Alrighty, so you all have waited patiently for over a year now gobbling up any screenshots and videos I posted up, but the time has come for a new build which I'm releasing a little ahead of time because I'm not sure if I'll be able to finish the final few things before christmas, so consider this a early gift ;)
Whats changed since the last build? A lot of stuff, far too numerous and broad in scope to cover in a changelog but as usual the build has been thoroughly vetted for bugs and glitches so should be pretty much flawless. If anyone encounters a mod related bug or CTD though let me know and I'll see what I can do. Oh, and its worth mentioning as people seem to forget this a lot, Nimble is intentionally difficult to save, not impossible, just hard.
Notes: Because some things are still in testing they have been disabled, but if you want to enable and use the below features anyway heres how to do it;
Nightvision scopes; Still in testing but useable, to re-enable them open bind_stalker.script and remove the two -- by shader_control.Update()
Godrays (sunshafts); Still being worked on but ready enough for a working preview, you'll want to change a couple of things in ShaderSettingsSunshafts.txt though, #define SSH_SUNHEIGHTMAX float (0.800) to a value of 0.650, this just changes the maximum sun height at which godrays are most intense to something more fitting. Some may also want to adjust #define SSH_SUNHEIGHTHI float (1.0) to a value of 0.8 or 0.7, this will adjust the maximum height at which godrays are visible.
Beta tester beginning; As this release is also intended for my playtesters by default you'll get the playtester beginning after talking to Wolf, a powerful suit of armour, Groza scope attachment and ammo. If you want to play as is intended for the official RC release delete escape_dialog.script and remove _RC from the other escape_dialog.script file.
Minimum Requirements
Phenom 2 X2 3GHz+ / Intel Core 2 Duo 3GHz+
1GB GTX460 / 1GB HD5830 (either highly overclocked)
2x2GB PC8000
Latest DirectX, sound and graphics drivers
Recommended Requirements
Phenom 2 X4 3.5GHz+ / Intel i5 2500k 3.5GHz+
GTX660Ti / HD7870 (Tahiti LE version)
2x2GB PC12800
Latest DirectX, sound and graphics drivers
I think thats got all the bases covered, good hunting stalkers ;)
DL Link: Pre-RC TK build 8-12-13
Is this for SoC 1.0004 or 1.0005?
1.0005, any additional info you need should be covered in the readmes or user manual ;)
You misunderstood ket, I meant what I just wrote was unnecessary(and badly spelt :/). I like that you are thorough so we are properly informed. ;)
lol ah ok I see now, brainfart :p
Well this has certainly been a different experience so far.
The game started at a midnight in the middle of a storm.
The rookie village is almost completely wiped out by a controller and bloodsucker followed by a couple of random bandits. One of the few survivors had apparently gone mad and started to attack me while investigating the carnage so I had to put him down.
Wolf's people meant to rescue Nimble are annihilated by a squad of zombies, who then move on to the bandit camp and start tearing them pieces, Nimble as well, with the help of a bloodsucker and a cat. Bloodsucker was dead when I got there, so I finished off the zombies. Cat ran away. Recovered the flash drive from Nimble's corpse. Found a lot of artifacts on the way back (nice particle effects!)
A tushkano's body actually had loot on it (10 buckshot) which REALLY surprised me.
Helicopters constantly circling around, making me nervous.
Texture work from what I can tell in the darkness is very nice. The game takes a while to load even on my SSD drive with all the modified textures so I can't imagine how long it takes on a normal HDD.
Load times on a mechanical HDD aren't too bad, for me on my WD Caviar Black load time is about 60-90 seconds but load time can vary significantly depending on the users storage medium and how many background applications a user has running.
That's all for you? It takes upwards of 5 minutes for me. :C
Damn it sounds like the storylines completely broken.
No, its not. Theres just not a unlimited timescale in which to save nimble, he can die in the vanilla game as well you know before you get the flash drive so how you can say the storyline is broken I don't know lol!
There no need to get offended, It was just my thoughts when he said he's found the rookie village wiped out which means no Wolf presumably and this is at the start of the game, Petruha and co over-run by mutants and the Bandits holding Nimble also over-run by the sound of it. Is the Nimble thing a timed out event you added or simply mutants from other spawns over-running them? It's not like it's a big deal if it's just over spawning I can simply remove the files if I need to, After all your mods primarily about the visuals isn't it?
I wasn't offended, thought that was clear by the "lol" at the end of my other post :p The nimble thing is kind of a timed event based around the dynamic nature of the AI, I could go into detail about how it all ties in and works but that would make for a lengthy post. Wolf also won't die easily I've given him custom properties which turn him into a real hardass he can take on the entire military base in cordon and still probably win ;) Petruha and his merry gang I did deliberately let die though by spawning zombies near to them, idea was to add even more suspense - thunder story middle of the night, player survives a mutant / military attack on the village, talks to wolf, thinks they are about to get a break and bam, reaches petruha to find them dead or under attack by zombies.
Oh, and the mod is about more than just the visuals I've corrected a lot of things the vanilla game had wrong with it and added a lot of things the game should of had but weren't implemented. Getting all these things to play nicely together is a tricky thing though, in most cases I succeed but blowouts are tricky any mini blowout mod I've tried so far seems to exploit something inherently broken in the engine which causes severe problems (and frustration :p ) trying to solve the issue is now my primary priority.
With the expo it makes sense, How has Cromm Cruac dealt with blowouts in AA? Actually I'm not sure if he even include them in AA, I wonder why not... I noticed your release said no blowouts when I downloaded it, I hope you figure it out.
I'll figure it out eventually, and when I do it will be a nice streamlined implementation. I'll likely use the dexx blowout scheme where npcs run for cover while using the priboy approach to getting mutants and artifacts to spawn / "die" but hopefully have it redone so its all as simply done as possible for compatibility. For whatever reason, blowouts have just never worked right for me weather it be a implementation added to TK or run by itself with the vanilla game. Its quite a oddity.
Will this work with Stalker SHOC 1.6?
No. Its for SoC 1.0005. At this time I don't intend to make a patch for 1.0006 as 1.0006 changed WAY more than just multiplayer stuff including changes to the renderers which are detrimental to the grass density in TK, and not just a little bit either. When I have more time I'll look into the possibility of making a patch for 1.0006 but there are other things I need to tend to first.
I've played some Autumn Aurora 2 with my Steam v1.0006 copy. Here I notice the frame rate takes a serious dive every time I walk into grassy fields. Could this be related to v1.0006? I always thought 1.0006 was mostly about multiplayer stuff. (Sorry, not ment to be rude asking about another mod, but since you know the mechanics of the game engine so well... :-)
That problem will be down to the grass draw distance, even on my i5 3570k @ 4.5GHz and HD7950 @ 1125 / 1375 I wouldn't recommend a grass draw distance over 259. the other cause would be due to the grass density, both can be fixed easily by any modder.
OK, my grass draw distance is 100m. It's probably down to more polygons and more complex vegetation. Thanks anyway! Keep up the good work with Twilight KET 2 Zero. :)
SoC isn't supposed to have a even grass draw distance, it needs to be a uneven number such as 99, 109, etc. Grass density will also have a big impact on FPS, I wouldn't recommend a grass density lower than 0.11 (you'll likely need to set it to this in the user.ltx file directly) either way, theres no way autumn aurora 2 should be slowing down your system more than TK would, something is wrong with AA2 if it is.
In fact, I'll DL AA2 and have a lok at it and see if I can see why it would be slowing your system down, shouldn't be hard to figure out its a simple mod.
Wow, thanks. :) My framerate goes from about 60 (triple buffered vsync) to about 32-37 when going into grassy fields (vs. walking on roads). This is everything maxed at 2560x1440, 75fov, 100m. I didn't mean to bring up another mod, but I found it interesting that you mentioned v1.0006 does things to the renderer and vegetation. (Steam updated ShoC to v1.0006 recently). Anyways, only a few days away from Christmas holiday now, puh.. Looking forward to finally download and check out the mod beta! :)
I edited the render, just shoot me a PM with your email and I'll send it your way. Looking over AA2 archive the grass textures look like they are in DXT5 format which will hit FPS as well, while the DXT format didn't make a difference for the grass textures between v1.0000 and 1.0004, the DXT format does make a difference for 1.0005 and 1.0006, both in performance and due to a weird "invisible" bug thats remedied by using a lower quality alpha channel, so if you know how, resave the build_details.dds files in DXT1 format with paint.net.
Thanks, that's great! Sending you a PM...
Emailed ;)