Evening folks, this evening I bring you another TK update for the final build. Work has gone well, albeit at a much more steady pace due to time restrictions. There isn't too much left to finish but more about making sure everything slots together nicely and doesn't cause any nasty surprises, so heres how things stand;
UPDATE! I forgot to add this to the change list, the TK stealth system has also been revised to make it more realistic. A good example of this would be shooting a NPC while his buddies are just on the other side of a wall, if you are too close they will hear the shot still and come to investigate, if they find you, they will gun you down.
1. Totally overhauled stashes. By this I mean I have completely changed the contents of stashes, the conditions which need to be met in order to get the stash location, and theres even some code in place to reward players that like to explore that will allow for looting of any stash found, even if you don't have its infoportion.
2. Enhanced NPC loot system. This is a simple (well, I suppose simple is relative) minimod I developed and injected into TK, its now possible for players to "loot" the armor a NPC is wearing. Obviously its not guaranteed that you can "loot" a NPCs armor, but a chance you will be able to loot it.
3. Diversified NPC loadouts. This is just to make things more "natural", so expect to see more NPCs sporting such things as silencers and scopes outside of what is predetermined in specific level xml files.
4. Finished optimisations. The mod is as friendly as its going to be, but make no mistake, you are going to need a powerful system still.
5. Added normal maps for tree branches and bushes. Reworked from the screens I've already posted, they add about as much depth as possible to avoid the textures from looking like they are steamrollered flat.
6. Revised survivalist aspects. NPCs and traders will carry far less food/drungs etc, while traders also have a lower chance of having such supplies.
7. Better rewards for exploring maps. In addition to the totally reworked stashes artifacts are also rarer, you won't find many stashes with artifacts in, if you want some, you will need to actively go and find them.
8. Fixed a CTD when approaching the abandoned farm in Dark Valley if a mutant ended up on the NPC smart terrain.
9. Fixed a CTD in Dark Valley where if a mutant spawned with no valid ID and you killed it it would crash the game.
10. Changed actor arm texture and normal map for a higher resolution version. This is just a cheap band aid fix for some weapons I added that use the actor arms from CS, while the arm models are a bit different because the textures are now the same the "transition" isn't particularly jarring in any way.
11. Removed being able to put some smaller weapons in the grenade slot. I've left the code in place so if anyone wants to re-enable this its as easy as making one change in a weapon ltx file. I disabled the feature just because the implementation wasn't perfect and I was too lazy to implement the hack/workaround to overcome the issue.
12. Numerous fixes and tweaks for other smaller things.
Left to do:
Resolve a issue with fleshes that seem to cause a problem in Agroprom
Implement blowouts (I'm getting around to this I swear)
Maybe make some tweaks to all.spawn
Help Meltac with DS2.0
Thats everything left to do, everything is slowly getting chipped away at ;)
Looks like we can expect a spring 2015 or Christmas release around there?
If everything goes to plan, possibly christmas. I'm expecting blowouts to cause me problems due to the sleep system in place.
Keep up the good work! Looking forward to it.
So I just got done reading every single piece of news you've released since March 25, 2010. Holy jumping f**king s**t balls. You've been modding this since '08 and you're still not done? Plus it sounds like I'll not be able to play this. Far too graphically uplifted. Hell, even my new system I'm planning on getting won't be able to run this. But it seems like a decent mod, so I'll follow it just in case. I liked how it start as a simple weapons mod because while I can find dozens of mods that change the graphics or the gameplay or what not, I simply can't find any good standalone weapons mods. Man, all I want for my SoC is to have more s**t to kill people with and blowouts. Blowouts are the main feature they left out I liked. I just like the idea and a lot of other mods have them so that'd be my one recommendation to get done soon. Sorry if I seem like a a**hole who is demanding things despite not having played the mod. I would if I could my friend. Final thing. I read about how you believe that the Xray engine, and by extension the modding community, is going to die. While it may reach the point of where you can no longer make the game look better, that doesn't mean modding will just stop. I may not be as invested in the community as most, but I can still see people modding S.T.A.L.K.E.R. till 2020 and on. No matter how old the engine a game runs on is, people will still want modify their games. I've rambled on for far too long so I shall take my leave. Happy Hunting, Stalker.
Indeed, I've been modding SoC for a long time, 2008 is just when I started this mod page TK was actually in development for 2-3 years before that even. One thing you may of missed is how TK came about simply from a love and desire to show what SoC and X-Ray could of been if they were given the proper attention they deserved at the time. The more I dug when I stared the simple weapons mod, and before that I made a simple graphics mod that enabled and refined many features that were disabled in user.ltx.. since then I've seen countless mods based on this very early graphics mod and claiming it as their own work.. hmm, but anyway I digress. The further I dug, the more I saw just how unfinished SoC was and I couldn't stand it, it infuriated me and still does that a game that aimed so high was given the disrespect it was. There are even elements of Stalker in other GSC/Vostok/4k games whatever their calling themselves now in other games they made, Metro and Survarium for example. I'm sure I've said it before as well, but in case I haven't, TK never was, nor will it ever try to, be a emulation of a existing mod it is purely what I think SoC should of been like coupled with the knowledge of many dev build videos prior to SoC's eventual release of what SoC should of been. I will not let go of this bone until I feel SoC is as finished and polished as it can be, that day is coming, quite soon, but I vowed I would see this through to the end when I started and I intend to do just that.
Please don't think any of what I was saying was implying I believe you're trying to emulate or copy others. Just alot of other mods have done what you've done, just done a different way. We all like our Diet Sausage cooked differently. By the way, Vostok Games and 4K Games are different companies but they're both from GSC. Vostok Games are the guys doing Survarium and 4K Games have done the amazing Metro series (which I hope they continue to do). I can easily see the similarities between Survarium, Metro, and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. but I think that's a good thing. Something about the post-apocalypse in Russia setting is a massive turn on. I'm going to also use this comment to talk about the second comment you made about the settings and such. I have no experience in overclocking PCs and such and I have a limited knowledge of ending processes in the Task Manager. So I have to ask this in a general way. Why is everyone always concerned about getting their games to play at 60 FPS? The human eye can only see at about 30 FPS and I've played many games and only getting 20 FPS if I'm lucky. I use to play World of Tanks and get 15 FPS on a good day. Also I have no ability to compare GPUs and CPUs. I am currently using Autumn Aurora 2.1 and able to play comfortably at about the lowest in game settings possible, save for a few things turned up a bit. This is done at about 1024x720 or so. I will give my PCs stuff as I know it, more as a FYI than for any actual point. E-350 1.6 GHz Dual-Core with AMD Radeon HD 6310 graphics and 2 GB of DDR3 RAM. But enough about my PoS PC. Keep up the work on this mod. It looks amazing as it is. Good Hunting, Stalker. P.S. How could you develop a SoC mod before SoC came out? 2008-2 years=2006 and SoC came out in 2007 :P
I started developing TK the same time the betas and alphas were leaked, thats how I could start developing TK before SoC was actually out ;) Your 6310 with 80 unified pipelines certainly isn't the most powerful graphics chip but with some system tweaks to free up and optimise things it probably has enough in it to play AA 2.1 with medium settings. As for why so many people are obsessed with the magic 60FPS mark its for the butter smooth experience while offering headroom for more demanding cases where a game may dip in FPS. Largely its a matter of perception I suppose those who have never had good FPS are used to the slowdown, while others who have made the switch to something that is at least half capable never go back. My personal view is that I can see the difference between 30FPS and 60FPS in the games I play, but at the same time I wholly dislike developers that set a 60FPS cap as there are plenty of games out there (alien isolation being the most recent example I can think of) where having a 60FPS cap severely hurts it as that cap is still active with in-game cut scenes and it causes the FPS to plummet, ruining an otherwise butter smooth game. Oh, and don't worry I didn't take what you said as me trying to copy anything, I was just reiterating.
I'd love to optimize this PoS laptop to play at its best but I'm far too scared and incompetent to do it and not somehow magically remove my system32 folder or something and destroy everything XD And like you said "Your 6310 with 80 unified pipelines" I have no idea what you mean by 80 unified pipelines XD
lol ah, well not a technically accurate way of putting it but a good simple way to describe it, those 80 pipelines you can look at as the number of "channels" at the graphics chip disposal for rendering stuff. If you want a crash course on how to optimise your system shoot me a PM.
I shall. thank you and keep it up, though I guess after 8 years, I don't need to tell you that XD Good hunting, Stalker.
Ah, I should mention too that while TK is a demanding mod it is very playable at slightly lower settings on weaker hardware. Even pre-optimisations with almost all of the visual improvements you see now I ran the mod on a overclocked GTX460 1GB (900/4200) at 1680*1050 resolution very comfortably, around 60-70FPS average. Switching up to 1920*1080 is a real pop in gear, even with a HD7970 @ 1125/6400 FPS goes down to about 45-50FPS average. Theres a lot that can be done to maximise your FPS in SoC without touching any of the games settings, overclocking your CPU, GPU, and system memory to start will give you significant improvements as X-Ray is a engine that likes to test a entire system not just part of it. Getting rid of any processes that start with Windows that don't need to will also greatly help, Regcleaner can help with that.