An audio, visual, QoL and optional gameplay overhaul for S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Anomaly focused around enhancing its systems to make sense without being too hardcore, and increasing replayability.
Main features in comparison to other modpacks:
- Overhauled almost all sound in the game.
- Many balance and gameplay alterations combined with the selected addons. More dangerous radiation, more present anomalies, bigger mutant packs and variances in faction power and groups.
- A completely overhauled mutant spawn system, allowing mutants to hunt, grow their packs, and attack stalker settlements over time. A new, dynamic nocturnal mutants system built from scratch for stability.
- A tightened configuration setup for a combined Warfare + Storymode playthrough, which encourages exploration, crafting, risk-taking and scavenging without limiting your options as a player. Dark Signal can be as immersive, chaotic, or difficult as you like.
Coming soon:
New audio for all remaining weapons (+- 40% done)
Ported quest system from Call of The Zone (Up next!)
Further refinements to zone alife and questing systems. Stay tuned!
Before we get started, many thanks to the authors of these addons whose work was used, altered and edited. Dark Signal would NOT be possible without you, and we are so grateful! If you have any issues with your work being included, please do not hesitate to contact us:
Dark Signal Developers:
Shrike#3875 (discord): Audio, Visuals
Goose#0758 (discord): Compatibility patching, bug fixing, gameplay and balance alteration
Advaris#7825 (discord): Compatibility patching, bug fixing, gameplay and balance alteration
Setting and Writing (more on this soon!)
Shen
Community, website development:
KrymSpree
Testing and support:
Fargoth, CarlKuwait, Ajackxe, Mar, zeku, NepNep, Linstead, KrymSpree
Important PSA: Please only report bugs related to the below addons/base anomaly game to us. Any issues encountered is likely as a result of us putting the pack together and making changes, and not a direct fault of the mentioned addons or base game. If there is a genuine issue with the addon or the game, we will report it to an author directly. Neither Addon Authors nor the Anomaly Developers should EVER be expected to diagnose issues with modpacks. Thanks!
CREDITS:
In no particular order:
Wojach for Ambient Music Pack.
Inamu for Merc Replica Voices.
joe325 for Nicer reflections (cubemaps)
Apathy_Knight for Water Flask Rework.
Arszi for mutant bleeding.
sticknou for New Coffee DLTX.
Alex@1986 for Abnormal Weather.
Mich_Cartman and the BAS team for BAS.
xGrenadier for Artefact Overhaul.
jmorrow for Tacticool Scopes.
MissingnoBW for Outfit Icon fix.
Strogglet for Fixed Vanilla Models
lvutner for Shadow Corner Fix.
Blindside for Blindside's Weapon Animation and Rebalance, Decreased Bush Hearing Distance for NPCs, Knife Animations.
Aoldri for Hideout Furniture
Banjaji for Undercover Communications, No goodwill loss on task giver death, Realistic Bodily Needs.
Gamma for Summer To Autumn.
Indyora for Narrative Loadscreens.
Painecx for Faction Rank Inventory.
Legapon for Hunger, Thirst, Sleep bars patched.
TAZ team and mp5lng for TAZ weapons.
OniBarix for Oni's Main Menu
Alchosin for Dynamic Relations Settings
Solarint for SoundScape Overhaul.
sneakyDud for EFT Weapon Reposition Updated, Adjustable Scope View.
Souvlaki for FAL Animations
Vintar for Warfare Alife Overhaul and Bounty Squads Expanded, Modular Misc Tweaks.
owencraig for Brumbling and Bumbling Begone.
FairFight for Minimalist Main Menu.
Magoeswang for Characters Die Properly.
OgBoZo420 for Underrail Cursors
jdud for Cinematic VFX.
HollidayW for Blood Of The Zone.
MerelyMezz for DLTX.
AyyKyu for Death Animations.
Diphenhydramine-HCI for Smart Terrain Spawns Bugfix, First Person Death Ironman.
Leviathan for Dynamic Mutants.
KennShade for Enhanced Shaders.
Ascii1457 for Screenspace Shaders.
SineDeviance for Expanded Starting Locations.
Maid and Cr3pis for HD icons.
Strogglet for G36 pack
Feel_Fried for FDDA, Quick Melee Reworked.
Solarint for JSRS.
FIREBREATH - L96 Reanimation.
Arti AKA The Shovel God for Outfit Parts Overhaul, Lootboxes, Arti's Ballistics, Outfit Speed, Streamlined Upgrades, Powered Exoskeletons, Armor Modkits, Remote IEDS, Weapon Parts Overhaul..
xcvb/bcvx for phantoms at low psy health, Stealth, Companions Remember Bases, Toxic Rain, Nocturnal Mutants.
Lucy! for Glowsticks.
The_Kitty_Cat for Anomaly Classic Hands.
DerChrom for Classic Freedom Taunt.
GhenTuong for Companion Dialogs.
All-Knowing Nimble for AI Can't See Through Bushes.
Iretuerye for Golden Autumn Retexture.
Strogglet15 for SidHud, Alternative Icons.
Damien for EFT Binoculars.
Wang_Laoshi for 1ST Person Visible Body.
Arya for better Glowstick Position
Roadside for Roadside's Lens Flares.
TomyGD for Tomy's Grass.
DeadEnvoy for DeadEnvoy's Backpacks.
CarlKuwait for PSO replacer.
Marq for 3rd Person Compliant Armor.
Crook for Crook's Faction Identification.
TheMrDemonized for Better Stats Bars, Perk-Based Artefacts, NPCS Die In Emissions, Previous Weapon After PDA, DLXT Minimod Repository, 2K SkyBoxes, More Aggressive NPC looting, Dynamic Tonemapping, Dynamic Anomalies, Keep Crafting Window Open, Prefer Best Dissassembly Tool, Parts in Tooltip, Auto Zoom Out Scope Aim Draw, Dissassemble All, Radiation Penetration, Weather Dynamic Params.
SarisKhan for LTTZ DC.
t0ky00 for Realistic Loot Drop.
iENCE for THAP Rework, INERTIA.
AGoodSetOfPistol for Trader Overhaul.
Karlack for Vicious Psy Storms.
Yastin and Flavkis for Fluid Dynamic Relations.
Alex@1986 for Abnormal Weather.
Dux for Duxs Innumerable Character Kit.
Drathalis for Helmet Parts Vanilla
KalakCZ for Original Status Bars.
Nastor for Fight My Foes.
Umbrellalord for HD Mutants.
RavenAscendant for MCM, No More Companion Friendly Fire, Cost In tooltip, Battery Warning, Sorting Plus, He Is With Me.
BlueDevil for S.K.I.N
DeathOrchid for HOLLYWOODFX.
GRULAG for Better Hitbox, Total Playtime, Dead Stalker PDA DLTX, Dead Stalker PDA More Parts DLTX.
QudiX for EFT Aim Rattle.
nacl for Companion Teleport MCM.
CrookR for 2D Shader Based Scopes
Beef for Beef's NVGs.
Skieppy for fluid aim, Companion Anti Awol, Lower Weapon Sprint Animation.
ChadSTALKEREnjoyer for Remade Animations.
Artifax for Cozy Campfires
Ishmaeel for Nitpicker's Modpack
CtpGunner for New Routes
Tweeki_Breeki for Companions No Headlamps in Stealth, TB's New Stashes
hexef for Tough Important NPCS and Companions.
In all cases, many thanks to the authors for their very hard work and for all the people in this wonderful community for helping them along the way.
Please let me know if I have missed any credits.
Feature list:
- Combined weapon packs of BAS and Blindside, with additions from TAZ.
- Overhauled almost ALL sound.
- Enhanced alife for mutants and stalkers, especially with warfare mode enabled. Mutant packs will get larger with time if they are not cleared. Stalkers will dynamically explore the zone and capture territory for their faction.
- Unique to Dark Signal, mutant alife has been enhanced tremendously. Featuring a stable and dynamic warfare based nocturnal spawn system, as well as overhauled semi-random spawns for mutant lairs with fixed mutant relationships. Mutants will hunt, attack stalker settlements more often at night, and packs will grow over time, if they aren’t cleared by hostile stalkers or rival mutant groups.
This extends to underground areas which are a LOT more dangerous now. Bring a lotta buckshot buddy.
- Stashes are filled with better loot now, but often locked behind locked cases and boxes. You will need a set of lockpicks to open them. Cases can contain weapons, artifacts, devices, supplies, tools, etc.
- Mutants bleed and can be wounded the same way stalkers can.
- Bounty squads have been expanded and are now more common.
- A large amount of VFX enhancements. Anomalies look amazing now.
- New, more dangerous anomalies. More unpredictable anomaly spawn patterns. Tweaked settings for the DAO spawn system to promote more artefact hunting even in the early game – ANY anomaly field can spawn artefacts now.
- Enhanced shaders for DX10 and 11. Game very pretty yes?
- Animations for almost all items.
- Better loot drops from NPCS, weapons drop in better condition.
- Overhauled traders from Trader Overhaul. A reason to visit all traders now.
- Dynamic relations to have realistic rules.
- Completely overhauled weather, environment textures, mutant textures and skyboxes. Some of the best weather I've seen for STALKER.
- Classic binoculars to detect enemies at a distance.
- HD Icons.
- Much higher stalker variety. It will be rare to see the same mesh twice. Lore friendly models (or at least, TONS better than hd models lol)
- Companions teleport key, companions keep up more, companions are tougher and less prone to dying to a stray tushkano bite.
- Shift key to quick take items.
- New stashes.
- Faction rank and food/sleep/thirst status bars in inventory.
- Lost To The Zone DC, which enhances the base anomaly storyline and adds new quests.
- The ability to open the crafting menu on the fly, by right clicking on a toolkit. Recipe requirements have been removed. As long as you have tools, you can craft shit. Weapons can be field stripped in the field using right click context menu. Scavenge weapons properly now!
- QOL changes for the ui. Scope zooming will remember what you last used. Hunger, sleep and thirst bars in the inventory. Hover over gear and items to see how it will affect your stats, with color coding. Costs in tooltips.
- Improved inventory sorting. No more crap bunched up on top of each other.
- Less hardcore starting loadouts. Start with more than just a pistol and some bread, if you want.
- Talk to everyone. No more squad leader conversations only.
- BS mutant auto aim removed. Bob, weave, dodge!
- Enhanced combat. Powered exoskeletons to turn you into a super soldier (at a cost). Rebalanced ballistics, no more bullshit old and damaged ammo. Find cool new ammo types, like anomalous bullets, dragons breath shotgun shells, etc. Quick melee with your weapon, using the middle mouse button. Better artifacts and armor attachments.
- Your outfit and encumbrance will now affect the speed at which you can run and sprint. Armors are easier to repair in general and more durable. Do patchwork repairs on the fly, only needing to visit a mechanic if parts are badly damaged. Heavy armor is tankier, but makes you slower.
- More usable mutant cooking.
- Better stealth. Enemies cant see through bushes anymore.
- Total playtime on keypress (right control)
- Traders sell basic tools after a goodwill threshold.
- Remote IEDs for sneaky assassinations.
- Additional texture and visual updates.
SPECIAL THANKS:
All authors involved. Contributions are in Credits.txt file.
Ajackxe, Arti, Advaris, GModPiggo, Mar, Carl, Fargoth, Rush, Spry, Ubermedic, CJ and Sean Eivor for the inspiration, testing and support
Chocohex for advice and for being based in general
Mar for telling me to hurry up and upload
Articles
Hello Stalkers, and welcome to Dark Signal!!! This won't take too long, I assure you.
Before we begin, there are a few prerequisites to installing Dark Signal:
1. A clean, UNMODDED copy of Anomaly 1.5.1, which you can get here. Dark Signal is not compatible with 1.5.2 yet, but it is on our to do list! If you downloaded the pack a day or so ago you may be confused - we did include the game initially, however we have realized for compatibility reasons, its best you install it yourself.
Once you have Anomaly installed, run it, start a new game and play for a few minutes. Save and load your game. Ensure everything works as expected with the Vanilla game - once done, move on to the next step.
2. The latest Visual C++ redistributable. It can be downloaded here.
Click download on the left of the page. Click a server and download the file. What you want from the archive is at the bottom: 
Install it, and then move on to the next step.
OH AND - the latest drivers for your GPU.
3. Extract everything from the archive into a temporary folder somewhere on your PC. For now, where does not matter.
Copy everything out from the "1. Install into your main Anomaly Folder" folder into the root folder where you installed Anomaly (the folder with the launcher), like so: 
into this folder:
Click yes to overwrite all. Do note that you CANNOT use this anomaly install for other mods/modpacks. This install needs to be clean, and used for Dark Signal only.
Next, create a new folder somewhere on your machine, called Dark Signal RC 2.2. It MUST NOT be in Program Files, your desktop, your users folder or the root of your drive. Think something like C://Modding/DarkSignal.. Drag everything from the "Modpack files" folder:
Into the folder you have created.
4. Now, inside this folder, click on ModOrganizer.exe. A window like this might pop up, if you've used it before, if it doesn't proceed to the next step:
Click create new instance at the top left.
5. Now, you'll see this:
Click next, and in the next window, click create Portable Instance:
In the next window, scroll to the bottom, and click Browse:
Find the folder where you installed Anomaly, and select it.
Click next, and then finish.
Using the dropdown at the top: 
It is time to select a profile.
. The base profile contains only the graphics, and QoL addons plus the very critical addons for the Dark Signal experience. Use this version if you want something closer to regular Anomaly.
The overhauled profile is the recommended experience, overhauling most aspects of the game with a selection of the best balance-related addons for the game, fine tuned and balanced further with additions from us.
Please note that these are simply presets – you are free to chop and change your load order afterwards if you like. The specifics of working with Mod Organizer will not be covered here for those purposes, I would recommend looking up a guide if you need help.
Once you have made a choice, you can launch the game on the right hand panel like so:
6. Well done, the hard part is done!!!!
You will need to launch the game through Mod Organizer to play with Dark Signal. Thankfully, MO makes it quite easy to create a shortcut and play the game right away.
If you have a low end PC, consider disabling some of the texture mods in the Visuals Separator. Dark Signal Environments, Dark Signal Skies, and Summer To Autumn disabled should restore vanilla anomaly, visually. If you would like to install Classic Textures on top, you are free to do so.
7. Open the launcher, check the “clear shader cache” as well as the “reset graphics settings” option . Pick your preferred renderer, and start the game. Configure your options as you would normally. ONLY use SSDO out of the ssao options. It performs best/looks best. If your icons look weird once ingame, please ensure “Texture Detail” is at max.
Additionally, the reshade comes with a CMAA antialiasing shader that seems to be more performance friendly than the game’s regular Anti Aliasing shader. I’d advise keeping this on and combining it with the game’s SMAA shader only. The only known side effect of this is that the screenshots the game takes for your savegames will look broken.
later on however, you can easily open the reshade menu with the Home key, disable the CMAA shader and use the game Anti Aliasing if you wish.
8. I know this step seems irritating, but its worth it, and necessary!
head back to the main menu (or do so ingame - doesn't actually matter!) and open the console with ` and type one of the following, consider them as presets adjusted for different monitors and hardware that you can use as a basis for tweaking:
cfg_load repacksettings1.ltx – repack default – what I use
cfg_load repacksettings2.ltx – if your pc has trouble with the shaders (ie, the game is too dark) use this.
you are done!
9. When starting a new game, ENSURE ALWAYS to select Story Mode and Warfare at the same time. This is the intended way to play Dark Signal. Do not worry – the game has been balanced in a way to make both war focused playthroughs and atmospheric story-based playthroughs fun, unpredictable and exciting.
PSA: If you can't take screenshots with the reshade, double check the screenshot path by clicking your Home key, going to the settings tab, and ensuring screenshots are saved in a path on your system.
Dark Signal RC2.2 release
News 16 commentsA few notes on the release of this version, and what to expect in the near future.
Gameplay Guide
Other Tutorial 5 commentsA guide to understand the fundamental differences between the two profiles of Dark Signal, and how to come out on top in the Zone.
Files
RC 2.2 Cumulative Patch Hotfix 1
Patch 10 commentsA hotfix for users running Cumulative Update 1. Read description for details!
RC 2.2 Cumulative Update (Last Upd. 2022/07/27)
Patch 6 commentsLatest patch for RC2.2. Check description for details.
Dark Signal RC2.2
Full Version 18 commentsThe latest version with all updates included. Please read the description!
Installation and Gameplay Guide
GuidePlease download this zip to access the Gameplay And Installation Guide.
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in 2024 I've downloaded this modpack and works like a charm, had the issue with shader configuration, just copy n paste the command line above in tutorial section, and it worked, just what's going on when I'm approaching to campfires which I'm getting low fps, beyond that all its playable :)
Guys is there a discord server for Dark Signal or something relevant so its easier to find info and install this pack since its 1.5.1 anomaly + outdated mods?
i downloaded the mod as told in the installation tutorial, but when i open mo2 all the mods are unticked, even if i change the profiles. I dont know if im supposed to enable all mods or what? also it would be nice to have a discord server where we can contact the devs if something small like this comes up so i dont have to make a whole post on moddb about such a small issue.
i have almost the same problem, in mo2 after following all the instruction i have nothing in the listing, no mods at all, and mo2 say that some files are blocked (internet(3))...
EDIT : okay actually i resolved this, i didnt installed correctly the mod organizer parts, but now its okay.
Hi! Um... Can someone tell what's the difference between the 'Dark Signal-Base' and 'Dark Signal-Overhaul'?
i just downloaded it and followed all the instructions... why it has to be this hard to run the game without an automatic crash on level load?
Expression : D3DXCreateTexture( HW.pDevice, top_width,top_height, levels_exist,0,t_dest_fmt, (RImplementation.o.no_ram_textures ? D3DPOOL_DEFAULT : D3DPOOL_MANAGED), &t_dest )
Function : TW_LoadTextureFromTexture
File : ..\xrRender\Texture.cpp
Line : 162
Description :
stack trace: