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Posted

Hi all,

If you're like me and waiting for the next lot of TDM missions to come out, I would strongly recommend checking out Stalker ANOMALY:

https://www.moddb.com/mods/stalker-anomaly

This and TDM are basically all I play now. I did try the Outer Worlds but found it to be a totally overrated, boring Fallout clone with some badly done Borderlands graphics...

 

Posted

I'm glad that after Stalker Lost Alpha there are more and more standalone mods for the game. Had no idea modding would become so big for this game.

"I really perceive that vanity about which most men merely prate — the vanity of the human or temporal life. I live continually in a reverie of the future. I have no faith in human perfectibility. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active — not more happy — nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago. The result will never vary — and to suppose that it will, is to suppose that the foregone man has lived in vain — that the foregone time is but the rudiment of the future — that the myriads who have perished have not been upon equal footing with ourselves — nor are we with our posterity. I cannot agree to lose sight of man the individual, in man the mass."

- 2 July 1844 letter to James Russell Lowell from Edgar Allan Poe.

Posted (edited)

I'm sorry to say that I've played so much stalker mods that even tho I love stalker and nothing comes close to it, not even Metro, i'm just tired of Stalker mods, IMO is just more of the same. 

Some mods just make the game much more complex and harder in the name of realism, but them prevent you from selling a "too damaged" weapon has if that was realistic at all, others bring a bunch of good looking but out of place/totally unrealistic weapons for the setting, others make the inventory management so complex that you think is a full RTS (real time strategy) game instead of a simple RPG. 

I would love that some day the Stalker community would take Xray engine and do a totally unrelated game with it, like Broken Glass Studios team did with Doom 3 but I know is unrealistic to think this, TDM is unique and imo was initiated at the right time. 

Edited by HMart
  • Like 1
Posted
21 minutes ago, HMart said:

I'm sorry to say that I've played so much stalker mods that even tho I love stalker and nothing comes close to it, not even Metro, i'm just tired of Stalker mods, IMO is just more of the same. 

Some mods just make the game much more complex and harder in the name of realism, but them prevent you from selling a "too damaged" weapon has if that was realistic at all, others bring a bunch of good looking but out of place/totally unrealistic weapons for the setting, others make the inventory management so complex that you think is a full RTS (real time strategy) game instead of a simple RPG. 

I would love that some day the Stalker community would take Xray engine and do a totally unrelated game with it, like Broken Glass Studios team did with Doom 3 but I know is unrealistic to think this, TDM is unique and imo was initiated at the right time. 

Yeah mod saturation is a problem for Stalker. Half Life suffers from the same trouble.

"I really perceive that vanity about which most men merely prate — the vanity of the human or temporal life. I live continually in a reverie of the future. I have no faith in human perfectibility. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active — not more happy — nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago. The result will never vary — and to suppose that it will, is to suppose that the foregone man has lived in vain — that the foregone time is but the rudiment of the future — that the myriads who have perished have not been upon equal footing with ourselves — nor are we with our posterity. I cannot agree to lose sight of man the individual, in man the mass."

- 2 July 1844 letter to James Russell Lowell from Edgar Allan Poe.

Posted
2 hours ago, HMart said:

Oh yes is true about half life but IMO still it has some cool exceptions that make it feel fresh and different, for example these. 

https://www.moddb.com/games/cry-of-fear

https://www.moddb.com/mods/occult-scrim 

https://www.moddb.com/mods/starlight

https://esforces.com/

I might add

https://www.moddb.com/mods/alchemilla-mod

"I really perceive that vanity about which most men merely prate — the vanity of the human or temporal life. I live continually in a reverie of the future. I have no faith in human perfectibility. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active — not more happy — nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago. The result will never vary — and to suppose that it will, is to suppose that the foregone man has lived in vain — that the foregone time is but the rudiment of the future — that the myriads who have perished have not been upon equal footing with ourselves — nor are we with our posterity. I cannot agree to lose sight of man the individual, in man the mass."

- 2 July 1844 letter to James Russell Lowell from Edgar Allan Poe.

Posted
1 hour ago, HMart said:

Ah I thought you were talking about Half Life 1 because that is a source engine (HL2) based game but yes is a very nice Silent Hill based mod, petty that imo is mostly (a very good) level design showcase, imo the gameplay is very minimal. 

Btw he or they are now working on this comercial game https://www.indiedb.com/games/twin-soul

Great. Looks just like my creepy home town.

"I really perceive that vanity about which most men merely prate — the vanity of the human or temporal life. I live continually in a reverie of the future. I have no faith in human perfectibility. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active — not more happy — nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago. The result will never vary — and to suppose that it will, is to suppose that the foregone man has lived in vain — that the foregone time is but the rudiment of the future — that the myriads who have perished have not been upon equal footing with ourselves — nor are we with our posterity. I cannot agree to lose sight of man the individual, in man the mass."

- 2 July 1844 letter to James Russell Lowell from Edgar Allan Poe.

Posted
On 1/23/2020 at 1:54 AM, HMart said:

Ah I thought you were talking about Half Life 1 because that is a source engine (HL2) based game but yes is a very nice Silent Hill based mod, petty that imo is mostly (a very good) level design showcase, imo the gameplay is very minimal. 

 

This Silent Hill thing is not a free game one can download? I would like to check this one out as  it looks like a dramatic improvement of the PSX original. :)

How do they produce these games? Is there some sort of "Dark Radiant for HL2 "? Sorry for the dumb questions, I do not do much outside Thief/DM (especially when it comes to video games I prefer Playstation formats) and started mapping only because I happened to see a DM promo video in which an off-voice reported "it is very easy to create missions with the Dark Radiant".  :)

Posted
6 minutes ago, JackFarmer said:

This Silent Hill thing is not a free game one can download? I would like to check this one out as  it looks like a dramatic improvement of the PSX original. :)

How do they produce these games? Is there some sort of "Dark Radiant for HL2 "? Sorry for the dumb questions, I do not do much outside Thief/DM (especially when it comes to video games I prefer Playstation formats) and started mapping only because I happened to see a DM promo video in which an off-voice reported "it is very easy to create missions with the Dark Radiant".  :)

Silent Hill: Alchemilla is just a standalone Source mod for Half Life 2. You can download it right away and play it. If you have Steam it'll recognize it as the Source SDK and run like any Steam game.

Unfortunately it has no NPC's or too much of a plot in consequence.

It's just a fan mod made by 2 people who couldn've found an animator to do the job. But it is a faithful recreation of the original locations and the mod has a soundtrack too:

If you haven't already listened to the soundtrack of the first two Silent Hill games, you should!

The combat in the original games was easily one of the weakest parts of the game and the puzzles were archaic but it was all in there just for the pacing. Today Silent Hill's legacy is in the Amnesia game and I've heard that SOMA is pretty good as well. I mean that, as in you can't fight your enemies there, which was the point of the whole thing. Besides, enemies respawn in Silent Hill so killing them can be useless sometimes.

  • Like 1

"I really perceive that vanity about which most men merely prate — the vanity of the human or temporal life. I live continually in a reverie of the future. I have no faith in human perfectibility. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active — not more happy — nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago. The result will never vary — and to suppose that it will, is to suppose that the foregone man has lived in vain — that the foregone time is but the rudiment of the future — that the myriads who have perished have not been upon equal footing with ourselves — nor are we with our posterity. I cannot agree to lose sight of man the individual, in man the mass."

- 2 July 1844 letter to James Russell Lowell from Edgar Allan Poe.

Posted

Interestingly, over on TTLG we were just chatting about Stalker being the one FPS that's bucked the HL2 entertainment-package mold, and is still probably the most immersive one since the HL2 era.

It's going to be limited with mods for the same reason most big FPS are. It doesn't lend itself well to smaller scale discrete missions like TDM. But the real issue is just that no FPS are doing what it did. And mods can't make up for that. We need a series today that's in its mold. (A series like Metro might be trying, but it's not there.) 

  • Like 1

What do you see when you turn out the light? I can't tell you but I know that it's mine.

Posted
5 hours ago, JackFarmer said:

Is there some sort of "Dark Radiant for HL2 "? Sorry for the dumb questions, I do not do much outside Thief/DM (especially when it comes to video games I prefer Playstation formats) and started mapping only because I happened to see a DM promo video in which an off-voice reported "it is very easy to create missions with the Dark Radiant".  :)

Yes is called hammer, very similar two Dark Radiant but more advanced but in some ways you will feel at home with it. Btw is similar because Valve used a modified quake 1 engine to do Half Life 1 and when they made Source 2 and its new hammer editor, they kept many of the characteristics of the old Quake based editor. 

I've used it before and let me tell you that is a awesome tool, personally decided to go to idtech 4 only because, I loved Doom 3 and because of the better real time per pixel lighting support but there's things that hammer can do that DR still can't, like it has a advanced patch system that makes it very easy to make complex terrains. 

  • Like 1
Posted
55 minutes ago, HMart said:

like it has a advanced patch system that makes it very easy to make complex terrains. 

Yes, you are right. It would be cool to have something for this as I like to create wilderness and cave missions.

  • Like 1
Posted

Our patch system isn't the best, but the two saving graces are most FMs are in urban spaces and, if you do want something complex, you can just make the geometry in a full-on model app and import it.  I mean you can export the scene geometry from DR and then model the patch around it, then import it back in. 

  • Like 3

What do you see when you turn out the light? I can't tell you but I know that it's mine.

Posted

I was not trying to make you guys feel bad about DR, :D, is perfectly fine to the job it was meant to do. And yes, you can very well make terrains outside of it and there's perfect tools to do that, like world machine that beats hammer system hands down. And the TDM engine was not optimized to render huge terrains so who cares.

  • Like 2
Posted

I've wanted to try Anomaly for a while now, but as it is Beta 3 I wanted to wait a little bit, because I don't have a very fast internet connection and I don't want to download a whole new version again when it is released. It looks like that this is going to stay in Beta 3 for a while though and they use patches as well, so I'm hoping they will do they same when a new version will come out. I'm not really fan though of just wandering around without a purpose, so will this keep me entertained enough?

  • Like 1
Posted

Man, I was excited to try this. I'm having issues getting it to work. Dove into their forums and did some research and it seems I'm not the only person with my issue. Best I could come up with after 4 hours of trying reinstalls and other workarounds and digging through their forums is "wait a week for a patch and hopefully it works".

Bummed cuz I love S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and was looking forward to trying this with other add-ons. I shan't give up tho.

As my father used to say, "A grenade a day, keeps the enemy at bay!"

My one FM so far: Paying the Bills: 0 - Moving Day

Posted (edited)

You should! In a sea of FPS's it definitely rose to be among the top for me. Lots of good mods out there, recommend graphics overhauls and SFX upgrades. The setting and atmosphere alone make it worthwhile. 

If I can't get Anomaly working I'm gonna have to dive into CoP to get my fix real quick. 

Edited by Jedi_Wannabe
  • Like 1

As my father used to say, "A grenade a day, keeps the enemy at bay!"

My one FM so far: Paying the Bills: 0 - Moving Day

Posted
26 minutes ago, esme said:

Is this a free standalone game like TDM is ?

Yes it is. "Update 1.5 [Beta 3.0] is FULL REPACK and STAND-ALONE. Don't attempt installing it on older version or other stalker games, just unpack it on an empty folder and play."

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