Phatose on 27/9/2008 at 03:56
SoC was poorly optimized, yes. But CS crashes to desktop on a regular basis. It sounds like you're not too far in, so wait. After a certain point, I became unable to spend more the 30 seconds in the garbage without a CTD. The scripts in this game really, really suck.
The hate towards the faction wars stems from the fact that the quest are largely dull and have an oh-so-annoying tendency to just not work properly - go take this point. Oh you did? Now wait for reinforcements. And the reinforcements never ever come. Plus, your first introduction to them is doubly annoying, because Clear Sky doesn't do shit at night. It's like they're expecting fucking dracula.
The you add in that it's the main reason the zone, despite just being through a near apocalypse, has more people in it then most small towns.
And as for atmosphere, it's not even close. X18 alone has more atmosphere then all of CS put together. And it's just one of the three labs, which serve to break up the pacing, to keep it from being utterly and completely repetitive.
duckman on 27/9/2008 at 04:59
SOC definitely crashed more than CS did/does. And the patches took way longer to come out than with CS. in 1.0000 to 1.0002 I would crash after about every minute while in the military zone. It took them a while to crash that bug.
I recently installed the AMK and the Arsenal mod for SOC and I forgot just how much worse SOC looks than CS. CS is so much better looking in comparison now. However amk and arsenal mod are way funner than vanilla CS :P To bad these mods crash way to much.
Phatose on 27/9/2008 at 06:10
You aren't by any chance running an nVidia card, are you? And getting crashes between levels?
Manwe on 27/9/2008 at 06:31
Quote Posted by Phatose
It sounds like you're not too far in, so wait. After a certain point, I became unable to spend more the 30 seconds in the garbage without a CTD.
Actually I've been through the garbage already, and I didnt get any CTD there. However I've just entered the underground of the agroprom facility and I'm starting to have frequent CTDs now and it is really annoying indeed. I hope I won't have to restart the game. I can't say I ever had a CTD in SoC but I'm sure some people did, like I'm sure some people didn't get any in CS. So I don't really know if it's an issue with the game or if the problem comes from our computers.
Quote Posted by Phatose
Now wait for reinforcements.
I have to admit this is really annoying, but after the first time when you realise it doesn't work it's not that big a deal, it's not like there's a penalty for not waiting for the second wave of enemies, the quest will just stay in your list, but it will disappear eventually. And btw the faction wars were already present in SoC they just didn't have a name. But I remember each time you went through the garbage or agroprom you would receive a call from some loners asking you to help them fight off some bandits. What we have in CS is just an extension of that, it's just a little more offensive. Anyway I don't really understand why they focused so much on those events when so many people hated them, probably a bad design decision, but in the end we have to make do with it. But yeah they could probably have spent their time and ressources on perfecting another aspect of the game.
Quote Posted by Phatose
And as for atmosphere, it's not even close. X18 alone has more atmosphere then all of CS put together. And it's just one of the three labs, which serve to break up the pacing, to keep it from being utterly and completely repetitive.
Well that's your opinion, the atmosphere was ok in SoC, but the gameplay was so shallow that it kinda ruined the immersion for me after a while. The first time I played through the game was great cause I was discovering all the environments and all, and I didn't really pay attention to its shortcomings. But you know once I realised there was absolutely nothing to do in this amazing setting other than shoot at people I became bored. And I always thought the labs were badly executed, there were some creepy moments in one lab with the flying objects and the monsters, but other than that you had to shoot your way through most of the time. Seriously does anyone remember the last level of the game ? It was like a really long corridor with hundreds of enemies in it and you had to kill them all. It was just really bad level design.
Anyway that's just me, I'm enjoying CS more than SoC right now (except for the damn CTDs :mad: ) but maybe I'll get bored with it too after some time who knows.
242 on 27/9/2008 at 08:30
Quote Posted by Manwe
It probably comes down to personal opinion in the end
Exactly.
SoC is my most favourite game along with Thief1/2, and CS is just an unnecessary add-on as for me (but still better than most of modern games). You mentioned atmosphere - it's not exactly "faction war" that spoils it for me, it's huge amount of people almost on every map and near absence of monsters, it's straight story - and I liked some obscurity of it in SoC. SoC's Zone was much more deserted and dark which I liked. As for gameplay in SoC, I don't agree, replayed it 4 times, I wouldn't if the gamaplay was shallow. The more I played the more I liked it ;)
Phatose on 27/9/2008 at 17:26
Quote Posted by Manwe
Actually I've been through the garbage already, and I didnt get any CTD there. However I've just entered the underground of the agroprom facility and I'm starting to have frequent CTDs now and it is really annoying indeed. I hope I won't have to restart the game. I can't say I ever had a CTD in SoC but I'm sure some people did, like I'm sure some people didn't get any in CS. So I don't really know if it's an issue with the game or if the problem comes from our computers.
The first couple times I passed through the garbage I was fine as well. It didn't start doing that until I came back from the factory.
Manwe on 27/9/2008 at 18:02
Is there a way to fix those CTDs ? Cause when it happens to me the game just crashes and I don't get an error message or anything, the game just shuts down without warning.
TF on 27/9/2008 at 18:59
Does anyone know for sure if artifacts are randomized or not?
242 on 27/9/2008 at 19:05
Manwe, patch 1.5.05 is supposed to fix lots of crashes (and I know for sure 1.5.04 really fixed a lot of them too), maybe it will help you. Russian version is planned to be released on Monday.
Meantime, you may try other graphics or sound options just to see if they are hardware or script related. Try static lighting, turn off EAX, things like that. Or maybe other drivers for your videocard, I suppose your videocard is nVidia? I just read that CS is somehow more stable on ATI currently. My experience and experience of my friend support the observation. I use ATI (3870) and haven't experienced a single crash yet, and my friend's card is GTS8800 and he got plenty of them already. We both were only in the Swamps, Cordon, Garbage, Agroprom, Dark Valley.
242 on 27/9/2008 at 19:11
Quote Posted by TF
Does anyone know for sure if artifacts are randomized or not?
I know for sure that they don't re-appear, but don't know if they're randomized or not.
