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[nenjin]

I guess I don't remember it that way. Maybe the later game. But the first two sections of the zone were pretty large and allowed for a lot of wandering around without finding anything. Or you could straight up walk around encounters like the train tunnel.

Later on yeah things basically become corridors. But up until the first couple major "dungeons", there was a lot of open space to move around in.

[Damiac]

I dunno, you KNEW when you were getting into something when you were getting into something with loading screens. Pripyat? Big fucken' deal. Lab X18? Big fucken' deal. One does not travel lightly in The Zone. I'm not sure that having a transition screen is a bad thing if you're priming the player that things are about to be different, but maybe I'm not super fussed about sensible loading windows. It'd add more to the contention about how the 8x8 playing field is represented, surely.

Loading screens improve immersion for you?
I think you're in the minority on that one.

[scriver]

Oh, nice! Posting to follow!

[nenjin]

I dunno, you KNEW when you were getting into something when you were getting into something with loading screens. Pripyat? Big fucken' deal. Lab X18? Big fucken' deal. One does not travel lightly in The Zone. I'm not sure that having a transition screen is a bad thing if you're priming the player that things are about to be different, but maybe I'm not super fussed about sensible loading windows. It'd add more to the contention about how the 8x8 playing field is represented, surely.

Loading screens improve immersion for you?
I think you're in the minority on that one.

Sounds like that should be directed at me, and while they don't enhance my immersion, shitty ones that look like they were done in 30 seconds certainly detract from my immersion.

[None]

I feel like I was perhaps wording my post too severely, and I'm sorry about that.

It's not so much the loading screens as that you've got very distinct dividers between very different parts of the game. Like, hypothetically, you could wander into Garbage from Cordon and not feel that the game has especially changed, except that the loading screen tells you you're entering into a different chunk of it, which is helpful when someone else tells you to go to the Garbage.

It's like, I dunno, like having doorways or something. Hypothetically you don't need doors around your abode, but you've got very specific dividers to differentiate which room is which. Most of the time, a door in a game doesn't convey the same brainstuff, but passing through a transition screen kind of has the same effect.

It's kind of a pacing thing, yeah?

[King Zultan]

PTW

[Damiac]

I feel like I was perhaps wording my post too severely, and I'm sorry about that.

It's not so much the loading screens as that you've got very distinct dividers between very different parts of the game. Like, hypothetically, you could wander into Garbage from Cordon and not feel that the game has especially changed, except that the loading screen tells you you're entering into a different chunk of it, which is helpful when someone else tells you to go to the Garbage.

It's like, I dunno, like having doorways or something. Hypothetically you don't need doors around your abode, but you've got very specific dividers to differentiate which room is which. Most of the time, a door in a game doesn't convey the same brainstuff, but passing through a transition screen kind of has the same effect.

It's kind of a pacing thing, yeah?

I get where you're coming from, you hit a level boundary and that means to expect new things. Loading screens were a good signal for that, even if they were immersion breaking in other ways.

Funny you mention doorways, there's a phenomenon called the threshold effect where walking through a doorway or something doorway like causes a sort of mental reset, it's supposedly one of the reasons its so easy to get up to do something then immediately forget what you were going to do when you get to the room in question.

Probably that sort of thing could still be utilized without any loading. A really simple version is just showing a caption like "You are entering the graveyard region" or some such.  Of course that's also immersion breaking. A signpost can accomplish much the same thing, and you could make the player walk through some kind of doorway/threshold to trigger the "I'm going to a new room" part of the brain.

Of course, a large problem is that real outdoor areas tend not to have obvious thresholds and doorways, and designing them to have them necessarily means a departure from realism, which again goes against immersion. 

[nenjin]

For me, Stalker's thresholds were weird and janky. Like I remember one that was a checkpoint, like a little perimeter wall and a block house and a chainlink fence at the back. Not a bad threshold I suppose, but as soon as you touched the chainlink fence, you zoned. You didn't open the fence, you didn't go around the fence, and on the other side it doesn't look like the side you just came from.

It's little things like that fuck with my immersion a bit. Not even really that, just.....looks lazy. Feels lazy. A small ding but something that has always stuck with me none the less.

[Robsoie]

I remember there was a Call of Chernobyl addon called MLR that had merged the Cordon map (the one in which you start in Shadow of Chernobyl) and a part of the Darkscape one (Darkscape was a map that was removed from Shadow of Chernobyl, because it was designed to be a vehicle ride, but when vehicles were cut from before the game release, the map had to go).
Performance was surprisingly good.

I wonder why modders didn't tried to merge more maps to see how it could play with no loading between some of the zones, unless the level editor has limitations in size (as it was made in 32bits era, so i guess the 32bits memory limit was in the engine itself).

[Salmeuk]

For me, Stalker's thresholds were weird and janky. Like I remember one that was a checkpoint, like a little perimeter wall and a block house and a chainlink fence at the back. Not a bad threshold I suppose, but as soon as you touched the chainlink fence, you zoned. You didn't open the fence, you didn't go around the fence, and on the other side it doesn't look like the side you just came from.

It's little things like that fuck with my immersion a bit. Not even really that, just.....looks lazy. Feels lazy. A small ding but something that has always stuck with me none the less.

 Definitely a game of it's era in that regard. This was actually why I brought up 'open-world' vs, 'dense world', since I recall the invisible walls of Stalker destroying immersion for me. It's like. . something about the world boundaries being a physical wall make me feel like I'm trapped in someone else's world. Which can be good, but for Stalker it's not.

I hope they balance the gear management. I honestly think they should take some inventory design hints from tarkov, though maybe not balanced for PvP. OG Stalker has you kitted out with multiple guns and LORD so much ammunition, but it would feel better if the game wasn't designed with that sort of hoarding in mind.

Really, they should halt Escape from Tarkov dev (game is toxic anyways) and join forces to make stalker 2..

[Damiac]

The single most important thing for me is that there's no terribly stupid mechanic where 2/3 or 1/2 of your bullets don't do anything.

Although trying to look that up now I can't find any evidence that was actually the case, although I could swear I needed a mod to disable that behavior...

So... hopefully it doesn't have this mechanic that may or may not have ever existed.

[Mini]

I think you're remembering the rumour that on lower difficulty settings the chance for enemy bullets to be ignored when they hit the player also applied in reverse (which is untrue, as far as I can tell).

[scriver]

For me, Stalker's thresholds were weird and janky. Like I remember one that was a checkpoint, like a little perimeter wall and a block house and a chainlink fence at the back. Not a bad threshold I suppose, but as soon as you touched the chainlink fence, you zoned. You didn't open the fence, you didn't go around the fence, and on the other side it doesn't look like the side you just came from.

It's little things like that fuck with my immersion a bit. Not even really that, just.....looks lazy. Feels lazy. A small ding but something that has always stuck with me none the less.

I've never had a problem with things like that. It's like in a movie, they cut away after you've left Cordon to when you enter the Scrapyard.

[Mech#4]

I wouldn't mind larger maps to walk through with areas of interest spaced out. If the atmosphere is done well you'd be constantly checking around for roaming animals. Walking through a forest would be neat, though I wonder how they're going to do new areas since Prypyat and Chernobyl are rather thoroughly explored at this point. They could always add more, unknown labs and factories I guess.


Some of the loading screens were a bit abrupt, but I don't think I payed them much heed. Though that one mentioned earlier which dumped you right in front of a guy being held at gunpoint by 3 bandits was always kind of annoying. The loading screens into the underground areas worked well since I always assumed they were filling in for the PC making their way through various floors of empty rooms to the interesting stuff.


I don't really know what to think of this. It looks neat but so have several other games announced over the years as sequels. Wasn't there one with heavy plantgrowth everywhere?

[Damiac]

I think you're remembering the rumour that on lower difficulty settings the chance for enemy bullets to be ignored when they hit the player also applied in reverse (which is untrue, as far as I can tell).

Yeah, I'm pretty sure this is the case.  It was easy to believe given the inaccuracy of the starting weapons, and general jankiness though. Damned urban legends of zelda...

Although somehow the jankiness fit the feel of the game to me.  I'm in a broken down abandoned irradiated zone that was neglected by an empire in decline, of course everything is janky.  Obviously that's just headcanon but it worked for me.