A small update on the impending patch:
All efforts done towards technical improvements have been working well with positive response as expected. Particularly introducing the STALKER game and the Mod to the
Windows 7 64 bit + Quad CPU combination has proved to be the best thing has ever happened to STALKER yet, spawns and all responses are spectacular (particularly when coming from Vista).
Even the helicopter attack at the entrance of the Red Forest that had not spawned earlier on my old Vista+Quad PC, has now spawned, even even dramatically so, as it coincided with the hellish blowout+horror time. On my Red Forest push, some
Hunter Stalkers spawned and kindly accompanied me all along the
Devil's Path (if I may call the section between the
entrance to RF to the Sniper Tower/Pripyat junction like it).
Cordon-Pripyat optional jump feature works well, too; and -when chosen, (particularly by those who have played the mod in its normal course before) provides a rather interesting and also entertaining a game-play as well, which can be described as
Freeplay with immersive non-linear action, as the storyline is presented backwards and essence of pick-and-choose missions become more prominent, which also brings its own challenges to face while following this reversed course.
Also, another important result:
As you know, one of the main aims of this patch was to deal and find a solution to the a random symptom seen on some PCs, which was the late spawning of "Initial Monolith Assault in Pripyat's Snipers Alley." After exhaustive test-runs and application of various scenarios, even gradual revert to vanilla on 3 computers (one as the main PC as above -Win7 64+Quad- and one Vista and an XP laptops in addition) have unequivocally proved that "there's nothing in Pripyat that may cause and effect this symptom. Putting everything summarily, while this symptom has been seen mostly on Vista and XP laptops with Core Duo and Core 2 Duo CPU + average RAMs, and very very rarely on my main PC on the normal course of the game (which is from Brain Scorcher to Pripyat as per the storyline), however, it has NEVER took place when I've jumped from Cordon to Pripyat directly. In this case, all the assault materialized with lighting speed and with immense force, and ferociously, as expected.
So, the problem lies between BS and Pripyat and it's obvious that the game
glitches around this section. So, the work was fruitful as proved that the Pripyat is clean. Now I will be looking carefully in the pre-Pripyat section, and the normal course of modding work as to identify and solve the matter so that the all those PCs which can play this mod should play it without having a random "late spawning of Pripyat Snipers Alley Monolith Assault."
There's a very intense (sometimes double) Horror Time occurrence prior to entrance to Pripyat when coming from BS Antennas, this will be a subject that I will be looking at, as the intensity may possibly upset the in-game communication (as to info-portion release and processing. Xray is very sensitive as we all know). I'd like to know, if any of you had played non-Horror time and had this late spawning symptom?
If, after I've isolated the root of the symptom in those pre-Pripyat areas, the required balancing work proves to be too much time and resource consuming (like a game company view: if too costly in terms of time, resources, etc, and not that much worth it f also requires to cut some functions) then, for this instance, I've already developed a number of constancy plans to apply, in fact achieve a better scenario and performance (which I've been keeping it for Xtreme++ options). I might just dropped it, or at least some of it. So, this matter is already in a very good course to be dealt with.
More updates and, hopefully, more frequently, will come as I progress.
