Mazryonh

Thank you very much. This should make the game much better in this respect.

According to what I've discovered, there were several unused tracks in the original game that for some reason were not included in the released version of SoC. Here are a few tracks, with a description of when they were originally supposed to be used. The Wish Granter Theme, to have been used when you get closer to the Wish Granter and break into the centre of the Sarcophagus in the Chernobyl NPP: The X18 exploration theme (in the original game no music plays once you're inside the lab): The Agroprom Underground theme, used instead for the Brain Scorcher underground in the original game: The X16 exploration theme (not used, the original Brainscorcher theme was used there instead): The "Streets of Pripyat" theme (unused): The original Brain Scorcher theme: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4doENjmfD9w Another track I think would go well when you're inside the secret lab inside the Chernobyl NPP would be this one: Is there any chance someone can tell me how to insert new tracks and get them to play in specific situations (such as when you get close enough to the Sarcophagus' centre, the "Wish Granter theme" begins to play) or possibly restore the original tracks in this game?

When STALKER: SoC was first released, it was praised for its very realistic gunplay. Only a few shooters before SoC had implemented bullet ricochet (let alone for ALL of their bullet-firing weapons), and even fewer had ballistic physics (such as bullet drop) for every bullet-firing weapon. Soon after the initial release many reviewers complained about how "weak" many of the weapons were, since pistols were nearly ineffectual and enemies could absorb quite a few assault rifle bullets before going down. Quite a few weapons also suffered from "power creep" as well--such as the fact that when you got further into the game, there was often no point to using the older weapons--the 5.45mm weapons, for instance, were next to useless once the player had access to the 5.56mm weapons, the G36 renders the other 5.56mm rifles are useless except for their grenade launchers, etc. While I'm glad that the AMK 1.4 mod has increased the damage of the weapons so that they are no longer as weak as they once were, I think in a way they went too far. I've had several instances where I've had 50% bullet resistance or more, and have still been killed in three hits by an MP5, a weapon well-known for its poor armour penetration in real life. Enemies often get instant headshots far too often, and some weapons (like the AS Val or the VSS Vintorez) are much too powerful for no real reason. My more specific criticisms of this mod's gun balance are as follows: 1) In the version of AMK 1.4 I am using, 9x39mm weapons can kill ANY human NPC in ONE hit, no matter the distance, the armour the target wears, or the location hit, including the Marked One. Of course, this is patently absurd--in real life, the AS Val has a firing rate of 900 rpm, which of course would be completely unnecessary if it had the performance level depicted in this game. I would suggest that 9x39mm weapons be returned to their original function, which is to be short-ranged weapons, about 30% to 40% more powerful than 5.56mm or 5.45mm weapons and better armour penetration, but with decreasing damage with increasing range (aside from the SP-5 version) due to its subsonic speed, and more bullet drop for the same reason. 9x39mm weapons should not supplant their more common cousins the 5.45mm weapons, but complement them. 2) Shotgun slugs and darts are completely useless in 1.4. They are too inaccurate, don't deal enough damage, and fire too slowly for the damage they do. They are also worthless against even the tough mutants (slugs were originally for big game hunting, mind you), dealing even less damage to them than buckshot. This makes no sense when you read the ingame descriptions of tough mutants like the pseudogiant, who thanks to its thick skin and internal carapace shouldn't be affected much by buckshot--it would have to have its armour pierced by large rounds like shotgun slugs in order to inflict much damage, aside from using explosives. Then there is the matter of how inaccurate shotgun slugs or darts are. Even when using shotgun ironsights, I've missed quite a few shots while using slugs or darts, even at 50 meters or less from a target. This is unacceptable given that shotguns either have a low magazine capacity or else cause a lot of muzzle jump, requiring you to wait before you can bring the ironsights back on target. This means that if you miss your first shot with a slug or dart, you're left very open to enemies who can fill you full of assault rifle bullet holes. I would suggest that slugs and darts be very accurate when ironsights are used, have a good chance of causing enemies to go into their "stunning animations," and kill lightly-armoured NPCs in 2 or 3 hits (but never more than 4 for the exo-armoured enemies). Darts would be better for more accurate long-range shooting and piercing heavy armour, but deal less raw damage (especially against mutants). Slugs are great for killing light- and medium-armoured enemies (bandit jackets, leather jackets, and Stalker/Merc suits count as light armour, Military/Duty/Heavy freedom suits count as medium armour) and tougher mutants like Pseudogiants, Bloodsuckers and Chimeras, but are less useful against heavily armoured enemies (those in SKAT-9M suits or Exoskeletons) and more shorter ranged. 3) Guns with 3 types of ammunition don't use them very well. In AMK 1.4 there really is no perceivable difference between the "armour piercing," "long ranged," and "cheaper modification" versions of 9x39mm or 7.62x54mm ammo. It would make more sense if the armour-piercing variants did more damage (against human NPCs but not against most mutants) and bypassed more armour, but was shorter-ranged and less accurate than the "long range variant." The "long range" variant is the most accurate and travels the furthest, but only does average damage. The "cheaper modification" should perform the worst, being the least accurate, the least damaging (maybe a damage penalty of 20% to 30% would be appropriate for 9x39mm ammo, and 40% to 50% for the 7.62x54mm ammo), and wears out your gun most quickly. An older STALKER mod called "STALKER Redux" did have "corrosive ammunition" that caused nonstandard ammunition types (most commonly the armour-piercing variants) to wear out the guns firing them more quickly--such a feature would be welcome in this mod. 4) The marksmanship of NPCs don't seem to fit their characters. Bandits shoot just as well as trained military soldiers, aside from the fact that they carry different weapons. It would make much more sense if Bandits and Rookie Loners were the least skilled at shooting, emptying their magazines in the general direction of the enemy rather than taking aim and using the semi-automatic and burst-fire settings on their guns. More experienced stalkers and military types would use semi-automatic at long range, burst-fire at medium range, and only resort to fully-automatic when at close range. I find it funny that despite the "2-bullets-in-one-hole" burst fire setting of the AN-94 that became its main gimmick, no human NPC uses one in this manner, or the burst firing settings on any other weapon. Even NPCs equipped with scoped guns that aren't specifically locked to semi-automatic fire never use anything other than fully automatic fire. Tying different weapon accuracy levels to NPC skill levels would also be nice--right now the rookie/experienced/veteran/expert label under an NPC's name doesn't actually affect their skill with firearms at all. 5) Most gunshot wounds should cause NPCs to lay on the floor and bleed out more often, instead of being killed instantly. This is most often the case in real life as well--barring being hit with high-caliber rounds (such as shotgun slugs or hits from .50 caliber or 7.62x54mm bullets) or hits to the head, heart, neck, or spine, most victims of gunshot wounds usually fall down after being "dropped" from their gunshot wounds and bleed to death--they are not often killed instantly barring the conditions I mentioned before. If there was a way to make NPCs shot with pistol-caliber or assault rifle-caliber rounds drop down and bleed to death more often than getting killed instantly by bodyshots or limbshots, I'd welcome it. Bleeding damage should be increased as well--even in AMK 1.4 it's nothing more than a temporary annoyance even at the most serious levels, whereas in real life major hemorrhages don't stop on their own and must be treated as medical emergencies. 6) NPCs should use their grenade launchers and scopes. I believe a youtube user named xStream0rus figured out how to make NPCs use grenade launchers; a link to a demonstration vid can be found here: On a related note, NPCs using scoped guns that are not locked into semi-automatic fire should really take single shots more often. The Mercenaries at the Mercenary camp in Wild Territory often use guns with scopes, but never actually fire semi-automatically. In addition, grenades launched from grenade launchers (not the thrown kind) should have a larger blast radius than they do now (maybe a 1 meter radius would be appropriate, with a 2.5 radius for the VOG-25P grenade), though not as large as thrown grenades have. In AMK 1.4 they only do any damage if they directly hit an NPC or mutant, which is not realistic. 7) Post-hit effects should not be chained together, and should not cause the Marked One to drop a pistol. I can't begin to count the number of times when an enemy got lucky with a burst of bullets which made the Marked One dizzy, and then just kept pouring it on so that the dizzy animations kept looping into one another, making it impossible for me to shoot straight before the Marked One was killed. This also occurs with some mutants as well, specifically the Burer. I've made another thread about this already. A solution would be to make the Marked One immune to post-hit effects for 5 seconds after being affected with one, so they cannot chain together and make it impossible to shoot straight. The reason I'm arguing for post-hit effects to not make the Marked One drop his pistol is because you're already in deep enough trouble if something or someone causes you to drop your rifle. Leaving a player helpless by forcing the Marked One to drop his pistol is overkill--players will have a hard enough time saving their lives with just a pistol as it is. 8) The random hit removal function should be removed or deactivated. In other words, Vanilla STALKER has a function that makes bullet hits just "not count" and be treated by the engine as misses. The likelihood of this happening is controlled by your difficulty level, with easier difficulties making it more likely, while higher difficulties making this less likely. Hits to the head are not subject to this, nor are hits that take place lower than the value (expressed in meters) indicated by the hit_probability_max_dist variable. To my knowledge and playtesting, AMK 1.4 still has this function, which causes bullets to miss when for all intents and purposes they should have hit. Deactivating the function is relatively simple; simply editing the hit_probability_max_dist variable (found in the weapons.ltx file in the gamedata/config/weapons directory) to read a high value like 300 or 1000 will effectively make the random hit removal function only take place at ranges where enemy NPCs are not even rendered, so it never actually activates. 9) Armour should be less useless against bullets. I'm glad that AMK made it so that even a lowly bandit with an AKs-74u can be a lethal threat (even though technically he shouldn't have gotten his hands on a special forces weapon in the first place), but beyond a certain level, with good armour and a high bullet resistance stat (such as 55% or higher), it shouldn't be impossible for the Marked One to be left near death or at 1/4 health after absorbing a full magazine from an MP5 or an AK-74. If an Exoskeleton couldn't absorb that kind of damage, I very much doubt GSC would have made it so you can't sprint while wearing one. I don't know whether or not AMK 1.4 has the maximum bullet resistance capped at 50%, or has a 3 bullet limit for the Marked One's health, or something else, but I'd really expect to be more resistant to bullets after getting good armour and artifacts. It also doesn't make much sense from a realistic point of view. People using armour, especially military soldiers, are quick to discard it or use something better if it proves ineffectual against the weapons it's meant to face. In short, armour is worn because armour works. I find it quite odd that they go down from five 5.45x39mm hits, even if they're all in the chest. A possible solution would be to tone down the hit_power variables of most weapons, but not to the point where it starts taking most of your rifle magazine to kill a single NPC. In my view, only the RPG missiles, the Gauss Rifle, certain anomalies, a knife stab from behind, and a well-placed grenade should kill the Marked One or human NPCs in a single hit. I don't mind if the Marked One dies in three assault rifle shots when wearing a leather or bandit jacket, but I do mind when I'm wearing a SEVA suit and am wearing artifacts that grant an additional 25% bullet resistance (for total of 65%). In addition, Exoskeleton-armoured NPCs aren't that dangerous when you can take them down with pretty much the same amount of bullets as you would an unarmoured bandit. 10) Headshots should be made known to the player with a visual and audio cue. I don't mean something like the special icon that displays a skull with a bullet going through it in Counterstrike or Metal Gear Online, I meant a graphical indication on the mutant or NPC and a unique sound effect that plays when the player or human NPCs score a headshot so we know that one was scored. There are plenty of gory sound effects on the web that could be used to simulate the noise of a skull being cored by a bullet. As for the graphical indication, two games I have played had a special graphical effect when the player scores a headshot, Postal 2 and Bet On Soldier: Bloodsport. In Postal 2, there was a spray of white and red particles (to represent blood and skull fragments) that erupted from another player's head in multiplayer whenever a headshot was scored. In Bet On Soldier, a headshot was indicated by a bunch of blood-coloured decals flying out of the character's skull (not only droplet shaped, to indicate the pieces of flesh and bone coming out of the exit wound). Something like this would be more useful to tell players they've scored a headshot (or died by a headshot in singleplayer), since NPCs are no longer flung back 15 feet from being killed with a headshot, as they were in Vanilla STALKER. Is there a way to make it so that only suits with helmets (such as the Berill5M armoured suit, the SKAT-9M and SKAT-10M suits, along with the exoskeleton) provide some protection against headshots? It would make sense to me if, while wearing the first three types of armour in the parentheses, you got to apply half the armour's bullet resistance value against the wound. Exoskeletons worn by NPCs could make it so that they are no longer affected by headshot bonuses--it would make the grenade launchers have more purpose if they were the only way to reliably kill tough opponents like these. The aforementioned STALKER Redux mod claimed to have a locational damage system that even took into account whether or not the location you hit on an NPC, or where an NPC's bullet hit you, was actually armoured or not. You can read about this interesting feature I think could have been included in AMK in more detail here: STALKER Redux --- On the other hand, I think there is another way bullet-resistance artifacts can be handled. Instead of simply reducing the damage bullets do to the Marked One, they instead are calculated separately from the armour and represent the percentage chance that a bullet fired at them will harmlessly deflect, represented by an anomaly flash (much like the Burer can block bullets and cause them to flash harmlessly). Expert Stalkers or Monolith soldiers having this effect would definitely make fighting them more interesting, especially the Monolith so as to represent how they have been touched by the Zone and are no longer playing by the rules. A flat 25% deflection chance could be good for expert stalkers, with a 30% chance for most monolith soldiers very good to make the player fear these Zone-touched warriors. Larger projectiles like shotgun slugs/darts being subject to only half the chance for deflection would also give a player more reason to use that ammo type, and of course it would not protect against launched or thrown grenades. One final note: making it so that you can't stack transmuted artifacts of the same type or general class together would also help balance the game. Right now there's nothing stopping a player from making four "Elder Glassbeads" artifacts and getting 80% bullet resistance from those artifacts together. Tweaking the game so the Marked One cannot equip transmuted artifacts from the same class would work--such as if the Marked One tries to equip two Elder Glassbeads, or one Elder Glassbeads and one Ancient Glassbeads, or one Tears of Electra and Tears of Fire, etc., the game will not let him equip them. Only one of each transmuted artifact class (Glassbeads, Porcupine, Tears, Kolobok, Scale, etc.) can be equipped at once. I'd appreciate it if the mod were better balanced along these lines. Gun combat is one of the biggest parts of this game, and making it more fun and less frustrating would go a long way into making this mod more enjoyable and popular.

Okay, now I've got a savegame that illustrates this problem well. Here's the link: http://www.filefront.com/14774335/NPC-Move...blem-Saves.rar/ It's in the Bar, just behind the entrance to General Voronin's headquarters. Given how the Duty guards there stand around, it is next to impossible without jumping on the sandbag barriers to get past those guards, since two guards stand right between the sandbag barriers. If the guards had their AI routines changed to stand in different places or had their "personal space radius" lowered, it would be easier to get into General Voronin's headquarters without having to jump over the sandbags or kill the guards.

300000, Just you wait until you start getting into the "big leagues." When you get your hands on a weapon that uses 9x39mm ammo, you'll notice that it kills human NPCs in one shot, no matter where you hit them or what armour they're wearing. The same happens to you if you get hit by someone using a 9x39mm ammo-using weapon, no matter your level of bullet resistance. That's game-breaking and completely unbalanced--if this were true in real life, why would the Russians see fit to give the AS Val a firing rate of 900 rounds per minute and a fully-automatic firing setting? I do agree with custodis in that it's nice that someone getting close enough with a weapon can still kill you, but even so, I don't think having 50% bullet resistance should still let 3 assault rifle bullets kill you, let alone 3 bullets from an MP5--the 9x19mm rounds which it uses are well-known for their poor penetration of body armour. I will definitely make a dedicated thread about the problems with the gunplay in this mod. I'm glad that the 1.4.1 patch does tone down the "mutant overpopulation" problem that 1.4 has. Maybe a version called 1.5 for SoC could fix the remaining problems of this mod without having to add too much new content.

300000, I am using AMK 1.4, EN Rev. 94. Nothing out of the ordinary. No arsenal mod or anything, just the weather overhauled mod and some text file changes to disallow the SIG 550 to use a SUSAT scope (it uses an ACOG scope in real life, etc.)

I think I should start a thread with a poll as to how to make this mod more popular. That could get us on filefront, and the more people who get interested, the more who might be willing to help with the mod.

If this is true, I will find it extremely disappointing. Even so, how are they going to import all the Build 1935 areas into Call of Pripyat? Or the areas from Clear Sky? Call of Pripyat only features three areas as well, albeit larger ones than Clear Sky or Shadow of Chernobyl had. How are they going to handle the transition from those zones to the old ones? Even if they do halt development for SoC, there's still much to be improved in this game without actually adding new content. Fixing the various translation errors, the electro-chimera problem, the stability and pathing issues for those with less awesome video cards than the testers had--there's still work to be done here. I'll be certain to keep posting issues with this mod and SoC.

I don't know who decided to implement this into AMK, but for some reason human NPCs in this mod can't be approached closer than 3 feet away. While this may seem realistic if it was to demonstrate how the Marked One respects the space of others, it does cause several issues that should be addressed. First, if a human NPC is too close to a doorway or somewhere near where the player needs to go, it is impossible to move past the NPC until either it decides to move, or you kill the human NPC, or you load up another savegame to reset their AI routines and get them to move away. Sometimes I've been trapped by several NPCs very close to one another, who have either decided to all stand in the middle of a doorway with their guns drawn or the like, or who have all sat close to a fire and block any way out short of loading another savegame and resetting their AI routine. An example of human NPCs blocking the door way in my playthrough is how the NPCs at the Army Warehouses stalker camp walked out of the trailer after a blowout, saw something that spooked them, and crouched down while drawing their guns--completely blocking my way out of the trailer since I had taken shelter in it too. Another example of how NPCs around a campfire can block any way out is for me, often found near the campfire at the very southern end of one of the abandoned farms near the south of the Dark Valley, and at the campfire in the farmstead in the Army Warehouses level, where the Duty kill-squad has taken up residence. If you try to reach the box behind both of those campfires and there are NPCs gathering to sit around it, it may become impossible to get out thanks to the "radius of inaccessibility" around each human NPC, unless you load another savegame to reset their AI routine and cause them to sit somewhere else. Another problem this "feature" causes is that since you can't get close enough to NPCs, it is impossible to use the knife on them unless they are wounded and bleeding to death. Before you say "JUST SHOOT THEM!", you should remember that AMK did make some improvements to the stealth system--not as good as the recently-released LURK mod, but still good enough that you can sneak behind an NPC heading somewhere and get close enough to shoot them from point-blank range. I would prefer to backstab them, but unfortunately given that you can't get any closer than 3 feet to a human NPC, it's too far to hit them with the knife. One more problem that this "radius of inaccessibility" problem causes is how difficult it can be to finish off downed Zombified Stalkers with the knife. Yes, they count as human NPCs as well, and you can't get closer than 3 feet to them. When they're on the ground but not dead, I would like to have the ability to keep stabbing them with the knife until they're truly dead. Shooting at them from a distance can be difficult or impossible when they're writhing on the ground, since most of the time their feet are towards you, not their heads, and is likely to be a waste of ammunition because of how resistant they are to gunshot wounds. The most efficient method is to get close, crouch low, and use the stabbing attack with the knife on their heads. Even this is difficult given that even when a Zombified Stalker is downed, the "radius of inaccessibility" will only let you get just close enough to stab their heads. To fix this, I suggest that the closest distance you can approach an active human NPC be changed to one foot, or perhaps even 6 inches of space. This will allow us to use the knife much more effectively, and reduce the chance that human NPCs will block a doorway or make it impossible to get around them. I do not believe this should be exceedingly difficult--this sounds like something that is controlled by single variable.

Actually, after getting through to the Red Forest, I've never seen any randomly spawned artifacts, except for in the Agroprom Research Institute. I think it may be a problem with the original artifact-spawning algorithm in the original game. You can read how artifacts are spawned in SoC here: A guide to artifact-spawning in SoC Unfortunately the probability of artifacts spawning in is flawed and is extremely low. I suppose the fact that AMK modified the A-Life so that stalkers take the few artifacts that do spawn in when you're not in the map. I suppose a solution to this would be to make it so that stalkers only seek out artifacts when you're actually in the level, and don't do so when you're not in the level, as well as reducing the chances you get artifacts through random stashes. Right now I've got virtually no reason to look for artifacts out in the levels when I can always just check random stashes and get them.

ahilej, Yes, I know where to get the Flamethrower, and I recently just got it from Screw at the Freedom base. Unfortunately for some reason Stalkers keep dying for no real reason in the centre of the Freedom base, including the very important NPC named Max. With this death, I have been completely locked out of the opportunities to join the Freedom faction, the ability to complete 3 quests, and possibly some artifact recipes as well. I use an Nvidia 9800 GT, which is not too bad today, but definitely not enough to handle the very large monster mobs that can spawn in. It may in fact actually be a problem of the XRay Engine when it can't handle all the pathing problems of the various monster mobs that can spawn into an area you haven't been to in a long time. I think something else that needs to be fixed about Wild Territory is how after you've saved or killed Kruglov, the Mercenaries and Bandits keep spawning in the same areas all the time. Unlike levels like Cordon or the Dark Valley, there's no variation as to where they spawn, so it's a very linear level with very few surprises as to where your human enemies are likely to be. Having groups of bandits, mercenaries, or military wander around Wild Territory would be nice. In fact, having them wander around Lake Yantar after the X16 Psi-Emitter is turned off would be nice too.

Okay, I've noticed two bugs regarding artifact transmutation and recipes. Neither of them produce crashes (so they don't produce crash logs), but I've included savegames for the convenience of developers. In the following savegame I've put the Marked One close to his stash at the Garbage, with an Electra Anomaly buzzing nearby. Everything is normal except for one thing--if you attempt to transfer one of the "Shining Dummy" artifacts from the Marked One's backpack to his stash on the ground, the game will consider it "dropped into the anomaly" and thus automatically starting the transmutation process, no matter what you do. This means that if you attempt to put a transmutable artifact into a stash that's too close to an anomaly, the game will consider it no different from dropping it close enough to the anomaly for transmutation. This also means that if you try to transfer the artifact to the stash, you will stand a very good chance of losing it permanently. I think this should be fixed so that placing transmutable artifacts inside a stash close to an anomaly is not considered the same as dropping it close enough to the anomaly for transmutation. Here's a link to the savegame: http://www.filefront.com/14639203/Artifact...-Stash-Bug.rar/ Another problem I've got with recipes is how the final recipe for the "Glassbeads" artifact series, the "Burer Grandmother's Beads," is supposed to be given to the Marked One after defending the Rookie Village from the Mercenary attack, but Fanatic never actually gives the recipe as a reward. Here's another savegame archive, with savegames that were saved both before and after the Mercenary attack on the Rookie village (but before the Marked One talks to Fanatic to receive the reward): http://www.filefront.com/14639251/Missing-...-Savegames.rar/

Lum4r, Yes, what you saw is the bug (or programming laziness, whichever you prefer) in action. I have a savegame here on my filefront account that shows a little confrontation about to occur between a gang of unarmed zombies and three stalkers around a campfire in Cordon. I've armed one with a Monolith armour suit and an L85A2 assault rifle, another with an AK-74 assault rifle, and the third with a TOZ-34 shotgun. You can get the file here: http://www.filefront.com/14638835/Zombies-vs-Stalkers.rar/ I tried running the scenario 3 times by leading the gang of zombies to the Stalkers around the campfire. The stalker wearing the Monolith suit most often never hit the zombies--in fact it looked like he kept firing his gun too high to hit much of anything. The stalker with the AK-74 shot his gun straight, but even he could hit the zombies very well, and one time even threw a grenade near the campfire, killing himself and his two buddies. The third stalker, despite being armed with only a TOZ-34 shotgun, did the best, actually. He usually killed around two zombies with his shotgun, instead of missing so many shots like his buddies did.

ahilej, Aside from the points that Master Bates brought up, I think there's a lot that could be done to fill in the gaps in the weaponry in the vanilla game. There's also the fun factor--more guns equal more time spent playing to master them or to figure out how each work. Some guns would make the factions more unique, or at least make them less overpowered compared to the others. For example, as I said before, a "starter package" from Sidorovich would have been nice to help the game be not too hard in the beginning. A Mosin Nagant 1890 rifle would be great for long distance shots within the Cordon, making it easier to take on Bandits and soldiers so early in the game. It's a bolt action rifle, so I don't think it would be at all unbalanced. There's also the matter of NATO weapons and Warsaw Pact weapons not having matching guns to equal their roles. For instance, Freedom has no equivalent to the VSS Vintorez, the AS Val, the OT-14 Groza, and the SVD and SVU sniper rifles, all of which are used by Duty. Here's my suggestions as to which guns from NATO could match these Warsaw Pact weapons. 1) The Groza could be matched by the FN P90--both have very good armour penetrating capabilities, and handle very well at short ranges. While the FN P90 can't match the Groza's grenade launcher, it can shoot farther due to its round's better ballistics, can be suppressed (unlike the Groza in SoC), and can also mount a scope. Another potential match for the Groza is the Steyr AUG, which doesn't have the same stopping power or armour penetration factor of the Groza, but can use a 42 round magazine, a grenade launcher, and is a bullpup rifle. 2) The VSS Vintorez could be matched by the M14, which uses more powerful ammunition than the 5.56mm round, is capable of automatic fire, can be suppresed, and shoots farther with a larger magazine, though it doesn't hit as hard as the 9x39mm round does. 3) The SVD and SVU could be matched by several kinds of NATO rifles, such as the PSG-1, the DSR-1, etc. A bullpup sniper rifle recently unveiled is the "Stealth Recon Scout" although it's bolt-action, not semi-automatic. I myself would like to see a clash of East and West not only in ideologies, but also on the battlefields of STALKER. Making this mod an official part of AMK could be great, since it's a nice balance of plausibility and variety.

Master Bates, I think I tried that once, with a SEVA suit and a Universal Protection Duty suit. Both were somewhat worn down so I used a Battery artifact to make up for the loss in electricity resistance. Didn't work too well for me, sadly. I think the AMK mod version I'm using (1.4, EN 92) caps resistance to the various types of damage at some level so you can't be healed by those damage sources at more than 100% resistance like you could in the vanilla game.

Master Bates, I know it's part of the original STALKER, but I don't like how such a thing completely locks you out of certain quests or certain artifacts you can't get anywhere else. Another bad example in my playthrough is how Friar, the target of the quest "Find the weapon of the Dutyer," either never spawned in or was killed in a way that destroyed the weapon he was carrying. Because I couldn't get that quest, I was locked out of Brome's "Old Glassbeads" artifact recipe, a highly necessary one to start the "Glassbeads" artifact series quests. Also, for some reason Max at the Army Warehouses level got killed for no real reason while I was away. Without him you cannot complete the "kill the duty squad" mission (along with two others), and without that, Skinflint never stocks better stuff in his store, nor can you join Freedom (I think this would also mean that you're locked out of some artifact recipes as well, since I recently discovered that joining Duty gets you an artiface recipe). I would like it better if I could keep those options open, without having to restart the game each and every time something like this occurs. Maybe if NPCs in a level you've never been in before were invulnerable to the A-Life system until you got there (kind of like how Professor Kruglov in Wild Territory always spawns in the first time you go there), it would make certain quests more achievable. Or, you could just have the NPCs in a level you've never been in before just not exist (at least, with respect to the A-life system) before you go to that level for the first time, kind of like how Kruglov and the mercenaries always spawn in when you first enter Wild Territory and cannot be killed by the A-life system until after you enter it once.

Halford, Great to see you again. I made lots of new bug reports which I think you should read. I know that with Diodor dead (though to be more precise, in my playthrough he either never spawned in or else was killed long before I got to him), his quest won't appear. The problem is Fiend's quest isn't appearing either, despite the fact that he is still alive in my save game. If you load up my savegame and talk to Sidorovich, while telling him you completed the last "normal" assassination quest (which is "Kill trader stalker") he will not give out the "Kill the stalker named 'fiend' mission." While it's true that my game lost its features after one month of ingame time passed, I managed to fix it with a new amk.script file from wodkagt which I had to hotfix due to my version of AMK not having a file called "amk_shooting.ppe" Could this be part of the problem? I've made another thread about this.

Master Bates, I think what you described is part of a really stupid bug in vanilla SoC--NPCs will keep on repeating their original AI scripts forever and ever and ever unless they're killed. Here's a few examples. 1) After you help Professor Kruglov or Assistant Semenov get the radiation measurements, he will keep going to Sakharov and say "here are the measurements, couldn't be any more accurate" over and over again every time you enter the bunker. Normally you can't see it because he does it every time you enter Yantar after that quest is finished, but it's there. It would have been much better if after the quest was done he would either wander around Yantar taking measurements with eco-stalkers protecting him, or else just spawned and stayed inside the bunkroom of the bunker. 2) Everytime you go into Cordon, you can see Nimble's map marker make its way from the east side of the Cordon, going through the same route he took from the parking garage. 3) Everytime you enter the Army Warehouses area, the Duty kill squad always makes its way to the three corpses of the Freedom soldiers they've killed right in front of the entrance to the area, unless of course you destroy them. If you throw the three corpses into Vortex or Whirligig anomalies, their pathing script will break and several members of the kill squad will just stand there doing nothing, even during blowouts. I hope the next version of AMK will fix these and only have these scripts execute once, replaced by something more appropriate (such as Nimble spawning at his house every time you enter Cordon instead of east of the rookie camp, the Duty kill-squad spawning at the farmstead around the campfire instead of at the ambush point, etc. I like playing dress-up with the game's NPCs where I give them better weapons and armours (though they often don't equip the armours you sell them, such as the Ecologist outfits, the bandit armours, the Freedom or Duty armours, etc), so maybe I'll share a few tales here too. It's fun leading packs of mutants to them and watch them fight.

The following site mentions two quests offered by Sidorovich: "Kill Father Diodor" and "Kill the stalker called Fiend." They are both present in the "quests" section for Sidorovich, available here: http://stalker.heroesradio.com/OptionalMis....php#Sidorovich Unfortunately during all my adventures in the Zone, Sidorovich has never offered these quests to me. I've finished Lab X16 but he has never offered these 2 quests to me, even after finishing all of his other quests. Does he offer it after the Brain Scorcher is turned off, or is this a bug? I've uploaded a savegame rar archive where you can see me talking to Sidorovich, with all his other assassination missions finished. Father Diodor is not alive in this savegame, but Oleg "Fiend" Gusarov most definitely is. I still don't understand why I don't get the mission to kill Fiend from Sidorovich. Here's the link: http://www.filefront.com/14621757/Sidorovi...ing-Quests.rar/

Master Bates, Okay, this AMK Arsenal mod is looking better and better. Are you using it with the English version of AMK 1.4.1? Another weapon-related problem I think this mod could fix is how widespread the H&K MP5 chambered for 9x19mm is in the unmodded game. Waaayyy too many Loners and Bandits use it, and what's worse is that many NPCs will equip it instead of using their old weapons in the AI script for AMK 1.4. Realistically, while it might be good for killing small packs of Blind Dogs or hordes of Tushkano (two things I've used it for myself), its low stopping power, short-ranged nature, and poor penetration of body armour would all work against it in the Zone, not to mention its low capacity magazine compared to the PPSh-41 and Bizon, something that could save your life when fighting many weaker mutants at once. I wouldn't pity the poor stalker who gets caught with the MP5 against a pack of Snorks, a gang of Bloodsuckers, or a few Chimeras--you really should have packed a better weapon, bud. Besides, as I said before, the MP5 is primarily used as a Police weapon--its presence in the military is pretty rare. At most I think the H&K MP5 would be used by the Mercenaries--it's light, compact, and useful for room-clearing or CQB, but not for long-ranged combat against more heavily-armoured humans or tougher mutants, and the Mercenaries use Western weapons almost exclusively. Another group of users could include the Freedom base guards on the inside of the base in the Army Warehouses level, mainly for killing Blind Dogs that end up on the inside, but even that's questionable, since the Freedom base has lots of wide-open spaces. Some other western SMGs useful for the Zone could include the H&K UMP (it fires .45 ACP rounds, much better stopping power for tougher mutants and armoured humans), the MP5/10 (chambered for the 10x25mm round, resulting in much better stopping power and better long-range shots), the Calico M960 (50 or 100 rounds of 9x19mm is much better than the MP5's 30), and the MP9. As famous as the FN P90 is, I don't think it would be very useful in the Zone. Bigger mutants aren't scared in the least by 5.7 mm holes--using them against bloodsuckers, snorks, or pseudogiants would likely cause them to bleed out after 3 hours, but not before they caught up with you and bit your head off.

Master Bates, I haven't tried this Arsenal mod myself (though I plan to), but does it change the "standard weapons" of the factions? By "standard weapons" I mean which weapons are most commonly used by which factions. In the vanilla game, Duty's standard firearms are the AN-94 and OC-14 Groza, Freedom and Mercenaries use the LR-300 and SIG 550, Ecologists use the L85A2, while Bandits stick to MP5s, BM-16s, and AKS-74Us. I'd like to know what the new "standard weapons" are for the AMK Arsenal mod. I would agree with you that including and balancing this mod for AMK 2.0 would be a welcome addition. Personally I think that there were some very questionable weapon assignment choices in the vanilla game. Some of the worst cases are the weapons assigned to the bandits--MP5s and AKS-74Us are principal weapons of police units and special forces/second-line military personnel, not likely to be the stuff bandits would get their hands on. If anything, I think Bandits would prefer guns suited for either long-range assassinations, intimidation value, short-range firepower, concealability, and overall use mostly outdated weapons. Here's my list of weapons they could use, all of which could fit the aforementioned themes. Information on each of these can be found at this site. 1) Pistols and Machine Pistols Makarov PM, Makarov PMM, Fort 12, Tokarev TT, OTs-33 Pernach, Beretta 92FS, Desert Eagle, Skorpion Vz.61, TEC-9, Mini Uzi, MAC-10, MAC-11 2) SMGs PPSh-41, PP-19 Bizon (elite bandits only), Uzi. 3) Shotguns TOZ-34, BM-16, Winchester 1300 (basically anything sawed-off, or found in a hunter's hands, or easily concealed for easier mugging) 4) Rifles SR-3 "Vikhr," 9A-91 (these compact assault rifles are for elite Bandits only, but useful for their short-ranged but lethal 9x39 mm round), AK-47 (the most illegally manufactured firearm in the world), Scoped Mosin Nagant 1890, VSS Vintorez (for elite bandit snipers only who hunt you down at night and try to assassinate you). I think a weapons list like this for the Bandits would be more thematic and less of a weapon set that speaks of "any and all low-tier guns thrown at them." It would also make more sense if most rookie or experienced bandits equipped with pistols, or machine pistols, or outdated SMGs just "sprayed-and-prayed," in other words, just set their guns to full automatic fire and try shooting wildly to hit you. They're small-time gangsters who mostly rely on strength of numbers to win their battles, not hardened Stalkers or well-disciplined soldiers who take their time to aim and hit you. Come to think of it, way too many people in the Zone use the AKS-74U in the wrong places. Since it has a shortened barrel and a higher firing rate than its parent rifle the AK-74, it really is optimized for CQB and room clearing, not in the wide open fields that many areas of the Zone in SoC are composed of. In real life, people will use the right weapons for the right jobs, and sticking so many soldiers with a short-range weapon when they're supposed to be fighting in terrain favouring long-range shots really doesn't make much sense. The only places I think where AKS-74Us would be appropriate would be the Agroprom Underground, the Military Soldiers who come after you in X18 and the Bandit base just above it since that location is all indoors, the military guards posted indoors at the Agroprom Western Facility, and maybe inside the Duty base (since Duty favours Warsaw Pact weapons and the Duty base at the Bar favours short-ranged combat anyhow. I spoke with WodkaGT once, and while he doesn't like the AMK Arsenal mod, he is at least willing to entertain the possibility of tweaking the Desert Eagle's stats to more realistic values and giving that pistol its own unique ammo, which is something that really should have been done for unmodded SoC.

ahilej, Unfortunately I haven't played Oblivion Lost, so I couldn't honestly give a good comparison, but I've watched quite a few vids that show gameplay on it. I do agree that having your work used without credit is quite a bad thing, though I think something like this emphasizes the need for better and faster English translation for this mod to reach more people. The more people interested, the more people who may be able to help develop this mod. The more people who can work reliably on this mod, the better it will likely become. I'll agree that cars really don't belong in the Zone--there are no working gas stations there, and getting gas inside would be a real problem. Besides, while I appreciate the "fast travel" system introduced in Clear Sky, being forced to walk everywhere in the Zone as you must in SoC really reinforces just how forlorn and dangerous the Zone actually is, especially with all the new AMK features such as blowouts and how they change the locations of anomalies--no two trips across the Zone are going to be alike, with attacks from mutants, other stalkers, and hidden anomalies likely every step of the way. I do think AMK could use a few design decisions from Oblivion Lost, though. Making it easier for the player when they start could be as simple as having Sidorovich giving you a small "starter package" once you give him the Flash Drive from Nimble. It could consist of the following items: 1) A Sparkler artifact. While this may not seem like much, even having this basic artifact equipped will allow you to recover stamina while walking, allowing players to get where they need to go more easily and without as much interruption. 2) A free TOZ-34 shotgun with some slugs, making it a little easer to kill Bandits in the Garbage and later until you get an AK-74. 3) A Spring artifact, since you won't have an anomaly detector until you get to Barkeep, and because Springboard, Vortex, and Whirligig anomalies are the most common. All three of those do Impact damage, which a free Spring artifact could make the game a little more forgiving in this respect. I believe with these in a starter the game could be more accessible to new players without making the game's early stages too easy. Do you think you could explain in more detail as to what you think Oblivion Lost did wrong?

ahilej, Did you set blowouts to occur every 12 hours? You can only sleep for a maximum of 5 hours with your sleeping bag, and then you can't sleep for a number of hours. I set my blowouts to occur once every 30 hours, so using that method would take a very long time. It would be better to use CarbonMonoxide's method and load a save from before you entered Wild Territory for the first time so the anomalies will go to different locations. Even so, that method still has its own problems . . . CarbonMonoxide, Normally that would work for me, but unfortunately as I take care not to enter Wild Territory too soon, that usually means enormous hordes of mutants have gotten there, including a large group of Electro-Chimeras. Everytime I have to restart the level from an earlier save, it means I have to kill them all again. Many times Kruglov was eaten by a bunch of mutants getting close to his location long before I could even get near his area. It would make a lot more sense if the mutant population was capped at some maximum when you enter an area for the first time, since they usually aren't being killed to reduce their numbers the first time you enter the area.

I would have liked this mod to come to full fruition. There's still lots of us who think that the decision by GSC to make left-handed guns for someone who clearly shoots right-handed was pretty awful, and better replacement gun models with the casings ejecting in the correct direction could help that. There's also the fact that with all the different factions and stalkers from various different countries would bring in a huge diversity of armaments with them. People want the right tools for the right jobs, and sometimes they trust certain gun manufacturers more than others--both of these reasons why more kinds of guns would enter the Zone. The AMK Arsenal mod in my view would have been a nice step in that direction. Here's hoping it gets picked up again, or at least the AMK 2.0 team allows for an option to install an updated version for AMK 2.0.

I know that the AMK team was planning on throwing out these creatures entirely for version 2.0, but I think they could be great with just some minor changes. For one thing, I think they are great addition to SoC in that they are one of the few ways that the game engine uses other damage types from a creature that is not from Impact-based, Bullet-based, or Rupture-based attacks. Most of the other damage types that armour protects against (such as burn damage, chemical burn damage--should have been called chemical corrosion damage, in my view--or electricity damage) come from anomalies, and because anomalies don't move on their own and have a small radius of effect, are easy to avoid so along as you are careful. Therefore when you wear armour that doesn't protect much against anomalies, such as the Exoskeleton or Berill-5M Armoured suit, it's not that much of a problem if you have the special anomaly detector from Sakharov that displays them as icons on the PDA map, or if you use lots of bolts. For the same reasons, there's often little to no point in using the artifacts that reduce damage from these more exotic sources as well. Creatures like the Burer or the Pyrogeist (both of which use fire damage), and the Electro-Chimera (which uses electricity damage) are much harder to avoid, since they'll actively seek you out and try to hurt you, which is another incentive to use the right armour (or at least the right artifacts) to reduce damage. Since no one I've seen wants to give humanoid NPCs the means of non-bullet, rupture, or explosion damage, despite the fact that real-life methods exist for this, such as flamethrowers, incendiary grenades or bullets, electrolasers, flamethrowers or gas grenades modified to spray corrosive chemical weapons, etc., keeping creatures who can deal these types of damage is an important part of the gameplay in my view. Having said that, the current version of Electro Chimeras is completely unbalanced. They often come at you in BIG PACKs and explode with electricity EVERY TIME they are shot (albeit with a small recovery time between explosions), so unless you are able to snipe ALL of them from a safe distance so that you can't be hit by their electrical discharges, you are very likely to die many times before successfully killing them all. There are two ways around this: 1) Either make it so that when heading into a level, the number of Electro-Chimeras is limited to three. For some reason, whenever you first enter a level there's huge hordes of mutants waiting for you. This could be a bug on the part of the A-life program (since you've never been there before, there's likely to be huge number of monsters that have accumulated there), but so as long as you've got a shotgun or a submachine gun, can sprint some distance, and carry enough ammo to kill them all, it's not much of a problem. Big packs of Electro-Chimeras are a real problem, though, with big packs of Bloodsuckers a close second (since they turn invisible and are very resistant to everything but buckshot from shotguns). 2) Change the abilities of Electro Chimeras so that they explode with electricity only when they die, and instead of having them deal rupture damage when they attack with their claws, have them deal electricity damage instead. This would make a bit more sense, because if they are coursing with electricity, they should be able to shock those they attack just by touching them, unlike other mutants who have to hit hard enough to make their rupture attacks get through armour. This time, their electrical explosion attacks are much more bearable and tactical, now that they will force the Marked One to get some fair distance away before delivering the killing blow, as well as stocking up on electrical-resistance artifacts or armour. 3) Make them only spawn in when the Stalker chat network mentions them, and have Barkeep or Sidorovich give rewards when the player kills the Electro Chimeras mentioned. This way, seeking them out for the bounty on their heads could be a great way to motivate players to kill them. It also makes their appearances more special. These solutions could go a long way towards making these unique creatures less of an annoyance and more towards enhancing the mood of the Zone. There's lots they could do for the game without removing them entirely.