The official STALKER: Twilight K.E.T. mod thread!

[3040Krag]

OK, finished playthrough of the new release. Some of what I took away from the mod:

The weather is very nicely polished, both in graphics and in physics. The storm sounds are a bit on the loud side for my taste (my ears are ringing right now, Stancia2 storm, I wear headphones). I really like how the lighting changes as the clouds pass by. Overall, much more immersive weather than most mods. +1

I liked the change of STALKER-played music to a more western variety (as opposed to a Soviet style).

Little things like the inventory menu select sound gave a smooth, professional feeling to the mod.

As advertised, the textures and particles added a lot to the appearance. Good job! I really like how you did the artifacts, as well. It fit right in with my vision of what an artifact is, in the zone.

The main menu, though the same as before, was a pleasant surprise. Before, mine was all blurry. Sharpening up the graphic was good to see.

As opposed to your announcement over at XS, I found it easy to find and carry thousands of rounds for each of my rifles (Antique AK, Groza and FN2000), though ammo for the shotguns was scarce. A 300 pound (320 with the exo) weight limit, coupled with the right artifacts, makes it all to easy to run & gun. Oh, since ALL AK series rifles have a threaded muzzle, why no silencer except on the antique? No big deal, just not what I'd expect.

"Upgrade" firepower was easily found in Cordon, I had quite an arsenal before venturing into Garbage and beyond. Ammo was a little more scarce, but the cache in Ag underground and a neutral military kept me from running scared because of low ammo. BTW, I did a tight-rope walk to get around the one soldier on the stairs leading out of Ag U/G. Never thought of that one, before!

I was happy to find that the battery bug was present. I ended up with *6* electro batteries so it took about 30 seconds of standing in an electro to mend my armor. Barkeep's rip-off rates to repair armor was in the past. Speaking of armor, it seemed to wear out a bit fast, which didn't "feel" quite right. One blowout in the red forest was enough to shed 5%+ armor across the board with nothing else (bullets, mutants) around to degrade it. lol, I went back to Bar from the BS with zero armor, only the night vision did anything for me. Speaking of which, the night vision on all armors was weak. I don't know if that's a plus or a minus for me, but I did end up either sleeping through most nights, or cheated by temporarily turning up the gamma. Hostile NPC that can see me in what's nothing but black in my night vision doesn't make for a very pleasant gaming experience! Night fell quite quickly, as well. 8:00 PM and almost no light left. This must be late fall/early winter in the zone!

Certain "alert" NPC were far more capable of headshots and full-auto muzzle control than I thought reasonable, but that just gave me incentive to be quicker with my own headshots.

Good job on the blind dogs re-skin(s).

Good job on souping up bloodsuckers. They're much smarter in KET than I've seen in any other mod. Tougher, too! There were times I thought a mag dump wouldn't be enough, at point-blank range!

[ket]

Some things in the beta still are easy such as ammo collection because I haven't added in the mutants. There should be a patch up on moddb adding in mutants to the first 4 levels but it hasn't been authorised yet. If you think bloodsuckers are smart in the beta you played, download the patch when its authorised and feel the fear at the beginning of the game when you happen to run into a bloodsucker with little more than a pistol and well worn shotgun Oh, and don't think the bloodsuckers will just "give up" chasing you either like in other mods... they won't. Even I found myself when I was playtesting the code yelling "stop chasing me!" Theres other cool stuff that will happen too, but I'll let you find those things out for yourself.

I may make armors a little tougher, I was trying to rebalance them so they done as they said on the tin; provide good anomaly and standard gunfire protection, but up against up close and personal attacks, and enemies with AP rounds, your going to want to find some good cover asap before they reventilate you

[ket]

Heres a newer patch for the beta. Just extract the all.spawn file to the spawns folder in the gamedata folder. Oh, and TK does fix a lot of bugs.

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=TZN91HJJ

[3040Krag]

I've patched to your most current beta, and played through Cordon->Garbage->Agroprom->Ag U/G->Ag->Garbage->Bar. The mutants are much more prevalent, tougher too. IMO the hand of a Burer should be worth more than Bloodsucker tentacles, they're harder to kill.

Garbage was bugged a bit: it appears I killed the last of Bes' bandits before the game triggered the request, so I failed his request. I've told him they're dead, he just says let's wait a while. Making a thorough round of garbage, Bes' bandits are all indeed dead. I farted around Garbage for about 30 minutes real time with no result, so went to Ag and received the "Failed" message about Bes' task.

It seems that bandits kill themselves off more often than the previous build, but maybe that's just my game playing out that way. Bloodsuckers are tougher, even boars are tenacious. Isloms are also quite tough, their attacks stronger, armor wears even faster than the last build. Firepower is still easy to come by, as are ammo and artifacts. Though, ammo is expensive and artifacts cheap. I smiled when I looted the body of the controller in Ag U/G. There was a controller right at the start in Cordon, but I couldn't find him.

Ag U/G was T-O-U-G-H!

[ket]

Some automatic quests are a bit funky, thats because of the rolling AI. Basically, things in the game happen even when you aren't around. Did you try talking to bes a second time? He should of given you the money for the task. There may be a new beta quite soon, fixed a lot of minor issues and made the AI panic system more dynamic. Bandits also won't freak out nowhere near as much anymore either, making it significantly easier to hunt them down. Such is my dislike for bandits I've thought about replacing them with mercs/monolith/duty/freedom spawns. Maybe even bring a few brand new factions in. Theres deffinately going to be the space. The next beta should be the very first build that will feature a brand new level or two to explore

Oh and krag you'll be glad to know I rectified silencers not being able to be fitted to the AKS-74U and AKS-74. I couldn't find any real world info on silencer mounts for them when I done the weapons, but I'll take your word on they do

[3040Krag]

I talked with Bes several times. After the initial conversation, all the dialog with Bes consisted of was "Can you tell me something interesting?" and "See you!" Ought to rename him Skinflint! Oh, yah, that name's already taken

As far as silencers (really should be called suppressors) go, any gunsmith who can repair firearms should be able to thread the muzzle of any firearm for a suppressor. Even shotguns CAN be suppressed. That said, only rounds traveling at less than the speed of sound can be suppressed to about the sound present in STALKER. Any round exceeding the speed of sound will form a shockwave and a mini sonic boom, causing the "crack" sound you can hear with real firearms, even when suppressed. All a suppressor can do is to muffle the sound of the ignited propellant. It can't do anything about any sound made after the bullet leaves the muzzle of the firearm.

Also, the actual AK47, AKM and AK74 rifles were rarely silenced; this was the niche filled by the AS VAL and similar rifles. There is a reason why the VAL fires a 9mm round: to pack a punch with a cartridge based on the small-volume 7.62x39 AK round while maintaining a subsonic speed, the bullet size needs to be larger.

The 5.45x39 round is somewhere in the range of 80-100 grains (5-6.5 grams)! So, a subsonic 5.45x39 round will be quite anemic, a poor defensive or offensive round that's little more effective than a .22 LR round!

Beefing it up to 9mm, the bullet weight is about 250 grains (17.5 grams) in the PAB-9 round, over 3 times larger, making up for the low speed required to suppress the VAL.

Finally, the trajectory of a slow bullet is a highly pronounced arc as compared to the much higher speed, standard 5.45x39. At any equal distance from the shooter, the PAB-9 bullet will have dropped a great deal more towards the ground than the 5.45x39. So, a truly suppressed weapon is really only suitable for relatively short ranges, perhaps 3, maybe 4 hundred meters tops due to bullet drop and loss of speed (which equals stopping power). Whereas the 7.62x54r round (relatively heavy bullet AND fast due to a larger case capacity and more propellant) maintains a reasonably flat trajectory and lethal speed out to about 800 meters.

Here's a descriptive thought: A bullet, any bullet of any caliber, fired horizontally to the ground on a flat plain will hit the ground at precisely the same time as a bullet dropped from your hand at the same time the fired bullet leaves the muzzle. Newton and gravity, grand old Englishman he! The only difference is how far downrange a particular cartridge can push that bullet before it hits the ground; that range will be different based on the initial speed of that bullet.

The 7.62x39 round is really meant for 300 meter max, the 5.45x39 is good for perhaps another 100 meters, to 400. The 5.56 NATO round will reach out to 600 meters or so, but packs little punch at that range and, like the 5.45 is really a 3-400 meter round.

So, are real AK rifles used in a silenced configuration by their respective militaries? No, at least not as a general issue item. It simply makes no sense as a general issue item. Does a round that fires a supersonic bullet benefit from a suppressor? The answer generally is "yes" because the "crack" is a diffuse sound, one that your enemy has difficulty using to locate you, and the report of the propellant ignition IS useful to locate the shooter.

HTH!

[ket]

I think I've got most of that covered. For a while now the necessary adjustments in the mod code have been present so while a silencer may be useful in keeping your actions quiet, having one attached reduces that weapons hit force and armor penetrating ability Sometimes I do wonder if paying such close attention to even the smallest details like that is worth it or if it'll even be noticed.

[DARK TEMPLAR]

Sometimes I do wonder if paying such close attention to even the smallest details like that is worth it or if it'll even be noticed.

Most definetly is, while yes some might not notice there are those who will and salute, so I say keep at it.

[3040Krag]

Other than some niggling differences, I also appreciate the details. Yours are different from, say, NEWSA. Both are very good and bring something otherwise missing from the game.

Now, to my question. I'm playing your latest beta & patch. On my way to see Doc after visiting Guide's corpus, I stopped off at the Agoroprom "Stalker Base" - the first enclave you come to in Ag. I climbed on top of the building where the radioactive source sits, and while sniping a bunch of military I notice I'm "in the red" for radiation. NP, I dose myself and carry on.

Except now, no matter WHERE in the zone I may be, I'm always getting a dose of radiation. It takes three Crystals (+30 radiation each) constantly on my belt to keep from accumulating a dose. This radiation also degrades my armor quite rapidly. I'll lose about 50% armor (across the board) every hour (game time, not real time) regardless of where I am. If I travel rapidly from Bar to the BS, I've zero armor by the time I go underground. This is while in stealth mode, I have little encounter with enemies.

I tried to find a source of this radiation by dropping ALL my kit into the locker in the Bar. I'm getting a dose, even over at Duty base with my gear at Bar. So, it appears to be "internal."

I'm also constantly leaking blood HORIZONTALLY onto surfaces (arterial squirt!!! ), though my health never drops due to that. Both the radiation and the bleeding started on that rooftop in Agoroprom.

Have you adjusted the game to include realistic radiation health effects? Or, did my game glitch. Needless to say, I must aggressively manage my "illness" as it affects both my health and the condition of my armor. My health is dealt with via artifacts (though I have three fewer slots to choose from) and armor through frequent (and expen$ive) repairs or electro-spas using electro batteries.

If it's a feature, my hat's off to you and I must ask, what did I "catch?" If a bug, is there a file I can edit (binary edits are OK with me) or anything I might do to effect a "cure?"

[ket]

Ahh, you encountered both a feature and a bug at the same time there crag The feature I implemented is the armor degrading with radiation, the bug is the constant radiation. The latter is a well known issue in mod circles. If I remember right what can *sometimes* cure it is dumping off all your stuff, saving, then reloading that save.

[Kaidonni]

If I may say so, the radiation bug has a possible fix from the ZRP mod. I've incorporated it into my mod, but I haven't tested it yet. If you visit the GSC Forums, you'd be able to find it in the thread there. However, it might be better to visit the ZRP site, though, and download it - they have extensive documentation on the changes they made, you stand more chance finding it that way than with the search function of those forums . From what I can gather, the bug usually hits at a point when you are being irradiated, and then you do something specific (in this case, sleep - it also happens when going through a highly radioactive zone and then getting a level change prompt, refusing the prompt, and being dropped off where the changer usually dumps you after refusing).

[ket]

I'll look into it. Its on my minors list though as I've only ever encountered that bug once after literally thousands of hours in the zone. On the plus side, at least for the next beta build I've remembered to include the skinflint fix I've also toughened up "key" NPCs in the game like Wolf, Fox, etc and made it so they won't turn against you with the random traitors feature.

[3040Krag]

Wolf is a RANDOM enemy? lolz, I'd best not buy any lottery tickets! I've now started Twilight KET games at least a dozen times (under the newest available patch) and every time Wolf becomes an enemy as soon as I finish my talk with him

[ket]

Yeah he won't do that anymore I still like him "turning", but for the sake of the quests he offers, I nuted him.

[ket]

Here you go people, a new main menu for TK. That musty old static background I've been meaning to replace for some time. Input is as always welcome. Just extract the file to Gamedata>textures>ui

[DARK TEMPLAR]

Theres only one thing that really bugs me tho, the scopes. The atachable PSO is good but most of nato scopes(perm and not) that have tinted central areas(the one on the gauss rifle isn't bad but still), for better detection I suppose, aren't actualy helping, they have more of a hampering effect as it's harder to spot the target(and the right spot on the target to shoot), even more so when the target is twitching about and it's night-time. Maybe up the opacity level( i think thats the right term) or something, to make them more see-through. Or try other textures that want create similar effects.

[3040Krag]

Agree, I generally stay away from the NATO rifles in KET for just that reason. It's already challenging due to the extreme darkness, no need to hamper what little night vision there is with a bright scope center that further degrades night contrast.

[DARK TEMPLAR]

These look quite nice http://stalker.filefront.com/screenshots/File/82058/7 dunno bout these cause cant see ingame version atm http://stalker.filefront.com/file/Advan ... ck_3;98005
also these might be eligeble http://stalker.filefront.com/file/Enhan ... cles;88188 with all due respect just my half of ''two cents of advice''

[DARK TEMPLAR]

Mh i have looked them ingame, well the first and last ones at least, since the scope pack3 gave me a weird ammo related ctd which i could not locate. So i'd go for the ''Scope reticle mod''. The l85 scope dexture remained default tho. And also i think that the dimmed are around the scope should be made a bit fuzzy and expanded a bit