The Guru3D S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky Thread

[RemCo]

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A little story,
The story of S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky brings the players one year prior to the events of the original S.T.A.L.K.E.R. game in 2011.

A group of stalkers has for the first time reached the very heart of the Zone – Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, and brings about a cataclysm on the brink of a catastrophe. An immense blowout of anomalous energy changes the Zone. There are no more reliable and relatively safe roads. The entire levels vanish in the outbursts of anomalies. Stalkers and even expeditions die or end up sealed on the lost territories. New areas, which remained unknown since the time of the Zone emergence, appear on the Zone map. The Zone continues to shake with blowouts. The Zone is unstable. The anomalous activity is at its maximum.

Changes of the Zone map known to stalkers shake the fragile balance of forces in the Zone. Among the groupings, there flare up hostilities for the new territories, artifact fields and spheres of influence. There are no more old enemies or friends – now everyone is for himself. The Factions War has started between the groupings.

The protagonist is a mercenary who appeared at the edge of the opposition between stalker factions, Strelok and even the Zone itself. The main character will have to play the key role in the events, which led to creation of the Zone up to the point from which the original S.T.A.L.K.E.R. game begins.

What’s waiting for stalkers in the opened depths of the Zone? Which new challenges bear in the new territories? Why blowouts continue shaking the Zone? Why did the Zone change? How to remove its instability? Which faction will take the upper hand in the clan opposition? Why did Strelok end up in the death truck? What happened to Strelok prior to that? Was there any other choice to make? These and many other questions will get answered in the official prequel S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky.


My experience,
You start at the Clear Sky base and that base is a real framerate killer but still playable and after that the games run smooth.
First map you enter is the swamp and how you get out of the swamps is up to you,you can either run through the swamp or explore.
If you run you wont have much money or good weapons and if you explore you might even end up with a nice clear sky suit and enough cash to upgrade your weapon.
The NPC's trowing grenades isnt really a problem because the grenades can be dodged and the fast travel option is a good addition to save you from long walks.
The weapon upgrade system is helpfull and makes you life a lot easier in the Zone,be sure to repair your weapon regurlary because your machine gun will jam if its almost broke after firing one bullet and thats annoying if you fight numerous enemies.
You can get more accuracie,more damage,less weight and make your weapon suitable for additions like scope and grenade launchers.
The loneliness from SoC is not as much present in Clear Sky but in return you have faction wars and fast travel by NPC's.
The underground levels are not as scary as in SoC but walking in the open with a duty squad in the night and suddenly a bloodsucker jumped in and trow a duty guard meters in the air scared the **** out of me.
All in all its a great game and just like SoC I am sure we will see some mods that will make it even better,there are still some bugs like NPC's pushing you out of cover.

some screenshots DX10,






DX9,






As you can see DX9 runs better then DX10 and both look good.Those are at maximum settings at a resolution of 1280-1024.I am not complaining about performance even so with DX10 is running around 30 fps most of the time.

new features in Clear Sky,
• Atmosphere of the Exclusion Zone
• Research of new depths of the Zone – Red Forest, Limansk and more.
• A-Life-driven War of the Factions
• Possibility to play and lead any faction to victory
• Advanced A-Life system
• Varied behaviour of NPC stalkers in the A-Life world

• Advanced spectacular storyline scenes
• Improved AI of computer-controlled characters
• Skirting around dynamic obstacles by NPCs
• Use of grenades by NPCs

• Fast Travel
• Improved concept of detectors, artifacts and anomalies
• New system of upgrades for weapons and armor
• Weapons and armor repair
• Reworked HUD and PDA

• New version of the game engine - X-Ray 1.5.
• DirectX 10 renderer
• Improved DirectX 9 renderer - parallax bump, soft particles, depth of field, motion blur, eye adaptation effect.
• Cutting-edge and detailed game graphics (normal map)
• Inverse kinematics
• New animation engine

Enjoy the new Zone fellow Stalkers

[John]

Since you took the time to make a good introduction, this will serve as the official thread. I took the liberty to edit the thread title.

All other threads about this game will hereby be closed.

[masterchiefx2]

i really would love to get into stalker but theres just something about the graphics i dont like at all

[eRa`]

Just got it, the Collector's Edition sure looks nice.



But before I start playing seriously there is a heavy amount of tweaking to do. The following screenshots are with all settings maxxed out, I guess even Crysis performs better. V-Sync seems to be not working. Oh, and is there an option to turn DX10 on/off? Or is it just enabled by enabling Volumetric Clouds etc.?

[BaDmOfO]

Originally Posted by masterchiefx2

i really would love to get into stalker but theres just something about the graphics i dont like at all

I thought that about the first one. It only took me about half an hour to shake that off and in the end I really enjoyed the game.

[RemCo]

Originally Posted by eRa`

Oh, and is there an option to turn DX10 on/off? Or is it just enabled by enabling Volumetric Clouds etc.?

Yes,just scroll down in the menu options for full dynamic lightning.DX10 option should be under it.

[philheckler]

The NPC pushing bug is probably the most annoying I've had so far - I was in a shoot out with some bandits in the swamp machine yard yesterday and got nailed when an npc pushed me out from behind a wall..... other than that and a couple of crashes I'm really digging this game so far ..... exeeded my expectations on all fronts TBH...

[marcosamerio]

nobody test de full game on a geforce 7600Gt

cya

[nzweers]

Something very strange is going on. I have two 4850's with ccc 8.8. In Stalker Clear Sky 1.503 I get about 30 frames according to fraps, but it feels like 15 frames. When I get to open space I have about 50 frames which feels more like 30 frames. Normally this gets solved by clicking on the ingame vsync option. In Stalker the tearing goes away, but the feeling of half the framerate is still there. I tried putting vsycn in ccc 8.8 on and off, no effect. It could be my motherboard which is a 16x 4x pciE board, but other games don't have this problem. Anybody good ideas?

[Mr.Bigtime]

i wish we can play as Third Person View.

[x-speed69]

bah i had no luck to get this game any local store, seems in here release date is more likely to be 12.9(that's the answer i got from one store). Well 18h before steam unlocks.

[philheckler]

i wish we can play as Third Person View.

noooooo!

[Mr.Bigtime]

TPS rules man why no? u can see ur character. and u can see the items that u carry and the damage u taken and the effects on ur body. imagine u entered a toxic, radiation place. and u start to walk slowly and a bit crippled, blinded etc. i now know why i hated first game. it is dull. holding weapon animation is dull ..my personal opinion indeed.

[eRa`]

Some shots without Dynamic Lightning on Objects and some DX10 stuff like Volumectric Shadows. Pretty much quadrupled my framerate but still looks good. V-Sync works too, thanks to D3D Overrider.

[RemCo]

Originally Posted by Mr.Bigtime

i wish we can play as Third Person View.

Thats possible
Just add these lines into your user ltx file located in C/users/public/public documents/Stalker clear sky.

bind cam_1 kF1
bind cam_2 kF2
bind cam_3 kF3
bind cam_zoom_in kADD
bind cam_zoom_out kSUBTRACT

Now F2 will give you third person view,F3 gives you the ability to look around,F1 will bring back first person view and the + and - on your numpad give you zoom in and out.



There is also a mod that makes the NPC's loot the bodies for anyone who thinks he finds way too much stuff and needs help with looting.

NPC loot mod

[Peerless]

So the dynamic lighting is what kills the performance on this game? I don't understand why dynamic lighting kills performance so bad. In one of the screen shot threads a guy has sli gtx280's and he isn't even getting that great of performance. He said he is getting between like 40 and 56 fps. Is it a coding bug or that demanding?

[Mr.Bigtime]

Cool man. TPS FTW..but will we get CROSSHAIR after pressing F2?

[chaotic1]

just installed this game and i am getting 42-65 fps on max dx9 @1680x1050 , but it does seem to run slow in parts even though fraps says my min fps is 42fps

[Decane]

I'm a bit bothered by the thread title. The last word ("thread") does not start with a capital letter like the others, and what's with the " ' "s? Furthermore, it's not "STALKER", it's "S.T.A.L.K.E.R."! (Yes, minor difference, but I'm a perfectionist and my mental harmony will suffer because of small and insignificant details like this). I recommend renaming the thread to "The Guru3D S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky Thread" (without the quotes!).

EDIT: Also, please remove the "--------- (...)" -part from the OP; it looks horrible. You can just wrap the logo in [ center][/center] tags to make it appear at the center of the page.

[John]

Haha. I've never seen anyone spend so much time analysing a thread title. In fact I can't begin to imagine how awful your stay here must be if you get worked up by something so incredibly minor.

[CJ3D]

Originally Posted by philheckler

The NPC pushing bug is probably the most annoying I've had so far - I was in a shoot out with some bandits in the swamp machine yard yesterday and got nailed when an npc pushed me out from behind a wall..... other than that and a couple of crashes I'm really digging this game so far ..... exeeded my expectations on all fronts TBH...

AAARGH! same here, NPC's pushing you into the fire zone is soooo annoying. Worst bug ever.

[Decane]

Originally Posted by John

Haha. I've never seen anyone spend so much time analysing a thread title. In fact I can't begin to imagine how awful your stay here must be if you get so worked up by something so incredibly minor.

Well, seeing as I'll probably be frequenting this thread for some time, I thought it'd be nice to have a title that doesn't make want to change it every time I see it. And yes, you are correct: my stay at Guru3D has so far been an excruciatingly painful experience. I absolutely detest the site, and yet, for some strange reason beyond human comprehension, I seem to keep coming back to browse the forums on a daily basis... Ain't life bizarre?

[John]

Originally Posted by Decane

Well, seeing as I'll probably be frequenting this thread for some time, I thought it'd be nice to have a title that doesn't make want to change it every time I see it. And yes, you are correct: my stay at Guru3D has so far been an excruciatingly painful experience. I absolutely detest the site, and yet, for some strange reason beyond human comprehension, I seem to keep coming back to browse the forums on a daily basis... Ain't life bizarre?

If this is so important to you, how can you then live with so many spelling mistakes in your computer specs?

[Decane]

Originally Posted by John

If this is so important to you, how can you then live with so many spelling mistakes in your computer specs?

I don't have much of a choice now do I? The character restrictions forced me to make certain omissions regarding the specs. But I'll get by... Thanks for your concern, though.

[91LudeSiT]

Decane you working up an english translation yet?