STALKER Shadow of Chernobyl Mod Thread

[Baron Dupek]

People were complaining about lack of proper storyline in the Anomaly.
Guess what, Anomaly Anthology is coming - it merges various CoP story mods (and their maps) in Anomaly project.
in short - Anomaly Soup?
https://www.reddit.com/r/stalker/comments/12yiojs/stalker_anomaly_anthology_10_link_to_stream_below/

Mods includes - "Spatial Anomaly” (Пространственная Аномалия), "Spectrum Project: Road in the Fog” (Spectrum Project: Путь во мгле), "Valley of Whispers” (Долина Шорохов), "Forgotten Squad” (Забытый Отряд), "In Spite of Death" (Смерти вопреки) but not sure if that includes whole trilogy (In Devil Circle, Novice, In the Web of Lies).

I remember new maps in Demosfen project, but it never got proper English translation

 

[Twiglard]

They should make these quests finite. Not better, just finite. And I don't mean 9999999 per area.

 

[Rocket-Propelled Game]

Some guy on Youtube called Anomalous Dugout was saying people are only playing Anomaly these days and not playing the original games.

So? Maybe they are? The originals have their charm but as far as actual fun factor goes Anomaly has so many improvements across the board plus near-infinite replayability that why wouldn't they?

Also someone in Dugout's comments said that Anomaly is for casuals, like CoD and Tarkov. In what world is Tarkov a casual game?

It's like words don't mean anything anymore.

 

[Tacgnol]

Some guy on Youtube called Anomalous Dugout was saying people are only playing Anomaly these days and not playing the original games.

Wouldn't surprise me considering how many people pick up Anomaly after seeing streamers hype it.

That said, I don't have anything against Anomaly other than it gets boring quite quickly without the right mods. It's sad however that a lot of these new players aren't experiencing the franchise through the story as intended.

 

[V17]

After playing GAMMA a lot for a month the one thing that I dislike about it is that the gameplay loop relies a bit too much on carrot on a stick grinding. I don't know if this also applies for Anomaly since in GAMMA it's partly dependent on not being able to buy guns and armor.

It is a lot of fun on its own, it's hard and immersive enough for that and pretty brutal on higher difficulties, which is fun on its own. But some stages of the game can take a long time because they're dependent on RNG - you pretty much need high level gear for the end game (unless you're very experienced already), but since you need to repair/craft everything, getting it is based on lucking out and finding not just the (broken) gear but also the expert toolkit needed to repair it. And that can take a long time. Even longer if you don't spend the time to search through the official discord and realize that the game is very imprecise and unintuitive in telling you in which areas expert tools even have a chance to spawn.

After being at this stage for a while I started to wonder if I actually still enjoy the gameplay or if I just keep playing to see numbers go up and get the next better thing. Have I become as retarded as the average Runescape player?? Well, no, the "grind" here is still kind of fun, and pushing myself to get to more dangerous situations improved the enjoyment immediately. But "I want to see myself get better gear" is simply not comparable as a motivation to experiencing an actual story, exploring new places and new gameplay features for the first time. I think it's a bit too artificial, it tries to manufacture more enjoyment from less substance.

 

[Tacgnol]

After playing GAMMA a lot for a month the one thing that I dislike about it is that the gameplay loop relies a bit too much on carrot on a stick grinding. I don't know if this also applies for Anomaly since in GAMMA it's partly dependent on not being able to buy guns and armor.

Normal loop on Anomaly is grinding rep/relations to be able to buy the weapons/armour as they don't appear until you have sufficient goodwill with the faction.

The actual monetary cost is rarely a problem by the time you've completed enough tasks for them to appear.

 

[Baron Dupek]

Gamma ain't working for me (must be alaa that garbage in the soft/drivers accumulated through the years) so Escape from Pripyat was the only choice.

There was some irritating stuffs like Unload All button, which detach mags for every gun, but there's no button to unload those mags. So either painstakingly unload them (even with option to empty mag instantly instead of bullet by bullet every second) it takes a lot of time. And you need that ammo to use or dismantle and turn into your prefered calibre.

There are missions to assassinate some target with [WTF] tag... but they can be really tough even with good gear - getting destroyed by some shotguns (usually Armsel Protecta) even with maxed out bulletproof resistance in my exo. Oh and if we gather enough rep they start sending bounty hunters at us. Remember Alpha Squad from SGM/Sigerous Mod? Yeah...

You can get new guns by running "[WTP] Equip" missions (you get info about NPC with gun in perfect condition, which is impossible to find in Misery-based mods and projects like ANomaly) or pick Transactions and open these chests/packages at the cost of rep loss.

You can get better artifacts via transmutation, which requires addons for Veles/Svarog detector and recipes on flashdrives. Pull out detector, drop the artifact and required mutant skin or meat.
Which is similar to Solanka mods where you put ingredients together and make a new one. At least you don't need to sit in the anomaly to drop them...
Another source of good arts? Medics can tell you which anomaly have good one via "Artifacts For Everyone" - at the cost of reputation loss when you pick it up. But if you do a lot of tasks then it doesn't matter.
Otherwise there's really small chance to find them traditional way even with Geologist achievement.

Sometimes your targets starts jumping between levels in weird way, crossing the Zone in one go. Quite annoying without fast traveling.

Bar is bloated - either by my stashes or amount of NPCs. Loading requires closing the game via Task Manager and loading autosave. Other maps works just fine.

Lootboxes are nice bonus, took me awhile before discovering that you can bundle lockpicks and not load them one by one... my fingers.

Nightvision doesn't work for me, iirc it's DX10/11 exclusive feature. What. Seems like my plan to visit Red Forest at night and poke people+animals with machete have to wait. Stabbin' in general, along with crafting and cooking, is best money saving method. I just wish that game didn't close crafting screen every time you craft something. Making more ammo takes even longer because you need to open them again (and with a lot of items - wait awhile to load. Every. Time).

PDA upgrade let you see corpses again, great tool in Red Forest if you like to scavenge some loot left behind...

 

[Gerrard]

The mad lad does it again.

 

[None]

Besides Lost Alpha, are there any mods that actually add something new? Like actually new, something to explore and remind me why I enjoyed the series in the first place. And ideally not incredibly janky. I don't need to run into Sid's bunker for the 1,000th time but with different footstep noises.

 

[V17]

Besides Lost Alpha, are there any mods that actually add something new? Like actually new, something to explore and remind me why I enjoyed the series in the first place. And ideally not incredibly janky. I don't need to run into Sid's bunker for the 1,000th time but with different footstep noises.

Goldsphere? Haven't played it yet, so I can't speak from experience. I don't think there are new areas, though the old ones are changed through new mechanics and a different story.

 

[toughasnails]

Perhaps this, once (if) it is properly released:
https://www.moddb.com/mods/back-to-the-stalker
They are promising a combo of considerably redesigned '07 and OL maps, plus some actually new stuff.

Honestly, at this point, you ain't getting much better than the above in that department. When new players hear of Stalker these days, especially of Anomaly but by no means only of it, what is it that they see and are attracted to? Hard-core "immersive" survival and gun porn. That's what the modding scene has been all about for the longest time, that is what the new players are coming for and, by the virtue of that, what the new modders are "selected" for. It's a self-replicating spiral into ever more hard-core "immersive" survival and gun porn. Often accompanied by all the bloat and jank that modders all around, but especially the Eastern Block ones, are so prone to.

 

[TC Jr]

Hey, I was wondering if "Old Good STALKER Evolution" is suitable for a first-time playthrough of the game? Seems like it's mostly QoL changes without altering gameplay too much.

Spoiler

There's a repack that has it installed in one package so I'm just being lazy instead of looking for bugfix mods/patches myself.

 

[Tweed]

I wouldn't, OGSE is completely different from vanilla Stalker. Just play with the Zone Reclamation Project, it doesn't screw with anything, it just fixes shit. Avoid Complete like the plague.

 

[bussinrounds]

Which version of NLC7 is the best? The latest? Or earlier? These things do tend to get a bit bloated in later builds, I would imagine, as the authors more and more succumb to their various autism spectrums until that final descent into madness. If I want to use the DeepL english translatiion I'm not sure I have much of a choice since early builds aren't supported, I don't think. I was going to give Goldsphere a shot but I heard if you make one innocent mistake like going to the wrong area first or attempting a quest out of order, you're dead because the mod breaks, and therefore the game can't be played without a guide. Is this true? No fun in that.

Hard Edition 2.3 with a very specific patch is the only one we have a working translation for currently. Details on our discord https://discord.com/channels/550866347995824138/978015795424657508/1053849301584990290

Link seems dead. Can you hook a brotha up with the Eng patch comrade ?

 

[Iucounu]

Just play with the Zone Reclamation Project, it doesn't screw with anything, it just fixes shit.

I recall it sometimes "fixes" things that nobody knew was a bug before, such as adding ambience music at night (vanilla game is silent during night time, which I prefer).

I think SoC should be played vanilla first time, how else will you know what mods you want to use? The only major vanilla bugs in SoC are nearby NPCs spawning dead in fire barrels, and crashes if spending too many days at the time in the Pripyat level.

 

[cretin]

Which version of NLC7 is the best? The latest? Or earlier? These things do tend to get a bit bloated in later builds, I would imagine, as the authors more and more succumb to their various autism spectrums until that final descent into madness. If I want to use the DeepL english translatiion I'm not sure I have much of a choice since early builds aren't supported, I don't think. I was going to give Goldsphere a shot but I heard if you make one innocent mistake like going to the wrong area first or attempting a quest out of order, you're dead because the mod breaks, and therefore the game can't be played without a guide. Is this true? No fun in that.

Hard Edition 2.3 with a very specific patch is the only one we have a working translation for currently. Details on our discord https://discord.com/channels/550866347995824138/978015795424657508/1053849301584990290

Link seems dead. Can you hook a brotha up with the Eng patch comrade ?

https://discord.gg/5Tn87bH5

go to #nlc-general and check the pins. I haven't kept up with it in months. Pin number 3 or 4 should be a repack of the english version of HE 2.3

actually I just looked, here's a direct link to the gdrive https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1j3U0XdgeOkaWhLAHNdvTHnCTPGEPvt0v

 

[toughasnails]

Hey, I was wondering if "Old Good STALKER Evolution" is suitable for a first-time playthrough of the game?

Hell no. For a newbie, it would be wise to stay well away from what appear to be popular big mods.
Anyway, many a Stalker mod/mod compilation is available as a standalone repack, even on moddb. If you absolutely need to have updated visuals, you have stuff like this
https://www.moddb.com/mods/stalker-...s/memories-of-the-zone-12-jsgme-addons-repack
A compilation of updated textures/models/vegetation/weather mods etc that try to be faithful to original visuals, together with updated engine and ZRP. Everything gameplay-related is optional and isn't installed by default. (also those recent pics on the moddb page are taken with some Reshade preset, so I wouldn't pay attention to them)

Otherwise, I'd stick with ZRP.

 

[bussinrounds]

Which version of NLC7 is the best? The latest? Or earlier? These things do tend to get a bit bloated in later builds, I would imagine, as the authors more and more succumb to their various autism spectrums until that final descent into madness. If I want to use the DeepL english translatiion I'm not sure I have much of a choice since early builds aren't supported, I don't think. I was going to give Goldsphere a shot but I heard if you make one innocent mistake like going to the wrong area first or attempting a quest out of order, you're dead because the mod breaks, and therefore the game can't be played without a guide. Is this true? No fun in that.

Hard Edition 2.3 with a very specific patch is the only one we have a working translation for currently. Details on our discord https://discord.com/channels/550866347995824138/978015795424657508/1053849301584990290

Link seems dead. Can you hook a brotha up with the Eng patch comrade ?

https://discord.gg/5Tn87bH5

go to #nlc-general and check the pins. I haven't kept up with it in months. Pin number 3 or 4 should be a repack of the english version of HE 2.3

actually I just looked, here's a direct link to the gdrive https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1j3U0XdgeOkaWhLAHNdvTHnCTPGEPvt0v

Is this a proper eng translation ? Or the machine one I'm reading about..that apparently isn't very good. Thanks btw

 

[cretin]

Which version of NLC7 is the best? The latest? Or earlier? These things do tend to get a bit bloated in later builds, I would imagine, as the authors more and more succumb to their various autism spectrums until that final descent into madness. If I want to use the DeepL english translatiion I'm not sure I have much of a choice since early builds aren't supported, I don't think. I was going to give Goldsphere a shot but I heard if you make one innocent mistake like going to the wrong area first or attempting a quest out of order, you're dead because the mod breaks, and therefore the game can't be played without a guide. Is this true? No fun in that.

Hard Edition 2.3 with a very specific patch is the only one we have a working translation for currently. Details on our discord https://discord.com/channels/550866347995824138/978015795424657508/1053849301584990290

Link seems dead. Can you hook a brotha up with the Eng patch comrade ?

https://discord.gg/5Tn87bH5

go to #nlc-general and check the pins. I haven't kept up with it in months. Pin number 3 or 4 should be a repack of the english version of HE 2.3

actually I just looked, here's a direct link to the gdrive https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1j3U0XdgeOkaWhLAHNdvTHnCTPGEPvt0v

Is this a proper eng translation ? Or the machine one I'm reading about..that apparently isn't very good. Thanks btw

Condensed history of english version:

Jester originally machine translates HE 3.0 . It is playable, but hard to grok at the best of times, and occasionally completely incomprehensible. This is the very memeable one you probably read about.

Bunch of nerds get together and start manually translating strings. Tedious slow work and then of course there is drama, as always with modders, and they abandon it.

Fella named Taim comes along and uses a much better MT program to translate NLC 3.7 and Hard Edition, in addition to making many hand edits to the text where appropriate. Suddenly not only is it completely understandable, the writing and dialogues are actually enjoyable in and of themselves. It is hard to overstate just what a massive improvement the current translation is over the old one. It's just very good period, you wont have trouble understanding anything.

The current project is someone is using AI to translate it in addition to the old hand translation work, so we will see how that turns out, but I don't expect it to be a huge improvement over the current one. I would just play now, its as good as its going to get.

 

[Icewater]

Is there a version of NLC with a 64 bit engine?

 

[cretin]

Is there a version of NLC with a 64 bit engine?

Negative. Never will be

 

[Icewater]

into the trash it goes

 

[Tacgnol]

into the trash it goes

The modders probably think the instability/random crashes of forcing the 32 bit engine to its knees is part of the fun.

 

[cretin]

Besides Lost Alpha, are there any mods that actually add something new? Like actually new, something to explore and remind me why I enjoyed the series in the first place. And ideally not incredibly janky. I don't need to run into Sid's bunker for the 1,000th time but with different footstep noises.

OLR is a good choice if you want to see what STALKER mightve looked like as a complete game during the early 2003ish builds. Very different and often much larger maps.

Goldsphere hasn't got new maps per se, but they are heavily reworked, and feature tons of quests and characters. I don't think sid is even in goldsphere. Mod isn't very stable, but we have an english translation for the OGSR engine version now, which should at least obviate the savegame corruption issue.

Return To The Zone is a COP-based mod from the goldsphere author, set during the decline of stalking and the zone. Some new maps, heavily reworked cop maps.

If we get further off the beaten track, there is Left To Die, which is a total conversion set in the midst of a zombie apocalypse in Russia. I haven't played it yet, but apparently its quite good.

 

[Twiglard]

Anyone knows how Stalker's cover system for the AI works? Particularly jebsmoker/fedsmoker may know.

I'm talking specifically about how the AI moves from cover to cover while shooting at opportune times to cover each others' advance.

Is it specified manually in the level editor as to where cover is located and the order in which AI should move between individual pieces of cover?

I'll be implementing a cover system in my WIP game and Stalker is the gold standard.