NEWSA+SIMBION_tweaked Support and Gameplay

[Nightwatch]

Thanks 3040Krag Well, actually not a bad idea, if nothing works at the end.

Hangman, can you access FileFactory or Rapidshare at all. With these servers, a direct link won't make a difference, tried it now and before many times, you need to pass through the srever URL and they make you wait a couple of seconds, you know, if you're not a premium member. That's no big deal for any of us, but if your "controlled firewalled ISP" does not allow these sights, you can't still go.
I might actually find a time slot to refresh the setup on Sendspace around midnight (tonight UK time) and I can send you the given direct link, but as tried before, you'll end up going through their URL. They won't let you enter their server before knocking at their door, so to speak.

----Or, if these still are not workable under the rules of the draconian regime that you face, then find and send me a suitable server in New zealand or anywhere in the world that your ISP allows, then I'll upload the mod there, too. But the server should be able to handle files -upload size of- up to 300 Mb. With the maximum available compression LZMA (7zip compression) it's reduced to just under ~290 Mb from an installed gamedata size of 830Mb (slight varies depending on the playing version you choose on the setup) So, the mod is a bit on the big side.

[Component Actual]

I did a fresh reinstall of STALKER patched to 1.0005, to make sure there was no previous mod residue left over. (I would have used version 1.0004, but I downloaded STALKER through Impulse which is kinda of like Steam but installs games in a more normal traditional way, and the Impulse download comes with Stalker already patched to version 1.0005 . So anyway I download the Newsa+SIMBION mod version 3.0. Ran the setup, which added a gamedata folder to my installation directory. I also changed the game_data line in the fsgame.ltx file to true| true| as per the installation instructions. Finnaly I applied the patch by copying and pasting the gamedata folder for the patch into the installation directory merging it with the gamedata folder created by the setup.exe and overwriting the system.ltx file. And as a final measure of conformance with the instructions I add the -nointro parameter to the target line of the shortcut. So I feel pretty confident that I have installed the mod correctly.

I launch the game and start a new game, and everything seems fine from main menu, and everything looks good in Sadorovich's cellar but as soon I emerge out of the cellar and out into the zone you could say I immediately see that something is seriously wrong. All the grass/shrubbery on the ground has these really wierd sold black polygons around them until I walk right up to em and then they kinda shrink and dissappear. Wish I had a screen shot available to me on this computer, so I could show you. But has anyone encountered such a graphical glitch/error with the grass before, when using this mod. It looks kinda like a texture is missing, but not really cuz the black polygons are really leaves or anything they just appear around the leaves, it is like there is something wrong with the shadders or something. It is really odd looking though, and a total immersion breaker. Any help will be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

By the way I have a pretty good computer set-up (well above minimum specs) so I dont think that is the issue.

[Nightwatch]

Welcome to the forum ComponentActual. Also, thanks for trying this mod and posting here.

Of course, I hear your problem there and I am not refuting it in any way, but in generally speaking, the game (mod here) has rather brilliant graphics as you can see from its YouTube videos and from the player pictures on Players Corner on the mod's website. (address is at my sig) Now, this needs obviously some thinking to do, as you say you have a very good PC. Nevertheless, in order to go through the usual procedure, can you please post the full specs of your PC , with the details of the components (such as graphics card, PSU, etc) and also the graphics driver. In short, all info that may somehow help to shed idea on this situation and so can lead to provide an enjoyable game to you.

EDIT:
PS:

I see that you're saying that your PC is above the Minimum specs. Well, actually that may not be good enough for this mod, if you are referring the minimum specs for the STALKER game. (Min specs for STALKER -the specs as dev put them- were not actually enough to run the game comfortably in even vanilla form. All developers in general try to play down the specs to be needed in order not to drive away the potential buyers.

NEWSA.SIMBION_Tweak 3.0 requires specs NOT less that of a PC that can play, say, Crysis at high settings.

[Component Actual]

Welcome to the forum ComponentActual. Also, thanks for trying this mod and posting here.

Of course, I hear your problem there and I am not refuting it in any way, but in generally speaking, the game (mod here) has rather brilliant graphics as you can see from its YouTube videos and from the player pictures on Players Corner on the mod's website. (address is at my sig) Now, this needs obviously some thinking to do, as you say you have a very good PC. Nevertheless, in order to go through the usual procedure, can you please post the full specs of your PC , with the details of the components (such as graphics card, PSU, etc) and also the graphics driver. In short, all info that may somehow help to shed idea on this situation and so can lead to provide an enjoyable game to you.

EDIT:
PS:

I see that you're saying that your PC is above the Minimum specs. Well, actually that may not be good enough for this mod, if you are referring the minimum specs for the STALKER game. (Min specs for STALKER -the specs as dev put them- were not actually enough to run the game comfortably in even vanilla form. All developers in general try to play down the specs to be needed in order not to drive away the potential buyers.

NEWSA.SIMBION_Tweak 3.0 requires specs NOT less that of a PC that can play, say, Crysis at high settings.

Thanks for your quick response. My computers specs are as follows:

CPU- Intel i7 965 with hyperthreading disabled and Overclocked very slightly up to 3.5ghz from the Stock 3.2ghz
RAM- 6gb of DD3 running in triple channel mode at 1600mhz
Video Card- Nvidia GTX-480 running default clock speeds
Power Supply (PSU)-BFG 1000 watts (I don't remember exact model)
Motherboard is a Gigabyte gax58-ud4p or something like that. (it uses the x58 chipset) and the video card is in the PCIe x16 slot
Sound Card- XiFi Fata1ty Pro

I use MSI Afterburner to monitor my framerate and temps in game, and with vertical sync enabled I see a steady FPS of 60 and no excessive heat, I have good airflow and careful fan placement in my case.

Here is a screenshot so you can see what I am talking about:


Here is a link to where you can see the image in its full size/resolution, you might be able to better see what I am talking about here:

http://public.bay.livefilestore.com/y1pdin7_NPHKsf4BqxsYpv2h5V4PQRh-EZCDPPZ6TVKVQo_bSwaEOzM8D876sDlwI3REKYtvXMbD9jcwyKMSkmpnw/ss_landon_10-15-10_01-55-32_(l01_escape).jpg?psid=1

[Nightwatch]

Thanks for posting the specs; and the picture from your game.
From this picture, it's a bit difficult the assess the extent of the problem that you're referring to, as it's only one frame, and on this it looks like a cast of shadow. However, from your descriptions, I assume that you mean that the shadow seen in the picture moves ahead along with you? Is this correct?

Then, if it's the case, there are still two issues to look at. One is that this Impulse network that you say it's like Steam and that you've installed the game from. I inherently have a dislike and mistrust towards those sites, never installed a game from any of them, and would prefer going through extreme measures instead of doing so. We can't be sure what kind of file(s) came with this kind of remote uncontrollable installation, which they might have kicked the game a bit differently.
Secondly, I see that you are using GTX 480 card. This card has not been verified ( tried and tested) on this game enough yet, its current driver might have a problem which may eventually rectified of course. I'd suggest, that you should try to get a newer driver if it's available to see if any change will occur, or roll back a previous one, an so fort.
Shaders are those which are widely used in gaming community and industry and extensively tried, tested and received superb credits. At this stage, under the available information, I can only point to the Graphics card and/or graphics driver. (that does not mean they are inferior, of course. Sometimes too new things may have a dislike of some other things)

EDIT:
OK, I've seen the picture in large format on the link you've provided. That certainly looks like a driver or a card problem. Nothing looks clear or detailed around either. The resolution and processing in general is below what's expected of this kind of card. I'm not saying that the card is developing a fault, what I mean is that either the card or (more likely) the driver might have some incompatibility issues with the game.

[Component Actual]

Thanks for posting the specs; and the picture from your game.
From this picture, it's a bit difficult the assess the extent of the problem that you're referring to, as it's only one frame, and on this it looks like a cast of shadow. However, from your descriptions, I assume that you mean that the shadow seen in the picture moves ahead along with you? Is this correct?

Then, if it's the case, there are still two issues to look at. One is that this Impulse network that you say it's like Steam and that you've installed the game from. I inherently have a dislike and mistrust towards those sites, never installed a game from any of them, and would prefer going through extreme measures instead of doing so. We can't be sure what kind of file(s) came with this kind of remote uncontrollable installation, which they might have kicked the game a bit differently.
Secondly, I see that you are using GTX 480 card. This card has not been verified ( tried and tested) on this game enough yet, its current driver might have a problem which may eventually rectified of course. I'd suggest, that you should try to get a newer driver if it's available to see if any change will occur, or roll back a previous one, an so fort.
Shaders are those which are widely used in gaming community and industry and extensively tried, tested and received superb credits. At this stage, under the available information, I can only point to the Graphics card and/or graphics driver. (that does not mean they are inferior, of course. Sometimes too new things may have a dislike of some other things)

EDIT:
OK, I've seen the picture in large format on the link you've provided. That certainly looks like a driver or a card problem. Nothing looks clear or detailed around either. The resolution and processing in general is below what's expected of this kind of card. I'm not saying that the card is developing a fault, what I mean is that either the card or (more likely) the driver might have some incompatibility issues with the game.

My only problem with your diagnosis, is that I have play STALKER SOC un-modded, and with the Oblivion Lost 2.2 mod and other Oblivion Lost based mods, LURK Mod, and Stalker Complete 2009 Mod, all on this same setup and all with my Impulse installation without any problems. I have also used small mods like float 32, and SkyGraphics without issue. Impulse installs the game patched to 1.0005 into the program files\THQ\Stalker folder. It also places the the user.ltx and saved game folders in the regular folder location of documents\public documents\ SHOC, or something like that but basically the same as the regular install from the disc. You don’t even have to launch impulse to launch the game.
My thinking was that if I could locate the grass files and either delete them from the gamedata folder or replace them with grass from a similar mod that has worked before, that would probly fix the problem.
I already tried just deleting the entire Shaders, and Textures files from the gamedata folder, but I get a crash as soon as soon as I start a new game so I guess at least some of the default shaders and textures must conflict with this mod. But do all of them default shaders and textures conflict with this mod?

I am using the lastest driver for my graphics card. I guess I will go buy the disc from Best Buy and see if it works with that installation, cuz at least that way I will be able to try it with the 1.0004 patch, instead of being forced to use the 1.0005 patch. And if that doesn't help, then I will just give the game to my brother for christmas or something.

[Component Actual]

What I am really trying to say is that the grass in this mod looks different from the grass in the unmodded game. Is there a way I can edit the gamedata folder so as to just use the default grass from the unmodded game, since I never had any problems with that grass?

And thanks alot for all your quick responses I really appreciate your assistance. This looks like the best Stalker mod I have ever seen, and I really really want to get into it, but I am afraid I wont be able to enjoy unless I get this graphical issue worked out, since so much of Stalker is about the atmosphere of the game, a graphical issue can really ruin the experience.

[Nightwatch]

Component Actual
First of all, you must not delete the entire textures folder. As this mod is not a mini mod that only changes a couple of elements in the vanilla game, but it comes as a full-add-on and it offers so many things that vanilla does not have; and naturally those things come with their textures. Therefore, if you delete the textures folder, then when the game tries to spawn those things it can't find their textures, so it crashes.

secondly, this mod uses Sky Graphics textures, you say you have used them before. Also this mod provides superb graphics as available to be seen on "Player Pictures from the game" on NEWSA site -Players Corner- and also videos available on the Utube.

Anyway, I wouldn't try to refute that your PC is having a problem and that you don't seem to be happy about it. OK, let's try this, delete textures\grnd folder (only the grnd folder, not the whole texture folder. "grnd" folder contains highly enhanced a few ground-grass textures. The game will automatically start using vanilla textures in place of those. Rest of the grass and ground textures, a great majority of it are still vanilla anyway.
But, it's important to note here that other textures from other texture folders cannot be picked and deleted with the same ease.

If you still have problems on your PC, you may try to delete the shaders folder as well, but do this as a secondary measure please.

But, before all these, I would recommend that you delete your gamedata folder, reinstall the mod -but do not install the "Mid_ResolutionPC InventoryHelp" patch, because your PC, with those specs as you put them so, should not need this patch. Try like that once, and if you're still not happy, then proceed with the above.

Hope you'll enjoy your gameplay.

Thank you again putting so much interest and effort towards this mod.
----------------------


Guys,

I refreshed the SendSpace download folder; although it's still on SendSpace, the link's folder number, therefore the link has changed of course. The folder over on the server is a 7zip, but a non-self-unzipping one, so anyone who wish to download from SendSpace should be a 7-zip software installed on their computer. The other two links that can be reached from the mod's download links page, namely Rapidshare and FileFactory offers self-unzipping download packs (info for those who haven't downloaded the mod yet) which contains mod's installer, support files, a quick-install guide and a short readme.

It's after midnight, nearly morning, I'll refresh the link on NEWSA website a bit later; right at this moment it's still pointing to an empty slot. But this is full:
http://www.sendspace.com/file/dayck0

Hangman, I don't know it will be of any use for you as you seemed that you were not able to access to SendSpace at all. Let's see, and as I said, you can give me a File-Host company address and I will upload another copy of the mod there, too. It wouldn't hurt increasing international presence anyway, We are already about to hit the 10,000 downloads possibly next month.

[Hangman]

Hey there, sorry for the late reply, we're up to our eyeballs in spammers on the wikia.

There's one site I can get to and DL from with ease, with the help of our Russian friends. "Dump.ru", although if you don't speak/read cyrillic, it can get hairy, so a web translator could help. For instance, the way I got hold of Dead city(Cut map form SOC) was here http://dump.ru/collection/2518. that might help you expand into the international scene as well. (Considering I'm a bit further away than across the pond, you've gone international anyway. )

[rockingmtranch]

Actually Hangman, using Google Chrome web browser, I opened the link you posted and the browser offered to translate the page and it did so perfectly

[Nightwatch]

That's interesting, the hardcore people in your town who don't even allow NEWSA and internationally renowned sites like FileFront and Rapidshare would then allow a Russian site which quite possibly they can't even read and understand! You're right, they are some strange people! It is not conceivable to find some people who can actually block rapidshare. If they block such a site, then it's amazing that they can allow another foreign site which they can't even read and understand to verify.
Well, Hangman, uploading to that site won't be possible.
Only the English language sites. Uploading and keeping a file residing on a Host entails many things in the long term; therefore having the ability to communicate effectively is one of most crucial keys here. So, either you would need to alter (or ask them to alter) your firewall setting to access those sites, or you would need to give me a site within New Zealand. Or, email me an address in New Zealand, and I'll send you the mod on a flash disk all expenses from me. There cannot be any better further offers than these.

[Hangman]

Holy **** man, mailing it? Thats a hell of a way to go just for a game, awesome as it may be.
I tried looking for a nz file site, and nothing turned up, it seems this country is more backward than I originally thought.
I'm tempted by the mailing thing, but I hate it when people go to severe trouble for me, this far away. I'll see what I can do with my own resources, and some things I recently thought of first, before even considering an option that troublesome. Thanks for all your help I'll keep you updated.

[Component Actual]

Component Actual
First of all, you must not delete the entire textures folder. As this mod is not a mini mod that only changes a couple of elements in the vanilla game, but it comes as a full-add-on and it offers so many things that vanilla does not have; and naturally those things come with their textures. Therefore, if you delete the textures folder, then when the game tries to spawn those things it can't find their textures, so it crashes.

secondly, this mod uses Sky Graphics textures, you say you have used them before. Also this mod provides superb graphics as available to be seen on "Player Pictures from the game" on NEWSA site -Players Corner- and also videos available on the Utube.

Anyway, I wouldn't try to refute that your PC is having a problem and that you don't seem to be happy about it. OK, let's try this, delete textures\grnd folder (only the grnd folder, not the whole texture folder. "grnd" folder contains highly enhanced a few ground-grass textures. The game will automatically start using vanilla textures in place of those. Rest of the grass and ground textures, a great majority of it are still vanilla anyway.
But, it's important to note here that other textures from other texture folders cannot be picked and deleted with the same ease.

If you still have problems on your PC, you may try to delete the shaders folder as well, but do this as a secondary measure please.

But, before all these, I would recommend that you delete your gamedata folder, reinstall the mod -but do not install the "Mid_ResolutionPC InventoryHelp" patch, because your PC, with those specs as you put them so, should not need this patch. Try like that once, and if you're still not happy, then proceed with the above.

Hope you'll enjoy your gameplay.

Thank you again putting so much interest and effort towards this mod.

Thanks for the advice, but I deleted the textures you suggested (the grnd folder) and tested and it still had the weird black polygons and then I tried deleting all the shaders as well, but it didn’t help either. So as a last ditch effort I checked Nvidia’s site and got the latest BETA driver for the GTX 480 installed it and left everything in the Nvidia Control Panel at their default settings and just like that no more black polygons.
However, when I exited the game and went back to the Nvidia Control Panel and changed a few settings the problem reappeared. I was eventually able to narrow it down the Antialiasing of Transparent Textures. If that setting was set to "on" in the Nvidia Control Panel then I had the weird black polygons if it was off no problem. So really I don’t even know if I needed to change my driver or not. So if anyone else is having this problem turn off transparent antialiasing.
Just for the record I am now using the geforce 260.89 driver.

[Nightwatch]

Great news, Component Actual you've managed to sort out the problem And thanks for posting the solution in details and through its stages, so that anyone who may be using a GTX480 card will find it very useful as it's inevitable that at one stage they will hit same kind of trouble, too. It's a very useful reference we have now.

[rockingmtranch]

That is very useful but will it be easy to find in a pinch?

[Nightwatch]

Hmm.. good point. I should add this info into the mod's website under help/tips.

Also, we should consider opening a section, possibly under the All PC forum, which is dedicated to various hardware/software (like drivers, etc) problems -and their discovered solutions- which are known to affect gaming, mainly for STALKER and its mods, but also for the problems which are known to affect other games as well. Because, a problem usually tend to affect others as well, sooner or later.

[rockingmtranch]

That sounds good. Do you want it as a new thread in All PC or a stickied topic in both Hardware Corner and Software Desk?

[Nightwatch]

Thanks, I think a section could suit better, like: "Problems & Solutions," possibly under the All PC forum, together with Hardware Corner and Software Desk. Would be related to both, as some problems arising from hardware and some comes from software. People can open threads for each separate problem, be it hardware or software related and the solutions for it. Some readers may ask and/or add somethings, like further info, explanations or twists in the matter.

[rockingmtranch]

Ok. I'll have to leave that up to you then. I can do new topics but not new threads.