NEWSA+SIMBION_tweaked Support and Gameplay

[fiznerpin1962]

Big haul from Prypryat, almost done repairing a shitload of weapons... CTD!! Oh well...

[Grump642]

Nightwatch if you need help with changing the music files to .ogg I can try to help. You need the SDK to comment the files properly, so I can't do that part. But I am willing to help however I can.

[audioave10]

Nightwatch... I have the exact same card as you. The new driver didn't list Stalker as one of the improved games, but we can hope. Most
crashes are looting corpses related. Maybe too much inventory around & xray loses track of it?

[Wombat_70]

Lots of crashes when searching corpses

FATAL ERROR

[error]Expression : assertion failed
[error]Function : CUILine::GetLength_inclusiveWord_1
[error]File : E:\stalker\patch_1_0004\xr_3da\xrGame\ui\UILine.cpp
[error]Line : 410
[error]Description : pos.word_1.exist()


stack trace:


Life is a bitch F6 is my friend, this game is awesome I'm
addicted to it.

[fiznerpin1962]

I have had very few crashes, all are very random. No crashes @ "prypryat night". Never while doing a "cavity search".
I'm thinking it's gotta be machine related....
My rig:
Intel Pentium D - 2.8 Ghz, 2.8 Ghz
Nvidia e-Gforce 8800 GS
4 Gb RAM
"silencer" 500watt power supply
Creative "Xtreme" sound card
160 Gb internal hard drive

..... just thinking out loud.

[Nightwatch]

audiave10
Yes I've noticed, too, that the new Nvidia Driver doesn't mention of STALKER on the "improved performance games" list, but I am hopeful as well, considering that they usually tend to mention of somewhat recently released games.

On the crashes that you have while serching the dead bodies, you have good point on the possible cause that there are too many inventories around (many NPCs, about 10 times of vanilla) and the engine bottlenecks, or loses the track of it when creating dead body inventories. Such glitches, even if they do not cause a crash at that time, may well be carried ahead by saves, too. It's after all an old game (vanilla STALKER) always has had problems. Having said that, in order to fair, some new games, like Fallout 3 (crashed many times when I tried) and particularly FarCry 2 (which is unplayable on my high-specs PC) have managed to make STALKER a smoother game, though it's now much older.

fiznerpin1962

.....No crashes @ "prypryat night". Never while doing a "cavity search".

OK, after managing to breath again, you have a nice specs PC there, though the Pentium D is a bit on the low clock side. Still, comparing with the Quads experince I now value Pentium D much higher at least as far as playing STALKER (and the equivalent games) are concerned.
You can have a quick look into your heating and RAMs. Particularly as there are known issues with STALKER's memory management. Not playing too longer periods, or while having a short coffee break rebooting the PC regularly, particularly when playing in demanding areas where the demand is known to be higher than the others, would help.


Wombat_70
Thanks for keeping up the high sprits even when a crash hits you.
I think the same answer to audioave10 as above would apply to your case, as you have undoubtedly already reached the same opinion before I even wrote this line.


Grump642

Nightwatch if you need help with changing the music files to .ogg I can try to help. You need the SDK to comment the files properly, so I can't do that part. But I am willing to help however I can.

That's great, thanks. As I'm thinking to offer, at least as an optional level, some new and fresher music pieces, for those who may wish to try some different sound tracks as well. I'm open to suggestions on available pieces.

SDK, on my first attempt, did not install on my new Vista Built this time. But, I'm upgrading to 64-bit tonight. Well, good luck for me with SDK, I need to say. let's see how it'll react to this news.


Balious
First of all, good luck with your Math exams. I appreciate that it's never easy, nor entertaining at all. But, still, one of those things that needs to be done.

Secondly, well, how many RPGs or missiles in that effect that you'd need when you are in DV depends on what kind of a gameplay, or strategy, you plan to follow there. And what would hit you there (in what proportion) also depends on your game-strategy that you've been following up to now.
Though, there are much battle-hardened gamers here on this thread and they may offer much better tactics than I can give, I may say that a couple of missiles will be fine if you shoot good. DV is mostly a bullet and shotgun-shell intensive fighting area, as swarms of heavily armed bandits (not handguns) and even more lethal soldiers ambush you wave by wave. I don't even mention of wide range of creatures there. Handgrenades will be effective, too. In night-time fighting, Hawkeye-1 flash grenade will offer very long lasting illimunation, too.

[NatVac]

One cause of dead body crashes: Each one of the following items has a 1-in-1000 chance of creation in a dead body for certain factions, with a resultant CTD: af_mincer, af_electra, af_zharka, af_ameba. Those items don't exist in the real game. (Also, af_gravi is included, but it is essentially a duplicate of a real artifact.)

Incidentally, the death manager is ignoring those items with odds less than 0.001. And the custom NightWatch ammo is missing from death_items_by_communities.ltx and death_items_by_count.ltx. They might not be needed, though.

Yes, fix the OGG comments, and a lot of the hyper-alertness will go away. If I can get the comment fields defined by someone (Darius6?) as changed by the SDK (variables, limits, etc.), I'll write an OGG-commenter.

I'm getting a contact list crash (single xrGame.dll stack trace reference) on specific individuals. Kill 'em, the problem goes away. And a Hunter didn't have a picture, right before he walked into a whirligig (unlike the other stalkers -- a problem with anomaly evasion in stalkers with no assigned smart terrain). Incidentally, watching him in the scope as he vanished may have been a contributor to the SMapLocation critical error that followed.

The pathing problem with Kruglov is not a vanilla issue. It happened to me as I watched him talk with Sakharov at the beginning of the very first dialog between them. I think it is related to the single_player errors about a bad position -- something mod-related may be quirky about using invalid info. (Example: the position coordinates read 0,0,0 or nil if the NPC's data is not fully loaded.)

Heh, that was a surprise workaround, Nightwatch. I was expecting something, but not that! However, it just made me friends with Yantar-Kruglov.

I had one more stuttering episode from log spew after my weather fixes -- it turned out that there are values above 0 for times outside nighttime, and the random weather code was using them! Setting the first value of sun_dir of "5" to "0" fixed it.

The only issues with the weather that remain: 1) There is sometimes a sudden change when the game hour changes. I recall seeing that before I started making any changes. 2) Loading a saved game randomly has rain at the start. These are minor.

Some scope zoom textures have unnecessary mipmaps.

The reputation bug is still in there, and I hate the way Mole kept putting himself in harm's way. However, I have a quick tweak that checks the completion of the "Protect the Agroprom stalkers" mission that winds up moving the Save Mole task along. And the gamedata\config\gameplay\info_l03agroprom.xml file from the ZRP is a drop-in fix for the Seriy post-Agroprom issues.

The mod_nlc_sak.script file that supports the artifact recipes is not valid in my non-Extreme version of the game. So you don't get the objects that it is supposed to create for the custom quests. When I attempted to create a PDA at the location using a copy of the function from that file, it CTD'ed because the level_vertex_id and game_vertex_id were swapped -- and that's probably true for all of them -- LVI's are generally larger than GVI's.

So I guess some recipes are not going to be available right away.

And the random quest rewards have problems: I accepted a task from Barkeep to get a reward of 2 Crystal Thorns. He gave me five loaves of bread instead. Apparently loading a save in between accepting the task and claiming the reward will change this. Also: Sakharov's moonlight quest is really for the ZoneMaker, and the mutant body parts are still vanilla messed up.

Now the good stuff: Despite Nightwatch's sadistic attempts to do me in -- Surprise! It's an APC that wasn't there a moment ago -- and the modded game's quirks (there was a deadly anomaly right on the spot where you enter the Bar from Garbage), I'm liking a lot about this mod.

The sounds on the silenced weapons are very good. The Vintorez, the silenced Groza-NT, and the AS Val Sniper (not to be confused with the Sniper AS Val, although the sound is the same) are favorite weapons at the moment.

Edit: Finally, a version of a vanilla shotgun that I'm willing to use (not counting the non-vanilla Saiga): The fast-loading guy that fits in the first slot.

The chopper and APC attacks are pretty good! Annoyingly so, but that's good. There are some tweaks to existing game elements that make this quite a bit different from vanilla, making it novel and fun. And getting good stuff early is balanced by meeting lots and lots and lots of bad stuff early.

Of course, much more later...

[audioave10]

Okay...went to the new 185.85 driver for my GTX260 playing 3.0
NEWSA. Pripyat was easy on "non horror" mode. Took some
damage from the blowout while in the underground garage. Heli
could not find me so he went away. Ready to go to the NPP. No
crashes of any kind yet...so far so good. Using 5 Mamas Beads.

crashes back again...
FATAL ERROR

[error]Expression : fatal error
[error]Function : CInifile::r_section
[error]File : E:\stalker\patch_1_0004\xrCore\Xr_ini.cpp
[error]Line : 342
[error]Description : <no expression>
[error]Arguments : Can't open section 'af_mosquito_bald'


stack trace:

plus looting corpses = crash (about every 10th corpse)
still in Pripyat area
Edit: made it to NPP...need a rest first - NPP is tough!

[fiznerpin1962]

[quote="audioave10"]
crashes of any kind yet...so far so good. Using 5 Mamas Beads.



quote]


How can you use 5 Momma's beads??? I only get 3 slots - and I have to put an anomaly detector in one of them!!!

[audioave10]

I'm running "non horror" mode, not "extreme" mode.
I seem to be stuck after refusing to join the C-Con. I see a teleport trying to form but it just blinks and I can't get into it.
How does freeplay work?

[fiznerpin1962]

Rats...

[audioave10]

Loaded an earlier save to do the wish granter in case it was
necessary but got a crash...

! Unknown command: abort=>FATAL_ERROR:~motivator_binder:update:Watchdog=[100]:Reason=[cn
- Disconnect
- Destroying level

[fiznerpin1962]

whoooooooooDoggy! Goint to saunter on in to Prypryat.... all clear. Get near the gate and BAM! -about 8 Monolithians "wink" in! Then BANG- a horror time @ the same time! Pseudogiant rolls in... then a dwarf... a Redhell.... zombies galore - and Monolith! got tired of dragging bodies to the corner
http://i468.photobucket.com/albums/rr49 ... _radar.jpg

- anyhow, one trip around Prypryat. Nice. - one more round before dark.


http://i468.photobucket.com/albums/rr49 ... _radar.jpg

[busetibi]

How does freeplay work?

after you jump through the final teleport in Stancia 2 (the one on the roof) you get the cut scene then you get teleported back to the Ferris Wheel in Pripyat.

! Unknown command: abort=>FATAL_ERROR:~motivator_binder:update:Watchdog=[100]:Reason=[cn
- Disconnect
- Destroying level
that one pops up every now and again

[busetibi]

whoooooooooDoggy! Goint to saunter on in to Prypryat.... all clear. Get near the gate and BAM! -about 8 Monolithians "wink" in! Then BANG- a horror time @ the same time! Pseudogiant rolls in... then a dwarf... a Redhell.... zombies galore - and Monolith! got tired of dragging bodies to the corner
http://i468.photobucket.com/albums/rr49 ... _radar.jpg

heh, I love the action around the RF/Pripyat switch,
a small and major Horror Time together,
http://i42.tinypic.com/etxjlk.jpg

hung around till night fell, seems to make the Monolith go/spawn like crazy
top of the hill beside the switch, (grey dots)
http://i42.tinypic.com/2m5f8zc.jpg

no less action at the bottom of the hill either (grey dots)
http://i39.tinypic.com/dm7fjk.jpg

[fiznerpin1962]

Sweet.

[audioave10]

I guess its game over for me. The teleport won't set-up and stay to take me to Stancia 2. It just blinks every 6 or 8 seconds and won't respond. Tried many times & different paths. I give up.
Have fun...guys.

[fiznerpin1962]

Nah, try walking out/ or near the (shut) door you came in.... somewhere around you the teleport will trigger.... teleporter never really forms anyway. There must be a way to trigger it.

[busetibi]

yep keep trying, I had problems with the AW to Bar switch, I was standing in the middle of the circle but couldn't get it to activate/switch me, I roamed all over the area for half an hour (rt)before it decided to work and I had the same problem with Cordon to Garbage switch last night