Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl Improvements!

The Mighty Gerbil

Tribe of Judah TF 2 Chapter Leader & CGA Admin
Staff member
I thought I would take the time to recommend this excellent mod http://artistpavel.blogspot.com/2009/04/stalker-complete-2009.html for Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl. It's a collection of the best mods for it and improves 90% of the experience while the remaining 10% may be up to taste. The mod includes additions selected for improving the experience not changing the gameplay/story (nightvision that actually works and a teleport system FTW). I would not play the game without the mod but be aware...

1. The better graphics may tax your system (I noticed no performance difference but mine already hanged without the mod because of the flawed hard drive loading system Stalker has).

2. You may have to start a new game as the mod may not read any game files made without the mod.

But wait there is more! If you would like to play Stalker with greatly reduced inappropriate language I edited it out of the game text (well what I could find). Of course all audio cussing will remain :/ .

Instructions for language removal:
1. Completely install the stalker complete mod first. My mod was made to work with it.

2. Find the eng folder within the mod folders. The folder path should be something similar to C:\Program
Files\Steam\steamapps\common\stalker shadow of chernobyl\gamedata\config\text\eng . Make a back up copy of it in case my mod fails.

3. Download one of these for my mod...
Zip version http://www.agapegraphics.com/eng.zip or
7z version http://www.agapegraphics.com/eng.7z

4. Extract my eng folder from the compressed file and copy it over Stalker complete's eng folder overwriting it's contents with mine.

If you cannot extract the folder from the .7z install http://www.7-zip.org/ or just use the zip version. The files within are the same.

Note: There is a LOT of cussing in the regular version of Stalker so this greatly improved the experience for me. Also I tested this on Stalker Complete 2009 version 1.4.1. They have since released newer versions of the mod which may cause my mod not to work. If it fails with my mod just re-copy the original eng folder backup over it to put it back to normal.
 
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How much hard drive space does this game take up?

And how frequent is the verbal profanity in the game?
 
How much hard drive space does this game take up?

And how frequent is the verbal profanity in the game?

Just about 5.6 gigs, and It's been so long that I don't really remember the profanity.

In my experience, it's prettymuch unmatched for atmosphere, so I'd definitely recommend it at a mere $2. Or you could get the THQ pack, I need more people for Company of Heroes and Red Faction Guerrilla multiplayer.
 
How much hard drive space does this game take up?

And how frequent is the verbal profanity in the game?

The uninstalled (thus unzipped) mod takes up 565 MB on top of the game itself. Store page says the game requires 10 GB hard drive space (I don't have it installed anymore because I needed the space so I can't look at it :p ).

As far as the cussing by far the majority of it is in the text as most of the game is not voice acted. In fact some of the voice acting is still in Russian which adds to the ambiance :). Without removing it I found the game to be impalpable as about any word is used and used often. I was at the point of regretting buying it thus my efforts to remove it all. The voice cussing is pretty infrequent mostly revolving around "you shot me you so and so" type things if I remember. It's also worth noting a couple of my replacement words were already used so it shouldn't sound more awkward than it was (if you find such things awkward). Plus the dialogue has that awkward "been translated" sentence structure sometimes anyway :p.

There are things you may not like about the gameplay though...

1. Lots of running between locations. Although the mod teleport system can alleviate the return trips.
Enemies could stand to be on a longer respawn timer becuase of this but it's not nearly as bad as Farcry 2. In fact the game feels like Farcry 2 should have been.

2. Limited item space so you will be picking up, selling and dropping stuff a lot. Basically you will end up with a ton of money with nothing to spend it on if you decide to loot every enemy.

3. Expect long loading times when you load up a game. You'll more than likely have hangs in some areas as content is loaded from your hard drive.

4. Multiplayer is supposed to be bad but I never played it.

Basically I like the game. I'm not crazy about it or making it my TF2 replacement but for 2 dollars I feel it is well worth it. It's like playing a moodier more realistic version of Half-life (the creators even have a tiny side joke about the similarities in a side quest too :p ). It has a decent plot if you find the good ending (don't miss the finding the doctor mission) and is probably the most atmospheric game I can remember playing. With the mod it's also rather pretty at times. So much so I was taken to making a few screen shots... 1 2 3 4 5 (visuals are better in game though with the wind blowing dust and grass).

I also played it with an additional realism mod but I don't recommend that unless you like continually using quick save and quick load :p .
 
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I went ahead and bought it. The last game I bought for $2 (Madballs in...Babo:Invasion) turned out to be great, so I thought I'd take a chance on this title, too.
 
Is there ANY other place where I can download the profanity removal kit, Gerbil?

</3 for FilePlanet.

NP I'll pm you another link :). Oh and I forgot to mention in the pm the teleport system only takes you to 2 places so if you use it before you actually get to them you'll be confused about where you are.
 
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Confused

Just wondering were do you find the mod to remove the cussing is it in the mod pack??

Rely want to get game but my Dad doesn't like me to play game with lots of cussing
 
Just wondering were do you find the mod to remove the cussing is it in the mod pack??

Rely want to get game but my Dad doesn't like me to play game with lots of cussing

I've re-wrtten my original post to make it a bit clearer for you :) . Please understand I have not played the game for 3 years so I cannot vouch for my mod still working with the Stalker Complete mod which has been updated, albeit only slightly. If my mod does not work with the game just delete the folder and put back the original one as per instructions above.
 
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