going to replay-any good mods?

GRRRR on 21/5/2008 at 04:55

Hehe yeah, the translation isnt the strongest point of it. Im quite liking AMK, installed an additional weather mod which has some pretty nifty effects like lens flare and the like, plus it makes the sun shine most times of the day (theres multiple presets) which is quite a change from the usual drabness of it.

Bloodsuckers are damn near invincible, which is both annoying and refreshing since they now live up to the hype.

Damage increased drastically, with some nasty hit effects (from the higher calibers, happens with pistols too but not that often) like being sent reeling with the screen shaking and loosing your weapon. I had a single burst knock me back with the first shot, make me drop my weapon with the second and kill me with the third from a soldier in Agroprom. Somewhat annoying if an enemy happily soaks multiple bursts himself and then knocks you flat with 3 shots, but i dont think this mod is intended for the beginner anyways and just enforces the "dont get hit at all" motto. Even with an Exoskeleton i could get killed by around 4 shots from an LR300.

Stalker banter is pretty funny (suffers from bad translation too, but hey, you type correctly in the midst of battle XD ), them goin around looting stuff is cool (they can snatch stuff away from you if youre not fast). However i didnt get any rucksack items ever (needed to make your own stash since everybody will clear out the blue boxes and corpses which would be safe normally) so i had to edit them in as quest rewards, stupid.

Some AMK stories :

-invisible anomalies where goddamn hard to get used to, i died 7 times just trying to get the artifact out of that fenced place left from Sidorovichs bunker. Must have thrown 20 billion bolts until i finally got the better detectors

-Two tank things at the Cordon military post. Destroyed one with some grenades shot by rifle launcer, helicopter pops up and i run like hell to the village and hide, stray rocket hits the guy standing watch. Had to go to the bar and buy more grenades from Duty watchmen for the second.

-Kruglov destined to die. First the mercs got him because i bumbled around too long (usually not a problem). Then a boar attacked him while i was fending of some mercs which took away enough health to make him croak in the next anomaly (random ones from the last blowout all over the place, hellish). Next time i cleared all the way and then discovered the tunnel out was stuffed with multiple overlapping anomalies, no chance, barely made it thru myself. My chance to meet Assistant Smirnov or however hes named.

-Blowout fun in the Garbage. Arrived just so the blowout would happen between the Bes quest and the Defend Hangar quest. Fended off Bandit attack at the carpark and then hightailed it to the hangar (only nearest safe place), problem was all the bandits attacking the hangar where already in there too and wasted everyone in split seconds. So i went to the hangar first hoping Bes would make it on its own. Lots of shooting outside, apparently every bandit from the carpark went to the train tunnel (they got lucky and it was largely anomaly free) together with the hangar bandits and after it was over they all attacked the hangar. Went back to the park and Bes still was standing there, i have no idea whatsoever how he survived, might have been a glitch :laff:

-A bandit at the Dark Valley lab place picked up the rocket launcer in the upper floor and shot me with it.

-Found an Exoskeleton in the factory stash (the one who usually has the meat chunk, random stash setting)

Pretty fun mod so far, doesnt have as much bugs as Alive.

Rogue Keeper on 21/5/2008 at 09:25

Good to read you GRRRR, as I planned, I also installed AMK. I am quite impressed!
I'ts better than Oblivion Lost, because it improves many things but at the same time it looks less revisionist to me and doesn't have features I disliked in OL.

It also has a nice installer where you can actually choose what features you want, pretty customizable. I appreciate I could slower the respawn rate and make blowout less common.

Translation in 1.4 English version has minor flaws, few sentences aren't translated at all, but since I understand a bit Russian, I don't mind. But Muzman mentioned differencies in translation of the artifact names - makes sense, the translators probably didn't play English version, but of course there were incorrect translations in vanilla English translation in the first place.

Combat is as dangerous as in OL, at least roughly. Yummy. NPCs throwing grenades at you can be pretty dangerous, but at least they aren't throwing them as often as in CoD4. Btw CoD4, it would be a good idea if you could throw their grenades back, but they explode very fast upon impact.

Even though I choose VISIBLE ANOMALIES in the installer options, some are still invisible and because of their random placement nature, it can be quite annoying sometimes to detect them. The only clue I have is their sound, and of course bolts throwing. It can be fun sometimes, adds to realism and legacy of the Stalker novel/film, but I shall see if it won't be a nuisance in later phases. Since I should get anomaly detector later, I guess it can't be that bad. I appreciate that unlike in OL, there are no fixed vanilla anomalies, all of them are placed randomly.

Now, Dynamic News System. That's the thing I love the most! Finally I have feeling that the zone is ALIVE, stalkers in other areas are exploring, fighting, looting! They are reporting their conflicts, discoveries, warnings, feelings. Sometimes they warn others about bloodsucker, other time they inform others when is the next blowout, another time they just note what a beautiful weather it is right now. Finally I have some fimpression that they have their own life, thinking and soul. When you fight something in the field, after a while you receive message that some stalker has heard someone shooting from a shotgun to the east of Car Park - and it was of course me, dealing with pack of dogs! But some reports don't seem to be a result of an NPC witnessing your actions. I have wiped out a pack of those mutated rat thingies and after a moment someone reported seeing dead rats in that location. While I'm fairly sure that there was no stalker around who could see those corpses... Nevermind, it's an useful information network and I hope I'll have much fun with it during the game.

Now I have to be much more active in looting the corpses, because I have to compete with others, who is gonna loot the corpse or stash sooner! It's just pity that they still have empty inventories and I can't trade with common NPCs. What's the deal? Would full inventories of NPCs slow the game down? Maybe. Nevertheless, they still have looted items on them when they die later, but I didn't notice them selling items to Sidorovich. It would be interesting if I wasn't the only one who is buying and selling stuff to traders.

A-Life seems to be much more interesting now. The second day of my stay in Cordon soldiers from the entrance outpost have decided to have some fun with the rookies and made raid on the camp. I had some hot moments defending the camp with other rookies, because I had just weak shotgun and pistol, and basic jacket - weakling against soldiers with body armor and AK74s.
With my fellows I ultimately managed to defend the camp, but in the meantime I died about 10 times and so did Wolf - I had to protect him from dying, not just because I had open miniquest with him, but just because he's so important character. I just hope these military raids on camp won't happen too often. I won't have time to defend poor rookies once I'll take my journey deeper into the Zone...

GRRR, didn't you get a backpack as reward for Sidodorvich's added special quest "Find night star artifact"?

Strange thing, I encountered a bandit in Duty armor near the carpark. Did he steal the armor from killed Dutyer in another area? That's cool! I hope I'll have more fun with factions and animals travelling between separate areas.

I also use weather mod for AMK. Very pretty, later I try out other two autumn presets. I also tweaked the user.ltx so that the HDR is now more rich, I have bumped up parallax mapping a bit and added some motion blur. Even though my Athlon 3000 has it's prime long time gone, it still can squeeze some impressive pictures out of Stalker. I just love to observe those bloody red sunsets...

Anyway, I'm just at the beginning and it seems this will be one hell of a modified campaign. Harder a lot, but also a lot funnier, I presume. Wish me luck.

242 on 21/5/2008 at 10:01

Quote Posted by BR796164

Now, Dynamic News System. That's the thing I love the most!

I read it's rather an imitation of Dynamic News System ;) The news are just random bits of info that may or may not appear truth in each case.

Rogue Keeper on 21/5/2008 at 10:14

Where did you read it? The modders swear in readme that the news aren't random. Well I wouldn't be surprised if it was true for other areas where you aren't now, but when I was in Cordon, their reports were always up to the facts, as far as I can tell. One dude even predicted a blowout a day ago more or less correctly.

GRRRR on 21/5/2008 at 10:18

Re Nightstar quest : Found one but cant turn it in. But i dunno, gaining access to such a vital feature (stashes) that late in the game and at such a prize (nightstar aint exactly common) seems abit over the top. That rucksack musta been made out of gold and diamonds. I dont feel guilty for "cheating" at all. :p

Bandits can have lotsa different armors in AMK apparently. I regulary run across other Stalkers (or enemies) which have inventorys full of all the stuff they pick up (like Soldiers with 5 Pistols and 3 AKs.), the ones you meet prolly all where too slow XD.

Some other random bits about AMK :

-you can put shotguns in the pistol slot
-you can run with the Exoskeleton ^^
-drinking too much makes you fall asleep or kills you. No more breaking into the bandit HQ at Dark valley and drinking their two crates of vodka :laff:
-real Zombies are in, also encountered some chimeras which zap you when you shoot them, pretty deadly. Also i noticed zombiefied Stalkers getting up again if you let them wriggle on the floor too long

If you are at Wild territory check the little house with the single body in it (not the one left of the truck but a little behind it). I found 6000 rounds of 5.56 on it >_O

News random? They pretty accurately report stuff. Of course if you get news from other areas they could just be lying, the meanies :o

Rogue Keeper on 21/5/2008 at 11:28

First, which version of AMK are you running? In my 1.4 ENG (here (http://forum.v5g.de/showthread.php?t=12558) ), Sidorovich gives you Night Star quest immediately at the beginning ot the new game, together with Get USB from Nimble quest. They have placed a Night Star somewhere in Cordon randomly on the ground, I found it two times near the boar lair, other time near the desolated mill (I started new game few times to observe changes in anomaly placement and how tweaks work).

If backpacks are really so rare, it's not pleasant, but then you have plenty of existing stashes you can use. Just don't place your stuff into obvious box or it will be robbed. The backpack you have can't be taken from the ground once you drop it! Choose your stash location wisely. I don't know if other NPCs can loot it if you place GPS nearby - it would make sense.

You can also put MP5 into pistol slot. Not a bad idea at the beginning but I like the more powerful pistols which come later... there could have been an option to place sawed-off shotgun and MP5 to either slot.

I don't think it would be easy to find 6000 rounds on the same dead body with this mod again... but who knows. Dead bodies which are part of the level function as stashes, I guess? And since I have random content option enabled as well....

In OL, zombies after blowout appear, but I didn't find any in AMK after blowout. Is this zombifying effect of blowout an exclusive OL feature? Also the early warnings make blowouts less surprising and thus less dangerous. When someone reports that next blowout is gonna happen the next morning, you know that the next morning you should stay near buildings. You shouldn't install DNS during mod installation to make the blowouts surprising. Still they are interesting event, it's neat to watch NPCs running for cover and getting out when it's over like rats from their holes...

There can be only one way how to make sure if the reports from other areas are true. When I get better equipment and explore more areas, I'll try to follow a report to the area it comes from and determine whether it's based on truth or not. I have suspition that such events may really occur, but they may be not witnessed by other stalkers - the game reports this event to you anyway. But we can't easily prove or disprove whether that event has really been witnessed...

242 on 21/5/2008 at 11:39

Quote Posted by BR796164

I read it either on AMK Forums or on the official forums, and it was like an half year ago. But you maybe right, perhaps they're random only when they come from off-line mode zones.

Rogue Keeper on 21/5/2008 at 11:52

Well, half year ago, old version, perhaps those impressions could have been at least partially justified...

Quote from 1.4 readme (link above):

Quote:

3. Dynamic News System

DNS is the main instrument which shows offline A-Life to the player.

Do you remember, that in the original game different NPC sometimes contact with you through PDA with text messages, which are shown below, in the left corner of the screen (something like "Marked One, at long last you returned. If there'll be a free time - come visit me, I have some jobs for you." )? We used this idea:

Marked One's PDA is connected to some kind "stalker network", through which he know the whole situation in the Zone: this network has IM-service, which stalkers actively use, reporting about the attacks of mutants, patrols, the obtained artifacts, skirmishes, etc.

There is only some types of their messages. Stalker(s):

- spotted someone (military patrol, for example), and name the place, where it happened.
- found a corpse, trying to recognise it's name from PDA, voices assumptions about the reasons for death (and, you know - it's true working feature: if he was killed with pistol, or automatic rifle, or shotgun - it'll be recognised by stalker, who found the body, he'll describe, how's the wound looking, etc.), and name the place, where it happened.
- seen the skirmish, name the participants, the place.
- seen, how kill happened, and name killer (as usual, it's the player) and victims, exemplary armament, place of the skirmish.
- heard something (shooting, scream, etc.)
- seen, that weather have changed, and tell, what he's thinking about it
- tells about the dawn, the sunset, the dark night, about what he feels now, about his friends and whole situation around...
- tell about military helicopters, about raids, helicopter attacks, about the fact that helicopter's taking fire, or about the fact that helicopter crushed...
- give SOS, when the matters go entirely badly.
- tell about good items and artifacts, about where to find them, if you want to buy something...
- ask for help with especially strong monsters (for example, with the controller, which arrived to Escape), and, sometimes - they thank you for help, and transmit something useful to the benefactor through Sidorovich or Barmen (leave transfer for you).
- report about when, approximately, the blowout begins.

- and many other types...

And, don't forget - this is not random news. All of them are about real events happened in the Zone. There is no fake messages.

Well, I'd love to believe them. :angel: But I'm ready to verify whether reports from other offline areas are true or not... later.

242 on 21/5/2008 at 12:05

Quote:

And, don't forget - this is not random news.

Well, if they specifically say so should be true then.

Duncan on 21/5/2008 at 13:09

Quote Posted by BR796164

Even though I choose VISIBLE ANOMALIES in the installer options, some are still invisible and because of their random placement nature, it can be quite annoying sometimes to detect them.

Have a look in your "gamedata/config" directory and you'll see two directories named Misc0 and Misc2. I cannot remember which is which, but i think it was Misc0 that has the files for the missing "visible" anomalies (with misc2 having the invisible ones). Copy these two files and overwrite the ones in the Misc directory.