[>GSXR<mrbusa]

Is there any hard evidence of a patch being tested already. I have searched but there are so many threads all over the net related to STALKER that I could have missed it. I am trying to find out what the 1.0001 version on the server browser is all about. I have a really good ping on it so it is hard to say. If it was a developers server then I would have a crappy ping being from the US.
If this game is not patched really fast then I believe it will be forgotten really fast. Don't get me wrong, I am having a blast playing SP and I am even experiencing problems with certain graphics settings. I have said this before about a game and then a few days into it I lose interest because of all the in game hickups. I hope that is not the case with this game.

[OmegaRED]

I agree a patch is needed asap, I want to play but there's several bugs are preventing prolonged play.

[Pluvious]

I think I would really like this game..if I could play it for more then 10 mins at a time. I finished clearing out the stalkers in the car park and that was fun, but everytime I get back to main camp it locks up before I can get back to Wolf to get my reward. VERY frustrating. More so, since its running so well on my rig.. just as I start to get 'into' it.. bam.. I'm staring at a frozen screen and wondering what the hell just happened?.. no error message and even the event viewer in Xp doesn't help narrow it down for me. I'm totally baffled on what to do to fix it. At this point, I guess I'll have to wait weeks for some rumored patch to come out and hope that fixes this random crash. By then i won't be able to return the game so I'm already kissing my $45 away. Really leaves a sour taste in my mouth and makes me question why I bother to spend all this money on video card upgrades and whatnot.

On a possitive note, Rainbow Six Vegas on the 360 is a pleasent surprise.. I normaly don't like squad based tactical shooters but they seem to have made that one really easy to get into.. runs great and looks amazing.. sure glad I got my 360.

[Vikingod]

Pluvious, how large is your page file? This game will fill a page file in a hurry. i used to run a 512mb PF, noticed I was getting a message that it was full, so I went up to 1024mb. Well, I noticed when I quit last night that I was getting the same message, so this evening, I'm gonna double it again. May seem far fetched, but you never know, try up'ing the page file a bit.

[Vikingod]

Originally Posted by >GSXR<mrbusa

Well,
After a day of random playing I have experienced my first problem with the game. All of the sudden the sun shadow, grass shadow, lighting distance, and shadow quality tick boxes and sliders are not working. The game runs fine and I have experienced no crashes or lockups. The model shadows and grass shadows now look really blocky and like they are on lowest detail.

What renderer are you using? If you have anything other than "High Dynamic whatever", you wont have control over those.

[Pluvious]

Mine was set at 2046 already..


I'll try it at 3069 and see if that works.

[Vikingod]

Just had a thought...

Save files are stored in your folder
\Documents and Settings\All Users\Documents\STALKER-SHOC\
Well, Vista treats those file a bit differently, so I would imagine that if it tried to save to those folders, it would give you an error. My thought is this, look in the profile file "user.ltx" and see if you can change the way it saves. Or... maybe create the directory in Vista and see what you get.

I've not tried this, I don't run the game on Vista. i just learned where the files are saved and this came to mind. If you are having trouble like some other members are, it's worth investigating.

[OmegaRED]

I've been using 2 4000mb page files on separate drives just because of Stalker but it hasn't seemed to help.

[Dark Lord]

so what happens when your bored, have over 500 rounds of ammo, and have a new gun?

this is what happens

[Sandok]

Poor soldiers

[jasonbourne]

any news on a patch yet??

[Dark Lord]

i pretty much work with duty, and they wanted to do a raid on the place. their payment offer was too tempting, whatever i found in the lines of guns and ammo was mine.

unfortunatly this fight really showed off how terrible the AI is. guy in front gets shot and drops over, none of hte other guys care. next guy gets shot in the chest and keeps walking, shoot him again and he dies.

drop 10 guys, none of the reinforcements care. they all just walk right in like notheing is happening. 20 guys down, and again, they still dont care.

come down to ground level where they can see me and then they start getting shooty.

[OmegaRED]

How do you change the speed of the game? I think I accidentally hit something because it was dark outside then a few seconds later was day, and the weather kept changing and my PDA said I failed 3-4 missions! That sucks.

[BlueMak]

you guys should really start buying the games.

[Sandok]

For the speed thing, * speeds up, / normal speed

[OmegaRED]

Thanks, I made the mistake of binding * as bandage and apparently it did both at the same time.

I managed to get in a good 10 hours of STALKER over the weekend, not sure why I had so many problems initially (might have been the fan not going into 3D mode while gaming) but I'm glad it's working.

Mini review:

Graphics: I'm running 1280x960 with a mix of high detail textures and models and lower quality shadows. Most of the time the graphics are about Half Life 2 quality but occasionally you'll get into a tense firefight in a sewer against some invisible creature or a squad of soldiers. What the game lacks in texture quality it makes up for in visual effects (like cesspools of toxic goo or various radiation or physical anomalies). 8/10

Sound: Not a big fan of the Russian only dialog. It would work better if the overall presentation of the game was higher especially the storyline but as is it comes off as cheap. This is balanced out by the more important sounds that come into play such as heavy breathing and footsteps as you hide and wait to ambush an enemy; usually it's the opposite as you're frantically trying to hold ground and enemy backup can be heard running towards your position. Weapon sounds are pretty good especially the assault rifles. 7/10

Gameplay: Supposedly you can kill enemies with headshots and this may be true with some weapons (I don't have a sniper yet) but I tried sneaking up on a guard tower 10 times in a row and shooting him in the back of the head with a silencer several times, not once did it kill him and the alarm was set off.

Combat is especially enjoyable; often you'll be able to sneak up on some enemies who are engaged in combat, take some cover, lean out, and start firing bursts at their heads. It's quite satisfying and some of the best combat in any Singleplayer FPS. I had to remap my lean and crouch keys but still find it impossible to lean, zoom in, fire, crouch and then crouch even further all at the same time. My motherboard beeps a lot telling me too many keys are being pressed. 8.5/10

Story: Not happy with this part of the game. PDA sucks and missions often fail because you're stuck far away in an enemy area and the timer on some other task is running out. I just follow the big arrow on the minimap and go wherever the hell it tells me to go. This game really needs more spoken dialogue to prevent you from just clicking away until you're given a mission. 6/10

Overall this game is for those that enjoyed FarCry but don't expect Half Life 2 quality storyline. It has the added bonus of some frightening moments (I almost fell outta my chair the first time one of those invisible mutants attacked me) which is something not really found in most FPS games.

[jasonbourne]

i upgraded my video card from a radeon x1900xt to a geforce 8880gts the game was playable with everything maxed out and full dynamic lights,but now i reinstalled windows and the game is unplayable the fps is constantly 2 or 3,the only way i can play the game is to turn static lights on ,is there anyone experiencing the same problem .

[OmegaRED]

Is it always 2-3 fps or happens if you look around? Vista is not compatible with Stalker to begin with and has all sorts of problems.

[Vikingod]

Got in quite a bit of the game this week, and I really have enjoyed it. The game doesn't really get interesting untill you get to "The Bar". I am enjoying the quests, and have even found the story to be better than most reviews are saying (you just have to talk to everyone). Atmosphere just gets better and better every time I play. Parts with the mutants can be really terrifying (especially indoors).

I've realized money is pretty much useless, which is a dissappointment. I've got like 300,000 dollars and I've pretty much stopped picking up things I don't need to use, because selling them is pointless. I'm still figuring out the factions and whatnot, but seems I spend most of my time with Duty (if only I could figure out how to join without getting shot at.)

Tweaked the settings a bit, and I've found performance settings that allow the game to run pretty steady 30fps while looking great on my system. Everything is almost at max, grass shadow off, highest lighting settings, 2xAF. Only place I have slowdown issues is inside "The Bar", but that doesn't matter to me as it doesn't require shooting.

[Pluvious]

Sigh..wish mine would run for more then 5 mins at a time.. Its been shelved and I lost $45 bucks on it. Joy joy. I give it a 0/10.

[Sandok]

Must be a problem with your system mate... Or wait for a patch I guess...

[jasonbourne]

i finally fixed my problem and i can now play the game with full dynamic lights and all the setings maxed out ,all i did was to swap the sata drivers provided by nvidia for the microsoft ones ,i never thought that just by doing something like that would make sucha big difference ,

[jasonbourne]

i was reading about stalker and someone came up with a fix like this for system that`re using more memory than they should ,like on my pc when i exit the game i can see that in the game`s console its taking nearly 4gbs of ram

Stalker with max settings cause crashes on Vista because out of memory error. It is a problem of 32 bit application compiled without /LARGEADDRESSAWARE linker flag (STALKER have this problem). Application try to use more memory when system already have 2 GB in use (occupied by all Windows processes) and can't. More info is here: [COLOR=#222222]http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/platf...PAE/PAEmem.mspx[/COLOR]

To fix crashes you need to have at least more than 2 GB total memory (physical + swap file) - 3, 4, 5 GB ...
AND
patch exe file with Microsoft editbin.exe tool

On 32 bit OS you need also to use /3GB boot flag.

After that - no crahes

My config - 8800GTX, 2GB RAM, 3 GB swap file, Vista 64 bit. Before patch exe - crash every 5 min with max settings on all drivers 100.65, 100.95, 101.41


now could someone plz explain me how to do it step by step,thanks

[MiDri]

Ok, so I beat the game after about 8 hours of playing.

It was fun, tough with the auto save not working (auto save does not function if your windows user name has a space in it...)

I'm using Vista and everything ran fine -- had only 2 crashs and that was only after 3-4 hour play sessions with lots of "zoning".

I got the crapy ending, which by all acounts is CRAPY -- do the side quests, ALL OF THEM -- otherwise don't bother beating the game.

[OmegaRED]

Originally Posted by Vikingod

Got in quite a bit of the game this week, and I really have enjoyed it. The game doesn't really get interesting untill you get to "The Bar". I am enjoying the quests, and have even found the story to be better than most reviews are saying (you just have to talk to everyone). Atmosphere just gets better and better every time I play. Parts with the mutants can be really terrifying (especially indoors).

I just did the mission where you find the Bar and on my way out I find some really pimp gun on a dead body, then I helped ambush a patrol and rescue a guy which was kinda cool. I guess the story isn't as dull as I thought and some of these missions sound fun.

[BlueMak]

Any word on a patch? I want to play this but I ain't going to order it if it is so buggy.

[>GSXR<mrbusa]

The 1.001 patch in available now. It only ways in at 4mb but is supposed to fix 68 bugs. LOL

EDIT: By the way, they warn that the 1.000 save games will not work with this patch. Double LOL

[OmegaRED]

You've got to be shitting me, they expect people to start over?! Lemme guess, it would have taken those idiots 6 months to make the patch save game compatible

Saved Games

Please note that Saved games from previous versions will NOT work with the patch.
After installing this patch, please go to "C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Documents\STALKER-SHOC\savedgames" and make sure any saves that were created prior to installing the patch are deleted.
You will need to make sure that hidden folders are visible on the view tab of the folder options menu.



Connectivity

After installing the patch, please note the version number that has been added to the bottom left corner of the Main Menu screen.
You will only be able to connect to servers hosted on that same version.



The patch fixes the following bugs:

1. Buttons remain "pressed" and value changes on its own in Options
2. Players can kill teammates with the knife when friendly fire is set to 0
3. Game crashed when client player types a server command in console
4. Game crashes when entering a MP game after dying in SP
5. Multiplayer map names will appear in debug text format when voting to change a multiplayer map during gameplay.
6. The game crashes while attempting to purchase an item, after pressing Buy button multiple times from the Buy Menu.
7. The game crashes when the user triggers an anomaly after the anomaly time is set to 0.
8. Purchased affordable weapons fail to be in the inventory when one item purchased exceeds the user's monetary amount.
9. The player will lose the weapon he has stored in his inventory as well as the equipped weapon when the equipped weapon is dropped in MP.
10. The host is able to pause the game during an MP game.
11. Players are able to duplicate other player names by using the "name" command in the console.
12. The user is unable to view a fly-by cutscene if their PDA is open while triggering the cutscene.
13. The user can speed up time with the * key on the numpad in SP
14. Players can damage and kill other teammates while friendly fire is set to 0.0
15. The starting weather in-game does not accurately reflect the starting weather set by the server host in multiplayer match
16. The corpse created by a user switching teams remains in the game when playing multiplayer team deathmatch or artifact hunt.
17. Options "show weapon" and "NPC identification" fail to function
18. The up and down function for the look feature are inverted through out the game.
19. The server will crash when the players vote to change maps, but don't select a map to change to.
20. Players will take no fall damage when friendly fire is set to 0 on the server
21. The player dies when trying to exit out of the skin menu back into gameplay
22. Death by an anomaly is not recorded as a negative frag when playing Team Deathmatch.
23. Game Crash when opening buy menu from certain spot in Artifact Hunt mode
24. The prompt for the buy menu and entry via pressing the spacebar appears when in spectator mode during any network game.
25. Professor Kruglov sometimes can't open the door to the mobile science lab
26. When player stands close to a wall and shoots grenade launcher, the grenade falls out of the map without damaging anyone.
27. Possibility of killing enemies through the roofs and walls
28. When killing Wolf before completing any of additional quests given from him, these quests doesn't change status from "Active Tasks" to "Failed Tasks" in PDA.
29. Problem with quest: "Kill gang leader" when piece of text in PDA is directing user to kill leader in Dark Valley. Quest is completed after kill this bandit on Garbage level.
30. Disappearing piece of scroll belt in Main Menu when the player changes resolution to 800x600
31. Anomalies were not appearing when turned on in server options menu.
32. Game crashed when creating a Team Deathmatch server with spectator on.
33. Problems with ‘Slug’ artifact.
34. Possibility to take the decoder through the Wall
35. Issue with cash in inventory on MP build
36. NPC called Seriy has 3 different names: Seriy, Gray and Grey.
37. Problem with price of weapon in inventory
38. Game crashed when vote for kicking a player ended
39. Rare game crash during multiplayer match, after players choose a team.
40. Exploit with update rate command
41. Wood in barrels is flickering, although there's no fire there.
42. Player can jump between 2 stalkers and table inside the bar and become stuck.
43. Two side quests from Sakharov have wrong description.
44. After playing in multiplayer mode and then starting single player game, Sidorovich has one of multiplayer nicks instead of his name.
45. Game crashed when player fight with pseudodogs on red forest.
46. The game crashes to a non-responsive state (task manager) when attempting to host multiplayer game a second time with an invalid CD-key.
47. On Win 2000 PCs, the Windows Desktop cursor has no functionality when minimizing the game (Alt+Tab).
48. The game will result in a soft crash when a player dies from radioactive poisoning, then immediately falls into the tunnel well that leads out of the Agroprom Underground level.
49. The arrow buttons remain depressed when clicked and dragged off the boxes, thus making the value increase or decrease indefinitely in the options menu of network games.
50. Game crashed during map rotation. This issue occurs several times while playing with maps (Vehicle station, Desolated Village and Deserted Factory)
51. Game crashes when entering an MP game after dying in SP
52. The Host will crash and all Clients will either return to the main menu, crash to the desktop, or the program will shut itself down and return the user to the desktop, when attempting to drop a player while users are In-Game
53. Users are able to pick up an opponent's grenade after it has been thrown and then use it themselves.
54. The players name switches to a random player's name with a _1 after it in multiplayer if no name is entered in the network games menu.
55. Players fail to be kicked, after unanimously voting to remove them, during network gameplay.
56. Player is unable to ban other player, everybody vote for, line "voting succeed" appears and nothing happens. Player that was supposed to be banned still can play and do whatever he wants on the server.
57. The starting weather in-game does not accurately reflect the starting weather set by the server host in multiplayer match
58. Saved game are over written when attempting a second save uses the first saved game's name followed by a "space" and any other word or number during single player campaign.
59. The artifact is unaffected by gravity when dropped during an artifact hunt game.
60. Players take no explosion damage when the friendly fire damage option is set to 0 in the server options of a team deathmatch game.
61. The game will crash, halting progression when transferring from Station to the Sarcophagus.
62. When player wants to reload a weapon, and start fast shooting, he can't do that because weapon continues reloading.
63. The game crashes when a player is killed immediately after they are re-spawned into the game.
64. The weapons fail to scroll when using the mouse wheel after all the grenades have been used during single player gameplay.
65. Minor text bugs.
66. Various balance issues in Singleplayer and Multiplayer.
67. Various known exploits/cheats.
68. Various other issues.

[Irishgi]

um - hate posts like this - it's just my second post in DH -
I've been a gamefaqer forever but am tired of the rude 20 year and younger crowd.

but on an average - haven't bought this yet - and with those specs
<<< Should I have a problem - Such an open ended question I know
But I'm not entirely sure crossfire can run with the ambi. lighting (DX9) in stalker
and I'd save the money for a later time if waiting is better. . . .

Thanks

I can play Q4 on 14AA and 16AF (HQ), 1600*1200 ultimate quality, just fine. Loading time is a killer, and the 1'st 15 seconds of each load stutters like mad. but once the level is up and running - it's amazing.

In your guys opinion should I fork over the cash now and try it - and be dissappointed I didn't put it into some better game considering the Xfire congif - or take the gamble? - I've been reading a lot of bad things about support issues for this game presently ....
and crossfire doesn't run all of my games better than a single GPU system - most yea - but it does have <<<ISSUES>>>

[OmegaRED]

Your system can more than handle Stalker on high details with dynamic lighting. Once there is crossfire support I reckon you could run HDR and everything maxed and it would be smooth.

I'm skipping the patch at this point, most of the fixes are for multiplayer and I'm not in the mood to start over.

Welcome to DH, the total opposite of GameFAQ/Gamespot forums (I post there and it's the worst gaming forums on the internet ).