STALKER Mod's

[leeland]

Hi All...

Basically I am looking for your recommendations on which mod or mods to install on the original STALKER...

I got the game when it first came out...played it for about a week and it fell off the map...

I want to get back into it and what to know which of the multitude of mods I should pick from.


I was hoping for something that cleaned up some of the graphics and bugs that I noticed when I first got into it.

Any recommendations is appreciated.


p.s. I did do a search and didn't find anything specific to my request...but I didn't search that long.


Thanks,
Lee

 

[Zenoth]

AMK Mod
Oblivion-Lost
Priboi Story
ABC Inferno

These four are the "biggest" ones. The next ABC Inferno, namely version 1.2, is pretty much the biggest in terms of changes and new content, but that version isn't released even though it's officially completed, according to the last messages from the author, russo, on the Oblivion-Lost.de's discussion forums. He (russo) hasn't been on since a while and we're all wondering what's going on, but the last time he talked about it he mentioned that it was technically completed, but he has a very slow Internet connection, and he needs to upload it from another location since he can't do it from home.

Meanwhile, the others I mentioned, or even the current ABC Inferno version (1.1) are all great mods. I myself am using AMK Mod right now, it's like a toned down version of Clear Sky in certain situations and thanks to certain features, such as NPC's throwing grenades or dragging corpses around, and some more. I've never tried Priboi Story but I heard it's great, you take on the role of a Military and you play the game from their point of view, you start somewhere else, with different weapons, and the situation in the Zone is relatively different too. The Oblivion-Lost mod is a much closer feel to the original ideas that GSC had for Shadow of Chernobyl, and the latest version adopted the dynamic anomalies system that we could (and still can) find in AMK Mod prior to it. The blowouts in AMK are random but the NPC's communication system of the mod allows the NPC's to speak about it a few hours before it occurs.

There's many great mods for Shadow of Chernobyl, and as I said in my humble opinion the best ones are both AMK Mod and Oblivion-Lost, those two are equal in my book, in fact I play both and I alternate between them as I see fit. I can't wait for ABC Inferno 1.2 however, and when it's released I will certainly spend most of my time on it instead of Clear Sky or any other games for that matter, I do feel like playing through Shadow of Chernobyl again but I need something new this time. By the way Oblivion-Lost is quite less randomized than AMK Mod, in O-L you pretty much follow the story and scripted events with some random encounters thrown in but it's nothing that different when compared to vanilla, but in AMK Mod you'll see many more mutants and they'll often be roaming around more freely than in O-L or vanilla SOC, but the story still works of course, but the risks of seeing broken quests are certainly present, even though I've only seen it happen once so far.

 

[leeland]

Originally posted by: Zenoth
AMK Mod
Oblivion-Lost
Priboi Story
ABC Inferno

These four are the "biggest" ones. The next ABC Inferno, namely version 1.2, is pretty much the biggest in terms of changes and new content, but that version isn't released even though it's officially completed, according to the last messages from the author, russo, on the Oblivion-Lost.de's discussion forums. He (russo) hasn't been on since a while and we're all wondering what's going on, but the last time he talked about it he mentioned that it was technically completed, but he has a very slow Internet connection, and he needs to upload it from another location since he can't do it from home.

Meanwhile, the others I mentioned, or even the current ABC Inferno version (1.1) are all great mods. I myself am using AMK Mod right now, it's like a toned down version of Clear Sky in certain situations and thanks to certain features, such as NPC's throwing grenades or dragging corpses around, and some more. I've never tried Priboi Story but I heard it's great, you take on the role of a Military and you play the game from their point of view, you start somewhere else, with different weapons, and the situation in the Zone is relatively different too. The Oblivion-Lost mod is a much closer feel to the original ideas that GSC had for Shadow of Chernobyl, and the latest version adopted the dynamic anomalies system that we could (and still can) find in AMK Mod prior to it. The blowouts in AMK are random but the NPC's communication system of the mod allows the NPC's to speak about it a few hours before it occurs.

There's many great mods for Shadow of Chernobyl, and as I said in my humble opinion the best ones are both AMK Mod and Oblivion-Lost, those two are equal in my book, in fact I play both and I alternate between them as I see fit. I can't wait for ABC Inferno 1.2 however, and when it's released I will certainly spend most of my time on it instead of Clear Sky or any other games for that matter, I do feel like playing through Shadow of Chernobyl again but I need something new this time. By the way Oblivion-Lost is quite less randomized than AMK Mod, in O-L you pretty much follow the story and scripted events with some random encounters thrown in but it's nothing that different when compared to vanilla, but in AMK Mod you'll see many more mutants and they'll often be roaming around more freely than in O-L or vanilla SOC, but the story still works of course, but the risks of seeing broken quests are certainly present, even though I've only seen it happen once so far.

Thanks for the excellent info...


One other question...you listed 4 mods for the game...is it safe to assume that you generally install only one at time?

Also...is there a specific patch level the original game has to be at in order for some of the mods to work correctly?

Lastly...

Do you have a good site that houses these mods for download?

Thanks again for the help!

Lee

 

[Zenoth]

Hmmm ok, let's see...

The best place for the latest and most comprehensive information regarding the modifications and the discussion about them by the community is universally found at the official GSC GameWorld's forums. There's of course other places like the FileFront Files network, but the mods authors often hang about in the GSC forums for convenience and simplicity's sake.

Shadow of Chernobyl Mods Discussion Forum: http://www.gsc-game.com/index....game_type=xr&sec_id=16
Shadow of Chernobyl Mods Downloads Forum: http://www.gsc-game.com/index....game_type=xr&sec_id=17

You can also find links to main Mods downloads and hotfixes or extra sub-mods within the discussion forum (first link), but usually the downloads section itself should do the job alright, but to stay up to date on any mod's status you'll obviously need to read about them in the discussion section.

As for the game's version compatibility information what I do know as of now is as follows:

For Oblivion-Lost, that one has two versions available, one for 1.0005 and one for 1.0004, Oblivion-Lost was made with 1.0005 in mind, so it's a single download and that one is automatically compatible with that version, but if you want to play O-L with 1.0004 then you'll need a separate 'fix' to make it compatible with that version. I myself am playing it under version 1.0004 because I also play with AMK Mod.

As for AMK Mod, it's only compatible with 1.0004 as far as I know. I haven't followed the news about that mod since a while simply because the team back then (let's say about three months ago) clearly mentioned that they left the mod's current version as is without any future updates planned. You need to be informed about the fact that AMK Mod was originally developed in Russian by Russian modders, of course. But eventually some of those Russian guys from the original team along with new English-speaking members of the community collaborated to make a full mod translation into English. The Russian version of the mod has been regularly updated, well, at least more often lately than for the English version, it's indeed just the English version that hasn't been updated since a while. Nevertheless, the English version is very stable as it is, the game can be completed without any major issues (I've done it twice) and it's very fun.

As I mentioned, when it comes to Priboi Story, I don't know much, other than what I mentioned already in my previous post. I do not know under which version of the game this mod should/could be played with. And finally, for ABC Inferno, that mod is at its core made for 1.0004, but I do believe that later on russo (the author) released a hotfix to make it compatible with 1.0005. The current mod's version, namely 1.1, is being discussed and can be downloaded from the GSC forums, as well as from the mods section of the Oblivion-Lost.de web-site, but as I type this the site is down (it's been like that since the past 24 hours or so, it was alright just before that). Also, russo last mentioned that the first place where ABC Inferno 1.2 will be released is going to be on that web-site, before GSC's forums (I.E the first links to download it along with all of the new version's information will be posted there).

I hope it helps.