S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat

[floogy]

Awesome, played both and loved them and all the rough edges they had too. Maybe this one will be more refined but i hope it doesn't lose the feel of the first two.

 

[Gothgar]

cant wait, and I havent even played the first expac, I need to get that...

 

[phexac]

I'm excited. I am playing through the original STALKER right now and waiting for the next gen of video cards to come out to do Clear Sky maxed out on my 30" screen.

 

[BFG10K]

Originally posted by: phexac

I'm excited. I am playing through the original STALKER right now and waiting for the next gen of video cards to come out to do Clear Sky maxed out on my 30" screen.

You'll be waiting a lot longer than the next generation to run Clear Sky maxed out at 2560x1600. Even four current GPUs can't do that now, and that?s with no AA either.

 

[WaitingForNehalem]

The graphics look incredible but I hope we don't have to play in the same areas again. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1lDskma6V0

 

[Zenoth]

Originally posted by: WaitingForNehalem
The graphics look incredible but I hope we don't have to play in the same areas again. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1lDskma6V0

According to what I've what on the GSC forums (which is nothing official since it comes from regular members, unless GSC revealed information in a post and people are just reposting that without me being aware of it) there will be three "big" maps of completely new areas, only a few characters will come back (I'd guess that Sidorovich is one of them). If the maps are limited at a number of three then it should certainly mean that each of them are very, very large, at least in comparison to both previous titles.

We'll find out by ourselves soon enough anyway, it's supposed to be released next month.

 

[Dorkenstein]

Why do I have a hunch that the current release date is REALLY un-realistic?

 

[Zenoth]

Originally posted by: Dorkenstein
Why do I have a hunch that the current release date is REALLY un-realistic?

Probably because we all do, but as far as I can remember Clear Sky at least made it the day they announced it would.

 

[AdamK47]

Originally posted by: BFG10K

Originally posted by: phexac

I'm excited. I am playing through the original STALKER right now and waiting for the next gen of video cards to come out to do Clear Sky maxed out on my 30" screen.

You'll be waiting a lot longer than the next generation to run Clear Sky maxed out at 2560x1600. Even four current GPUs can't do that now, and that?s with no AA either.

Late reply, but... I play Clear Sky maxed out at 1920x1080 with the exception of Sun Rays set to low (not much of a visual difference between high and low) and AA off, AF 8x. It's not 2560x1600, but the game runs great at 60 FPS 99% of the time and dips down to 45 at rare times.

 

[BFG10K]

Originally posted by: AdamK47

Late reply, but... I play Clear Sky maxed out at 1920x1080 with the exception of Sun Rays set to low (not much of a visual difference between high and low) and AA off, AF 8x. It's not 2560x1600, but the game runs great at 60 FPS 99% of the time and dips down to 45 at rare times.

Sure, but that isn't 2560x1600 but rather half the pixel count; and there's no AA.

I'm actually playing through Clear Sky again right now and it's awesome on a 30" screen, even if I do have to drop my resolution down to 1680x1050 to get 2xAA.

 

[Zenoth]

Regarding anti-aliasing in Clear Sky, if some of you haven't read it, I'd suggest taking a look at the TweakGuide's guide for CS and read the A-A section.

Quoted from the guide in question:

However Clear Sky's game engine uses a form of rendering called Deferred Shading which effectively means that in the DX8 and DX9 modes it can't support proper Multisampling Antialiasing which would remove all the jagged outlines in the game world, regardless of which type of graphics card you have. Thus the Antialiasing option has no real impact on performance or image quality - unless you use it under DirectX 10 mode, at which point it does reduce jaggedness, but only on world geometry such as buildings, boxes, objects, NPCs; unfortunately it does not reduce jaggedness on foliage such as bushes and trees - you need to enable the 'Antialias A-tested objects' option for that to occur. It also comes at a very steep performance cost. For DX9 mode you can instead use the r2_aa command to enable and customize a fake form of blurred AA - see the Advanced Tweaking section for details.

It may help some people better understand why A-A in Clear Sky works (or doesn't work) the way it does. I for one am not using any forced A-A nor any in-game A-A modes at all, it's coming at an obvious price, jagged edges, but to be honest they are very tolerable in Clear Sky for some reason, compared to many other games I own in which I tested with and without A-A. And the Sun Rays must be set to Low or else it destroys performance on any computers out there, even SLi setups (when the Sun rises of course, each game mornings, and also during Sunsets to some extent).

 

[Spike]

Can't wait for the new game. I never could get into SoC but loved CS and this looks awesome. I personally don't mind if the graphics are the same as CS since to me, that game is the most atmospheric of any I have ever played.

Bring on the pre-order!

 

[Zenoth]

Originally posted by: Spike
Can't wait for the new game. I never could get into SoC but loved CS and this looks awesome. I personally don't mind if the graphics are the same as CS since to me, that game is the most atmospheric of any I have ever played.

Bring on the pre-order!

I agree, the atmosphere in both SoC and CS is pretty much the best we can get in a first-person-shooter, especially of the recent years. There's one thing I would like to see happen in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. however, and it's facial expression on NPCs, unfortunately the current engine doesn't support that at all, even back in early 2007 when SoC was released, when I first saw Sidorovich speaking and saw his 1995'ish mouth animation I couldn't help myself and starting laughing and thought to myself: «during seven years of development they themselves endured that? they are my new heroes».