S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Clear Sky!

[MichaelD]

I'm late to the party on this one; but so far so good, except for a few snags. All of those snags (so far) have to do with saving games...of all things!

I loaded the game and immediately patched to 1.5.05. The "load save" key (F9) does not work, though the save game (F5) does. It's the weirdest thing; nothing wrong with my keyboard. Also, automatic saves, like after you complete an objective, do not save either. The auto saves when passing from one area to another work fine. I have no idea what the problem is. Needless to say, I have been ESC\SAVE\*insert name of save*\SAVE a whole lot. :roll:

The game itself runs pretty smoothly and the visuals are very nice; definitely a big improvement over the original. I don't have all my settings memorized, but I'm running 19x12, full AF, 25% AA with everything else on default...IIRC. I have no tearing or other visual hiccups. Running the latest DX9/CATs for my system.

I'm getting anywhere from 100+ to 55FPS. The vast majority of the time is at 80FPS+ so I can't complain. It's nice to see a big investment *cough_videocardthatwillbeworth$200sixmonthsfromnow_cough* paying off for a change.

I like the story a lot! The game is a bit harder than the original, but in a different way. AI is a lot smarter now and the damage level is higher. You get access to nice weapons much earlier on in the story, but the AI/damage scale balances that out.

I've had not a single crash or blue screen in the 8+ hours I've been playing. I'm taking my time, exploring everything. It's really cool passing thru the old areas/buildings, but things are different. I.E. rooms that were open before are now blocking. Areas that had crates before, now don't.

The biggest change is the "disarmament factor." When going into areas where there are potential allies/enemies where you have to decide to help or not, you become "disarmed." Your weapon auto-hides and you can't arm yourself until you leave the area. That sucks b/c those areas have crates/boxes to be smashed/explored. Don't like that at all. Before, I had the option of shooting anyone I wanted...as it should be in a game like this. It's a bit too restrictive, IMO.

Other than that, so far, so good. I just delivered the turncoat Commandant's PDA back to the (Freedom?) leader and saved and quit. I guess I'm still at the beginning.

This edition of STALKER was worth waiting for. They need to fix the save bug, but at least manual saves work (thankfully!).

 

[imported_Imp]

Originally posted by: MichaelD
The biggest change is the "disarmament factor." When going into areas where there are potential allies/enemies where you have to decide to help or not, you become "disarmed." Your weapon auto-hides and you can't arm yourself until you leave the area. That sucks b/c those areas have crates/boxes to be smashed/explored. Don't like that at all. Before, I had the option of shooting anyone I wanted...as it should be in a game like this. It's a bit too restrictive, IMO.

That does suck. In the original, only the Barman's actual bar had this disarmanent. It's poorly done too cause the scripts are screwy when attacking bases. Sometimes you get disarmed while there are still people inside to kill in order to finish the quest. Oh well, faction wars is bugged anyways.

 

[Spike]

I searched through the thread and noticed that most of you don't have any crashes so I'm a little confused. At this point I have played ~15 hours and had 10+ blue screens.... as in complete memory dump and pc resets. I have tried lowering my oc to nothing, still crashed. Updated ATI drivers, still crashed. Changed graphical settings, still crashed. This is driving me nuts since the game is a ton of fun and the crashes are completely random. The other night I played for 5 hours, not a single crash. Last night I played for 2 hours and had 5 crashes. Today, 20 min, crash, 2 hours, crash. It happens when fast traveling, walking, acessing my inventory, picking my nose, etc...

Anyone seeing anything like this out there? Is it Vista 64 thats causing the problem? My 4870? My temps have not passed the mid-80's so I don't think temps are an issue with that card.

Thanks to anyone who can help.

 

[Zenoth]

Originally posted by: Spike
I searched through the thread and noticed that most of you don't have any crashes so I'm a little confused. At this point I have played ~15 hours and had 10+ blue screens.... as in complete memory dump and pc resets. I have tried lowering my oc to nothing, still crashed. Updated ATI drivers, still crashed. Changed graphical settings, still crashed. This is driving me nuts since the game is a ton of fun and the crashes are completely random. The other night I played for 5 hours, not a single crash. Last night I played for 2 hours and had 5 crashes. Today, 20 min, crash, 2 hours, crash. It happens when fast traveling, walking, acessing my inventory, picking my nose, etc...

Anyone seeing anything like this out there? Is it Vista 64 thats causing the problem? My 4870? My temps have not passed the mid-80's so I don't think temps are an issue with that card.

Thanks to anyone who can help.

Is CS the only game exhibiting that behavior? If not then it may be Power Supply-related (just getting or already is faulty or just not enough overall amperage on the main volt rail). Maybe it's also just OS-related (perhaps a reformat is long due). I would suggest by starting to run very long stress tests on your system at absolute stock settings including the BIOS, let that run for at least 24 hours, then do it again under over-clocked settings, to make sure that it's not hardware and/or insufficient power related.

 

[Spike]

Originally posted by: Zenoth

Originally posted by: Spike
I searched through the thread and noticed that most of you don't have any crashes so I'm a little confused. At this point I have played ~15 hours and had 10+ blue screens.... as in complete memory dump and pc resets. I have tried lowering my oc to nothing, still crashed. Updated ATI drivers, still crashed. Changed graphical settings, still crashed. This is driving me nuts since the game is a ton of fun and the crashes are completely random. The other night I played for 5 hours, not a single crash. Last night I played for 2 hours and had 5 crashes. Today, 20 min, crash, 2 hours, crash. It happens when fast traveling, walking, acessing my inventory, picking my nose, etc...

Anyone seeing anything like this out there? Is it Vista 64 thats causing the problem? My 4870? My temps have not passed the mid-80's so I don't think temps are an issue with that card.

Thanks to anyone who can help.

Is CS the only game exhibiting that behavior? If not then it may be Power Supply-related (just getting or already is faulty or just not enough overall amperage on the main volt rail). Maybe it's also just OS-related (perhaps a reformat is long due). I would suggest by starting to run very long stress tests on your system at absolute stock settings including the BIOS, let that run for at least 24 hours, then do it again under over-clocked settings, to make sure that it's not hardware and/or insufficient power related.

Yes, CS is the only game that has ever crashed (well, Bioshock did initially until the 1.1 patch) and the the system is well within spec for my earthwatts 500. On the flip side, I have never been able to pass the stability test (memtest fine, atitool fine, prime - not so good) yet I have had 0 problems with the build Just in case this was the issue I dropped my cpu oc (only thing overclocked at the moment) to zero and still had the crash.

Curiously enough I disabled EAX and just finished 3 hours of playing with no crashes. This is not conclusive in itself as the other night I played for 4 hours and no crash. I'll be playing again tomorrow and see if I'm still stable...

PS. How do you add scope/silencer to gun? I had some of the M-16/HK-416 look alikes with the acog and silencer all-ready attached (took from the dead mercs) and as soon as I upgraded them the scope and silencer where taken off. Now that they are off I can't get them back on or add these items to any of my other guns, how do I do this?

 

[Zenoth]

Playing games isn't a very good way to stress test, even if a system is indeed unstable, games won't always stress the system enough to provoke an issue or a complete crash. But this subject would (and already does) deviate from the thread's main purpose. I will leave it at this but I do wish you luck with your problems man.

 

[Billyzeke]

Originally posted by: Spike


PS. How do you add scope/silencer to gun? I had some of the M-16/HK-416 look alikes with the acog and silencer all-ready attached (took from the dead mercs) and as soon as I upgraded them the scope and silencer where taken off. Now that they are off I can't get them back on or add these items to any of my other guns, how do I do this?

Press (I) to go into your inventory and drag the scope or silencer to the weapon you are carrying to attach it. Note that not all attachments are compatible with all weapons. To remove an attachment right click on the weapon and select detach.

As far as the crashes are concerned I had lots of blue screens while going between maps, but the last Patch V1.5.05 solved that problem and the game ran perfectly after that.

 

[Spike]

Originally posted by: Zenoth
Playing games isn't a very good way to stress test, even if a system is indeed unstable, games won't always stress the system enough to provoke an issue or a complete crash. But this subject would (and already does) deviate from the thread's main purpose. I will leave it at this but I do wish you luck with your problems man.

Your mostly correct on games not being a good stress test however all I do that fully utilizes my pc is play games so if it's stable there then I'm good. Besides, if I have issues in a game (this is the second time, first was bioshock and the patch fixed that) the first thing I do is drop my overclock to nothing and try it again. In this case even with 0 overclock the BSOD was still occuring telling me the fault lies elsewhere.

I was able to play another hour today with no crashes, sadly I have some housework to get done now or the wife will kill me So far this EAX disable has helped... I think. Never before have I gone two sessions with no crash so maybe, just maybe I'm good.

Originally posted by: Billyzeke

Originally posted by: Spike


PS. How do you add scope/silencer to gun? I had some of the M-16/HK-416 look alikes with the acog and silencer all-ready attached (took from the dead mercs) and as soon as I upgraded them the scope and silencer where taken off. Now that they are off I can't get them back on or add these items to any of my other guns, how do I do this?

Press (I) to go into your inventory and drag the scope or silencer to the weapon you are carrying to attach it. Note that not all attachments are compatible with all weapons. To remove an attachment right click on the weapon and select detach.

As far as the crashes are concerned I had lots of blue screens while going between maps, but the last Patch V1.5.05 solved that problem and the game ran perfectly after that.

Odd, the gun came with both attached, then I upgrade it and both ACOG and suppressor are removed. Now I can't add them back on even by dragging and dropping, really annoying. I don't care so much about the suppressor but the ACOG would be nice.

 

[Billyzeke]

Originally posted by: Spike


Odd, the gun came with both attached, then I upgrade it and both ACOG and suppressor are removed. Now I can't add them back on even by dragging and dropping, really annoying. I don't care so much about the suppressor but the ACOG would be nice.

When you upgrade your gun for some reason the attachments get removed. If you have the scope and silencer in your inventory you should be able to reattach them by dragging and dropping or right click and select attach scope to rifle, but you must have the gun you want to attach it to equipped. In other words the rifle must be in the center of your inventory screen where your armor-radiation suit and artifacts you are carrying are located.

 

[Spike]

Originally posted by: Billyzeke

Originally posted by: Spike


Odd, the gun came with both attached, then I upgrade it and both ACOG and suppressor are removed. Now I can't add them back on even by dragging and dropping, really annoying. I don't care so much about the suppressor but the ACOG would be nice.

When you upgrade your gun for some reason the attachments get removed. If you have the scope and silencer in your inventory you should be able to reattach them by dragging and dropping or right click and select attach scope to rifle, but you must have the gun you want to attach it to equipped. In other words the rifle must be in the center of your inventory screen where your armor-radiation suit and artifacts you are carrying are located.

Ah, I don't think I had it equiped at the time, going to have to try that.

Sadly I had another BSOD today... 4 sessions of gaming (6 hours total) and no issues until this last little time... I was hoping it was gone for good but I guess not. Dang, this game is too fun to keep crashing like this


EDIT* Well, I'm dumb, yeah the scope and suppressor work just fine if you add them to an equipped gun. Thanks for the info!

 

[skace]

Originally posted by: Spike
I searched through the thread and noticed that most of you don't have any crashes so I'm a little confused. At this point I have played ~15 hours and had 10+ blue screens.... as in complete memory dump and pc resets. I have tried lowering my oc to nothing, still crashed. Updated ATI drivers, still crashed. Changed graphical settings, still crashed. This is driving me nuts since the game is a ton of fun and the crashes are completely random. The other night I played for 5 hours, not a single crash. Last night I played for 2 hours and had 5 crashes. Today, 20 min, crash, 2 hours, crash. It happens when fast traveling, walking, acessing my inventory, picking my nose, etc...

Anyone seeing anything like this out there? Is it Vista 64 thats causing the problem? My 4870? My temps have not passed the mid-80's so I don't think temps are an issue with that card.

Thanks to anyone who can help.

I didn't have a single BSOD w/ Vista 64. By the way, mid-80C on a video card is extremely fucking hot. My Nvidia cards would BSOD mid 80s, I ended up replacing my heat sinks (this was before Clear Sky came out).

The retail video card sector does an extremely poor job of cooling their equipment, I don't even know how they get away with such a massive oversight.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16835186016

This is what I put on my cards. Don't even need fans anymore and my temps never get close to 80C.

 

[Mem]

Originally posted by: skace

Originally posted by: Spike
I searched through the thread and noticed that most of you don't have any crashes so I'm a little confused. At this point I have played ~15 hours and had 10+ blue screens.... as in complete memory dump and pc resets. I have tried lowering my oc to nothing, still crashed. Updated ATI drivers, still crashed. Changed graphical settings, still crashed. This is driving me nuts since the game is a ton of fun and the crashes are completely random. The other night I played for 5 hours, not a single crash. Last night I played for 2 hours and had 5 crashes. Today, 20 min, crash, 2 hours, crash. It happens when fast traveling, walking, acessing my inventory, picking my nose, etc...

Anyone seeing anything like this out there? Is it Vista 64 thats causing the problem? My 4870? My temps have not passed the mid-80's so I don't think temps are an issue with that card.

Thanks to anyone who can help.

I didn't have a single BSOD w/ Vista 64. By the way, mid-80C on a video card is extremely fucking hot. My Nvidia cards would BSOD mid 80s, I ended up replacing my heat sinks (this was before Clear Sky came out).

The retail video card sector does an extremely poor job of cooling their equipment, I don't even know how they get away with such a massive oversight.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16835186016

This is what I put on my cards. Don't even need fans anymore and my temps never get close to 80C.

Stable on my Vista x64 with my Gigabyte 4870 card,never even bothered keeping with the fan profile hack,so I'm running at default fan speed.

Be careful with overclocking since once the hardware is damaged due to OC you are buggered and even reducing OC back to defaults won't fix the problem.

Have you tried running Memtest86+ to rule out faulty ram?

 

[Spike]

Originally posted by: Mem

Originally posted by: skace

Originally posted by: Spike
I searched through the thread and noticed that most of you don't have any crashes so I'm a little confused. At this point I have played ~15 hours and had 10+ blue screens.... as in complete memory dump and pc resets. I have tried lowering my oc to nothing, still crashed. Updated ATI drivers, still crashed. Changed graphical settings, still crashed. This is driving me nuts since the game is a ton of fun and the crashes are completely random. The other night I played for 5 hours, not a single crash. Last night I played for 2 hours and had 5 crashes. Today, 20 min, crash, 2 hours, crash. It happens when fast traveling, walking, acessing my inventory, picking my nose, etc...

Anyone seeing anything like this out there? Is it Vista 64 thats causing the problem? My 4870? My temps have not passed the mid-80's so I don't think temps are an issue with that card.

Thanks to anyone who can help.

I didn't have a single BSOD w/ Vista 64. By the way, mid-80C on a video card is extremely fucking hot. My Nvidia cards would BSOD mid 80s, I ended up replacing my heat sinks (this was before Clear Sky came out).

The retail video card sector does an extremely poor job of cooling their equipment, I don't even know how they get away with such a massive oversight.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16835186016

This is what I put on my cards. Don't even need fans anymore and my temps never get close to 80C.

Stable on my Vista x64 with my Gigabyte 4870 card,never even bothered keeping with the fan profile hack,so I'm running at default fan speed.

Be careful with overclocking since once the hardware is damaged due to OC you are buggered and even reducing OC back to defaults won't fix the problem.

Have you tried running Memtest86+ to rule out faulty ram?

I am away of the dangers of overclocking which is why I always do a mild oc and in this case I have not even changed the vcore, it's still stock. I also ran memtest back in the day (Jan when I built the PC and first overclocked) and all was fine. I have not run it since so I'm not sure how things are doing now.

One thing I did notice last night is my 4870 actually hit 101 C while playing!!! I am changing the fan profile to 40% and we shall see if that drops the temps back into the 80's or 90's. BTW Mem, 80's and 90's are fine for the 4870 and the stock cooling actually does quite well according to ATi. It keeps the card within their "safe" range and while that seems freaking hot to you and me I guess it works.

 

[Raduque]

Well, I think I'm done with this game for now. DX10 mode runs like absolute shit @ 1024x768 (C2D @ 2.8, 2gb, HD3870), and it corrupted all it's save games for the 3rd time. I've probably put about 4 days worth of hours into this game and have had to start over thrice.

Wouldn't matter if it didn't corrupt anyway, as 1.5.04 saves aren't compatible with 1.5.05.

I don't feel like starting over again.

 

[Spike]

Originally posted by: Raduque
Well, I think I'm done with this game for now. DX10 mode runs like absolute shit @ 1024x768 (C2D @ 2.8, 2gb, HD3870), and it corrupted all it's save games for the 3rd time. I've probably put about 4 days worth of hours into this game and have had to start over thrice.

Wouldn't matter if it didn't corrupt anyway, as 1.5.04 saves aren't compatible with 1.5.05.

I don't feel like starting over again.

Actually 1.5.04 and 1.5.05 saves are compatible, at least according to the FAQ and the gamespot forums. However, I started with 1.5.05 so I can't personally say for sure if thats the case.

I personally am still having crashes though less frequently now. I cut off my profiles and let ati handle the fan speed and what do you know, it actually works quite well so I'm going to leave it like that. I'm going to drop my oc once again (even though last time that did not help) and run some benchmarks on my pc to see if everything checks out like it used to. I really want to keep playing this game but even less frequent BSOD's are annoying, especially since each time they happen I risk corrupting a boot sector or something even more fun.

 

[Mem]

Originally posted by: Raduque
Well, I think I'm done with this game for now. DX10 mode runs like absolute shit @ 1024x768 (C2D @ 2.8, 2gb, HD3870), and it corrupted all it's save games for the 3rd time. I've probably put about 4 days worth of hours into this game and have had to start over thrice.

Wouldn't matter if it didn't corrupt anyway, as 1.5.04 saves aren't compatible with 1.5.05.

I don't feel like starting over again.

Something wrong there,I'm running it in DX10 mode on my 4870 card and very humble 3800+ x2 CPU@1680x1050(Vista x64) and it runs fine,the patch is compatible with older 1.5.04 version(I have updated to the latest from that),you can try a few things like disable shadows,sun ray options I put on low,otherthings like detail,texture I put on on about 90% full,check the sound option to, by default it goes to generic software,I selected Audigy 4 option(since I have an Audigy 4),I disabled EAX too.

Only real thing I find annoying is after the last couple of patches it resets all your preferences back to default so you spend a good 5-10 minutes getting them back to how they were,this also includes keyboard mapping too.




Btw they do say its compatible with older version .

In our download section you'll find the brand new patch v1.5.05 for S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky improving both the download and retail versions of the game.
This update doesn?t have any compatibility problems with the previous patch 1.5.04.

Only thing I can think of is there are two patches,one for retail and one for download version link ,not sure if that makes any difference.

 

[Spike]

So just as an update after extensive testing I found I had a bad ram stick, it constantly failed in memtest. After removing that I was able to resume my oc and pass an overnight of both memtest and prime so as far as I can tell I'm golden. Problem is Clear Sky still BSODs albeit less frequently than in the past. Thanklfully I'm not too far from the end so I plan to finish it and come back to do some of the faction wars stuff once another patch is out.

After searching around I am finding that while this is not a common problem it does exist in other pc's, all running Vista 64. The really odd part is that while a minority of Vista 64 people have this crash, the vast majority not only report it running great but that it actually runs much better than in XP. I'm tired of debugging so I'm leaving this problem alone and will move onto Warhead and when they come out, Left 4 Dead and Fallout 3.

Thanks for the help.

 

[Martimus]

Originally posted by: Spike
I searched through the thread and noticed that most of you don't have any crashes so I'm a little confused. At this point I have played ~15 hours and had 10+ blue screens.... as in complete memory dump and pc resets. I have tried lowering my oc to nothing, still crashed. Updated ATI drivers, still crashed. Changed graphical settings, still crashed. This is driving me nuts since the game is a ton of fun and the crashes are completely random. The other night I played for 5 hours, not a single crash. Last night I played for 2 hours and had 5 crashes. Today, 20 min, crash, 2 hours, crash. It happens when fast traveling, walking, acessing my inventory, picking my nose, etc...

Anyone seeing anything like this out there? Is it Vista 64 thats causing the problem? My 4870? My temps have not passed the mid-80's so I don't think temps are an issue with that card.

Thanks to anyone who can help.

The Saphire 4870 is known to do this. You can actually update the Bios on the card, and it should fix the issues. Here is a link to the thread discussing the problems.

 

[Spike]

Originally posted by: Martimus

Originally posted by: Spike
I searched through the thread and noticed that most of you don't have any crashes so I'm a little confused. At this point I have played ~15 hours and had 10+ blue screens.... as in complete memory dump and pc resets. I have tried lowering my oc to nothing, still crashed. Updated ATI drivers, still crashed. Changed graphical settings, still crashed. This is driving me nuts since the game is a ton of fun and the crashes are completely random. The other night I played for 5 hours, not a single crash. Last night I played for 2 hours and had 5 crashes. Today, 20 min, crash, 2 hours, crash. It happens when fast traveling, walking, acessing my inventory, picking my nose, etc...

Anyone seeing anything like this out there? Is it Vista 64 thats causing the problem? My 4870? My temps have not passed the mid-80's so I don't think temps are an issue with that card.

Thanks to anyone who can help.

The Saphire 4870 is known to do this. You can actually update the Bios on the card, and it should fix the issues. Here is a link to the thread discussing the problems.

Interesting... I'm not sure if that specifically applies to my card since all other games have run with 0 issues including older ones that won't max out the card (so the speed won't keep trying to switch). This problem seems to occure if the game won't max out the card constantly so it tries to cut down and I don't think Clear Sky does this. Also, the other users that have reported this same problem with vista 64 have had other ATi cards as well as nVidia cards so I'm not sure if it's just the sapphire.

That being said I'm going to look into what your talking about so thanks for bringing that up. Now I just need to find the box so I can figure out the part number.

 

[marmasatt]

Why am I reading more and more that this game is *really* scary? Is it like DIII/Fear scary? They're calling it horror/survival and I hardly thought the first one was that.....

 

[Billyzeke]

Originally posted by: marmasatt

Why am I reading more and more that this game is *really* scary? Is it like DIII/Fear scary? They're calling it horror/survival and I hardly thought the first one was that.....

Neither is Clear Sky. I thought Shadow of Chernobyl was creepier, at least in some areas. For some reason though the scientist area in Yantar still gives me the willys in both games!

 

[imported_Imp]

Originally posted by: Billyzeke

Originally posted by: marmasatt

Why am I reading more and more that this game is *really* scary? Is it like DIII/Fear scary? They're calling it horror/survival and I hardly thought the first one was that.....

Neither is Clear Sky. I thought Shadow of Chernobyl was creepier, at least in some areas. For some reason though the scientist area in Yantar still gives me the willys in both games!

The Yantar area with zombies is pretty creepy, especially because they don't go down that easily.

The freakist part has to be the village area with invisible monsters. I've jumped a bump of times when entering houses and suddenly getting rushed by a few. Thank god for the SPSA-14.

 

[Patt]

I finished the game this past weekend, and I must say I enjoyed it almost as much as the original. The ending sequence was kind of weak, but I'm definitely that I bought this game. I had zero crashes throughout the game, and didn't run into too many bugs. I never really got into the Faction Wars part, and remained relatively neutral. I'll try it again at some point in the future, and fully throw myself behind one of the factions.

 

[ghost001]

im looking for a no-cd crack for v1.5.04, if someone can email it to me at kornghsot001@hotmail.com. and yes i own the game but, im a marine in iraq and my computer cant read the cd

 

[Kirby]

Originally posted by: ghost001
im looking for a no-cd crack for v1.5.04, if someone can email it to me at kornghsot001@hotmail.com. and yes i own the game but, im a marine in iraq and my computer cant read the cd

how did you install it then?