DO NOT PLAY THIS GAME!

[RandalMcdaniel]

Edit: was not paid to write this as i knew people would say but if someone wants to give me money i accept

If you want to play stalker shadow of chernobyl. YOU MUST play stalker lost alpha instead. There is absolutely no reason not to. It is like the 2017 version of stalker. All the same storyline are covered but much easier to understand. The environment design skills of the lost alpha team make GSC look like amateurs. I played base game then stalker complete 2009.. But lost alpha is on a different level. Definately among one of the best games i have ever played in my life. An amazing 70+hr experience

-Still updated in 2017
-Recently upgraded to DX11, Full ambient occlusion, dynamic lighting, tons of other stuff
-Swaying trees, blowing grass, more vegetation density than most AAA games.
-Multiple map areas from original are merged into larger open world sections
-Fully functioning third person mode (not broken like in stalker complete 2009)
-Vehicles that you have to manually open the door, sit down in, start engine, refuel, repair
-So many monsters and enemy types its like morrowind with guns

Stalker base game is a small map shooter with no balance. You can just sell every enemies guns and have more money than you could possibly spend. It's just depressing to play. You can shoot enemies from afar and watch blood spatter out of them and they wont even become alerted. You ever get that depressed feeling when a game is too easy and the AI are so dumb that you dont even want to play?

Lost alpha is more of a balanced rpg complete experience.

Compared to SOC, lost alpha looks AMAZING. It's looks like dear esther with guns. Seriously i can't believe this uses the same game engine as SOC. The amount of vegetation and trees is nuts

https://i.imgur.com/WC2BALd.jpg?2

https://i.imgur.com/XcOcyBq.jpg?2


**If you want to try lost alpha**

Things i wish i knew before installing. You do not need stalker installed anywhere! It is all included in the lost alpha files

You have to download lost alpha 1.3.000 (4 parts) then the 1.42 huge patch and thats it! Do not download the 1.3.0003 patch (skip the 1.003 patch)

Set a video preset first (high for example) then turn OFF sun shadows as they ruin fps. Then set grass density to 75% and object detail to 50%. Disable the games vertical sync and disable the games "use 60hz" options and instead enable vsync through nvidia control panel with only max frames ahead set to 1 and you will much better performance over the default settings trust me.

I am not a dev or anything i just want the world to see this game lost alpha. It might be the best game i've ever played and my steam library is like 1400+ games or something (most unplayed ofc)

[whit]

I've played a lot of stalker

http://www.moddb.com/members/davidme

pretty much everything this guy has posted as well as stuff from GSC and even had people seed mods that you can no longer find. Had to track down some non-english speaking forums and look like an idiot using google translate to get them..lol.

Brand new people coming to the game..I'd say skip original (you're just going to get pissed off at the AI) and complete. Start with OGSE and see how you feel with that, then based off descriptions of other mods..choose your poison. Lost Alpha (I don't believe I've played the most recent update.) It's alright, but I wouldn't recommend starting your S.T.A.L.K.E.R. career with it.

Pretty much everything to do with stalker has bugs...so you're not going to avoid that...make sure you always have hard saves and not just quicksaves (quicksaves crash/corrupt and generally suck when trying to reload).

I am going to give LA another go this weekend though and if anyone cares - I'll let you know what I think with it fresh on my mind.

Regardless, there's a lot of fun ones out there. Pretty much something for every kind of cult stalker fan.

Edit 1 - oh also pay attention to what mod devs suggest for difficulty settings..it'snot about being hardcore - it's just dealing with how the game deals with enemies.

Edit 2 - as a side anyone whose ran this recently

win 10
4790k
gtx 970 ssc

Any recommendations for settings?

[based af]

İlk olarak whit30 tarafından gönderildi:

I've played a lot of stalker

http://www.moddb.com/members/davidme

pretty much everything this guy has posted as well as stuff from GSC and even had people seed mods that you can no longer find. Had to track down some non-english speaking forums and look like an idiot using google translate to get them..lol.

Brand new people coming to the game..I'd say skip original (you're just going to get pissed off at the AI) and complete. Start with OGSE and see how you feel with that, then based off descriptions of other mods..choose your poison. Lost Alpha (I don't believe I've played the most recent update.) It's alright, but I wouldn't recommend starting your S.T.A.L.K.E.R. career with it.

Pretty much everything to do with stalker has bugs...so you're not going to avoid that...make sure you always have hard saves and not just quicksaves (quicksaves crash/corrupt and generally suck when trying to reload).

I am going to give LA another go this weekend though and if anyone cares - I'll let you know what I think with it fresh on my mind.

Regardless, there's a lot of fun ones out there. Pretty much something for every kind of cult stalker fan.

Edit 1 - oh also pay attention to what mod devs suggest for difficulty settings..it'snot about being hardcore - it's just dealing with how the game deals with enemies.

Edit 2 - as a side anyone whose ran this recently

win 10
4790k
gtx 970 ssc

Any recommendations for settings?

Just max it out fam, textures can be lowered if you get out of memory crashes since the 32-bit limits the amount of memory the game can access. Running a i7-6700K and Vega 64 and I keep getting crashes in CoC unless I drop texture quality and vision distance, OGSE runs fine though.

[whit]

Alright, I'll check it out...alreadygot it downloaded...installer keeps hanging though (so probably gunna have to redo it). I played 1.4 back in april I believe..but I can't remember what settings I used.

I'll just keep a monitor up for it and adjust accordingly. Thanks for the info.

Edit - ok so 1.3 started up just fine...1.42 would not start with out win xp comp mode. Kept causing a sound driver error without comp mode.

Edit 2 - looks decent, runs well, loads up fine after initial. AI is pretty bad though. Spawned in did the artifact quest, did proverbs nonsense with the 8 rounds you start with, and then I bought some ammo and went and wiped out the military base with the starter pistol. Saved and calling it a night.

[Draescan]

I will never understand why so many people fap over OGSE. Also I'm pretty sure OGSE is Call of Pripyat ( I was confusing OGSE with SGM, it's still ShoC but it makes pretty drastic changes to the storyline as well that impedes progress through the game and ruins the pacing, hence most of these negatives still being here :P ) , NOT ShoC so telling people to play it instead of ShoC is questionable at best. If anything people SHOULD experience the original stalker game before touching anything, if they want to mod it to make it more approachable in this day and age, more power to them. However if that is the case, there's nothing wrong with complete, there's nothing wrong with vanilla, there's nothing wrong with ZRP, there's nothing wrong with ANY of these things for the sake of an original experience of a game that's trying so hard to push a narrative of the environment your character exists in. OGSE gets so far up its own ass in the first 15 minutes that you're sick of it by the time you get enough ammo to comfortably defend yourself. OGSE does some cool stuff, don't get me wrong, I'm not hating on the mod or the mod authors, but the reality is that a first time player should never jump into OGSE when some veterans of the series can barely stand to look at it for more than an hour without getting bored and annoyed. OGSE suffers from the same legwork BS that Lost Alpha does. Why would you risk ruining someone's opinion of the game based on something that's kept to a minimum in the original game?

[Heresy]

I have heard nothing but bad things about the "complete" mods. Vanilla had many unique experiences on its own. Mostly due to broken scripting and AI lol but this made for some awesome moments.

[Heresy]

İlk olarak whit30 tarafından gönderildi:

Alright, I'll check it out...alreadygot it downloaded...installer keeps hanging though (so probably gunna have to redo it). I played 1.4 back in april I believe..but I can't remember what settings I used.

I'll just keep a monitor up for it and adjust accordingly. Thanks for the info.

Edit - ok so 1.3 started up just fine...1.42 would not start with out win xp comp mode. Kept causing a sound driver error without comp mode.

Edit 2 - looks decent, runs well, loads up fine after initial. AI is pretty bad though. Spawned in did the artifact quest, did proverbs nonsense with the 8 rounds you start with, and then I bought some ammo and went and wiped out the military base with the starter pistol. Saved and calling it a night.

Basically not possible to do that in many of the versions ive played. If you take out militairy patrol , the whole base is alerted and starts walking towards the first town. If you yourself dont kill the advancing 10+ soldiers then they wipe out the starting camp and kill lots of important npcs lol. Sure i did the same thing but it took 2-3 frag grenades to kill everyone at the start of the game and a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of hit and runs with the pistol.

Their agroe range must be broken or they must have dumbed down the AI in Lost Alpha. Or to be fair none hacker AI that see you across map lol.

[whit]

İlk olarak Mantis tarafından gönderildi:

I will never understand why so many people fap over OGSE. Also I'm pretty sure OGSE is Call of Pripyat, NOT ShoC so telling people to play it instead of ShoC is questionable at best. If anything people SHOULD experience the original stalker game before touching anything, if they want to mod it to make it more approachable in this day and age, more power to them. However if that is the case, there's nothing wrong with complete, there's nothing wrong with vanilla, there's nothing wrong with ZRP, there's nothing wrong with ANY of these things for the sake of an original experience of a game that's trying so hard to push a narrative of the environment your character exists in. OGSE gets so far up its own ass in the first 15 minutes that you're sick of it by the time you get enough ammo to comfortably defend yourself. OGSE does some cool stuff, don't get me wrong, I'm not hating on the mod or the mod authors, but the reality is that a first time player should never jump into OGSE when some veterans of the series can barely stand to look at it for more than an hour without getting bored and annoyed. OGSE suffers from the same legwork BS that Lost Alpha does. Why would you risk ruining someone's opinion of the game based on something that's kept to a minimum in the original game?

http://www.moddb.com/mods/old-good-stalker-evolution


so you obviously have no clue what you're talking about..nice wall of text though. The AI in OGSE is more aggressive though..I will agree with that..they do try and surround and flank you..which is a bit much if you don't have explosives or a defendable position.


Edit - I think LA looks better out of the box though.

[whit]

İlk olarak Heresy tarafından gönderildi:

İlk olarak whit30 tarafından gönderildi:

Alright, I'll check it out...alreadygot it downloaded...installer keeps hanging though (so probably gunna have to redo it). I played 1.4 back in april I believe..but I can't remember what settings I used.

I'll just keep a monitor up for it and adjust accordingly. Thanks for the info.

Edit - ok so 1.3 started up just fine...1.42 would not start with out win xp comp mode. Kept causing a sound driver error without comp mode.

Edit 2 - looks decent, runs well, loads up fine after initial. AI is pretty bad though. Spawned in did the artifact quest, did proverbs nonsense with the 8 rounds you start with, and then I bought some ammo and went and wiped out the military base with the starter pistol. Saved and calling it a night.

Basically not possible to do that in many of the versions ive played. If you take out militairy patrol , the whole base is alerted and starts walking towards the first town. If you yourself dont kill the advancing 10+ soldiers then they wipe out the starting camp and kill lots of important npcs lol. Sure i did the same thing but it took 2-3 frag grenades to kill everyone at the start of the game and a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of hit and runs with the pistol.

Their agroe range must be broken or they must have dumbed down the AI in Lost Alpha. Or to be fair none hacker AI that see you across map lol.

It's pretty simple...facing from rookie village towards checkpoint (sorry I don't remember cardinal directions right now)..head to the far left side...dodge 2 mines...Depending on which version you're playing...the checkpoint will either have a fallen tree over the fence that you can jump...or nothing blocking your way but the mines.

Once over the fence...you'll see some concrete slabs and an outhouse...jump on the outhouse from the slaps...onto the roof of the barracks they use....kill all day long.

Edit - also depending on mod..there may be an auto turret on one of the guard towers (to prevent this easy access to gear and weapons)...so be careful of that.

[jan de dobberman]

Lost alpha man my pc cant even handle that ♥♥♥♥

[Cipher]

Lost alpha i would say is a totally alternate story but also made longer by force. Its not bad but it has its problems.

[whit]

Alright, so encountered 2 bugs so far.....

After saving nimble anytime you walk out of his AI life radius he respawns underground and starts making his trip back to newbie village to sleep in the first building. Which sucks cause he buys all the junk for more than sid will buy it.

Doing the mission for sid to steal the box from the military outpost (that I previously wiped out). Once game time turns to 2200 the game turns almost completely pitch black (can only see the stars, mine locations, lights from the tower, and mutant eyes). I had to set the game to static lighting and restart the game in order to bypass that issue. I tried to use a save from around 2000 but the game was still pitch black..requiring a restart either way.

The quest itself has you follow basically an invisible path, but that wasn't hard to figure out because Sid will yell at you instantly if you leave it..so just back up and try a different direction.

Basically follow the large fence (east side of map) until it meets the broken barbed wire (carefull there is one anomaly that can hurt you along the way - just move fast) fence that goes from east to west infront of the outpost...once you're sitting next to the barb wire fence - facing west you'll see an anomaly where there's a break in the fence (rolled up barbed wire on the ground). Head to the tree direcly south of this..then to the tree south of that..face west and start heading towards the barracks.

Once you get close enough sid will say something else about climbing through the window. He means the window on the SW side of the barracks...you can grab the case from outside of the building. Then just head back the way you came and turn in the quest.

Edit - if the military is still alive there will probably be two inside that building and you may need to tweak how you handle grabbing the case.

Edit 2 - I should also mention it's completely worth it to save nimble..I got around 8-10 poltergeist brains or whatever and those sell for 3k a peice. I saved some for when I meet the scientist.

[Draescan]

İlk olarak whit30 tarafından gönderildi:

İlk olarak Mantis tarafından gönderildi:

I will never understand why so many people fap over OGSE. Also I'm pretty sure OGSE is Call of Pripyat, NOT ShoC so telling people to play it instead of ShoC is questionable at best. If anything people SHOULD experience the original stalker game before touching anything, if they want to mod it to make it more approachable in this day and age, more power to them. However if that is the case, there's nothing wrong with complete, there's nothing wrong with vanilla, there's nothing wrong with ZRP, there's nothing wrong with ANY of these things for the sake of an original experience of a game that's trying so hard to push a narrative of the environment your character exists in. OGSE gets so far up its own ass in the first 15 minutes that you're sick of it by the time you get enough ammo to comfortably defend yourself. OGSE does some cool stuff, don't get me wrong, I'm not hating on the mod or the mod authors, but the reality is that a first time player should never jump into OGSE when some veterans of the series can barely stand to look at it for more than an hour without getting bored and annoyed. OGSE suffers from the same legwork BS that Lost Alpha does. Why would you risk ruining someone's opinion of the game based on something that's kept to a minimum in the original game?

http://www.moddb.com/mods/old-good-stalker-evolution


so you obviously have no clue what you're talking about..nice wall of text though. The AI in OGSE is more aggressive though..I will agree with that..they do try and surround and flank you..which is a bit much if you don't have explosives or a defendable position.


Edit - I think LA looks better out of the box though.

I somehow got it confused with SGM, my mistake.


That being said, I have played OGSE as well it seems. Just doesn't do it for me. Too much HUD the visuals are really unpleasant, feels like it's trying to copy NS and the animations made me want to vomit. They're worse than a lot of the vanilla ones. Not to mention if you play above the default FOV the animations look even worse than normal as they're all made for that narrow AF FOV that stalker defaults to. Hell some of them aren't even really made for that from the looks of things as there's still ♥♥♥♥ tons of clipping going on in playthroughs I've seen where the player is using default FOV also, CHRIST that translation! Ack!


Also why the ♥♥♥♥ would you tell people who are brand new to stalker to play a mod that's so blatantly geared towards vets looking for a different experience? It has none of the same charm the old one did and is just " Here's the zone, now here's random ♥♥♥♥ we liked " which by the way there's nothing wrong with, but it's hardly an experience I'd throw someone into with no prior knowledge of the game >_<

[Samz]

I love how everyone claims SHOC isn't a RPG when it very much is one, with its various sidequests and other RPG Elements

[Draescan]

İlk olarak Samz tarafından gönderildi:

I love how everyone claims SHOC isn't a RPG when it very much is one, with its various sidequests and other RPG Elements

? I wasn't aware anyone was talking about ShoC's genre in general.

[whit]

@Mantis I'm not going to argue with you. Specifically, when you admit your memory is foggy.


They've all had issues and at the end of the day we can disagree all day long on our opinons. I just wouldn't ever recommend someone starting with LA.

The AI is terrible - Sometimes just standing idle while you kill them
There's issues with enemies being right at zone in attacking you...like in cordon (coming from garbage) almost instant death from 4 military stalkers
Game crashes at zoning (though I think a lot of them do this I just can't remember)
Has tool boxes that are quest items from COP that are no longer used for quest..but you can't get rid of them.

Though I really like the additions of the tunnel system in Cordon and the change for Streloks stash. Minus how it spawns the controller - because it's aware of your presence through walls and affects you while you're being attacked by spawned in blood suckers.

Nimble is still bugged out AF.

Anyway - if they end up becoming a cult fan like the rest of us ..it won't really matter what we recommend. They'll end up playing them all too.

Over the years I've played ..vanilla > complete > OGSE > Narodnay Solyanka DMX > various versions of those > StalkerSoup (this one I've never gone back to because all the bugs ended up driving me out of my mind back in the day -Technobacon's version) > AA > almost all of the mods listed in that link I provided a couple of days ago. I have played SGM as well...but I can't remember which versions. CoC too it looks like, but I don't remember that one at all.

Clear Sky is probably the only stalker game I haven't played much..and I never played it vanilla. I played it with some faction war mod.

If I had to pick the best mash up for experienced stalkers...it would probably be somekind of mashup with a version of Solyanka. Maybe StalkerSoup is worth playing now I really don't know.