Comments - Batushka

It is a good game but it's frustrating at first because the small tanks can't take much of a beating and playing the free way is painfully slow to earn the points and gold you need to do stuff. Everything costs and the bigger tanks ain't cheap! You can speed things up and buy gold to spend on upgrades and supplies, but that ain't cheap either! I think the 12 month fee package is about $100.

The other thing I find a bit frustrating is you are in the 3rd person view but your ability to see enemies and your team mates is like you were in the first person view. You should be able to see a tank destroyer hiding in a bush in the 3rd person, but it's invisible as if you were in the first person. You supposedly can't see beyond what you could see from the real thing (as it was explained to me)which means for some tanks you practically have to be on top of an enemy to see them, yet markers will indicate enemy tanks that are behind big hills and impossible to hit. Throw in a treeline in front of the hill and it's impossible to know if the enemy is behind the trees or hill. Another result of the weird sighting is you can get shot up and can't see where the shots are coming from so it's damn hard to take evasive action.

Besides the invisible tanks, I've seen a few other odd things like incredibly fast tanks of which the Russians had a few, but these in the game accelerate and change directions like sports cars but they are WWII era vehicles!

I haven't seen much in the way of unsportsmanlike behavior but some players go all Test Drive Unlimited and will charge and ram you shooting all the way in a Kamikaze like tactic. The forum has the usual mix of some who think WoT is the real world and take it much to seriously. In the game I see a little of the same, especially with tactical talk in the chat. Other times I laugh because it's like GTA IV in free-play with tanks.

The torrent site now says it's locked down because the bill hasn't been paid, "insufficient funds in your account" to be exact. It goes on and says if the owner doesn't pay, bad things will happen like everything will be lost, etc.

@Trailhog 250- tell that to the people who got busted for illegal downloading of music and taken to court. tell that to napster and limewire and a host of other P2P sites.

Piracy is why there are some pretty crappy things afoot in the digital rights world.

Ever heard of ACTA, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement? Look it up. It is VERY scary stuff. It's still a debate circus right now, but just because it's stupid doesn't mean it won't become law. Look at the US Patriot Act.

There are already ISPs blocking access to known pirate and warez sites. Piracy and illegal downloading was the Trojan Horse telecoms like Comcast, Time-Warner, and others used to cap service. We all know it's bull, but those who were doing it handed the telecoms the gun they shot all of us with. Law enforcement is paying attention more, too.

Whether one chooses to steal or not is a personal decision. It can be morally subjective such as stealing food when your starving vs. breaking into someone's house and stealing their stuff and thinking it's OK because they look like they have money.

My opinion is the two lowest forms of life are thieves and liars. I have no sympathy for them and hope all experience what they do to others. They deserve whatever karma or The Powers that Be drop on their heads.

As for Diablo 3, I'm not going to buy it. I don't like what Blizzard has done but I'm not going to use that to justify pirating a copy. That action has consequences beyond just me.

I wouldn't be surprised if the requirement of a full-time Internet connection is also part of a new DRM scheme that allows both identification of an unauthorized copy and a means to know where it is.... remember, the music industry found out the identity of down-loaders easily enough.

What's sad is if there IS such a thing and it ends up working, even if it just disables the pirated copies, every game company will likely follow suit. An entire world-wide community of modders may be at risk over actions of a few.

On the subject of weapon accuracy, I have always had an issue with both SoC and CS. It's damn frustrating early on in SoC when Bandits seem to have sniper rifle accuracy and inflict major damage with those sawed off double barrel shotties. The pistols they wield, while maybe the same as what you are equipped with seem 10X more accurate and cause incredible damage. I also hated the misfires that always seem to happen when you are being stealthy and sneak up on a target. Squeeze the trigger and "Your weapon has misfired. Press reload to clear the jam" or whatever that swear out loud message is.

Hopefully I'm not stepping on any-one's toes by saying this, but after running the unpacker on the STALKER games and/or if I use a mod that I can open and edit, I go into the actor LTX file and up the number that is the hit probability percentage. I'm reciting this from memory, but I think novice is like 0.10, and it goes on up. I change those to higher values. At first I questioned whether this figure was damage inflicted on the character you play or damage the player inflicts. On the highest level, Master or whatever, I have used .95 which is 95% and it's definitely your accuracy that improves. Also, if you hunt into the files in gamedata\configs further and go into the weapons folder, you can open the file for each weapon and change the probability of a misfire. Again, I don't recall the exact terminology, but it's easy to figure out. I add a zero after the decimal point to make the weapon less likely to screw up. So, if it has a .009 I change it to .0009. The hard part is the names of the files don't always match what the guns are called in the game. Of course, let your conscience be your guide for these tweaks. And they work the same for SoC, CS, and CoP.

CoP has the Illusion of being huge. Most of the area in map 1 is so sparse it just seems big. You can run to the freighter/bar from about anywhere when the blow-out alarm sounds. One of the odder sights was when a dozen or more Stalkers and/or Bandits were standing outside the freighter in formation. Zombies would come up and start shooting. I'd stand between one of those guys and the Zombies. They just stood there grunting each time a bullet hit them until they died. I also experienced the sudden spawning of snorks, rats, bloodsuckers, dogs, and all the other mutants all at the same time. It was impossible to fight them all and I could use up every med kit and bandage I had in seconds. They only solution was to keep reloading a save until it didn't happen. During these attacks sometimes my character would shoot up in the air like a rocket and land far away with no damage. I got swarmed like that at the entrance to the Wild Territories (train yard side) and I shot up and touched down by the small sheds next to the unfinished building on the opposite side of the area behind the crane. (There were always Mercs posted there in the SoC game). On the return trip the between the tunnel that leads from the Wild Territories to the transfer spot to the area with the bar was so often full of all the different mutants it was just ridiculous. Another oddity was when I had to meet up with Stalkers or military to do missions. I'd see them in the distance and packs of dogs or other mutants would be jumping all around and on them while they just stood there. Once I got close enough they would "wake up" and begin fighting them but ended up dead before I could help. The only way around it was to remain at a distance and try to pick off the dogs one by one without nicking or hitting one of the men. If I did they'd wake up and open fire on me instead of the mutants. I wish that there were times I could have told them to hold their position like you could to characters in Fallout 3.

Often, they go charging in and if the enemy doesn't get them they will cross your line of fire and get killed. They always get mixed in with the melee so you can't tell who is who. All the STALKER games had this to a degree, but CoP seems the worst of all. My biggest disappointment in CoP was Oasis. It was spoken of in almost every conversation all through the game. There was an almost reverent mythology about it, and with the difficulty in finding it, I expected so much more. It was like finding King Tut's Tomb and it was a tiny broom closet with a mean dog and a potted plant! What a let down!!!! I hope any mod makes Oasis the legend it deserves to be! At least it should be another big map! I figured out its location when I was up on the water towers hunting the Chimera for a mission. It was dark and a blow-out alarm sounded. The safe place marker appeared to the side and below me but I couldn't find any opening so I ran back to Yanov Station. I went back at daylight and searched again for an entrance and couldn't find one. I studied the map and saw what lined up with where the marker had been. I quickly solved it, but I don't know how else I would have found it without searching on the Internet for it. I thought it would produce a second artifact so I could have a complete collection, but that was a no as well. The glowing artifact you recover early in the game for a mission was the only one like it as well. In several parts of the game actions could change the direction things went. One was who you gave the PDA from the missing Duty squad leader to, Freedom or Duty. Another choice was if you sold or kept Strelok's messages you found. At the end whether you chose to go or stay affected the game ending or going into free play

I read that at one point you had to side with Duty or Freedom. I never had to side with either and they stayed green towards me the whole game. My point is not a one of the event altering choices gave any indication that it was so important. There were missions/events such as with Crow or whatever the guy's name was you do a few missions for at the freighter. At one point he accuses you of having a weapon stolen from him that you bought from Nimble. In the response dialog I threatened to shoot Crow with it and that was that. Only much later when I engaged Nimble in a conversation to buy a protective suit did I see a dialog choice relating to the stolen weapon. Selecting it set off a whole chain of events from a shoot-out to having my stuff stolen from Yanov Station later in the game. This happened more than once. The PDA gives no hint or clue something needs to or can be done. The game can be played through and a whole bunch of stuff missed without ever knowing it! I hope any mod would at least put the font for the choices affecting the storyline in a different color. Adding some kind of clue on the PDA when things aren't fully played out or still open would be nice. With Pripyat the way missions kept coming up one after seemed as if they were urgent and needed immediate attention. I wasn't sure if I was working against a clock so it kept me from exploring as much as I wanted to. The game ended much too quickly. Fortunately the STALKER series conditioned me to frequent saves I finished the game by leaving with the military and then reloaded and stayed discovering that sent me into free play.

When I went into the secret lab in Pripyat by chance I found the main document to complete the mission almost immediately. I learned later there were 6 documents there in al. The other 5 had some use but only the one was the key to completing the mission. I went back later and found I missed a lot besides the documents! Another mission gets a red access card to get into a store room in the lab. It has some goodies, but is not mission essential. I missed that mission and never got the card. I think it's possible to missions out of sequence and other missions never come up as a result. Early on I was supposed to talk to this hermit for information on how to get to a plateau. While exploring the area I hit some sort of anomaly purely by chance, wound up on the plateau and the talk to the hermit mission disappeared. It didn't show up as active, completed, or failed. It was just gone! My main Pripyat gripes- lots of buildings but very few were actually accessible. The ones you could get in had limited places you could explore. The other gripe was bodies started disappearing almost immediately. I would encounter a dozen mixed Mercs and Monolith troops and had a hell of an enjoyable fire fight. When I would go looking for bodies to loot I would be lucky to find two or three. Even the exit is a massive firefight from one end of Pripyat to the other. After the choppers leave, not a body can be found. I still playing in free-play mode. I've seen everything there is to see, explored all there is to explore. The only fun is the far too infrequent massive firefights against Mercs and Monolith or between Bandits, Stalkers, Freedom, and Duty.

Finished the game and what a blast it was! In spite of some more irregularly spaced crashes it was a delight! I went back through the whole thing after completing it. I was surprised at having to take on 3 BMP type armored cars and the 2 helicopters at the train yard after the stadium. I went back there again to look for weapons dropped from my first trek through when there was a battle going on. It took me a bit to figure out where the fire was coming from. I don't know if you guys did this or it was in the original version, but I was glad I had an RPG and a dozen rockets left. I didn't find any weapons but went through all the tunnels again and through the Chernobyl NPP and back to Cordon. In the tunnels I engaged maybe 6 or 8 Monolith soldiers and at the NPP there was one guy left who probably got away from me the first time through. I'm in free play mode now seeing if anything is any different in any areas. So far it's more of the same stuff which isn't a bad thing.

I was looking through my notes on the game and I forgot to mention one other mission that gives no location or any information. Sidorvich gives a mission to find the Perfect Pistol (Perfected Pistol?). There's no location and no other information given. I went back to him with every pistol I could find and it never completed the mission. It eventually failed as did the Duty Member's Weapon mission which I failed six times. Those were the only two I thought a bug prevented me from completing. The other two were artifact related, the Moon Light artifact missions which I believe failed because it's spelled two different ways and the Star Light artifact which I never found. I refused two missions, the Eliminate the Duty Squad given by the head of Freedom and Kill the Stalker from Freedom Mission given by the Duty guy in Rostok you trade with so I don't know if they worked.

Overall- I absolutely love what you did with this game. The visuals are stunning and you did a hell of a lot to balance out the combat between the opposition and the character. The only real side mission bugs were the Duty Weapon which never shows up and the Moon Light which I think is the way it's spelled. I still had a bit of lag inside buildings, but not all the time inside the same buildings. Inside the one at the Garbage always lagged in the original game and maybe one out of every ten times inside with yours. I've noticed the same in Pripyat- one time in a building it's fine but later back in the same place it lags. Even though it still crashes, it's far less than the original did.

I'm looking forward to what you do with Clear Sky, especially the treatment you give the Emissions. If I had one wish with Clear Sky it would be a way to control the rate of the enemy respawning. At one time I was trying to fight my way back into the Garbage from Agroprom and the Bandits kept coming in wave after wave on both sides of the tunnel. I must have killed well over 200 and there was just no pause it it and no apparent end. It never slowed even enough to make a run through the area. It would be nice that after some point all the shooting there would have some effect. I never did the faction wars part and maybe that's the point of it. Still, for those who play straight seeing some effect from all the battles would be nice.

I haven't done more than start Call of Pripyat yet so I can't say too much about it.

On the find the artifact mission for the Moon Light artifact I have had 5 of them in my possession and can't complete the mission. The artifact in my back pack is 2 words:Moon Light. The mission calls it Moonlight, one word. I think the spelling mismatch prevents the artifact from being recognized.

Only other complaint is the mass simultaneous attacks by mutants in the Wild Territory area. Two bloodsuckers, five pseudodogs, five blind dogs, five rat things, and three snorks all at the exact same time are a bit much and waste a lot of first-aid packs. It's happened about 5 times and even though the character sometimes gets launched way up into the air- from the guard tower by the railroad tracks at the entrance and landing outside the building where the mercs are on the other side of the area- the remaining mutants are back on you as soon as you hit the ground. All I can do is keep hitting the fire button and keep hitting the use med kit key until the attack stops. If you didn't have enough med kits to last I don't know how you'd ever get away.

Is the Starlight artifact found by trying to find where the blue meteor hits? That's a beautiful visual!

I've had about 6 crashes to desktop after playing different amounts of time.

Continuation of my play through- Currently in Pripyat. Still have not been able to complete Weapon of the Duty member mission after 4 tries. Sometimes the marker shows up at Agroprom on the PDA map, but not on the minimap. Nothing is there anyway. the dialog say it was lost in Dark Valley and I am sure I covered every inch of it. Another set of stash markers referring to one on top of a yellow barrel and another behind a door show up occasionally on the PDA map at Agroprom but not on the minimap and also aren't actually there.

When I went back to the locked steel door underground in Dark Valley the second time it allowed the find the documents mission to continue and I was able to play through it even though the first time it told me "Mission Complete- take the documents to the barman" as soon as I walked up to the door which wouldn't open.

Forgot to add this- the two pistols, the H&K USP and the Colt M1911 both use the same .45 cal.ammo. On the damage portion, the M1911 only goes 3 marks on the damage bar while the H&K goes fully half the bar. That's about 10 times the damage as the M1911. The pistol design definitely can affect accuracy and range, but similar ammo should produce similar damage shouldn't it?

BTW: have you ever noticed the "face" on the tower that's almost in the middle of the image on the loading screen for Rostok? It's definitely too detailed and proportional to be an accident. I wonder if it's a programmer's or code writer's face?

Also noted the "Get out of here Stalker" dialog by the guard in the warehouse you pass thru to get to the bar in Rostok is gone, too.

After I completed the Defend the Barrier mission there, I got one of those instant missions that was to defend the stalkers at Agroprom! So, I had to cross that area and go to and through Rostok. From Rostok I went to the Garbage and from the Garbage to Agroprom. An attack was still underway and I killed off all the bandits. I hung around and wiped out another 2 waves of them attacking and then two groups that spawned as I was leaving. I never got a mission complete notice. When i checked the map on the PDA the purple location indicator for the mission was over the small valley in the Military Warehouse area! it's the spot where 3 stalkers are by a camp fire and one is to be killed for a mission. Even the text balloon which is pretty big speaks of that area as Agroprom. I don't recall bandits raiding in that area, but I'm heading back there next time I play to see what's up.

This may all be redundant to you. If so, I apologize. If this is helpful to you I can do this the rest of my play through. If you'd rather i send it directly to someone, let me know who or if you don't care and already know all this, let me know as well.

At Lab X-18 I went all through the place and cleaned everybody out. I went downstairs into the tunnels. I got to the locked door with the keypad and as soon as I got there I got the message I had found the documents. I never got past that door and played none of the mission that was past it and didn't have to fight my way back out either.

I tried to do a side mission for the Duty Member's Rifle. I remembered a bandit had it in Dark Valley, but he sometimes was in the Garbage or Agroprom. No marker ever appeared at all for the mission and every time I clicked to highlight the mission from the PDA menu the map went to Agroprom but there were no indicators except the occasional stash. I traveled from site to site and smoked every bandit I could find and never found him or the gun. It finally timed out and the mission failed.

These may be my fault, but the stash in the Agroprom that's in the bottom of the 3 large pipes in front of the place by the RR tracks is completely surrounded by anomalies. It is unapproachable. The stash by the digger crane that's in the ditch to the side of the building in the Garbage is either invisible, not there, or the anomalies are too big to get near where it is.

At the military Warehouses I did the Kill the Informer Mission. I successfully completed it, got my reward, but the green indicator that says to Kill the Informer stays there. It won't go away.

Now, in game things I noted as I played along.

It may be planned that way, but the pseudo-dogs disappear awfully quick. A few were only a blood stain after about 3 seconds. I had to dust quite a few before I could get a tail.

Dark Valley had some issues. The first was when clearing out the old factory where the Duty (?) guy was locked up. After going through the building you end up in a lobby area with twin staircases. There's a hallway you go down to get to the basement where the cells are. There's an armory room off this hallway, too. There are 2 bandits at the entrance just inside. After dispatching them i checked them for goodies. The second guy "exploded" as soon as I had my cross-hair on him and pressed "F". It was strong enough to flip over a table nearby but didn't do any damage to me at all. He had completely disappeared. I found him stuck to the ceiling flailing like he was having a fit in the jail cell area below where he disappeared from above. I couldn't get a fix on him to check him for loot.

The guy who is supposed to be locked up was outside his cell. He wouldn't speak and I couldn't interact with him. I pressed the button to unlock the cell and I go the Mission Complete message although i was still unable to interact with him. He stayed in place until I was almost all the way back outside when I saw his dot on the mini-map move.

I don't remember the sequence from the original game, but I never met or saw the Borov character who had the key I needed for the X-18 lab. The marker on the mini-map showed the location in the elevated passageway going out of the side of the facility. I ran down it and the message appeared that I had the key and to go to the lab. I didn't see anyone or anything nor did I interact with anything. All I did was run down the passage past the indicator which was at the beginning and about half way down just before the high radiation warning, it said I had done it.

Hi again. Not sure if this is the appropriate place to put this, but i have been making some notes as i go along. First off, thanks for doing this! You made one helluva conversion! The graphics are awesome and it plays well on my old rig with high settings. Problems I had such as lagging inside buildings, especially the one in the Garbage and a few other spots are gone. (I haven't been all the way into Yantar yet)are gone. Annoying things like the guy behind the bars in Rostok who kept asking you to come in have been fixed. What you did with the audio from birds chirping and bugs buzzing to wind whistling through buildings is mind blowing! That being said, here are a few nit picks:

The .txt extension on the readme files that came with the patch and the weapons upgrade were missing. They came up as unknown file types and I renamed them only adding the extension and they worked fine. I played for almost 15 hours straight before I had a crash. I used the sleeping bag and did the maximum rest time. After the dream sequence it came back to the inventory screen which I was able to close. I was able to look around again from the first person view but couldn't do anything else. When I hit ESC it crashed to desktop. It did the crash twice more after long play times, usually from changing screens to the main menu screen, inventory screen, or back from one of them. Each time I got a Windows Error Report thing saying to reduce my hardware acceleration setting which leads me to assume it's my hardware being (ahem) somewhat dated. The only other issue I have had is 2 times out of maybe 40 saves total when I got killed and did a "Last Save" the game that was restored was many saves back rather than the actual last one. That has been it with functionality, a quantum leap over the stability of the original game. I even left it up for over 24 hours, about 36 including play time with NO crashes or freeze ups!

Question with an explanation first- I'm replaying SOC after playing thru Clear Sky and prior to Call of Pripyat. I remember modding the game myself when I first played it. I upped the carry weight limit and increased the accuracy of the weapons. I couldn't remember how to do it and came across this mod/conversion while searching. It sounds really interesting and I downloaded it. Will this work with an older PC that doesn't have Pixel Shader at all on the video card? I know I had an issue with Clear Sky crashing to the desktop with occasional, unexpected "your video card doesn't support Pixel Shader 1.1" errors. Sometimes it would happen after 10 minutes, sometimes afte 10+ hours of play time. I was able to turn down some settings, resolution to 1024 X 768 and lighting to full dynamic lighting after which it played fine. While researching the pixel shader error I found a utility called ATI Tray Tools or something like that. I downloaded and installed it because it was advertised as having a means to over-ride pixel shading requirements. It had a setting for 1.1, 2.0, and 3.0. With the setting enabled that was supposed to over-ride the Pixel Shader 1.1 error that Clear Sky kept crashing with, it didn't really stop the error and created a series of BSODs until I managed to uninstall it (the tray tools, not CS. I should have know a software solution to a hardware shortcoming is too often wishful thinking. Today, I got a couple hours of play time in on Call of Pripyat and it seems to run just fine on my machine. A new PC is still a ways off for me. Unemployed, living on savings, etc. So, what do you suggest? Will this mod be OK with my old, but trusty 2.2 GHz Pentium 4 with 2 GB RAM and an ATI Radeon X-1950 Pro with 720 GB of video memory? Or should I just save it for when I get a new PC because it will be too much for mine? Oh yeah, my game is the retail US version...