The official STALKER: Twilight K.E.T. mod thread!

[ket]

The next step will be the bump and parallax mapping, or rather, the lack of it in stalker. They will be redone as well. I know there are bump map mods so it won't take long implementing one of them, but parallax mapping mods.. aren't many of them and the only good one I've seen goes overkill with it and actually makes things look less realistic.

[DARK TEMPLAR]

Looking sweet. Can hardly wait.

[ket]

All actor and level bump maps have just been completed, heres some before and after screens. Don't worry, performance impacts of these changes should be minimal to none. To do pretty much ALL the bumps in the game the file weighs in at 366MB, so even a 256MB graphics card with a little HDD swapping should be able to handle this. Its always difficult to get the full picture of improvements with screenshots especially if you have to resize them, but you should get a very good idea with these images.





Unfortunately for me (but good for all of you) deciding to redo all the bumps means I'm going to have to take a lot of in-game screenshots

[ket]

Here we go, a small army of new screenshots with the enhanced bump mapping! I apologise for the quality of the screenshots, I forgot to turn AF back on in CCC. I also noticed something rather nice, don't get too excited as it may not be the case for everyone. Since re-doing almost all of the bump maps for the game, in areas my FPS used to dip to between 18-22FPS due to the piss poor X-Ray optimisations, thats no longer the case! Not once so far have I seen my FPS dip below 28-32 and thats in the most notorious areas of levels. Just for perhaps an interesting point for some, current build size of TK 1.1 is 710MB.

* Screenshots taken @ 1280*1024, resized to 600*480. Fullsize screens available HERE

[ket]

pt2

[ket]

pt3

[ket]

Last part

[audioave10]

This is impressive work. I hope it's a Merry Christmas for me...

[ket]

Theres not too much left for me to do now. I'll even list all that remains to be done so you can all have guesses at the release day

- Finish moving scripted mutants to all.spawn
- Do custom soundtracks
- Add helicopters and APCs to all.spawn
- Figure out how to make crows attack
- Move level changer positions
- Finish "Scorched Earth" weather

[Nightwatch]

Light and shadows have been masterfully handled, saturated beautiful tones, yet the images are very clear. Yes, it's an impressive work.

[ket]

Glad everybody likes it so far Do remember though those beautiful visuals are not just texture changes and so forth, the user.ltx file is heavily resposible. So if you want TK to look as gob-smacking as those shots, using the custom user.ltx file is absolutely essential. At this time given the very late beta build, while I finish off more elements I'm looking for some proper hands on experiences with the mod. If anyone has the time to sit down and play this mod let me know and I'll upload the beta, this one isn't closed, its open to anyone who has the time.

[audioave10]

I'm ready...got one system with ONLY Stalker on it. If you have clear instructions (which you usually do) then I can put a thorough
test on it.

I have Priboi on it now so if you think I should reinstall Stalker first
I can do that. If it's OK just to replace the datafile let me know.

[ket]

Alright I'll package things up now. To save me doing it seperately I'll also do the how to install bit here.

How To Install Twilight K.E.T. v1.1 pre-release

1. Unzip the Gamedata folder and fsgame.ltx to your STALKER - Shadow Of Chernobyl directory.
2. Place the user.ltx file in your STALKER-SHOC folder. If your not sure where the STALKER-SHOC folder is located use Windows search to find it
3. The user.ltx file is absolutely essential to experience TK 1.1 in all its visual beauty, you will have to re-do your game controls though. Nothing I can do about that one.
4. Thats it! For safetys sake anyone running other mods its probably a good idea to delete your existing gamedata folder.

**Important Notes** TK is designed for stalker 1.0004, other patches are untested. As this is a pre-release, naturally some aspects are still unfinished such as the conversion of mutants from script into all.spawn, some of them are there though

Minimum recommended specs

CPU: AMD Athlon 64 2.8GHz or equivillent
RAM: 2x1GB PC6400 (800MHz)
Graphics: X1950Pro 512MB overclocked
Page File: 2048MB

Even the smallest nit-picking thing, let me know in this thread and I'll look into it. Thats everything! I'll edit this post with the DL link when its uploaded.

TK 1.1 pre-release build 2000 download!

[DARK TEMPLAR]

Man that all sounds real nice, too bad I can't play right now. Stalker is my most time consuming game and I got to get my grades up before I go on a killing spree in the ZONE, so I'l wait.

[audioave10]

COOL!...downloading now...will take 22 minutes to get (I love my
high speed cable). I only used up to patch 1.004 anyway so that's
good too.

[ket]

Try not to die too quickly at the beginning especially you will get a real feel for how the rest of TK will pan out in the final version. Don't be afraid, the character may pull out a bolt after leaving sid, but your not totally defenceless, you have a knife. I thought I was being generous giving the knife, so no "wheres my gun" stuff Oh and lastly if you find yourself falling through certain metal grating just delete gamemtl.xr - its for testing purposes only.

[Nightwatch]

Congratulations Ket and thanks for relasing this mod, although it's officially a pre-release state.
(As you know, I'm very time strapped now with the mod's upgrade project, but as soon as I've find time I'll surely play it to the full.)

[ket]

Thanks! Hopefully the things that need to be finished won't take too long. I really tried to weed out all of the bugs for TK 1.1 too so hopefully it'll behave itself in the wild. I'm still noticing fantastic FPS improvements too. Inside the bar instead of it being about 22FPS with the torchlight on its about 38FPS all the way up to around 50.

[audioave10]

First impressions in Cordon:
Blowout burn marks on wall of bunker - really cool
I was sneaking around awhile until I could get some good weapons
and armor since in Cordon alone there was:
two controllers, 5 burers, 1 gigant, 3 bloodsuckers and obviously
many dead loners along with 5 cats and about 10 tushkanos.
The south military base must have had over 20 guys there so I
bothered them until they attacked the loners camp and made out of
that battle a wealthy rookie.
Difficulty - Stalker (I wasn't very brave this time)
If I run too far too fast I can make it stutter a bit but I'm running wide screen at 1600 x 900 res. Very Nice textures and much better
flashlight.
The above is only up to the railroad overpass.
Still get indicators on map leading to empty stashes but I think that
is vanilla problem.
VERY enjoyable so far. Nice sunrise and sunset. Good work.