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This is a compilation of popular and rare to find graphical and technical mods that significantly enhance the appearance of the game without distorting the original story and gameplay, this is vanilla 2.0 for 2009.

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File Instructions:

This mod has been created with a thought of brining the beautiful and immersive game of STALKER from the era when it was created to an up-to-date experience you'd expect from games you play in 2009. I did not try to include every single mod out there that changes the game beyond recognition, that was not the point. The following list is the carefully chosen essential collection of most advanced and aesthetically pleasent modifications, created by talented concept artists and programmers in the past 2 years. These are meant to technically and artistically enhance the game without compromising the original feel and atmosphere developers meant you to see. You'll notice every single detail has been retouched and has a quality feel to it.

This is ideal for first time players or people who have beaten the game when it first came out and now are coming back to replay it on new rig with higher resolution and better graphics.


Summary:
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List of merged and modified mods:

- Panoramic Mod 2.1 + S.W.O 2.2 + Vivid Sunsets 0.7:
visually beautiful creative merge of 3 different graphics & weather mods created by several artists, large view distance, horizons, proper sun travel according to location, enhanced HDR, wet surfaces, morning due, multiple weather cycles, darker nights, moonlight, different types of storms from fast to slow, stars constellation, water animation and many more implementations, all by staying within the mood of the game.

- SkyGRAPHICS_-_MOD_v2.0_RC4.1:
this mod introduces advanced shader technology known as Parallax Occlusion Mapping seen in Crysis and very recent games, creating close-to-life illusion of true relief, Depth of Field, Motion Blur, Sun Shafts (optional) and Screen Space Ambient Occlusion (SSAO), which creates an enormous difference in the way the game looks (mod has been fine tuned from it's default state to avoid excessive rock relief and contrast)

- Photorealistic Zone 1.0 (a.k.a Argus Texture Pack):
this is a 6 months of reworking every texture in the game by Argus, special attention has been paid to preserving the original look of materials while textures have been replaced with equivalent higher quality photographs with manual bump editing and partial use of original files, heavily optimized to reduce performance drop.

- Vehicles Retexture Pack
selected vehicles now look extra rusty and abandoned but only the ones that been parked there for 20 years, Stalkers and millitary still use transpartation.

- Zone Reclamation Project:
adds numerous bug fixes, creates dynamic camp fires that act as a source of light, removes head bobbling, mutes annoying characters "Get out of here Stalker" and many more.

- Particle Enhancement 3.0:
this mod enhances many of the particle effects in Stalker, sparkles, anomalies, smoke, explosions, etc.

- Ragdoll Mod 1.3:
adds natural death and hit physics, kills will no longer cause corpse ragdoll to fly backwards.

- Bulbs Soc (a.k.a Lampochki Soc):
now you can shoot the bulbs and the lights will go out!

- Argus Add-ons:
new quality Google Earth type map, halogen flashlight, gloves, knife with signs of sharpenning (very cool).

- AI Pack 10005:
adds the following set of abilities to NPCs: removing bodies from camp sites, throwing grenades, changing armor, healing other NPC's.

- Hades Real Gore Mod 1.0:
textures to simulate real blood and gore, wet blood look, bits of guts, bullet sprays, all done classy without exaggeration.

- Sound Overhaul 1.07 RC2:
replaces most weapon sounds, anomalies, equipment clatter, footsteps, nightlife, bullet fly-by sounds and more with quality equivalents.
All sounds are properly OGG-commented to prevent any issues.

- Harmonica Mod:
NPC's can randomly play harmonica between guitar sessions.

- Authentic Music:
adds a few acoustic guitar songs in authentic language in the mix, but not too many.

- Asphalt 2.0:
quality asphalt texture.

- Medkits:
quality medkit textures.

- Chernobyl TV 1.1:
smooth TV animation, actual footage about Chernobyl.

- NWT 0.6.1:
quality weapon textures.

- TS Nades:
quality grenade textures.

- Elite Nightvision 1.1:
black & white nightvision based on the psy_antenna postprocess effect.
This one really makes you see in the dark.

- Stalker Forever HD Foodndrinks 1.0:
authentic vodka and energy drink skins, food textures stay original.

- Normal Accuracy Plus 1.0:
the set of tweaked weapons configs that slightly increases your chances of hitting the target without ruining the game's original award-winning ballistic system.

- Rules of Engagement 0.1:
removes the ability for NPC's to notice you at unrealistically large distances, 500m and up.

- 1154HUD 1.2:
a clean and minimalistic hud from early game development as oppose to final arts'n'crafts style hud.

- many smaller fixes not included in the list. If you notice older mod versions, there's a reason for that, they either have been modified beyond their versions or the new versions brought unnecessary changes and incompatibilities.

Screenshots included in the pack.



Install:
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Designed and tested for STALKER Version 1.0005/1.0006
New game is required only if you experience crashes when trying to load saved games.


1. In the main STALKER directory (by default it's "C:\Program Files\THQ\S.T.A.L.K.E.R. - Shadow of Chernobyl", and for Steam users it should be located in "Steam/SteamApps/Common/Stalker shadow of Chernobyl"), locate file "fsgame.ltx", open with Notepad and change both variables in the first line to "true":

$game_data$ = true| true| $fs_root$|


2. Copy 'gamedata' folder to main STALKER directory.


3. In the "user.ltx" file change gloss factor to 2.5:

r2_gloss_factor 2.5

- to find "user.ltx", XP users go to:
"C:/Documents and Settings\All Users\Documents\stalker-shoc\user.ltx"

- Vista/Win7 users just type "stalker-shoc" in Windows Explorer search or go to:
"C:\Users\Public\Documents\stalker-shoc\user.ltx"

- Steam users go to "steam\steamapps\common\stalker shadow of chernobyl\_appdata_" if I'm not mistaken.


The 3rd step is optional but recommended, since textures were designed with those settings. Make sure you backup your original "user.ltx" before making changes.



Unistall:
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1. delete "gamedata"
2. change "r2_gloss_factor 2.5" back to what it was in "user.ltx"



Additional information:
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- despite every effort been made to optimize this mod, it may reduce the performance, especially on older machines.

- it's recommended to play with Full Dynamic Lighting, and set Textures, Anisotropic Filtering, Grass Density and Shadow quality to maximum settings, the rest could be set to 50%, it won't make any visual difference.

- STALKER does not support Anti-Aliasing, either leave it alone or force x2 AA using game profile in the video card control panel if you have enthusiast machine.

- if you experience "shadow glitch", where shadow artifacts are following you around, go to "user.ltx" and make changes to these lines:

r2_sun_near 20.
r2_sun_near_border 0.8

- if you don't like the "dot" cursor, go to "gamedata\config\system.ltx" and make changes to this line from 0.00 to default 0.015:

[hud_cursor]
cross_length = 0.015

- for fine tune settings control go to "gamedata" and launch "Modifier.exe"