Reworked err... building? image - STALKER: Singularity (SIN) mod for S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl
The envisionment of SIN is to bring you what was promised by GSC for STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl, instead of the gutted retail release we were left with. SIN aims to cover every aspect imaginable from gameplay intended to genuinely scare the player, to graphics for the absolute best visual experience, cut mutants, absolute realism, optimisations, stability, and a complete game mechanics overhaul, all without breaking the story. The idea is to present the player with a complete retail experience for the purist that liked SoC but wished it was far more fleshed out. In no way what so ever does SIN try to be like old beta or alpha builds of SoC, SIN aims to enhance everything SoC already has and give it continuity with CS and CoP - nothing more, nothing less.
I'm sure everybody will recognise this structure, I used to call it the great lazy slab because the devs just slapped a few plain textures over it, and not even good ones at that never mind give this object some proper level geometry so I did all a texturer could do, pick a few nice HD textures, add a window to one of the textures and give it some awesome normal maps. At least it doesn't look nowhere near as shit as it did.
For some reason, it looks off. Probably because of the windows. Not used to it ;p
Also, you have to keep in mind GSC re-used A LOT of textures in their buildings and levels / maps. Adding windows to a texture can result in weird textures elsewhere. Just a heads up. Does look good tho!
Yeah I know the devs reused loads of textures everywhere its why retexturing has taken so long but best I can tell the texture used for that lazy slab has its own texture that isn't reused (at least not in any of the vanilla levels) so it should be alright. Still ****** me off though that the devs were so lazy, especially as they were so damn slow as well, granted THQ continuously sticking their oar in and dicking with development didn't help but the GSC devs aren't blameless either if they had focused themselves more SoC could of still been a way better game than we got. Even now the only thing I still remember on my very first playthrough of SoC was one disappointment after another. Everything that was promised wasn't there, thats why I've spent so long on TK, rebuilding a large chunk of what we were promised as well as making TK a solid foundation others can build and expand upon.
If your playing stalker for graphics, you aren't playing it right.
No, if you're playing stalker for graphics, and you're not happy with it, you aren't playing it with the right mod ;)
Lets put it this way; why play a game for one thing alone when you can have everything? Kinda like PC modders have done for aliens colonial marines, the game as a whole is a turd but at least it can be made to look pretty. In the case of SoC, good gameplay but the graphics were kinda dated when it was released and by todays standards looked just terrible - SoC was due a HD upgrade.
I honestly think you are wasting your time. You should be adding something new to the game play, instead of making the game blinding to look at with all your shaders and overlays and post-processes and stuff. People like me who are used to games like Battlefield 1942 look at this and can't concentrate on the shooting. S.T.A.L.K.E.R.s graphics IMO are better then games today, they aren't watered down, they are to the point where you can tell what something is and how to deal with it, instead of squinting trying to figure out what something is with all the shaders and normal maps getting in the way.
IMO it looks off because of the position of the windows, they're placed too high compared to the roof...weird architecture. Otherwise, the textures are great.
This exactly.
The windows had to be placed where they are due to how the texture is tiled, anywhere else you would get the window part of the texture in areas it shouldn't be such as on the pillars. If I could of placed the windows lower I would of, I wanted to, but X-Ray tiling disallowed it.
This definitively does look way better now.