STALKER Complete 2009 (2012) | Shadow of Chernobyl mod

If you haven’t played 2007’s most immersive and atmospheric shooter, or you’re back for replay, this mod is for you. This is the world of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. like you’ve never seen before, with updated graphics and added functionality that don’t change the original story or gameplay.

Contained within are new textures, sounds, music, sky, weather system and visual effects, along with bug fixes, AI improvements, upgraded shaders, ragdoll physics, a revamped user interface and so much more.

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64 comments by Artistpavel on Oct 3rd, 2009

Note: we are in the middle of the new 2012 update, the current and the latest available mod version is STALKER Complete 2009 1.4.4 until further notice.

If you haven’t played 2007’s most immersive and atmospheric shooter, or you’re back for replay, this mod is for you. This is the world of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. like you’ve never seen before, with updated graphics and added functionality that don’t change the original story or gameplay. The game hasn’t been changed beyond recognition, but rather enhanced while preserving the core elements that made it the unique experience is it.
What makes this mod different?
It was designed by professional graphic artists with rich experience in the field, following industry standards for creating interactive 3D environments. It features artistic works and modifications from many community members unified under one art direction. The game has been redesigned with new visual qualities, and is offered as one convenient, complete package to reach a user base beyond the modding community. This mod has been created with a thought of bringing the beautiful and immersive game of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl from the previous generation when it was created to an up-to-date experience you’d expect from games currently being developed.
The following list details the carefully chosen collection of technically advanced and aesthetically brilliant modifications that were created by talented modders, concept artists, and programmers over the past two years. They are meant to technically and artistically enhance the original feel and atmosphere the developers meant you to experience, without compromising it in the process. You’ll notice every single detail has been retouched and has a polished feel to it.
This is ideal for first time players or people who finished the game in the past and now are coming back to replay it on newer, more powerful hardware on improved resolution and graphics.
STALKER Complete 2009 defined the standards for making S.T.A.L.K.E.R. mods, and its successful formula has inspired many similar projects.

Natural lighting, vast panoramic views, depth of field, parallax mapping, SSAO, over 900 reworked texture files, including vehicles and armor suites with manual bump editing, you won't believe it's the same game.

Version 1.4.4

Developed by a professional art studio, the weather system in Stalker Complete 2009 is a pinnacle of visual game design. It features work by several artists including challenge winners from conceptart.org (the largest concept art community which produces works for games and movie industries). It’s based on the same elements and principles found in representational art such as aerial perspective, composition, balance, and color theory, to name a few. The key features include:

• Natural multi-phase day and night transitions, based on daily observations, photographs, and studies by artists from Dolgov Studio.
• Vast distant views, creating large open world around the player.
• New multi-phase moon design authored by Dolgov Studio.
• Proper sun travel according to date (01.05.2012) and geographic location (Ukraine).
• Enhanced High Dynamic Range lighting and Sun effects (including realistic sunsets and sunrises).
• Increased weather cycling.
• Different types of storms, fast and slow.
• Wet surfaces during rain.
• High resolution nighttime constellation map.
• Improved water animations.

(authors: DolgovStudio.com, Argus, Trojanuch, Sergy172)

This mod takes full advantage of Shader Model 3.0 and introduces advanced shader technology first seen in the game “Crysis”. This tool allows creating close-to-life illusions of true relief and depth, in addition to adding rendering techniques creating an enormous difference in the way the game looks. Improvements include:

• Parallax Occlusion Mapping - Gives 2D textures the illusion of 3D geometry, most visible on surfaces such as brick walls.
• Screen Space Ambient Occlusion - A shading method that approximates the way light radiates in real life, creating soft shadows in corner-type places with a difficult lighting sample.
• Depth of Field - An effect that creates a gradual decrease in sharpness determined by the subject distance. For example, a distant landscape will appear blurry when compared to closer objects.
• Motion Blur - A streaking effect frequently used to show a sense of speed when the camera quickly moves around.
• Particle system - Enhanced rendering of fire, explosions, smoke, muzzle, sparks, falling leaves, anomalies, fog, and more.
• Water Shaders - Improved water effects ported from S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Clear Sky.
• Fire Dynamic Lighting - Fire now illuminates the surroundings, casting dynamic shadows.

(authors: Sky4CE, Eggchen, NatVac)

This mod includes a texture overhaul featuring the “Photorealistic Zone”, a total rework of every texture in game by Argus over a nine month period. Special attention has been given to preserve the game’s original look while the original textures have been replaced with higher quality versions and manually bump-edited files. The textures are heavily optimized to reduce performance impact. Elements that are improved include:

• Locations - all textures replaced with higher quality photographs with partial use of original files, creating highly detailed outdoor and indoor environments.
• Living Creatures - Mutated creatures have soaking wet flesh showing through wounds, creating a disturbingly graphic effect. Also, all humans in Zone have been retouched down to even the finest details (armor, shoes, wrinkles, faces, even their eyeballs).
• Vehicles - 20 year old vehicles in the Zone now appear realistically rusted and abandoned.

(authors: Argus, Domestos)

The game’s notorious reputation of being a huge bugfest ends here. Over the past two years a joint community effort has accumulated fixes for most known bugs and crash to desktop exits left out by developers after patch 1.0005. With the release of the unofficial community patch, bug fixes and numerous positive gameplay tweaks are implemented, such as realistic weapons names, reduced head bobbing, increased actor’s height, increased inventory weight limit, extended quest times, and more.
(authors: NatVac, Fatrap, Victim, DC-, silverpower, omero, Decane, fitzroy_doll,
motiv-8, BobBQ, Snowball, TSL16b, Eggchen, barin, Alex-Tommy, GSC forums...)

Artificial Intelligence received major reworking:

• New abilities - NPCs can avoid anomalies, remove dead bodies from camp sites, throw grenades, change armor, and even heal other NPCs. You can also give weapons and armor to NPCs by selling or dropping it near them and giving them privacy to equip them (NPC’s preferences may prevent them from accepting the items, however).
• Early detection - Removed the ability for NPC's to notice you at unrealistically large distances.
• Stealth - Knife and other critical sounds such as falling dead bodies, grass, and footsteps have been properly commented to reduce their sound radius, making the gameplay much more realistic.
• Death panic - Reduced the sound distance of death cries (in the original game it caused the entire camp to alert once one member was hit, as it was set to be heard at a great distance).

(authors: xStream, BAC9-FLCL, KoGar, Darius6, {imperialreign}, MulleR, Mongol)

This mod replaces a massive amount of in-game sounds, including weapons, anomalies, equipment clatter, footsteps, nightlife, bullet fly-by sounds and more with higher quality versions. Also, the mod adds unique ambient sounds for each weather cycle. “Repetitive” NPCs will now only say their lines once (such as the “Get out of here, stalker” line), and hundreds of additional ambient sounds like bar kitchen cooking, nighttime horror sounds, fog sounds, and more have been added to the game, creating a more immersive audio experience.
(authors: Darius6, {imperialreign}, MulleR, Mongol)

The mod also adds a new music collection, featuring 84 new acoustic guitar compositions added to the existing set plus a few vocal songs in authentic language unique to each faction. This is the only music mod where compositions have been performed live and recorded specifically for this game by a musician (no MIDI or generic karaoke tracks were used). This is live music with human touch that blends seamlessly with the ambient soundtrack, and makes you want to spend more time by the campfire. Also, NPCs will now randomly play the harmonica in addition to the guitar. Finally, 19 authentic music tracks can be heard on the radio and from the megaphones throughout the Zone.
(authors: DolgovStudio.com, MulleR, Mongol)

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl is not exactly a textbook example when it comes to localization. Misspelled words, typos, grammatical errors, and humor lost in translation can be charming at times given the context, but creating unnecessary difficulty in understanding their meaning. Most of the text received a grammar-friendly rewrite, providing a much improved English localization.
(authors: Tharawdeal, Onionradish, Dethtoll)

A visual overhaul mod isn’t complete without a new, custom user interface. This is why we are proud to present our very own Main Menu, Loading Screen, and redesigned HUD. Created by our graphic design firm, the interface incorporates existing in-game art and photographs of actual Chernobyl disaster zone artifacts, adding a unique art style and authentic feel. Certain buttons have been conveniently reorganized for more intuitive access and new shortcuts added, such as ESC+S which works like a “smart quick-save”, creating a separate save file with the level name, in-game date, and timestamp each time it’s used.
(authors: DolgovStudio.com, NatVac)

• Sleeping Bag - It’s always in the inventory and allows the player sleep in-game.
• Faction Change and Reset - Now players have the ability to reset hostile status and join factions outside of the storyline.
• Ragdoll Physics - Natural death and hit animation, and kills will no longer cause extreme ragdoll effects.
• Bulb tweak - Now you can shoot the lights out!
• Gnomus' Scopes - High resolution scopes for widescreen and standard monitors.
• Repair Kit - A special item to the game that allows you to repair weapons and armors out in the Zone. The only way to get this rare item is to loot it from a NPC’s corpse.
• Repair Services - The bar trader and Screw now sell weapons and armor repair services.
• Chernobyl TV - Replaced the original TV animation with actual Chernobyl footage.
• Elite Nightvision - Black & white night vision based on the psy_antenna postprocess effect. This one really makes you see in the dark.
• ZRP Teleport - The ESC+J shortcut lets you jump between the points in the environment.
• Third-Person View - Press F1, F2 and F3 to cycle through camera views and + or - to zoom in & out. (by default this feature enables camera toggle only, add -psp switch to a shortcut to activate a third-person gameplay, please refer to Technical FAQ page 15 for assistance).
• Other features - Authentic food and drink skins, the ability to drag dead creatures’ bodies, the ability to carry selected explosive fuel cans & barrels, the ability to shoot birds, and more!

After your journey ends with the “good” ending, you’ll get the dialogue that will let you continue the game in freeplay mode, allowing creatures and NPCs to migrate freely about in the environment. It will be a living and breathing zone with self sustained A-Life and unscripted events. This feature doesn’t remove the ending scene, so players will still have the enjoyment of viewing the cinematic completion of the game. You can skip the entire story line from the start by pressing ESC+T while in-game and teleporting to the last map or by clicking Freeplay and “Equip for Level” to start from the first map.
There is also a large number of small subtle changes that make big difference in overall experience. ReadMe contains extended list of mods and their respective authors who contributed to this project.
This mod will run smooth as long as you have a video card with Shader Model 3.0/4.0 and large amount of memory to accommodate the high quality textures. It performs better than S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Clear Sky and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Call of Pripyat, while providing similar and often better visuals. It’s DirectX9 and the X-Ray engine at their full potential and the best looking mod for this game.

Reviews:

STALKER Complete 2009 in retrospective S.T.A.L.K.E.R. review by PCFormat magazine, issue #234.

Someone wrote:Lighting – the new day-night cycle’s particularly spectacular – and textures are what’s most lovingly touched by the hand of mod, but on the non-graphical front much of the in-game text gets a more grammar-friendly rewrite and the HUD receives a much-needed overhaul.

[rockpapershotgun.com]

Someone wrote:This is the "STALKER Complete 2009" mod [...], which does an admirable job of making the game look like it was, well, made in 2009. New textures, new lighting and new weather effects help get the game looking ship-shape [...]

[kotaku.com]

Someone wrote:[...] the graphical changes are immediately smack-you-in-the-face obvious. It's stunning. Whereas looking at old STALKER made me think of, well, a 2007 eastern European PC title, the texture and shader upgrades in STALKER Complete 2009 made the place instantly come alive.

[gamerswithjobs.com]

Someone wrote:Stalker Complete 2009 combines several modifications that improve Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl in matters of graphics, gameplay and atmosphere.

[pcgameshardware.com]

Someone wrote:As mods go this is one of the most subtle imaginable. It does not attempt to change the atmosphere or effect of the game world, but simple to enhance it. 900 new textures, an improved sky and weather system, and the introduction of expanded graphics options make this one of the most exquisitely beautiful experiences ever to grace a gaming system. [...] this is, finally, the finished and complete version of Stalker - as good as it could possibly have been on release.

[eurogamer.net]

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