Comments - SalmonGod

It looks like there are a lot of complaints about artifacts now ("The balls are inert!"). I haven't had much opportunity to play 1.1 yet, and I'm not complaining. I also know you guys don't care much for suggestions, so I'm just throwing my thoughts out for what they're worth.

Personally, I've wanted for a long time to see more creative benefit/penalty balances for artifacts. There are anti-rad artifacts, and others raise a resistance while dropping another and dosing you with rads. All you have to do is offset one with the other. Way too simple. So I agree with the assessment that artifacts made the game too easy, but I also think they're a core element of the Stalker experience. Surely there are more creative solutions? I would love to see artifact penalties be more immediate and tangible, such as causing drunkenness effects, addiction, change in movement style, etc. They could also be made heavier or made to share space with other equipment on your belt, etc.

Going to enjoy the hell out of both LURK and Lost Alpha.... and SMP someday when I have a better computer :P

Don't get the point of all the rivalry.

4. So if you willingly gave your work to the Arsenal compilation without specifying any conditions, you were failing to defend your rights and allowing the distributors of that work free reign over yours. Whether you knew what you were doing or not wouldn't matter in court. Judges will coldly state "ignorance of the law is no excuse." The Arsenal team is not to blame for their interpretations of a vague agreement.

5. If someone else downloads Arsenal mod and reads "These weapons are free for use however you please." Then it's legally safe for anyone to assume that the distributor of that Arsenal download knows what they're talking about, and if their written statements are false, then it's on them. If the Arsenal documents ask for credit if you use their work, but don't give the names of individual authors, then it's also safe to assume that credit simply needs to be given to the compilation. It may be a really nice thing to do, but somebody like Holden has no assumed obligation to track down every individual author of every individual work in a whole compilation that is offered in a unified package with a blanket statement of "free to use".

6. The internet modding scene is an anarchistic clusterfuck of casually shared content, and when you put your work out there you should assume as a matter of common sense that things like this are going to happen unless you go to some lengths to make sure otherwise. People who put hundreds of hours of work into a project and offer it for free online are generally nice people who will try to give credit where it's due, but will fail once in a while and there's no way around that. Appearing out of nowhere and being insulting was a completely unreasonable way to go about this. If you had just said "Hey I think that's my model. Here's some reason you should believe me. Please mention me in your documentation." then I'm sure Holden would have been decent about it and everything would have been fine from the beginning.

I've recently studied copyright law in school and even engaged in a little bit of activism on the subject. I think both of you are wrong on different points.

1. An author of a creative work has legal copyright ownership of it as soon as it is recorded in a fixed format, and there's even debate as to whether a hard drive can be legally considered a fixed format, though I believe it generally holds up while the world waits for government beaurocracy to get around to modifying a few words of legal verbage.

2. #1 doesn't guarantee you anything. If somebody violates your copyright, it's up to the legal owner of the copyright to take notice and legal action. Once the case is in court, the burden of proof is on the prosecutor. They must prove that they legally own the copyright. This is why a legal process for filing copyright with the government exists. It basically enables you to auto-win in court. It also costs money. The poor man's option is to mail a copy of the work to yourself in an envelope as soon as it's finished, and then you have an officially government sealed, named, and dated document to present in court.

3. Transferring ownership of copyrights does require legal documentation, but not much and only if you intend to hold on to your rights to that work. If you offer your work to others without any explicit agreement, then you are basically letting go of any rights you had. You must also specify exactly which rights are being transferred (right to reproduce, right to modify, right to distribute, etc). On the internet, people usually use a simple copyright template such as the ones provided by Creative Commons.

Summary: Massively improved graphics, mostly functional stealth system, tons of new equipment, tightly adjusted balance and feel of gameplay, minimized hud including removal of mini-map, and optional reduced carry limits for challenge, realism, & economy.

Watching the videos helps too.

Ah, thanks. I didn't think to look there :S

There's only one video there and it's not the one I'm referring to... I'm interested in the music from LURK 1.1 Update #2

So what's the music from the latest video?

I'm pretty sure it's been said before that LURK will eventually move on to CoP... but I imagine that's quite a ways away.

It's not wrong to ask, but I've seen 3 year old children beg for candy with more dignity than some of the people whining for updates here. Somebody posting another beg every single day is just ridiculous.

It'll happen when it happens or it won't. Begging for updates doesn't change anything.

The only thing anybody has to benefit from making a mod for a moderately successful game with a fairly small mod scene is a portfolio piece for applying to jobs in the game industry. I don't know about Holden, but I think the majority of mod makers aren't that ambitious about careers in game development. Usually it's just a hobby. Regardless, it's still nothing more than a nice portfolio piece. It's not like he's getting paid.

I'm not saying you should beg him to release it either. What I am saying is it's ridiculous to believe that anybody has rights to hold the LURK team to any expectations. They're making something because they want to. They're releasing it because they're nice. That's it.

I'm always amazed at the sense of entitlement that seems to boil up and scream out of most people anytime a stranger decides to be generous. Incredibly generous, in fact. Mod-making takes expensive software, training in specialized knowledge, and tons of time.

And no, it's not the same as being invited to a birthday party. Usually, a person invites people they know to their own birthdays, and guests are expected to bring gifts. They don't just show up to eat cake and complain about how it wasn't served fast enough and isn't their favorite flavor. There's well-defined social formula in place between people who have real connections to eachother.

A random group of people on the internet making something to share with the world with no expectation of anything in return is completely different.

Are you offering anything in return? If not, the least you can offer is patience.

They also stack. The limited number of slots only limits how many different types you can carry (each a different stack)... and I'm not sure but I think there's more slots than types of artifacts.

So really weight is the only limit on artifact use in LURK... which I really like, actually.

Kind of broken. When weight is the only limitation to the amount of artifacts you can equip, anti-grav artifacts could stack infinitely. You might as well turn into a katamari :D

I pity people who complain so much about releases. They're only putting the hollowness of their lives on public display. Holden should be flattered that his mod has become the very center of so many lives.

Timely status updates are great, but not an entitlement by a long shot. They're a mark of dedication and nothing more. A mod is a gift from a complete stranger... a gift that took hundreds of hours of effort, expensive software, and development of advanced skills to create. It's almost like a complete stranger approaching you on the street with an expensive painting and offering it to you with the words "I don't know you, but I studied painting, bought this high quality canvas and paint set, and spent a year on this painting just so you can decorate your house and I ask nothing in return." Would you really respond "Hey this is great thanks, but I want you to add some things to it and these details are a little off. Keep me updated on your progress or I'm going to nag and bitch at you."

Just played my first 20 min or so. Wiped out the bandits and saved Nimble. Everything looks and feels wonderful.

Except I CTD consistently when trying to give Nimble's flash drive to Sidorovich.

XR_3DA.exe caused ACCESS_VIOLATION in module "C:\Program Files (x86)\S.T.A.L.K.E.R. - Shadow of Chernobyl\bin\xrLUA.dll" at 0023:0089105B

Luckily I was planning on stopping there anyway. I'm up way later than I should be as it is. Thanks for the great mod LURK team :)