Comments - Daemonion

What up, brotha?

While I really appreciate your enthusiasm, what you are suggesting is not practical nor possible. You're just going to have to trust me, I'm afraid.

I'm aware you asked some additional questions, but I feel that my first response still applies.

Asking someone from the Russian community to "finish" our mod would be like dumping a truck-load of Lego pieces onto a person and saying,

"Hey, can you put all of this together? By the way, there is no instruction manual, no pictures to go off of, and some of the pieces won't fit right. Just figure it out and try to do it the way I had it figured out in my head. K, thanks!"

There is no clear list of "Complete these 127 things in this specific way and the mod will be complete" to hand off to anybody.

Creating something like a mod, which has so much creative flair to it, is an organic process that changes over time while also reflecting the minds and talents of the people working on it.

Just saw this. Amazing.

Your perspective makes sense; I can see why you'd think that. From my end, though, I just don't think it'd be worth it for the community, given where modding is at now. Sure, there might be a few tidbits in there to use, but you'd have to sift through a mountain of files to find them. I also think what we were doing on the technical side is completely eclipsed by Open XRay.

For example, I did hours and hours of recording in nature. Gigabytes of this stuff, all unedited. First, someone would have to download those files, listen to them, categorize them, edit them, normalize, convert to .ogg, comment, then implement. Who wants to listen to three hours of my random recordings to find a suitable 30 second loop and then go through all the work of implementing it? Maybe I'm wrong, though.

As far as the weapons go, I can't make that call for the artists. I wouldn't say it was a waste, though! I think what you meant is that the STALKER community wouldn't be directly enjoying the fruits of that labor - in that sense, you are right. We did try to be informative in our videos (and even some articles) and posts we made on the forums to at least let people know how we were doing some of the stuff we were doing so others could replicate it. Back to the models, though, they can still use those as portfolio pieces and, potentially, in future releases for other games/mods. I still think it was time well spent in that regard, even if only considering how educational it was for everyone.

All of this stuff was also pre-release of the X-Ray source code, which changed everything, in my opinion. Call of Chernobyl is incredible and I'd love to see people build off of that shared engine, like Swartz is doing with Radium. That stuff is so far beyond the janky workarounds we were doing with LURK 1.2 that I think it'd just be silly to release something so cobbled-together with such poor documentation, even back in 2013.

Why should people try to make sense of our stuff when that time could be, arguably, better spent improving the Open XRay engine for everybody? For example, no one needs my hacked-together code to get stereo audio working anymore ...you can just do that straight-up with Open XRay out-of-the-box. That is the future of modding this game, in my opinion, and I don't think there is anything of real value to offer in our files.

Aside from the weapon models you mentioned, the good stuff is already out there in the forums or videos, I'd say. Anyway, I hope my perspective has helped answer your question in some way.

I get a crash when I try to use it. For now, I would not use it.

Looks great!

I'm sorry to hear that you're having issues. Unfortunately, I am not sure how to help.

Also, you are playing version 1.1, which I had nothing to do with. I appreciate your applause, but it is undeserved, as I was not part of the team that made 1.1 :)

Send me an email and I'd be happy to help you out :)

You can find my email address in my profile.

Wonderful work, guys. Looks really well done. I can see this saving a significant amount of time for a lot of people.

Great update! Welcome to Comrade Bear and Ddraig! I know Ddraig from the SA forums and he is a talented dude to have around.

I used to own a Rem 700p and CZ-75b - it'll be fun to use them in the game :)

Wish you guys the best!

Interesting! Are you able to comment on how you envision this to affect gameplay?

I ask because I'm curious to hear how you will be able to implement and balance a constant radiation dynamic that has a meaningful impact on gameplay without being tedious. I think it is a tricky thing.

I seem to remember that the Metro series did the gas mask filters pretty well. A good example of something that could have been really tedious that was given a bit more depth (good audio, nice visual effects, sometimes having to wipe gore off the goggles, etc) and turned out to be fun (at least, I thought so).

Looking forward to your future announcements!

Hey man, this is all really exciting stuff. I'm really curious to hear more about the ballistics modifications. Do you have any debugging tools that can trace bullet paths in-game or something like that to see the effects?

Best of luck!

Hi there, just to clarify, I don't deserve any credit for 1.1 as I was not part of the team when that was released. Holden was the lead then; he and his team deserve the credit.

We swapped builds for 1.2 so often that there isn't really anything meaningful to share; our indecisiveness led to some of the difficulties we had.

Even sharing little pieces here and there in isolation are difficult, because they may be tied to all.spawns for particular versions of the game. It makes merging difficult. I hope that makes sense.

I understand the disappoint. Sorry to have let you down. Thanks for the kind words and I hope we can make it up to you :)

Hey Trooper, we're not releasing any information yet. We will let you guys know when we're ready :)

I knew you wouldn't let me down <3

Looks really good, guys. I can't wait for the release :)

Looks great, Beacon :)

Well done, guys! On behalf of the entire community - thank you!

Are you a musician? If not, let's pretend that you are for a second just for the sake of analogy:

Imagine trying to make a modern dubstep song using tools from 50 years ago - all you've got is an old Moog, a 6 track analog recorder, a lot of free time, and a deep love of dubstep. You can't get enough of that old Moog sound, and the tape distortion coming from that 6 track is the personification of vintage. You're sure it could be done, and it'd be epic.

... that'd be a hell of an achievement, but what really matters is the goal.

If the goal is to make a dubstep song using tools from 50 years ago because you love those old tools so much, then there you go. There is nothing wrong with that. It is a great way to spend your time and there are plenty of people who will appreciate it. If the goal is to make the best dubstep song you can possibly make, then you will need to fire up the latest version of Pro Tools and push your boundaries.

That old 6 track has it's place (it is irreplaceable!), but it can't do what a full-fledged Digital Audio Workstation can do.

Our vision has grown, and our goal has changed. We don't want to spend time reinventing the wheel (like editing X-Ray's sound renderer to be able to play stereo audio files) when we could spend time creating something better.

Working in X-Ray felt like tinkering with an old Chevy on the weekends - it brought me joy. We're all still here because that old Chevy is special, even though it doesn't have bluetooth and an AUX jack.

It's time to build a hot rod, though.

We'll tell everyone but you. No hard feelings <3

We certainly will have a great time! Thanks for the encouragement.

We need approx $15.7mm to pay for the private jet that will shuttle us to our new penthouse office in Stockholm. Pretty please? We'll totally provide a budget and alpha video after we get the money.

Thanks, your post made my day. We'll keep you updated.

Truthfully, a part of me feels a little ashamed to be leaving something unfinished, especially after putting so much time into it. But I am in full agreement with Panzer and the team and think it is for the best. Plus, there is so much awesome Stalker stuff coming down the pipe it is kind of ridiculous.

I figure I'll be able to do a lot more in less time and effort in UE4, though, so I'm excited by that. It will be nice to work without limitations and achieve a better end result.

Anyway, sometime around the middle of October, I'll be updating the Stalker wiki and releasing a few videos with tutorials teaching some audio tricks/tips I learned in Stalker. I hope you guys find those useful!

Feel free to still PM or email me with any audio questions, of course. I'll still be around and will help however I'm able.

daemonion@outlook.com is the best way to reach me.

It is possible to bypass EAX completely using the source code to switch the sound render to OpenAL and enabling all of the features into the sound environments. OpenAL has it's own impressive list of DSP (reverb, compression, doppler, etc) - it is even more robust than EAX :)

I love going out in the field and capturing real-world elements to then bring into the game. Looks like a fruitful trip, nice work!

We won't be able to make a stand-alone. You'll need the original version installed.

Well done, guys!

He's probably snapchatting :D