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@ScorpionSkull: The same could be said for Loner's. Many of them run in gangs but have an affiliated respect for each other as "Loners". However there's no reason why certain Loner groups wouldn't have their own secrets and rivalries, or who might leave other Loner's to die.

There's actually a pretty good example of this in CoP already. The guy isn't exactly a bandit, but he's a bit of a liar and a cheater and generally just a jackass. But he's not a bandit.

All of these new AI changes are going to be awesome!

I believe they explained themselves saying that many retailers want pre-order DLC in order to guarantee Day 1 sales (i.e. it's the retailers who really want pre-order DLC, in order to get pre-orders, so they (retailers) get money for doing nothing) and the devs decided that the best thing they could do was put the Ranger mode as the free DLC because they figure it's going to be the hardcore fans who will pre-order it and the hardcore fans will be the same ones who actually want ranger mode.

I hope that makes sense.

Perhaps is Beac is done by the time a Misery 3.0 is in the works they could merge some stuff. :p

This kind of thing only makes me get ahead of myself. :P 2.0 isn't even out yet and I'm thinking of all the wonderful things that could be done for 3.0 to truly expand and bring all of the Zone to life like never before. For me that speaks wonders about the work that has been put into this mod: I now see it as the definitive way to play CoP and experience the Stalker universe. I just want to see more until the whole Zone is complete! :p

It is possible, but requires a lot of work (it requires moddlers). Redux is actually focusing on making this happen, so maybe if there's a 3.0 it might be something that could be included.

I've seen some other mods add new "stats" so I think it's possible in some way - as in, add a broken limb "stat" and when you break a limb your character movement speed could be slow and have a bit of camera shake. *shrugs*

@VitaminK: The last content update was April 2nd (look at the images - scopes)

My discussion point was only 2 things: firstly another user made the comment that LA would look better than a high end CoP mod. I believe that this is technically impossible and a fallacy to not only believe, but spread. From the screens I have seen, and my experience with ShoC the blurry/fuzzy look it has makes it look a bit "old" and sometimes not that great to look at. But all of this is in reference to the users original comment. I have no issues with the realistic green vegetation.

Believe me, I'm excited for the level design and new features (including cutscenes and story) you guys have done and I'm especially looking forward to seeing some of the old areas completely overhauled and made new as well as never before seen levels. Lost Alpha is obviously the closest thing to another Stalker game we'll ever see so why wouldn't I support it? :)

I didn't compare it to Crysis 2. My point was that the "final" look of LA could be anything, but we have to judge it on what we actually see - which for me is a game that looks old.

@Shadowracer: there's one glaring issue with that - the fact that to begin with I never said it looked BAD just that it wasn't going to look as good as CoP (technically unable) as another user had asserted. If you agree that LA is going for an "old" look then why exactly did you disagree with me for saying exactly that?

Your second parapgrah was personal opinion so I'm not going to comment on it.

As for the first paragraph: screen resolution and texture resolution are different to the sharpness of an image (i.e. upscaling destroys the quality of an image). I don't pretend to know the technical reasons behind why ShoC looks kind of blurry, but suffice to say that the images we've seen of LA ARE blurry and they are blurry in a way that ONLY seems to affect ShoC. Neither Clear Sky nor CoP have this issue.

The difference between these games is mainly the age of the engine: CS and CoP run on updated versions of the engine and for whatever reason have much sharper imagery which is why I believe that, regardless of screen resolution or level design, Misery will end up being a better looking mod - it's simply going to have sharper imagery due to the technical capability of the CoP engine.

Then I fail to see why I was downvoted. The engine that LA runs on - as far as we've seen - isn;t as technically capable as CoP. Does it have DX11 with sun rays and wet surfaces etc? LA (R1) looks closer to ShoC which was released 6 years ago. Even if I give it the benefit of the doubt that it's better than ShoC it's still going to be looking like a 5 or so year old game. CoP came out in 2011. If LA is running on a 2011+ updated engine and we haven't seen the R2 or DX11 features then my point still stands that what we've seen doesn't look that great at all - especially, if as you've said, it's running on static lighting with compressed screenshots.

As for gameplay, as I said there's something I can't quite describe but I noticed a difference in the way that ShoC plays compared to CS and CoP and ShoC "somehow" feels outdated in comparison (and these features maybe can't be felt or haven't been shown in the few videos we've seen).

In other words my points were perfectly valid for what we've seen and speculating on "what could be" is pointless because LA COULD be Crysis 2 levels for all we know, but since we haven't seen that there's no point in saying "oh yeah of course it will look like that". Instead a bunch of fan boys who can't handle criticism or critical discussion just downvoted me. Not sure if you've noticed but there's pretty much NO critical discussion of this mod without people having their comments completely buried.

I have been following the mod (you'll have to explain what R1 and R2 means). When I mentioned gameplay I wasn't talking about "features" but rather the way the game is played and feels when you play - something I can't quite quantify, but something I can definitely feel the difference with when I go back to ShoC.

YOu speak of "potential" from from the screenshots that are updated monthly which I assume represent the current state of the game and not renders from 5 years ago they DON'T look better than Misery or even CoP. They look like ShoC which, objectively, is outdated.

Try showing these screenshots to people who aren't dezowave, LA or Stalker fans. If you have to sit there and defend them by saying "I expect it to look better" or "it might take some texture packs" then the screenshots are obviously not speaking for themselves. As I said, the level design is impressive and I look forward to exploring an expansive and new Zone, but I've asked a bunch of people what they thought and the overwhelming concensus was that it looks "old" and "outdated" and that it looks the same as ShoC, which I agree with (at least until I can get my hands on it and see it in motion). On top of that some of the screen shots look slightly blurry or fuzzy, which is the same issue I persnally have with ShoC after playing CS and CoP and that's because the textures and game resolution is much lower than the proceeding games.

Dismiss my thoughts all you want but LA looks outdated. There's no point in burying your head in the sand about it. Regardless of all that I look forward to LA (because I have been following it for years) and I look forward to the mods that will improve it, just as they improved the almost unplayable ShoC and CS and made CoP so much better.

Are there any assualt scopes implemented (like in gnomus scopes) or are they all sniper scopes that blacken the entire screen?

I was watching the BF4 gameplay today and thought it would be cool to have some of the gun sounds in Stalker and then look here!

And it seems like you're living in a bubble. GSC was never going to make the perfect game you dream of. Even after Clear Sky - a game which THQ didn't interfere with GSC still made a buggy ****ed up mess. Call of Pripyat was the most stable and refined game in the series and it was made on a pretty ancient engine without much improved gameplay. Again, untouched by THQ but GSC was still unable to make a game larger in scope. Blame THQ all you want but you're being completely unrealistic in what you think GSC was capable of.

Random question: will the new AI changes allow NPC's to hunt for artifacts and/or will they be able to use the animations/actions(ai behaviour) from Clear Sky where they would assess anomalies with detectors?

Hm, speaking of that mission, fighting zombies and the insane camera movement when being hit: please tell me both of these things have been fixed. I love Misery but these two things are the reason I pretty much just rage quit from it and it's nuts that you guys have this amazing mod but then messed up such simple things. :(

I don't want to sound rude, but you're basically just playing wrong. For starters, the regular health kit healed something like 15%, and they're mostly useful in downtime, not the heat of battle, as they heal over time. Also, they don't stack, so using 3 at once is only going to heal you 15% (at least as far as I know). I suggest you find a quiet spot, after you've taken damage, and use ONE medkit and see how it works.

In my last play through I amassed quite a lot of medical and food supplies and I was pretty set, but you just need to know how they work before claiming they don't.

Yeah, but... some mercs got it working again. At least, that's what we can say happened.

I'd prefer to simply have the "magazine" idea (that didn't require manually loading them from ammo boxes).

As for health, hunger and radiation... obviously we need those kind of things displayed on screen because they would come to us naturally in real life.

I know you guys added the cat (I wish you hadn't :p) but please tell me you didn't add the other "zombies" or those weird *** dopey things with long arms. :/

Sorry didn't mean to come across as an ***. I had seen them posted elsewhere and people were jumping all over them. Sometimes people read way too much into things.

Well that's a shame. It reminds me a fair bit of the SMG from Halo, which I thought looked cool also. But then people love the UMP and FAL/FAN and I think they look disgusting. *shrugs*

dat aliasing :p

The Stalker games do great lightning storms, but not really great rain. It's always really light and pitter-pattery instead of a full blown drenching rain storm.

I want to see this gun in! Looks awesome.

Moddb.com

It's important to note that it's not as grand as "new art for Stalker 2" - he's only put them on his professional profile.