I picked SoC back up yesterday. I left off terrified of progressing into X-16. Got through rather easily, honestly. I guess a break from the game reduced the effects of the game's atmosphere a bit. And the thing at the end never even saw me. A grenade and a clip took him right out.
I left off yesterday having just entered Red Forest and what I'm assuming is the home stretch.
Just a tip - once you finish your business in the Red Forest, there's the final quest to the north. The dialogue makes it sound like you should do it immediately - you don't need to. You can go back down to the Bar and trade stuff and get ready to go. And you've already met Doc, right? You want to make sure to do that before you go past the Red Forest.
I picked SoC back up yesterday. I left off terrified of progressing into X-16. Got through rather easily, honestly. I guess a break from the game reduced the effects of the game's atmosphere a bit. And the thing at the end never even saw me. A grenade and a clip took him right out.
I left off yesterday having just entered Red Forest and what I'm assuming is the home stretch.
Just a tip - once you finish your business in the Red Forest, there's the final quest to the north. The dialogue makes it sound like you should do it immediately - you don't need to. You can go back down to the Bar and trade stuff and get ready to go. And you've already met Doc, right? You want to make sure to do that before you go past the Red Forest.
I got a similar vibe for the mission from the Barman that sent me to Red Forest in the first place.
Don't think I've met Doc. Doesn't sound familiar.
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DrakeEdgelord TrashBelow the ecliptic plane.Registered Userregular
I picked SoC back up yesterday. I left off terrified of progressing into X-16. Got through rather easily, honestly. I guess a break from the game reduced the effects of the game's atmosphere a bit. And the thing at the end never even saw me. A grenade and a clip took him right out.
I left off yesterday having just entered Red Forest and what I'm assuming is the home stretch.
Just a tip - once you finish your business in the Red Forest, there's the final quest to the north. The dialogue makes it sound like you should do it immediately - you don't need to. You can go back down to the Bar and trade stuff and get ready to go. And you've already met Doc, right? You want to make sure to do that before you go past the Red Forest.
I got a similar vibe for the mission from the Barman that sent me to Red Forest in the first place.
Don't think I've met Doc. Doesn't sound familiar.
After X-16, you got an objective to go back down to the Cordon and meet a guy. Do that short questline or you miss out a significant portion of the final quest and the good ending.
I picked SoC back up yesterday. I left off terrified of progressing into X-16. Got through rather easily, honestly. I guess a break from the game reduced the effects of the game's atmosphere a bit. And the thing at the end never even saw me. A grenade and a clip took him right out.
I left off yesterday having just entered Red Forest and what I'm assuming is the home stretch.
Just a tip - once you finish your business in the Red Forest, there's the final quest to the north. The dialogue makes it sound like you should do it immediately - you don't need to. You can go back down to the Bar and trade stuff and get ready to go. And you've already met Doc, right? You want to make sure to do that before you go past the Red Forest.
I got a similar vibe for the mission from the Barman that sent me to Red Forest in the first place.
Don't think I've met Doc. Doesn't sound familiar.
After X-16, you got an objective to go back down to the Cordon and meet a guy. Do that short questline or you miss out a significant portion of the final quest and the good ending.
I found it sitting in my quest log after finishing Red Forest. Must have forgotten that I picked it up since it wasn't showing a quest marker. Probably assumed it was bugged; never occurred to me to go underground. I went over to see him before walking into Pripyat. Kinda figured that was the deal after finishing X-10.
Y'know, that Misery mod for CoP sounds like it'd be a great way to replay the game, if not for the fact that:
A) I just replayed it a few months ago, and That kind of crazy harsh gameplay can really grate on me after a while.
I mean it sounds awesome, especially since there's been so much added to the whole thing, but making shots more lethal in a game where you can already get taken out fairly easily can lead to a whole lot of "BS moments". Maybe if it gets a bit more refined with patches and different versions after a while once people provide more feedback, I'll give it a shot.
Oh, and YAY STALKER 2 STILL LIVES (kinda)!
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DietarySupplementStill not approved by the FDADublin, OHRegistered Userregular
Hypothetical question: how much would you pay for a turn-based STALKER game, a la X-COM/Jagged Alliance 2?
Stalker 2 lives: According to Facebook...I'll believe it when I have the game in my hands!
And screw making these games harder (at least at the start)- Just started CoP and I can tell I'm in The Zone. Hi Anomaly, I see you move now! Oh, a merc is shooting at m--dead!. Reload 20 times. I so need to find a decent gun/armor...
Xeddicus on
"For no one - no one in this world can you trust. Not men. Not women. Not beasts...this you can trust."
Hypothetical question: how much would you pay for a turn-based STALKER game, a la X-COM/Jagged Alliance 2?
I think there's real potential there...
I think a top down turn based game would take away some of the atmosphere (no more frantically running around outside in the middle of the night and then seeing a bloodsucker uncloak right in front of your face in first person, no more "holy shit what was that noise ugh ugh where is the ladder topside?!" positional audio, etc), but I still think it would be pretty awesome if it was done right.
The big problem would be translating STALKER's environments, since the games are all about huge, open expanses dotted with structures and the occasional underground tunnel system or lab to break things up. You'd probably have to do a hybrid realtime movement/turn based combat system like the Fallout games to avoid having to walk from end of The Garbage to the other over the course of six thousand turns.
The answer to your question, though? A billion dollars.
SmokeStacks on
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DrakeEdgelord TrashBelow the ecliptic plane.Registered Userregular
Too bad Gorky 17 is still kind of a mess despite GoG's efforts so far. It seems to have a bit of STALKER vibe to it and it's turn based. A little weird in its rules but seems to be fun.
I'm as done with SoC as I'm likely to get. I wound up trapped in the
talking hologram's chamber in the Monolith lab
with no way out because what was supposed to happen in that room didn't actually happen, and I'm not in the mood to fight my way back through to get there again. My last quicksave literally happened at the exact second I heard a creaking sound, which I thought was the typical environmental sound effect. Maybe it was, but when I turned around to get out the door was closed and it refuses to open. Oh well, at least I can youtube the end.
If it makes you feel better I thought that was the real ending (minus it not doing anything at all like it sounds like it did for you), had no idea you could
track the hologram guys down and kill them
. Couldn't be bothered doing it once I found it out.
In CoP related news: Emissions are a tad annoying, especially since there have been a few of them now yet both anomalies I traversed seemed to be barren of artifacts. Random event that can kill you if you happen to be too far from cover needs a better pay off... thank The Zone for Complete's teleporting. :P
"For no one - no one in this world can you trust. Not men. Not women. Not beasts...this you can trust."
Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
edited January 2012
Oh. Snap.
Man, I wasn't planning on doing an LP for a while, but when that comes out I might need to make time for it. Crossing my fingers that it's basically a complete balls-to-the-wall whole new game and not something you can run through in a few hours.
EDIT: I'm super-excited over the simple fact that I've never seen any of the landscape they show.
With the sad news of Stalker 2, I decided I'd take the opportunity to post a plug for LURK.
Check out my sound design dev diaries spawning the last several months, let me know what you think, give us some feedback, etc etc. If we can't have Stalker 2 at least we'll work hard at making Stalker 1 reach somewhere near its full potential!
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MongerI got the ham stink.Dallas, TXRegistered Userregular
So how much of your environmental work going to be with EAX? I ask mostly because I've got a (cheap) recording-oriented audio interface with no EAX support. Hell, it only begrudgingly functions outside of ASIO.
The ambient tones definitely add a lot. I'll be interested to hear how this starts shaping up once it's less placeholdery, but it's at least nice to hear that things are mostly working. That short corridor demo was particularly jarring, in a way that sort of made me wonder about how you're going to deal with the lack of gradiation between soundscapes. In half-open areas like that, the number of reflections and general tinnyness sounds mostly fine in the middle of that tunnel and way less fine towards the ends of it, since there's less surface to be reflecting noises back at you. Also some weirdness where the low end comes out of nowhere on exit, since that reverb processor is cutting it out without compensating for the volume increase that would come from the inflated high end. I don't know if that's something you're going to want to deal with by understating some effects in those areas or by adding in transitional soundscapes that aren't as wet near entrances or just playing with where the bounds are or what. Maybe you've already planned for it, or it won't be an issue once everything's tuned properly. No idea. Just started thinking about it.
Wait, wait. Hold on just a second there. Was that a sick burn on Dead Space? Incidentally, Dead Space had exceptional sound design. The first one, at least. The second one not as much, insofar as I can remember. The second one not as much on a lot of counts, really.
Ha! No, no burn on Dead Space. Just a joke I am planning on using a bit of EAX in the right environments, but having it off won't make a huge difference, I suppose. Most of the stuff I am doing is more on the subtle side. You'll be able to just leave EAX turned off in the options menu.
About what you mentioned, there is essentially nothing that can be done about that. Rebuilding the EAX.dll and how the engine works with it is way beyond the scope of my abilities and anyone else I've met, to be honest. Essentially, an EAX environment is placed via a "box" in the level editor. All sides of that box act as walls which reflect sound. There is no support for making a non-enclosed shape, and I don't see that ever being possible. I'd love it if I had all of the tools that Frostbite has but ...oh well. I make do with what I can, and, so far, I've actually accomplished quite a bit. The next step is polishing and actually recording/creating all of the sounds.
Polishing all of the features I've implemented will be difficult, I imagine. Almost everything I've wanted to use just doesn't exist, and I've had to code or fix or something just to get it going. I have high hopes, though. I'm continually moving things forward and I am confident that it will all come together.
Honestly, just being able to re-record (using my own equipment) and replace most of the sound effects in the game with my own high-quality samples will make a huge difference. So much stuff in that game just sounds like absolute crap. That is also the most fun, to be honest (doing my own foley and what not).
Daemonion on
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MongerI got the ham stink.Dallas, TXRegistered Userregular
I was thinking/talking more about ways to compensate for the tools at your disposal, but sure.
Either way, it's definitely going to be a giant workload. So have fun with that, I guess.
Okay, I've gone through the OP and read the advice regarding mods and the like, but I thought hey, I might as well ask anyway since things might've changed and it's always a good excuse to talk about Stalker. So I played this once, years ago, and I now want my girlfriend to play it, since I think she'll love the atmosphere. I figure it's a good idea to firstly install the latest official patch to smooth things over as much as possible, but I also guess it'd be a good idea to run some collection of mods on there too. Now her PC isn't the most cutting-edge (it's more recent than my own archaeological relic, which did just about run vanilla, launch Stalker with everything on minimum), so I'm not looking for "THE MOST BEST GRAPHICS OVERHAUL!" stuff. I'm thinking performance should be the target, visuals can come second. Also, I remember it being absolutely balls-hard, so if there's included mods that also make it a bit easier, without losing the hostility of the Zone, that'd be dandy. So with that in mind, which way should I go?
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DietarySupplementStill not approved by the FDADublin, OHRegistered Userregular
I'm not looking for "THE MOST BEST GRAPHICS OVERHAUL!" stuff. I'm thinking performance should be the target, visuals can come second. Also, I remember it being absolutely balls-hard, so if there's included mods that also make it a bit easier, without losing the hostility of the Zone, that'd be dandy. So with that in mind, which way should I go?
Stalker: Complete. Not only does it improve the visuals, it also fixes a lot of performance issues too. Kind of a win-win.
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ShimshaiFlush with Success!Isle of EmeraldRegistered Userregular
Stalker Complete is highly recommended. Just don't try to use Dynamic Lighting with it and expect more than a slideshow.
Steam/Origin: Shimshai
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MongerI got the ham stink.Dallas, TXRegistered Userregular
I'm not looking for "THE MOST BEST GRAPHICS OVERHAUL!" stuff. I'm thinking performance should be the target, visuals can come second. Also, I remember it being absolutely balls-hard, so if there's included mods that also make it a bit easier, without losing the hostility of the Zone, that'd be dandy. So with that in mind, which way should I go?
Stalker: Complete. Not only does it improve the visuals, it also fixes a lot of performance issues too. Kind of a win-win.
It also fixes shit tons of bugs and the more egregious gameplay issues. So it's win-win-win. In the event that her computer can't quite handle Complete, ZRP and the Stolls pack are still good options.
The difficulty, though? Every mod pack adds a repair option, and that's going to make the whole experience way more tolerable, but it's still going to be the same hard U that SoC has always had. For the first few missions, you're going to be undergeared, and it's going to be hard. At the end of the game, there's exoskeleton dudes with perfect accuracy that become psychic when the level design in the final areas bugs out the AI, and it's going to be hard. The only mod I've used that legitimately smooths out the difficulty curve is LURK, with a combination of AI fixes and equipment rebalances. It's still probably a higher overall difficulty than vanilla, though, and LURK is absolutely not for a first playthrough, anyway.
I'm installing Clear Sky complete. Played both of the others relentlessly. The Zone calls again.
Guys...I still haven't gotten around to STALKing.
How does modding work with the Steam versions? Just installing/swapping files from the directory I guess?
I'm not looking for "THE MOST BEST GRAPHICS OVERHAUL!" stuff. I'm thinking performance should be the target, visuals can come second. Also, I remember it being absolutely balls-hard, so if there's included mods that also make it a bit easier, without losing the hostility of the Zone, that'd be dandy. So with that in mind, which way should I go?
Stalker: Complete. Not only does it improve the visuals, it also fixes a lot of performance issues too. Kind of a win-win.
It also fixes shit tons of bugs and the more egregious gameplay issues. So it's win-win-win. In the event that her computer can't quite handle Complete, ZRP and the Stolls pack are still good options.
The difficulty, though? Every mod pack adds a repair option, and that's going to make the whole experience way more tolerable, but it's still going to be the same hard U that SoC has always had. For the first few missions, you're going to be undergeared, and it's going to be hard. At the end of the game, there's exoskeleton dudes with perfect accuracy that become psychic when the level design in the final areas bugs out the AI, and it's going to be hard. The only mod I've used that legitimately smooths out the difficulty curve is LURK, with a combination of AI fixes and equipment rebalances. It's still probably a higher overall difficulty than vanilla, though, and LURK is absolutely not for a first playthrough, anyway.
Alright, cheers. Yeah, I guess repairing stuff was the main hindrance, so that'll be good. When you guys are saying 'improve the visuals', you do mean 'at no cost to performance', right? Because yeah, dynamic lighting aside, I think getting to-or-above 30fps will be the priority. When I played it, my PC's clunkiness only added to the difficulty, making it much harder to get an accurate shot in between stutters.
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DrakeEdgelord TrashBelow the ecliptic plane.Registered Userregular
I'm not looking for "THE MOST BEST GRAPHICS OVERHAUL!" stuff. I'm thinking performance should be the target, visuals can come second. Also, I remember it being absolutely balls-hard, so if there's included mods that also make it a bit easier, without losing the hostility of the Zone, that'd be dandy. So with that in mind, which way should I go?
Stalker: Complete. Not only does it improve the visuals, it also fixes a lot of performance issues too. Kind of a win-win.
It also fixes shit tons of bugs and the more egregious gameplay issues. So it's win-win-win. In the event that her computer can't quite handle Complete, ZRP and the Stolls pack are still good options.
The difficulty, though? Every mod pack adds a repair option, and that's going to make the whole experience way more tolerable, but it's still going to be the same hard U that SoC has always had. For the first few missions, you're going to be undergeared, and it's going to be hard. At the end of the game, there's exoskeleton dudes with perfect accuracy that become psychic when the level design in the final areas bugs out the AI, and it's going to be hard. The only mod I've used that legitimately smooths out the difficulty curve is LURK, with a combination of AI fixes and equipment rebalances. It's still probably a higher overall difficulty than vanilla, though, and LURK is absolutely not for a first playthrough, anyway.
Alright, cheers. Yeah, I guess repairing stuff was the main hindrance, so that'll be good. When you guys are saying 'improve the visuals', you do mean 'at no cost to performance', right? Because yeah, dynamic lighting aside, I think getting to-or-above 30fps will be the priority. When I played it, my PC's clunkiness only added to the difficulty, making it much harder to get an accurate shot in between stutters.
If you want the most up to date bugfixes and performance boosts then you can't do better than ZRP. Complete uses an old version of ZRP for bugfixes and optimization. ZRP also defaults as a "vanilla" installation, changing very little of the core game. So you can tweak things you want with the Modifier front-end for ZRP, like adding in a repair option or tweaking quest lengths, headbob, hunger or whatever. There is no graphics upgrade to ZRP so it's lightweight and installs quickly and will not stress any computer capable of running vanilla SOC.
Matter of fact they just released a new version yesterday, so nothing will be as up to date for SoC bugfixing and optimization as far as I know. They've even added in a sleeping bag.
ShogunHair long; money long; me and broke wizards we don't get alongRegistered Userregular
Enjoying the heck out of Clear Sky Complete so far. Graphics maxed out; FPS glossy. Never thought I'd see STALKER run this well. Faction war and settings are fun thus far. Combat has been crazy intense. Miss the geiger noise for radiation and fuck puddles. Even the tiniest puddle reduces you to a crawl. That's silly. Complete has done good work but I feel like I should look into other mods.
I'm not looking for "THE MOST BEST GRAPHICS OVERHAUL!" stuff. I'm thinking performance should be the target, visuals can come second. Also, I remember it being absolutely balls-hard, so if there's included mods that also make it a bit easier, without losing the hostility of the Zone, that'd be dandy. So with that in mind, which way should I go?
Stalker: Complete. Not only does it improve the visuals, it also fixes a lot of performance issues too. Kind of a win-win.
It also fixes shit tons of bugs and the more egregious gameplay issues. So it's win-win-win. In the event that her computer can't quite handle Complete, ZRP and the Stolls pack are still good options.
The difficulty, though? Every mod pack adds a repair option, and that's going to make the whole experience way more tolerable, but it's still going to be the same hard U that SoC has always had. For the first few missions, you're going to be undergeared, and it's going to be hard. At the end of the game, there's exoskeleton dudes with perfect accuracy that become psychic when the level design in the final areas bugs out the AI, and it's going to be hard. The only mod I've used that legitimately smooths out the difficulty curve is LURK, with a combination of AI fixes and equipment rebalances. It's still probably a higher overall difficulty than vanilla, though, and LURK is absolutely not for a first playthrough, anyway.
Alright, cheers. Yeah, I guess repairing stuff was the main hindrance, so that'll be good. When you guys are saying 'improve the visuals', you do mean 'at no cost to performance', right? Because yeah, dynamic lighting aside, I think getting to-or-above 30fps will be the priority. When I played it, my PC's clunkiness only added to the difficulty, making it much harder to get an accurate shot in between stutters.
If you want the most up to date bugfixes and performance boosts then you can't do better than ZRP. Complete uses an old version of ZRP for bugfixes and optimization. ZRP also defaults as a "vanilla" installation, changing very little of the core game. So you can tweak things you want with the Modifier front-end for ZRP, like adding in a repair option or tweaking quest lengths, headbob, hunger or whatever. There is no graphics upgrade to ZRP so it's lightweight and installs quickly and will not stress any computer capable of running vanilla SOC.
Matter of fact they just released a new version yesterday, so nothing will be as up to date for SoC bugfixing and optimization as far as I know. They've even added in a sleeping bag.
Excellent, thanks for that! Now I just need to get my copy back, since I realised my brother has it. Damnit to hell.
For anyone who is interested I just posted a new dev diary for LURK.
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CheesecakeRecipe"Should not be allowed to post in the Steam Thread" - IsornSqualor Victoria, Squalor Victoria!Registered Userregular
Fascinating stuff Dae, really looking forward to seeing all of your soundwork come together in the final product.
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MongerI got the ham stink.Dallas, TXRegistered Userregular
Always interested. Sounding great so far. The echo version of that shot sounds excellent in that demo, but that's in an area with a sound profile that's relatively close to the recording. The real test is what it's going to sound like in enclosed environments and such, where it wouldn't have so long a tail, and whether that's going to sound more wrong than the lack of an echo outside. The simple crack version on its own seems like it's going to be a bit too soulless for much of anywhere, though (assuming it's the same take) the deeper EQ on it makes it sound a lot more neutral and immediate compared to the light and airy sound of the echo version. The echo version could benefit from that, since you want to avoid having too much of any single kind of color to the tone. Or you could just mix the two, which would probably also sound fine. The other thing is that shots fired from the player's weapon are probably a higher priority for sounding correct than shots fired by enemies, since, as a player, your weapon is your fundamental avenue of interaction with the game, and people tend to focus on that more heavily than other sounds as a result. Their perceived immediacy is a big deal there. Your sounds are going to stray airier and spacier by virtue of recording from a distance, so it's probably going to be in your interest to deepen and sharpen their tones for that reason. Assuming you aren't recording a separate soundset for player shots. Which would be crazy.
I don't know how meticulous you really want to get about it (or how much time you have to be meticulous), but some ideas for things you might experiment with, if you haven't:
-Further reduce the delay between the crack and the echo. There's probably a midground somewhere that will sound decent for most environments, if the current one doesn't. Might get super annoying to do outiside of a multitrack editor, though.
-May also help to play around with the volume on the echo for the same reason.
-Could try sharpening the echo a bit. Again, it might help it blend into other soundscapes. Fading it earlier and more dramatically might sound alright. Cutting bits of the middle or end might sound alright. You could also play around with a compressor with a long attack, like what some people use to reduce ringing on drum hits. Maybe that one's a bit of a long shot, but you never know.
-If you have a snazzy reverb processor on hand, you might try taking the simple crack and seeing if you can manufacture a subtle or more tonally neutral echo. Maybe it sounds a bit better in other environments or maybe it sounds godawful everywhere.
-This is your own fault for asking for feedback, and thus allowing me to armchair engineer.
-I apologize for that one terrible pun.
Wait, you have some kind of baller I-know-what-area-I'm-in script running, right? Is that covering every sound source or just things centered on the player? If that's all-inclusive, you could get real crazy with customized sounds real fast, in a way that I'm kind of terrified to think about.
My script only covers the space restrictors I place by hand (a space restrictor is placed in each building, and labeled), for the most part. I'm using the script to call up certain ambient sound files to match where the player is standing. So, for example, when you run into Sid's bunker you'll hear something like this this instead of leaves rustling and birds chirping. However, it might be possible to alter the weapons.ltx config to play a certain set of bullet cracks when outdoors (ones with environmental reflections) and a different set when the player is inside (just the crack) using the on_actor_inside and on_actor_outside function. I agree with you, though. It will be interesting to hear them in one of the underground labs.
I'm not sure what you mean the sounds getting airier and spacier by recording from a distance. Are you talking about the sonic cracks and the shotgun mic I used?
And by recording separate sounds for player shots, are you talking about the actual shooting of the guns? If so, I will be attempting to use different audio for the player gunshots vs NPCs. It is important that the player always feel like their shit sounds the best. Mostly, it will be a matter of code (aside from the process of getting really good recordings of weapon reports, which is a whole different monster). Right now, the weapon configs have a relatively straight forward bit of code to determine what sound plays where. I'd hope I'd be able to add a on_info {=actor} and on_info {!=actor} condition, or something like that. I'm kind of learning the Lua implementation as I go. If so, the player's weapons would sound beefier and all around have a superior awesome-factor. That would all be post field recording stuff, of course - it'll all be editing in my DAW at that point.
Kinda felt let down when I reached the city. I enjoyed exploring Yanov and Zaton, but Pripyat itself just seemed like a bunch of boring empty buildings.
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MongerI got the ham stink.Dallas, TXRegistered Userregular
I'm not sure what you mean the sounds getting airier and spacier by recording from a distance. Are you talking about the sonic cracks and the shotgun mic I used?
I just mean tonally. You know that thing where guitarists talk about tones with metaphorical terms that don't at all relate to the process of hearing? I do that. As you put more distance between your source and your mic, you're giving the environment more leeway to color the sound. You're using a shotgun mic, so that's already going to minimize it as much as is possible through hardware, but the raw audio still going to sound a bit like it's way over there as opposed to right in my face because that's accurate to what the mic heard. If you're going to be recording a separate set of sounds for player shots, it's a complete non-issue. It's going to sound correct in context, since those files are pretty much always going to be heard from a distance. Though how you're going to get a clean recording of a firearm from something approaching the perspective of the shooter while simultaneously not destroying microphones is beyond me. You seem crazy and resourceful enough to pull it off, though. I will be fascinated by however that one works out.
edit: Unless you're not going to be recording separate audio for the player, and instead just making player shots from the same base sounds. Which would be more sensible, if less savage alpha.
You are correct in that the position of a microphone heavily alters how a sound is picked up. The beauty of a shotgun mic is that it is the equivalent of a telephoto lens for sound, but I need many more mics to properly record guns (I was using that setup only for the sonic cracks). The reason I'd need a lot of mics is because a good gun report is actually a layering of several elements - the mechanical noise (bolt cycling, trigger resetting, in any m16 based gun the buffer tube spring, etc), the report from the bore (the actual bang), the intense change in pressure/recoil, the "lingering echo" and the environmental reflections.
In a perfect world, I'd have Stalker taking care of the environmental reflections completely procedurally. With the proper mics, I'll be catching all of those other noises from different positions all in one go using several mics set up at various places (many of them within 2m of the gun itself). Here is what I mean by that intense change of pressure/recoil (listen to this LOUD). When a gun is shot, the sound is so powerful that the air in the surrounding area is compressed, measured by a value of about 160-175SPL (sound pressure level). To accurately capture this up-close, you'd need a microphone capable of around a 175SPL. That soundcloud file is me recording some gunshots from distances of 150-800m, trying to capture that "pressure change" without the loudness of the report (just for experiments). Whatever frequency that is, it hits your speaker diaphragms in such a way that they are physically displaced (much like your eardrums are) quickly and intrusively. My theory is that without that frequency coming through to give that feeling of a pressure change, no gun will sound powerful. I believe it is between the 30-160hz range.
The recoil jamming into your bones also provides a frequency of sorts. That is another reason why capturing that change in pressure is so important. As a spectator, you can "feel" the power of a rifle shot from over half a mile away. When I start re-doing all of the guns in SoC, a huge priority of mine is to retain that sense of power heard in real gunfire.
Once I have all of those master files from all those mics, I'd just layer them together in my DAW. Layered and mixed in a certain way, they'd be the sound you'd hear from the zeroith and first person (aiming down the sights and holding the gun). Layered and mixed in a different (less powerful sounding) way, they'd be the shots from NPCs. That way, the players guns always sounds more powerful. I wouldn't re-do the entire recording session just for NPC vs Player gun sounds. I'd have enough mics setup already providing enough different input that I could make all of the changes I'd need digitally after the fact. Of course, none of that matters if I can't code in the difference between NPC and Player
Daemonion on
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KadokenGiving Ends to my Friends and it Feels StupendousRegistered Userregular
Can someone give me some help? I have STALKER Complete, 1.44, STALKER Version 1.0006, and I can't talk to Sidorovich, which means I can't start the game, get my knife, or make the townspeople stop being assholes. Even if I use teleport, I don't have my knife.
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Just a tip - once you finish your business in the Red Forest, there's the final quest to the north. The dialogue makes it sound like you should do it immediately - you don't need to. You can go back down to the Bar and trade stuff and get ready to go. And you've already met Doc, right? You want to make sure to do that before you go past the Red Forest.
I got a similar vibe for the mission from the Barman that sent me to Red Forest in the first place.
Don't think I've met Doc. Doesn't sound familiar.
After X-16, you got an objective to go back down to the Cordon and meet a guy. Do that short questline or you miss out a significant portion of the final quest and the good ending.
I found it sitting in my quest log after finishing Red Forest. Must have forgotten that I picked it up since it wasn't showing a quest marker. Probably assumed it was bugged; never occurred to me to go underground. I went over to see him before walking into Pripyat. Kinda figured that was the deal after finishing X-10.
A) I just replayed it a few months ago, and
I mean it sounds awesome, especially since there's been so much added to the whole thing, but making shots more lethal in a game where you can already get taken out fairly easily can lead to a whole lot of "BS moments". Maybe if it gets a bit more refined with patches and different versions after a while once people provide more feedback, I'll give it a shot.
Oh, and YAY STALKER 2 STILL LIVES (kinda)!
I think there's real potential there...
And screw making these games harder (at least at the start)- Just started CoP and I can tell I'm in The Zone. Hi Anomaly, I see you move now! Oh, a merc is shooting at m--dead!. Reload 20 times. I so need to find a decent gun/armor...
I think a top down turn based game would take away some of the atmosphere (no more frantically running around outside in the middle of the night and then seeing a bloodsucker uncloak right in front of your face in first person, no more "holy shit what was that noise ugh ugh where is the ladder topside?!" positional audio, etc), but I still think it would be pretty awesome if it was done right.
The big problem would be translating STALKER's environments, since the games are all about huge, open expanses dotted with structures and the occasional underground tunnel system or lab to break things up. You'd probably have to do a hybrid realtime movement/turn based combat system like the Fallout games to avoid having to walk from end of The Garbage to the other over the course of six thousand turns.
The answer to your question, though? A billion dollars.
In CoP related news: Emissions are a tad annoying, especially since there have been a few of them now yet both anomalies I traversed seemed to be barren of artifacts. Random event that can kill you if you happen to be too far from cover needs a better pay off... thank The Zone for Complete's teleporting. :P
wow
Man, I wasn't planning on doing an LP for a while, but when that comes out I might need to make time for it. Crossing my fingers that it's basically a complete balls-to-the-wall whole new game and not something you can run through in a few hours.
EDIT: I'm super-excited over the simple fact that I've never seen any of the landscape they show.
Check out my sound design dev diaries spawning the last several months, let me know what you think, give us some feedback, etc etc. If we can't have Stalker 2 at least we'll work hard at making Stalker 1 reach somewhere near its full potential!
The ambient tones definitely add a lot. I'll be interested to hear how this starts shaping up once it's less placeholdery, but it's at least nice to hear that things are mostly working. That short corridor demo was particularly jarring, in a way that sort of made me wonder about how you're going to deal with the lack of gradiation between soundscapes. In half-open areas like that, the number of reflections and general tinnyness sounds mostly fine in the middle of that tunnel and way less fine towards the ends of it, since there's less surface to be reflecting noises back at you. Also some weirdness where the low end comes out of nowhere on exit, since that reverb processor is cutting it out without compensating for the volume increase that would come from the inflated high end. I don't know if that's something you're going to want to deal with by understating some effects in those areas or by adding in transitional soundscapes that aren't as wet near entrances or just playing with where the bounds are or what. Maybe you've already planned for it, or it won't be an issue once everything's tuned properly. No idea. Just started thinking about it.
Wait, wait. Hold on just a second there. Was that a sick burn on Dead Space? Incidentally, Dead Space had exceptional sound design. The first one, at least. The second one not as much, insofar as I can remember. The second one not as much on a lot of counts, really.
All right, people. It is not a gerbil. It is not a hamster. It is not a guinea pig. It is a death rabbit. Death. Rabbit. Say it with me, now.
About what you mentioned, there is essentially nothing that can be done about that. Rebuilding the EAX.dll and how the engine works with it is way beyond the scope of my abilities and anyone else I've met, to be honest. Essentially, an EAX environment is placed via a "box" in the level editor. All sides of that box act as walls which reflect sound. There is no support for making a non-enclosed shape, and I don't see that ever being possible. I'd love it if I had all of the tools that Frostbite has but ...oh well. I make do with what I can, and, so far, I've actually accomplished quite a bit. The next step is polishing and actually recording/creating all of the sounds.
Polishing all of the features I've implemented will be difficult, I imagine. Almost everything I've wanted to use just doesn't exist, and I've had to code or fix or something just to get it going. I have high hopes, though. I'm continually moving things forward and I am confident that it will all come together.
Honestly, just being able to re-record (using my own equipment) and replace most of the sound effects in the game with my own high-quality samples will make a huge difference. So much stuff in that game just sounds like absolute crap. That is also the most fun, to be honest (doing my own foley and what not).
Either way, it's definitely going to be a giant workload. So have fun with that, I guess.
All right, people. It is not a gerbil. It is not a hamster. It is not a guinea pig. It is a death rabbit. Death. Rabbit. Say it with me, now.
Stalker: Complete. Not only does it improve the visuals, it also fixes a lot of performance issues too. Kind of a win-win.
The difficulty, though? Every mod pack adds a repair option, and that's going to make the whole experience way more tolerable, but it's still going to be the same hard U that SoC has always had. For the first few missions, you're going to be undergeared, and it's going to be hard. At the end of the game, there's exoskeleton dudes with perfect accuracy that become psychic when the level design in the final areas bugs out the AI, and it's going to be hard. The only mod I've used that legitimately smooths out the difficulty curve is LURK, with a combination of AI fixes and equipment rebalances. It's still probably a higher overall difficulty than vanilla, though, and LURK is absolutely not for a first playthrough, anyway.
All right, people. It is not a gerbil. It is not a hamster. It is not a guinea pig. It is a death rabbit. Death. Rabbit. Say it with me, now.
Shogun Streams Vidya
Guys...I still haven't gotten around to STALKing.
How does modding work with the Steam versions? Just installing/swapping files from the directory I guess?
Alright, cheers. Yeah, I guess repairing stuff was the main hindrance, so that'll be good. When you guys are saying 'improve the visuals', you do mean 'at no cost to performance', right? Because yeah, dynamic lighting aside, I think getting to-or-above 30fps will be the priority. When I played it, my PC's clunkiness only added to the difficulty, making it much harder to get an accurate shot in between stutters.
If you want the most up to date bugfixes and performance boosts then you can't do better than ZRP. Complete uses an old version of ZRP for bugfixes and optimization. ZRP also defaults as a "vanilla" installation, changing very little of the core game. So you can tweak things you want with the Modifier front-end for ZRP, like adding in a repair option or tweaking quest lengths, headbob, hunger or whatever. There is no graphics upgrade to ZRP so it's lightweight and installs quickly and will not stress any computer capable of running vanilla SOC.
Matter of fact they just released a new version yesterday, so nothing will be as up to date for SoC bugfixing and optimization as far as I know. They've even added in a sleeping bag.
Shogun Streams Vidya
Excellent, thanks for that! Now I just need to get my copy back, since I realised my brother has it. Damnit to hell.
I don't know how meticulous you really want to get about it (or how much time you have to be meticulous), but some ideas for things you might experiment with, if you haven't:
-Further reduce the delay between the crack and the echo. There's probably a midground somewhere that will sound decent for most environments, if the current one doesn't. Might get super annoying to do outiside of a multitrack editor, though.
-May also help to play around with the volume on the echo for the same reason.
-Could try sharpening the echo a bit. Again, it might help it blend into other soundscapes. Fading it earlier and more dramatically might sound alright. Cutting bits of the middle or end might sound alright. You could also play around with a compressor with a long attack, like what some people use to reduce ringing on drum hits. Maybe that one's a bit of a long shot, but you never know.
-If you have a snazzy reverb processor on hand, you might try taking the simple crack and seeing if you can manufacture a subtle or more tonally neutral echo. Maybe it sounds a bit better in other environments or maybe it sounds godawful everywhere.
-This is your own fault for asking for feedback, and thus allowing me to armchair engineer.
-I apologize for that one terrible pun.
Wait, you have some kind of baller I-know-what-area-I'm-in script running, right? Is that covering every sound source or just things centered on the player? If that's all-inclusive, you could get real crazy with customized sounds real fast, in a way that I'm kind of terrified to think about.
All right, people. It is not a gerbil. It is not a hamster. It is not a guinea pig. It is a death rabbit. Death. Rabbit. Say it with me, now.
My script only covers the space restrictors I place by hand (a space restrictor is placed in each building, and labeled), for the most part. I'm using the script to call up certain ambient sound files to match where the player is standing. So, for example, when you run into Sid's bunker you'll hear something like this this instead of leaves rustling and birds chirping. However, it might be possible to alter the weapons.ltx config to play a certain set of bullet cracks when outdoors (ones with environmental reflections) and a different set when the player is inside (just the crack) using the on_actor_inside and on_actor_outside function. I agree with you, though. It will be interesting to hear them in one of the underground labs.
I'm not sure what you mean the sounds getting airier and spacier by recording from a distance. Are you talking about the sonic cracks and the shotgun mic I used?
And by recording separate sounds for player shots, are you talking about the actual shooting of the guns? If so, I will be attempting to use different audio for the player gunshots vs NPCs. It is important that the player always feel like their shit sounds the best. Mostly, it will be a matter of code (aside from the process of getting really good recordings of weapon reports, which is a whole different monster). Right now, the weapon configs have a relatively straight forward bit of code to determine what sound plays where. I'd hope I'd be able to add a on_info {=actor} and on_info {!=actor} condition, or something like that. I'm kind of learning the Lua implementation as I go. If so, the player's weapons would sound beefier and all around have a superior awesome-factor. That would all be post field recording stuff, of course - it'll all be editing in my DAW at that point.
Kinda felt let down when I reached the city. I enjoyed exploring Yanov and Zaton, but Pripyat itself just seemed like a bunch of boring empty buildings.
I just mean tonally. You know that thing where guitarists talk about tones with metaphorical terms that don't at all relate to the process of hearing? I do that. As you put more distance between your source and your mic, you're giving the environment more leeway to color the sound. You're using a shotgun mic, so that's already going to minimize it as much as is possible through hardware, but the raw audio still going to sound a bit like it's way over there as opposed to right in my face because that's accurate to what the mic heard. If you're going to be recording a separate set of sounds for player shots, it's a complete non-issue. It's going to sound correct in context, since those files are pretty much always going to be heard from a distance. Though how you're going to get a clean recording of a firearm from something approaching the perspective of the shooter while simultaneously not destroying microphones is beyond me. You seem crazy and resourceful enough to pull it off, though. I will be fascinated by however that one works out.
edit: Unless you're not going to be recording separate audio for the player, and instead just making player shots from the same base sounds. Which would be more sensible, if less savage alpha.
All right, people. It is not a gerbil. It is not a hamster. It is not a guinea pig. It is a death rabbit. Death. Rabbit. Say it with me, now.
You are correct in that the position of a microphone heavily alters how a sound is picked up. The beauty of a shotgun mic is that it is the equivalent of a telephoto lens for sound, but I need many more mics to properly record guns (I was using that setup only for the sonic cracks). The reason I'd need a lot of mics is because a good gun report is actually a layering of several elements - the mechanical noise (bolt cycling, trigger resetting, in any m16 based gun the buffer tube spring, etc), the report from the bore (the actual bang), the intense change in pressure/recoil, the "lingering echo" and the environmental reflections.
In a perfect world, I'd have Stalker taking care of the environmental reflections completely procedurally. With the proper mics, I'll be catching all of those other noises from different positions all in one go using several mics set up at various places (many of them within 2m of the gun itself). Here is what I mean by that intense change of pressure/recoil (listen to this LOUD). When a gun is shot, the sound is so powerful that the air in the surrounding area is compressed, measured by a value of about 160-175SPL (sound pressure level). To accurately capture this up-close, you'd need a microphone capable of around a 175SPL. That soundcloud file is me recording some gunshots from distances of 150-800m, trying to capture that "pressure change" without the loudness of the report (just for experiments). Whatever frequency that is, it hits your speaker diaphragms in such a way that they are physically displaced (much like your eardrums are) quickly and intrusively. My theory is that without that frequency coming through to give that feeling of a pressure change, no gun will sound powerful. I believe it is between the 30-160hz range.
The recoil jamming into your bones also provides a frequency of sorts. That is another reason why capturing that change in pressure is so important. As a spectator, you can "feel" the power of a rifle shot from over half a mile away. When I start re-doing all of the guns in SoC, a huge priority of mine is to retain that sense of power heard in real gunfire.
Once I have all of those master files from all those mics, I'd just layer them together in my DAW. Layered and mixed in a certain way, they'd be the sound you'd hear from the zeroith and first person (aiming down the sights and holding the gun). Layered and mixed in a different (less powerful sounding) way, they'd be the shots from NPCs. That way, the players guns always sounds more powerful. I wouldn't re-do the entire recording session just for NPC vs Player gun sounds. I'd have enough mics setup already providing enough different input that I could make all of the changes I'd need digitally after the fact. Of course, none of that matters if I can't code in the difference between NPC and Player