My Problems Thread - L.U.R.K. mod for S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl

Instead of just putting in my two bits in every thread I'll just list all my problems and concerns (read: bitching)

#1: No HUD

I know that this is intentional but the ability to add it back would be
standard I think.

#2: Medkits stop working

If I use medkits enough times they stop healing me. If this is
intentional it is a very bad system considering how often you get hurt
in this game. A prolonged firefight will eventually result in me being
unable to heal myself and have little chance to survive.

#3: Recoil much?

I understand the desire to have the recoil and guns seem realistic but I
can't use any gun on automatic. There are 10 different AK models and
all of them are completely useless outside of semi-automatic. Maybe this
gets better with later game guns but it currently just serves to make a
difficult beginning near impossible.

#4: Paper armor

I've recently gotten a stalker suit (low-mid tier armor in vanilla) and
it might as well be a cotton hoodie for what stats it has.

#5: I was told there would be cake

Weapon mods and arena spectating. Wasn't I supposed to get that?

#6: Lowered expectations

I guess the main problem I have is that I was told this would add to the
game immensely like Oblivion Lost did. Instead I more or less just got a
bunch of new guns and tweaks to make it harder. If that's all that was
intended then you've done a very good job with it. If you were trying to
overhaul and rejuvenate a game that had become quite dated....the
results are less favorable.

Let me know if I'm missing something or have gotten something wrong. I
keep getting the feeling that I only installed a portion of this mod
and if that's so I redact all my statements against it. Also keep in
mind I hardly knew about this mod before it was released.

Edited by: Fien1111

1.) Duh. It's completely intentional and forces you to use your PDA more often for objective locations and map headings, however, there is a text interface, showing your current ammo type/caliber, as well as how many rounds you have in total and what you have in your current magazine/stripper clip.

2.) Don't spam the medical kits, I've probably (and to my shame or glory, depending on your view of things ) have well over 20 hours sunken into this new version of lurk already, what your talking about is when you use medic kits to replace Bandages. When you get shot, use a Bandage, not the Medic Pack/Kit, the medical packs are designed for -post- combat, or if needs be while in cover during combat, health restoration, they do not instantly stop bleeding. Because of this they can lull/even out the current amount of damage being done to your character -by- bleeding. Ie; "I hit the medic pack button after I was shot, but it didn't do anything" did you notice your health isn't going down? Well, again, it's because YOUR STILL BLEEDING.

3.) Have you ever fired any of the Kalashnikov weapons in real life? Bluntly put, with the possible exception of the SKS (and yes, I know its not technically a AK variant, however its considered in the same family, <3 you Victor ) they are spray-and-pray weapons, in reality the only way people get so amazingly accurate with them is hundreds of thousands of rounds down range in training, and literally hundreds of hours of use with the weapon, and even then, you'll never see the FSB/Spetznaz/Special Police, using the weapon on fully automatic, or even 'burst' semi-automatic. Get yourself an L85, SKS, or one of the other weapons spreadout through the starting area, or use it on single only and just understand you need to compensate for the recoil of the weapon; and make that first shot count.

4.) Well, considering the stalker suit is probably -the- most basic piece of armor in the game, perhaps your expectations where a bit high for that? Hell, in reality nothing really would stand up to the abuse stalkers put their kit through in -any- variation of this game, be that LURK, Vanilla, or otherwise. 7.62 eats armor, hell, even 5.56 can eat modern armor, while you may not have the stopping power of something like a modern Interceptor vest, your talking about a -fictional- universe, where that piece of equipment might not even exist, be happy with what you've got, and next time, try running around without -any- armor on, see how that turns out You'll be grateful for the 'small' amount of protection the Stalker Suit gives.

5.) "Weapon Mods" ? They have weapon add-ons, Suppressor, Tricog/etc if that's what your referring to. If you mean something along the lines of the Clear Sky/Call of Pripyat upgrade system, then no, I don't believe that was even mentioned or implied to being brought in with the new edition of Lurk. Yes, there is Arena Spectating, get past the traditional rounds and you'll learn all about that.

6.) Well bluntly put, whomever 'told' you this would extend the game, lied. Effectively this fixes a major portion of what made stalker unplayable for a lot of us, while it still has many, many issues, the massive amount of weapons, revamped animations, tweaked & corrected questlines, fixed localizations, and general balance of difficulty Lurk brings to the table outpaces things like Oblivion Lost. I believe it was said that LURK was not created with the intentions of tacking things on (poorly in most cases) to the main story, it's a major graphical overhaul of the engine (<3 running a HD5870 with this game, hah), as well as bringing back to life some of the broken aspects of Vanilla stalker.

I have a problem..... It's quite annoying, but the Leupold Scope. doesnt work with anything.... G3 says it can use it... what do i do, waste 8k at Skinflint, to buy it and attach it to my g3, and it doesnt work... If this can be fixed, i would be grateful....

Fair enough, I went into this mod with the wrong viewpoint and very misinformed I guess. I installed the patch and gotten a bit farther, but I still have no ammo counter. Whatever "text interface" you have I haven't found.

The medkit situation appears to have result from my ignorance of the new health system. I tended to use one as soon as I saw red around my screen thinking I was badly hurt. After about 4 or so healings they stopped working entirely.

And as for the recoil; Being unable to hit anything in a 2-3 round burst at longer than "barrel is against head" distance is not fair. I'm stuck fighting dozens of soldiers by sitting behind a rock and firing pop shots for 10 minutes. I'd have to imagine that if Strelok could make it to the Monolith he could handle an AK a bit better than this. Personally I thought the vanilla did a fairly good job illustrating recoil in a realist way while still have it playable. Just my opinion I guess.

Edited by: Fien1111

I'll just leave this here.

Also, are you seriously suggesting we compensate for the enormous recoil with the mouse? I would understand if this game came with a gun controller or even a regular one where could probably do the job with the analogs, but with a computer mouse?

Yeah, my problem is that there is neither a moon nor a sun. Wtf??? I guess I am gonna have to wait for Lurk COP edition to ever be satisfied.

Still unable to heal myself more than once or twice (seem to be worst with army kits) and I still have no ammo counter. Sorry to keep mentioning that but it's a very large concern

But as for new complaints; There's no dot on my p90's sight when I go to use it. I've had to make a mark in pencil on my screen to simulate it but it seems rather silly. The Bizon's sights are also horribly mis-aligned making it pretty much useless as a weapon.

Beyond all that though, I think I've finally broken into this mod. Hopefully future patches will alleviate most of the problems I'm having and make it much more playable.

Edit: The M3 or whatever the auto shotgun is called also has misaligned sights (sights cause it to aim WELL to the left). The 560 sights are better but a bit too low.

Edited by: Fien1111

This is bull****. I totally agree that the med kits are messed up bad. How the heck are you suppose to survive a gun fight against 20 bandits with chuck norris delta force aim out in the open on garbage. This is not intentional its impossible when your getting hit from like 300 yards by the most bull**** weapons. You barely peek your head out to aim and you get shot instantly. Is this just Garbage or is this just the general run of things for this mod. Whoever the hell is compairing this to real shooting its a video game alright and this is no where near realistic. At least make the medikits work, cant believe i deleted complete and put this half ass mod on. Sorry to whoever worked really hard on this but wtf.

Fien1111 wrote: Still unable to heal myself more than once or twice (seem to be worst with army kits) and I still have no ammo counter. Sorry to keep mentioning that but it's a very large concern

But as for new complaints; There's no dot on my p90's sight when I go to use it. I've had to make a mark in pencil on my screen to simulate it but it seems rather silly. The Bizon's sights are also horribly mis-aligned making it pretty much useless as a weapon.

Beyond all that though, I think I've finally broken into this mod. Hopefully future patches will alleviate most of the problems I'm having and make it much more playable.

Interesting fact, I also have this problem with the Bizon, I thought that I done something wrong, but curiously, Complete 2009 also has this problem with the AS VAL's ironsights. Strange.

I agree that the recoil is unrealistically high, and no, I never shot an AK, in my life, but I seen tons of videos of people shooting them, civilians and soldiers, amateurs and experienced shooters, and an AK-47, or any 7.62x39mm rifle, on full auto doesn't have that much recoil, let alone 5.45mm like the AK-74, it has even less recoil because of the lighter round and the muzzle compensator. There's also a HK G3 rifle, a battle rifle that kicks like a mule in real life, but in-game its recoil is the same as the AKs.

Edited by: Subway2033

Well i havent wondered over to the weapon side of things but i managed to fix the health packs by opening up the items files and changing the code back to normal. Which isnt hard if you have the old fie to compare it to. I also edited the damage to the actor to be more balanced along with the hit ratio so your not getting auto headshoted from very far out. Game was very playable until it just crashed while trying to steal the documents fromt the military. As though something was about to load when i was going up the stairs then it froze up. Main issue seems to be this mod developed characteristics that just are not very logical, such as handicaping the player yet not the ai. Your adding tons of unrealistic recoil vs various ai combatants who have perfect shots and are not effected by recoil. Basicly wasted my night i could of been having fun playing this game fixing it. Actually makes me wonder if this file is the finished verison. Again im sorry if this is someones masterpiece but its rough...

Protip: I have a real AK (Yugoslavian M70B, basically an AKM) that, while not fully-automatic, is entirely controllable in rapid succession (I won't get into just how I'm capable of getting near-fully-automatic RPMs..). Whoever thinks a 7.62x39mm rifle that weighs as much as an AK/AKM does is extremely uncontrollable during fast firing is, frankly, a dumbass - or has never fired a gun in their life. As anyone that's ever been trained on a fully-automatic weapon knows, use short bursts of 3-5 rounds. Control issue solved.

Also, I have a big problem with the NPCs seeing you so far out. Most of the time they're getting extremely accurate shots on you when all you can see of them is little dots in the distance. It is pretty bullshit.

Edited by: Malikyte

Now im down in the lab and that mutant giant kills you instantly once you go in the room. it stomps the ground and you die. I guess its suppose to be kicking stuff at you maybe but it doesnt show up on screen. lol This mod is junk. what was i smoking thinking deleting complete and using this. I have to stop every 10 minutes and fix a glitch myself in the files and im not even a modder.

RampageHunt wrote: Now im down in the lab and that mutant giant kills you instantly once you go in the room. it stomps the ground and you die. I guess its suppose to be kicking stuff at you maybe but it doesnt show up on screen. lol This mod is junk. what was i smoking thinking deleting complete and using this. I have to stop every 10 minutes and fix a glitch myself in the files and im not even a modder.

it's not a bug it's a feature
Also, give Holden a little while with the patches. It's not that I'm unimpressed with the mod, I'm unimpressed with the beta testers.

Me wrote: Casual gamers just need to STFU and GTFO

But I do think armor decays to fast

I'm in Red Forest and i've had to change armor over 5 times and now i'm just wearing a destoryed duty suit

Someone wrote: But I do think armor decays to fast

I'm in Red Forest and i've had to change armor over 5 times and now i'm just wearing a destoryed duty suit

Truth.

I'm wondering if there is a repair kit mod that works with this. Probably not but it's a good idea to keep in mind for future releases.

Subway2033 wrote:

Fien1111 wrote: Still unable to heal myself more than once or twice (seem to be worst with army kits) and I still have no ammo counter. Sorry to keep mentioning that but it's a very large concern

But as for new complaints; There's no dot on my p90's sight when I go to use it. I've had to make a mark in pencil on my screen to simulate it but it seems rather silly. The Bizon's sights are also horribly mis-aligned making it pretty much useless as a weapon.

Beyond all that though, I think I've finally broken into this mod. Hopefully future patches will alleviate most of the problems I'm having and make it much more playable.

I agree that the recoil is unrealistically high, and no, I never shot an AK, in my life, but I seen tons of videos of people shooting them, civilians and soldiers, amateurs and experienced shooters, and an AK-47, or any 7.62x39mm rifle, on full auto doesn't have that much recoil, let alone 5.45mm like the AK-74, it has even less recoil because of the lighter round and the muzzle compensator. There's also a HK G3 rifle, a battle rifle that kicks like a mule in real life, but in-game its recoil is the same as the AKs.

Wrong Wrong Wrong Wrong Wrong Wrong Wrong Wrong Wrong

Fire some real guns.

Anyone who has ever fired an AK47 or AKM IRL can tell you that if fire more than 2 rounds at a time the recoil will send your rounds wild. Firing in short controlled bursts really isnt that hard.

Edited by: SolidStrelok

Fun new bug. Enemies refuse to use anything but pistols so I have the pleasure of wiping out the grand Ukrainian Pistoleers army with the weapons their comrades had but wouldn't use.

I also tried screwing with the weapon values in the games files to make to take the recoil off "cannon" level but I'm not a modder so I have no real clue what I'm doing.

@solidstrelok: We're not saying these guns aren't heavy on recoil, just that the amount shown in the mod is ridiculously extreme. If AKs actually behaved this way, no army on the planet would use them. And the AK-74 is famous for it's controllability on full-auto.

We're not asking to unload an AKM onto a soldier 100 meters away and hit him with every shot, but 1-2 after a short burst at close range would be nice.

I have a Saiga AK-47 created in the Izhmash factory and I took it to the range the day I got it and I could fire it and get pin-point accuracy with it, Almost every weapon is decent in the accuracy department but it depends on the person using it.

What's hilarious is that you can actually recoil DOWNWARDS. LOL.

I already posted some stuff on how to fix recoil on a general level:

Someone wrote: Recoil can be adjusted on a weapon by weapon basis. Go to gamedata/config/weapons and make a copy of all the weapon folders and paste them on your documents or somewhere. Edit the .ltx files in the copied folders and look for the line "cam_relax_speed." After editing as below, use the edited copied files to overwrite the original.

Cam_relax_speed should be set to 0.0 as default. Cam relax speed controls the speed at which you recover from recoil. For you its set to 0, so you don't recover from recoil, whereas NPCs have a cam_relax_speed_ai of 360. Fool around with that number and pick one you like - a high value like 20 or so for more controllable weapons like an MP5 or assault rifle, and a lower value like 10 or 5 for battle rifles and 5-ish perhaps for bolt-action rifles and sniper rifles. Or whatever you like. Note that you only seem to compensate for recoil when firing semi-auto.

Recoil is also controlled by a series of factors below cam_relax_speed such as cam_dispersion, cam_max_angle, etc. I don't recommend fooling around with those too much unless you feel like seriously overhauling the weapon dynamics yourself. [NOTE: This obviously would take a lot more experimenting than just fooling around with the cam_relax_speed values]

The ability to recover from recoil like that isn't unrealistic either. Typically speaking, if you assume a proper firing grip and fire the firearm, with a neutral grip and stance, the firearm will naturally return from recoil back to pretty much where the front sight post was last. Guns also don't recoil downwards as well, unlike in various mods that set cam_relax_speed to 0.

@Solid Strelok,

While full-auto is pretty much a waste and never is used in any real-capacity in assault/battle rifles, nonetheless:

youtube.com/watch?v=ybAyrAF4Y1E
'
Anyway, as far as the no HUD thing, the only thing I miss is the minimap. It is incredibly inconvenient to be constantly pulling up the PDA to check if I'm going in the right direction or not. If there could be some way to enable the minimap without enabling visual/sound detection bars and enemy/friendly/neutral AI locations, that would be awesome.

Edited by: rayndeon

I know the zone like the back of my hand, so the minimap is no problem for me... The one thing i miss, and hell, i dont even miss that, is the ability to loot corpses easily, with the grey dots...

IMO, the minimap is essential for 2 reasons.

1) Locating corpses. Anyone that's wandered around outside for awhile can tell you how hard it is to see bodies in all the vegetation now.
2) Underground. The PDA has NO MAPS WHATSOEVER for the underground areas, making finding stashes in the underground impossible unless you already know where to check, which in turn defeats the purpose of a stash and getting the stash location off dead stalkers..

It may be possible to add the minimap to the pda so it would still be accessible, but without the robocop feel.

That would be acceptable; I just want a way to be able to keep track of things. If I have to pull the PDA up to do it, so be it. That honestly sounds more attractive than constantly having a map on the otherwise naked HUD.

It looks like the dll that handles the UI processes menus as "windows". It considers the HUD (including the minimap and fatigue/injury effects) and the pda menus as separate windows. It seems to look for specific declarations in the XML naming each window, and produces a crash if one isn't found. It refuses to process multiple windows and will instead process neither, producing a crash (so I can't load the pda and the minimap at the same time). The internal workings of the minimap are also hidden away in this dll, and the only thing that can be changed with the script is its position on the screen. Looks like someone would have to crack the dll to make my idea work (or make the fatigue/injury effects persist while the inventory is open).