S.T.A.L.K.E.R. - Shadow of Chernobyl
A little warning to anyone that plans on buying Stalker. The mimimum stated requirements aren't enough to play it. Well, they are... But only if you don't mind literally having 2-3 frames a second as you walk around.
My computer meets the minimum requirements exactly, but the game has to do so much swaping off the hard drive, because I don't have an adequate amount of memory, that the game literally turns into a slideshow of Powerpoint speeds... Even with every detail setting turned down to the lowest setting.
So, if your computer meets the minimum requirements for Stalker, don't bother getting it until you upgrade to 1GB or 2GB of memory. I just bought 2GB of memory myself, I'll post the results within a week.
P.S. I had a funny bug even with the first game patch applied in the starting location. This guy with a machine gun was chasing me, shooting at me, and the polygons that made up the top of his head were literally missing. His head was half gone! No, it wasn't intentional. :rolleyes:
My computer meets the minimum requirements exactly, but the game has to do so much swaping off the hard drive, because I don't have an adequate amount of memory, that the game literally turns into a slideshow of Powerpoint speeds... Even with every detail setting turned down to the lowest setting.
So, if your computer meets the minimum requirements for Stalker, don't bother getting it until you upgrade to 1GB or 2GB of memory. I just bought 2GB of memory myself, I'll post the results within a week.
P.S. I had a funny bug even with the first game patch applied in the starting location. This guy with a machine gun was chasing me, shooting at me, and the polygons that made up the top of his head were literally missing. His head was half gone! No, it wasn't intentional. :rolleyes:
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That better not be true, that's Class Action Lawsuit material! :mad: Fortunately, I think I have an ASUS motherboard anyway. Their motherboards usually have good features. I should add, however, that I purchased 3 ASUS videocards several years ago and each one of them were defective.
I hear lots of horror stories about ASUS videocards. If that thing with ASUS and Stalker is true, then I definately won't be buying any more of their things ever again. For those who don't know, ASUS paid for an advertisement video in the opening sequence.
I should say that even though Stalker has extremely high system requirements (So high that there should be a red "Warning! Very high system requirements!" label on the box), and that even though it was released with apparently 68 already known bugs, and that there are still dozens and dozens more, that the game is excellent. They should've took another year to fix the bugs and finish the features, but hey Publishers are assholes.
Of course they are, because they can
It's why I say it's a good time to start being a concerned buyer, and consider where the money ends up after we part with them.
F@H runs at priority 0, so pretty much anything outranks it for CPU time
By the way, anyone know if there's any truth to the rumor about stalker using assets from other games?
The RAM must make a big difference in Stalker then, because I was running it at 800x600 with every detail setting at the lowest and running with static lighting, and while it ran smooth (it better!!!) when the hard drive wasn't going (which is 99% of the time), it turns to molasses when I move. Thankfully my 2GB upgrade will be here on Wednesday. If quadrupling my RAM doesn't help with the disk access, I don't know what will. : /
The Cross-hair? :P
It looks similar to a Cross-hair from one of the D3 Engine Games, but that was it, just similar, but seriously i can't really believe this rumor after that development time.
As far as Publishers are Ass....., mhh i think THQ gave more than regular time to develop the Game, but the Developers just underestimated their Project just as simple as that(feature wise). (and some Peoples just canceled in the development time)
Yep it is not Perfect, far from Perfect, but none the less its a great Game.(imo better than HL2 but thats personal preference.)
And sorry to say that THQ are not so assholes as other Publishers.
Btw, that MB thing with ASUS now that would i call a bad rumor, it's just not true, which idiot tells peoples so much crap?
Btw i have to admit first it ran not good an my machine crashed ever 10-35 minutes to desktop(Vista x64 4Gb Ram) but a little hack(not CopyPro. hack but not legal too because the tool edited the File Header to adress more than 2gb Ram(even if its not using so much), since then i had not a single crash anymore, but i hope the next patch will fix that maybe.
The idiot that was just throwing a theory out there because he could find no other reason for the crashing while testing the game for a friend? The idiot that foresees many smoking PC towers due to a bullshit system requirements label? The idiot that lost 2 perfectly good video cards due to mobo problems?
I never said ASUS boards were required by STALKER... I said ASUS boards SEEM to be... the same way people say Nvidia SEEMS to be a requirement for Doom 3. Everyone knows you can run Doom 3 on an ATi, but it's optimized for Nvidia.
It's obvious that STALKER is optimized for ASUS products.
Anyway, I think this game will be a post-patch classic. Once more people can get it running, a GOTY award doesn't seem too far-fetched. At least until Crysis
Agreed. After the 1.3 patch it will be a great game. In the current state it's just another Gothic III desaster.
Penny Arcade wasn't too far off: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/1999/01/06
Anyway, my memory should be here later today so I will tell everyone how much that improves loading times. It takes about 7 minutes or so to load a new sector right now. I'm hoping the upgrade will cut that down to 2.5 or 3 minutes. The game is actually about 5.5GB total in size, so I should be able to load almost half of the entire game in memory at once. So that better help!
Stalker is definately the buggiest game I have ever played. I litterally can't go for 1 or 2 minutes without seeing a bug. I've seen NPCs with half their heads missing, I've seen NPCs walk out of hills, NPCs sink into the ground, I've had items dissapear out of my inventory, flashlights for NPCs not placed correctly, literally half the quests are broken because of terrible scripting (One particular quest keeps restarting on it's own, I'm not sure if it's even supposed to or not...).
I would call the out-of-the-box retail version an Alpha build, at best. The game is literally broken in the retail form, and even with the 68+ bug fixing first patch it's still a mess. The item descriptions are often so vague and misleading that you are left without any knowledge as to what it's supposed to be.
The AI, while often quite tricky, will often get into places where they will move repeatedly in the same paths over and over again in combat. Also, the main menu music frequently cuts out. It's seems so unusual that you wonder if it was just intentional. Don't even get me started on the repititious looping NPC chatter.
And yet Stalker is still fun to play, but it's bugs are so numberous as to be annoying, yet few of them seem to prevent you from playing. Unless you count the quests, which are mostly non-functional...
Also, I just read a developer interview where he suggests the NPCs have daily routines. He lied. They have absolutely no routines what-so-ever. Some NPCs have routes that they constantly loop through, if you get in their way they will just keep walking. Other NPCs just sit in one spot, looping the same dialog over and over again. NPCs don't interact with each other, though they made it seem like they do. They don't actually talk to each other, some are programmed to, but I've seen cases where they will talk like someone else is there when actually they died and aren't there anymore. Other times they simply talk to themselves. NPCs have no routine what-so-ever.
I find it humorous how they number the patches... v.1.0001 for over 68 bug fixes? I've never seen such a low numeral change for a patch before, let alone for one so big. I guess it's to imply that the game didn't really need much patching and not much was changed?
Sure not to say that no bugs would the nicest case, but unrealistic these days and forever. (as long time is money)
btw not to be meant as excuse for publisher/developers.
Or another question, a perfect(not that ever a perfect game existed yet) Game that is maybe a AAA Title but without soul(subjective feelings of commitment from the Devs.), or with that but with some faults(or dozen in this case, but not limited to this case).
Example Gothic 3, a really great Game but filled with hundreds of bugs, and after the third or fourth patch not bugfree(still at least one A Bug), and there will be in foreseeable future a Giant Patch to fix the knowing rest.
On the other Side i have a great Game too, but because of the strict investment politics after a bit over a year the next successor was released based on the same Game Engine, and exact the same bugs wasn't fixed. (but sure the support for the old Game was canceled too.)
Excluding D3(john carmack was mad about ati, thats no secret) and some other titles, mostly the ad logos are in most cases just sponsoring for advertising.
How many Games i have yet played that are advertised "x meant to be played blieblablub", "x optimized", ect. und ran faster on opposite but comparable HW.
I believe you know that, but just to tell again, today, marketing means everything, at least for the big players in the industry.
Funny thing isn't?
Btw sorry , i overlooked the little word of "seems" so the "idiot" was a bit rude, sorry about that. It was generally(yeah i know it is a bit generalized) meant to the many peoples out there that just telling everyone they know(or knot knowing , hey that is internet) rumors just for fun, because they are FB's.
(And I apologize again for flying off at you, schuu)
Oh well, at least the bullet dynamics are adequately realistic