all your mods breaking, again.

 

[None]

Its just a shaders mod, not a new release of Anomaly. Nothing special, unless you'd like to run through the Zone for the 10th time, but have it look slightly different.

I know mapping is mostly undocumented and outright arcane, but you'd think by now that there would be some actual meat being developed instead of yet more paint added.

 

[ferratilis]

These kids who make Anomaly mods have never even played vanilla SoC, they've been raised by DayZ and Tarkov, so I wouldn't expect anything of note to come out. Just take a glance at some Anomaly videos on youtube, it's mostly about gunporn and "muh hardcore survival" where you spend hours collecting cigarette butts and such to get a barely decent gun (although Anomaly can't really be blamed for that, it started with later versions of Misery). A lot of the atmosphere from original games just isn't there. Everything looks kind of homogenized to the point that it has no identity. More shaders and particles will not fix that imo.

 

[NecroLord]

These kids who make Anomaly mods have never even played vanilla SoC, they've been raised by DayZ and Tarkov, so I wouldn't expect anything of note to come out. Just take a glance at some Anomaly videos on youtube, it's mostly about gunporn and "muh hardcore survival" where you spend hours collecting cigarette butts and such to get a barely decent gun (although Anomaly can't really be blamed for that, it started with later versions of Misery). A lot of the atmosphere from original games just isn't there. Everything looks kind of homogenized to the point that it has no identity. More shaders and particles will not fix that imo.

Yeah.
A lot of the original atmosphere is lost, as the game turns way more flashy and filled with lens flare shit.

 

[dreughjiggers]

Is Call of Chernobyl mod the best way to play these games?

 

[Tacgnol]

These kids who make Anomaly mods have never even played vanilla SoC, they've been raised by DayZ and Tarkov, so I wouldn't expect anything of note to come out. Just take a glance at some Anomaly videos on youtube, it's mostly about gunporn and "muh hardcore survival" where you spend hours collecting cigarette butts and such to get a barely decent gun (although Anomaly can't really be blamed for that, it started with later versions of Misery). A lot of the atmosphere from original games just isn't there. Everything looks kind of homogenized to the point that it has no identity. More shaders and particles will not fix that imo.

I only know of two-story mods, the one that adds a new duty base and associated storyline and the Russian artefact hunter mod.

It's a real shame the community hasn't made more story content.

 

[Ivan]

I'm gonna give Gamma a try. I don't have experience with CoC or Anomaly, just Misery 1.2

 

[Baron Dupek]

After some time we finally got working teleporter on the bridge

 

[Tweed]

All Anomalmeme mods packs add retarded shit to the game, the only way to truly get what you want is to make your own.

 

[Tacgnol]

All Anomalmeme mods packs add retarded shit to the game, the only way to truly get what you want is to make your own.

And then often make your own modifications to the mods.

 

[V17]

Just started playing GAMMA a few days ago, right after finishing the whole trilogy for the first time.

I'd say managing expectations is important when playing it, I knew what I was getting into and also specifically what I wasn't getting out of it - a meaningful story or a true Stalker atmosphere.

I don't really mind that it kind of does its own thing. I do mind that many Anomaly players present it as the "ultimate Stalker experience", that's nonsense, but it doesn't make the game itself less fun. I play it on low difficulty with a (relatively modest) minimum time difference between saves (otherwise no rectriction), which is still slightly more difficult than the original games on the highest difficulty. I enjoy figuring out slightly complex systems in games in general, so I find the crafting to be fun.

There are individual features that I really like, for example the enhanced sound engine (hearing shots across the map and being able to approximately say where and how far they are and having an idea about the type of weapon used is awesome) and the simulated PDA communication from NPCs that makes the zone feel alive - though the latter arguably takes away from the original Stalker atmosphere.

Ultimately for me GAMMA is like some "enhanced freeplay" mod, it's different enough that it's fun to return to the same places immediately after finishing the trilogy, and due to the stash/sidequest system and anomalies/radiation hotspots changing places after blowouts it motivates me to explore places that I originally didn't because there wasn't enough motivation apart from exploration itself. No idea how long this enjoyment is going to last though.