s.t.a.l.k.e.r. game release!

twinQuins

Well I'm going to go out on a limb and declare that I love this damn game. I honestly cannot stop playing it;

I, just last night, got by the underground lab. Luckily I earlier wandered into the Wild Zone and met up with the scientist from Yantar, who as a reward for saving him, offerred me a protective suit. Nice!

.

Every time I wander into a new area I don't know what to expect. Seeing as how the last one was just...insane. I won't say which area it was, and when you do go in it isn't apparent what you're getting into, but it's a great experience.
The atmosphere is suitably oppressive. Some reviewers have commented that it's a little too depressing, but I think it suits the situation you find yourself in.
The way night and day shift. No more scripted day-night times in areas (Half-Life, I'm looking at you), and this adds another element to consider when exploring. While night can offer additional cover, it can be more difficult to fight in. Well, at least until you get night-vision.
Oh, and don't worry if you've only started and it doesn't seem to work, as one person seemed to find. I really don't want to reveal too much but it does work.

However, I do feel a bit let down. It's true that this game didn't live up to its promises, but then again how many can you say have? Especially when such great things were expected.
AI is great though. I was always sickened by people who droned on about the AI in Half-Life when it came out and then HL2. This is good AI. Enemies who constantly try to outflank you, and do so without making a sound usually.

Yes, the graphics do look a bit dated at times, but in a game like this I should think that should be a minor concern.

As for the stability, I admit I had about two or three crashes. However, for the last two days it's been going fine, apart from the odd case of stalling. One or two problems with scratchy sound, and the spelling mistakes are annoying, but overall I'm very, very pleased with this game.

mewso

Sierra Oscar wrote:

Does anyone else crash often if they use Dynamic Lighting?

I turned Static lighting on and now I never crash.

There are threads on forums all over the place about it. It was looking like a Radeon problem but it's starting to look more like a RAM problem. Possibly a RAM + Radeon problem. In any case the log file indicates a memory problem when it crashes for me and I only have 1Gig. The game is buggy enough to suggest to me that it's a memory leak that needs fixing quickly.

hellboy99

Sierra Oscar wrote:

Does anyone else crash often if they use Dynamic Lighting?

Does it on me aswell.

Mr. Presentable

AMD x2 4400
6800 GS 256
2 GB Ram
1280 x 1024
XP Pro

The only problem I had was a weird double sound one that started the second time I played, and went away with a restart of the PC.

I'm loving it: The guitar player, the weird radiation effects, the general look of the game

A friend has
Core 2 Duo 6600
8800GTX
2GB Ram
Vista Home

When it runs it generates sky only - no buildings, people etc, but full sounds!

Cunny-Funt

neGev wrote:

It seems that RAM is the key part of the system for Stalker, I'm running on a 3500+, 1Gb RAM, 6800GT and I have to play at 1024x768, medium settings and object dynamic lighting only, and I still get slowdown at times.

Hmm indeed you may be right. I notice whenever I come out of the game, a windows notification "low on virtual memory" pops up. which is something I have not seen on my pc in a long time.

One other thing that happens to me is when I try to launch the game, it tells me wrong disc/no disc or whatever.

I ran "end it all" and killed all background tasks and it worked then.

(just incase anyone has this problem)

Branoic

I had my first performance related problem late last night.

I moved into The Garbage area for the first time and helped Bez & the others repel a bandit attack on the scrap yard. After that I moved off towards the hanger to meet with someone else regarding Strelock. When I got to the hanger some stalkers were under attack from more bandits

and bang, my FPS dropped to a painful, impossible slide show.

I'd say it was probably a combination of the number of people involved in a firefight in a large hanger at night with dynamic lighting turned on. With lightening, flashlights, and building lights bouncing around the hanger structure, I guess my system just couldn't handle it the way it could handle the outdoor scenes.

I'll need to play around with some settings when I get home from work. The last thing I want to do is revert to static lighting. That'll be a last resort - the games too pretty with dynamic on!

Sierra Oscar

musician wrote:

There are threads on forums all over the place about it. It was looking like a Radeon problem but it's starting to look more like a RAM problem. Possibly a RAM + Radeon problem. In any case the log file indicates a memory problem when it crashes for me and I only have 1Gig. The game is buggy enough to suggest to me that it's a memory leak that needs fixing quickly.

Well I am using 3GB ram and a 8800GTX so that is pretty much contradicting those beliefs.

Spear

I'm having no graphics or sounds issues so far, but damn, does it love to CTD when I try to save.

hopeful

I haven't had a single crash or restart (yet!) either with or without dynamic lighting.

I cannot run at full res on my 24" Dell but at 1680x1050 it averages 35fps with dynamic lighting on and everything else on high.

AMD X2 3800 @2.5ghz
2gb DDR400
ATI X1900xt @ 640 gpu 750 ram

Mojito

Spear wrote:

I'm having no graphics or sounds issues so far, but damn, does it love to CTD when I try to save.

Bingo! Exactly the same problem I have.

Branoic

Damn, and it had been going so well!

As per my post above - I'm able to play with dynamic lighting on and details to maximum when outdoors, and its great. But as soon as I enter the hanger in The Garbage it all goes pear shaped. FPS drops to a slide show and I can only watch in juttery slow motion as bandits take out the guy Im meant to talk to, again and again and again.

I've tried static lighting, I've reduced the resolution to 800 x 600, I've reduced the detail from "Maximum" to "Minimum" and then even gone into the slider settings and moved them further all the way to the left, so the settings are actually less than minimum - and nothing makes a difference. When I walk into the hanger, it becomes unplayable, when I walk back outside, everything returns to normal.

I really don't understand it, especially since I've been able to run it at its absolute maximum!

Windows XP
Intel P4 3.4 GHz
2 gig ram
256mb nVidia 7900 GT

Spear

Patch 1.0001 is out and fixes several crashes and claims performance improvements. The cost for this is that you can't use your old savegames.


Worldwide
http://stalker.filefront.com/file/STALKER_Patch_World_Wide;77221

US only
http://stalker.filefront.com/file/STALKER_Patch_US_ONLY;77220

0ubliette

Branoic wrote:

I had my first performance related problem late last night.

I moved into The Garbage area for the first time and helped Bez & the others repel a bandit attack on the scrap yard. After that I moved off towards the hanger to meet with someone else regarding Strelock. When I got to the hanger some stalkers were under attack from more bandits

and bang, my FPS dropped to a painful, impossible slide show.

I'd say it was probably a combination of the number of people involved in a firefight in a large hanger at night with dynamic lighting turned on. With lightening, flashlights, and building lights bouncing around the hanger structure, I guess my system just couldn't handle it the way it could handle the outdoor scenes.

I'll need to play around with some settings when I get home from work. The last thing I want to do is revert to static lighting. That'll be a last resort - the games too pretty with dynamic on!

Yep, EXACT same thing happened to me, its because all the stalkers inside the hangar are using flashlights, just go into the options and turn off NPC flashlights, then it worked fine for me.
Good news on the patch, bad news on having to start the bloody game from scratch if you cant use your savegame files :mad:

kaimera

Dammit..I'd rather struggle thru with no patch right now than lose my save games.

bizmark

Jesus after the patch my fps droped from 45 to 16

0ubliette

bizmark wrote:

Jesus after the patch my fps droped from 45 to 16

:eek:
At what settings??

bizmark

0ubliette wrote:

:eek:
At what settings??

High settings with no AA reduced grass/shadow detail plus full dynamic lighting

kaimera

Jesus after the patch my fps droped from 45 to 16

Good enough for me not to patch it yet.
My settings are no where near as high but I'm not going to risk loosing more fps.

0ubliette

as jerry lee lewis might have said, theres a whole lot of tweakin goin on
http://uk.gamespot.com/pc/action/stalker/show_msgs.php?topic_id=m-1-34287187&pid=540331&page=0

havent tried it myself so cant comment. some are sying it works miracles, others saying it buggers up the rain with artifacts.

Sierra Oscar

Spear wrote:

Patch 1.0001 is out and fixes several crashes and claims performance improvements. The cost for this is that you can't use your old savegames.


Worldwide
http://stalker.filefront.com/file/STALKER_Patch_World_Wide;77221

US only
http://stalker.filefront.com/file/STALKER_Patch_US_ONLY;77220

Hmmm good thing I have not got that far yet. I would not mind restarting for the price of getting my hands on that patch.

Nick_oliveri

Found nothing worthwhile in

Red Forest

only a bad beating, no good artefacts or anything. Going to the last area now. Feck all medipacks, going to need to shoot any pixel that moves to survive! Playing on medium. Where to get the

Exoskeleton suit? Or is there one?

neGev

Nick_oliveri, I think what you're looking for is in the

power plant

although I haven't gotten that far myself, so I'm not certain.

Cunny-Funt

Spear wrote:

The cost for this is that you can't use your old savegames.

thats fking outrageous, I have to start again????????

WTF????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!


and if I dont patch I wont be able to play MP till I beat the game!!!!!???



:mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad:

mewso

Cunny-Funt wrote:

thats fking outrageous, I have to start again????????

Agreed. In this day and age save games should not include information that a patch could affect. Ridiculous punishment for those who bought their game and tried to stick with it.

Sand

Ah, I reckon Ill hold on. Ive not had any show stopping bugs yet, and Ill install the patch/patches when I play through a second time. First time in a game is always an extended recon tbh.

Spear

With the new patch, I still get plenty of CTD's when saving, but as an added bonus it now manages to bluescreen my machine instead when I kill the process when it locks up.

Nick_oliveri

Well i fecked everything up, installed Alcohol on Vista, BSOD, restarted, same in safe mode. Had to reinstall XP. No more save games for me.

Cunny-Funt

so the patch doesnt even help anyways it seems.

Still, annoying now that I have to wait till I beat the game untill I can play online.

Nick_oliveri

Download a compete save game?!!

Cunny-Funt

??

No I mean I want to enjoy both mulitplayer and single player but since I dont want to start again. I am going to have to wait till I beat the game, before I patch up and play MP