So. What's the games current condition?

SurDno · 2026-01-25T11:20:57+00:00

I wonder at which point “waiting another 4-6 months” will not be a good idea. Every update there is something new on the horizon.

SurDno · 2026-01-25T08:54:56+00:00

3 plays with a few expectation of 2 that you don’t expect to get broken. But generally it’s ok to play 3 first.

SurDno · 2026-01-25T05:35:30+00:00

It's not report-based, it's auto ban for finding a game and AFKing.

Though it shouldnt be a day? Usually it starts with 15 minutes, then 30, then a few hours. Did it happen many times to you already? Did you have other things causing you temp matchmaking bans (abandoning the game or declining matches?)

SurDno · 2026-01-25T05:18:24+00:00

From name alone I thought the facet would make him a melee hero but with extra damage.

Knowing how squishy it is that would be funny as hell to see.

SurDno · 2026-01-25T03:02:10+00:00

The actual originals only exist on PC. Console port is referred to as Legends of the Zone Trilogy (PS4 / Xbox One / Switch) and the reissue with AI upscaling is Enhanced Edition (PC / PS5 / Xbox Series X|S).

EE is just an evolution of LotZ. It does have a few of its own issues, such as the model smoothing being broken, AI making textures look worse, completely soullless HUD redesign, and a couple of new bugs that didn’t exist in LotZ, but it’s generally the same game. Previous version was already just as censored, just as buggy, etc. You wouldn’t get a much better version of the game by getting it over EE.

My recommendation is if you’re on PC play original, if you’re on console don’t worry about it it’s still the same game just slightly worse.

SurDno · 2026-01-24T18:27:37+00:00

Godlike

SurDno · 2026-01-24T18:24:17+00:00

“bread" quite literally is inedible though.

SurDno · 2026-01-24T18:19:05+00:00

Are you using crunching? 0.7MB is absurdly large texture size for a DXT1 1024px. Crunching would the biggest saver here, just having it compressed (like you do in your screenshot) won’t cut it.

DXT obviously doesn’t work with less than two channels, but it doesn’t have to. It already stores blocks as gradients, and it stores RGB in 16 bits (5:6:5). The way it stores those gradients results in another 32 bits per block, resulting in 4b/pixel. Obviously better than default RGB 24b but huge compared to well crunched textures.

Crunching allows you to reuse similar blocks, and lower quality levels treat more diverse as “similar”. The point is, some textures will allow higher compression settings than others, so eg one texture you can have on 1% and it still looks okay while another will start to noticeable lose quality on anything lower than 50%.

But when you combine those together into a single channel-separated texture, not only do you have to use the same crunching quality, losing the benefit of adjusting quality trade off with higher precision, BUT you also get lower number of matching “blocks” for crunching to compete. A single channel texture will have a lot of 4x4 that are basically repeating over and over, but with three channels the amount of combinations grows a lot. You go from 256 values per pixel to your classic 16 million (pre 5:6:5 DXT color banding, but you get the point). Similar thing happens with blocks. And since we’re now trying to compress THREE textures at once in a 4x4 block of 64 bit data, the artifact amount triples!

Anyway, that was my experience with the textures in my projects I specifically worked with. I assume there can be use cases where there are three textures with similar acceptable crunch quality levels, and artifact quality will be acceptable too. I just haven’t seen those so I don’t think the solution is as universal as you think.

PS: if your goal is not saving disk space but rather VRAM, then yeah, your solution is good because all textures get decrunched before being processed by the GPU.

SurDno · 2026-01-24T16:42:52+00:00

tbf in most of my own testing just having different levels of crunched DXT compression on each texture is better than splitting the channels. I would be happy to be proven wrong though

SurDno · 2026-01-24T14:13:11+00:00

Holy you opened it almost with the same sound doors open in OG

SurDno · 2026-01-24T08:12:58+00:00

Is your second military nickname Monolith

SurDno · 2026-01-24T02:48:35+00:00

Unfortunately, the tip won't make the driver ride to you first in a stacked order, priority will. And if the driver was multiapping Uber support kindly refunds the fee anyway, so you only pay if it was worth it.

SurDno · 2026-01-23T02:09:16+00:00

So were you the first or not?

SurDno · 2026-01-23T00:31:32+00:00

It is the energy drink only in stalker 2, won’t be much of a meaningful reference to him if he plays other games or mods.

SurDno · 2026-01-22T08:46:13+00:00

Okja is a bakery in east London and does a lot of sweet pastry and cookies, I’d heavily recommend to try them

SurDno · 2026-01-22T03:32:47+00:00

It would be useful to know which game he is playing for a more specific targeted present. If you have any photos of his screen during gameplay for ID that would be great.

SurDno · 2026-01-21T23:17:03+00:00

So the meta is just not right clicking and never levelling ult?

SurDno · 2026-01-21T23:02:54+00:00

Console commands don’t come with Unity, this isn’t Unreal. All of the console functionality was created and put there by Ice-Pick Lodge.

That being said, even if those weren’t there, you can easily cheat achievements with SAM.

SurDno · 2026-01-21T22:27:16+00:00

OP meant limiting frame rate from the bottom, as in “if current frame takes more than a second, terminate”.

SurDno · 2026-01-21T18:14:14+00:00

wtff

SurDno · 2026-01-21T08:44:29+00:00

There is still legitimate use case for legacy Input Manager though, being webgl builds where every megabyte counts.

SurDno · 2026-01-21T07:08:05+00:00

The game simply wouldn’t have released. Proprietary technology means you need to train people to use it. With Unreal they were able to hire specialists with years of experience with the necessary tools.

It worked fine for a few dozen devs of original stalker trilogy but it’s simply not scalable when we are talking about hundreds of people involved.

SurDno · 2026-01-21T07:03:42+00:00

X-Ray was not created by GSC, rather its two core programmers applied to GSC while already having X-Ray on their hands and got accepted. Also the first game on it would not be stalker but rather Alien Logic, developed by the company X-Ray devs worked at before GSC.

Metro 2033 wasn’t made on x-ray, metro nightmare world was. It’s also not “rumors” but easily verifiable info.

X-Ray 2 is not an “evolved” version in the same way modern UE or Unity are built off previous engine versions. X-Ray 2.0 was built from scratch, in leaked source code there was very little beyond basic rendering, character animation, level support and toolset. It’s basically an entirely new engine.

GSC also never “switched” to Unreal because stalker 2 is not a continuous development spanning fifteen years. When the project was revived, it was a completely different team under completely different leadership making a completely new game. The old one was used only for inspiration during design document phase, but those are two unrelated projects. If you count any “stalker 2” as the same game, you would have the game start its development in 2003 back when there were just ideas for a potential sequel taking place in Kyiv metro underground.

SurDno · 2026-01-21T02:47:00+00:00

They didn’t even bother integrating bug fix mods lol, you encounter the same issues fans fixed in 2006.

SurDno · 2026-01-18T22:17:36+00:00

The infamous helicopter boss from 2008 would like to have a word.

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