Absolute HD 2023 is a mod for Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl, bought to you by the same people developing Stalker: Singularity (SIN). Absolute HD is designed for the purist who wishes the game were modernised with true remastered HD textures and very few other changes.
Right, so, some people are having problems launching AHD, as an IT tech by trade I tend to have every bit of software installed that other software might depend on to run so some issues I just don't see as a result. This checklist is so you can ensure you can run AHD first time without issue.
1. Open fsgame.ltx and change the gamedata line to true | true
2. Install OpenAL32
3. Install Visual C++ 2010 Redist 32 & 64bit at minimum
4. This shouldn't be necessary with the version of OGSR AHD uses but in some cases it might be, create a shortcut to xrEngine, right-click on it and select "properties". In the Target field at the end leave a space outside of the quote marks and add -steam.
With these things covered you should be able to run AHD without any issues.
Note that AHD is localised for ENGLISH, if you installed Stalker in a different language you will need to change your Stalker installation localisation.
Quick example on how to do this;
Gamedata>Config
Open "localization.ltx" with notepad, change language = eng to language = rus (for russian installations)
Next, go to; Gamedata>Config>Text
Change the "Eng" folder to "Rus" (for Russian installations)
As far as the game is now concerned the files contained within are the russian versions.
Title says it all landing early mainly to address a CTD, read on for details.
I said it would be coming soon and here it is right on time for the weekend, Absolute HD 2023 v1.4.
There's a lot of changes coming to AHD v1.4, this article covers all those changes.
This news post is just to clear up some assumptions some media outlets have made rather than contacting me and asking.
Due to ongoing internet issues (which are now fixed) this optional HD textures pack got delayed.
This hotfix addresses a CTD in Yantar referencing armour created for SIN but not present in AHD.
4K diffuse textures for human NPCs. Do NOT use this pack if you are running AHD on the old v1.0 X-Ray engine.. it'll cause the .exe to exceed the maximum...
Like a moron I forgot to give the player a pistol and somehow the money bug remained from v1.0 so this patch fixes those things until a proper update.
Does this mod come with better engine. Textures patch says not to use them unless play on better Xray engine. Where do you get that ?
The mod includes the better engine run xrEngine from the bin_64 folder. The warning is for anyone trying to use HD textures on original X-Ray.
This is simply amazing. First texture pack for Stalker I've seen in almost 20 years that is actually using original textures. Bloody well done!
One question though, can I just use the textures without any other changes you have made to the game? I like the game as it is with just ZRP added and would love to play it like that with your textures.
Some textures are custom such as for the weapons so some manual editing of textures.ltx would be needed for full vanilla compatibility.
Is there a way to change Rendering settings? They aren't saving for me/are reset each time I launch xrEngine.exe
EDIT: got it to work. copied the user data directory over to STALKER's root and changed the referenced directory in fsgame.ltx
I can now make changes in game, and they are saved/recognized-at-launch
can I add other mods into this ???
Anything that doesnt overwrite files already contained in AHD will be fine, other mods that do have files AHD uses will need manual merging.
I was reading your notes in weapons.ltx, and I feel the need to point out a couple of mistakes you might have made, maybe they are intentional, but I'll clarify to make sure.
In the notes you write
impair = 1.0 ;A multiplier for recoil?
This value, according to some info lost when gsc forums clsoed, it's actually a value for to make different types of ammo contribute more or less to weapon degradation (presumably it interacts with condition_shot_dec). Mods that add corrosive or old ammo achieve the effect by tinkering with with this value.
This here is probably on purpose, but you've drastically reduced the k_dist value for all shotgun shells, which means the description of slug and dart increasing range to up to hundreds of meters is false for all shotguns but the hunting shotgun, which can fire well beyond the stated ranges.
On your first point I could never find out or see a difference when adjusting impair values so I just took a shot in the dark with my notes at a best guess what it would do if I was designing the engine and I always consider until tested otherwise a feature that doesn't seem to be working as a broken\incomplete engine feature. Anything with a "?" is where I'm not entirely certain on functionality, Western\Eastern logic differences I guess :p Thanks for that clarification though I can add that into the notes.
For k_dist, yeah that's intentional as part of the ballistics refining I'm doing. Shotguns tend to be deadly at anything up to around 100 meters (I dare you even with the best armour on to take a point-blank shot from even a lowly bandit with a BM16 loaded with buckshot ;p ) but due to pellet spread and factoring barrel length drops off after that point AFAIK so I've been trying to get shotguns to be as deadly as they should be without being OP. Still trying to get the darts and impact shells to behave more realistically though.
But shotguns don't hit anything beyond 30 meters with your settings. The only shotgun that can hit at those diatances with your current set up is the toz34 regardless if on the handa of npcs or player.
As I said, balancing without being OP. Barrel length also matters the shorter the barrel the more pellet spread IRL those factors are being considered when tuning with how firearms behave in the game. If you want to be really pedantic (which I am when it comes to balancing) then you also have to consider IRL not every shotgun is going to be slug optimised either, particularly not ones taking multiple types of shells. Every NPC (or player) being essentially a "shotgun sniper" would be unbalanced, and frankly, just absurd. The Toz range balances out nicely with the convenient fact it has the longest barrel, is only 2 shots, and slow to reload. In other words, the player has a fair chance if they come up against a single or multiple NPCs with them. Other shotguns are every bit as deadly due to them having higher ammo counts and being faster to reload.