S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl

What works

Installation

Menu

Single Player (Played whole story on Stalker level)

Maximum Graphics (minor dynamic shadows bugs)

Major mods (Priboi Story for example)

What does not

DRM is not detecting original DVD, needs modiffied exe to run

Some mods may crash (Stalker Complete crashed with bugtrap)

Workarounds

What was not tested

Multiplayer

Hardware tested

Graphics:

• GPU:
• Driver:

Additional Comments

Needs openal32.dll set to native otherwise it will freeze on loading. With dyanmic shadows enabled some strange shadows are following actor (on ground).

Setup a 32-bit or 64-bit Wineprefix.
Although a 32-bit Wineprefix is generally recommended for maximum compatibility, a 64-bit Wineprefix might be beneficial in certain, restricted circumstances.
E.g. to support the transfer of S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: SOC saved games between a native 64-bit Windows install of S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: SOC and your Wine Wineprefix (see Saved Games note below).

32-bit Wineprefix:

¹ > export WINEPREFIX="❚❚❚❚❚❚"
  > export WINEARCH=win32
  > winecfg

64-bit Wineprefix:

² > export WINEPREFIX="❚❚❚❚❚❚"
  > export WINEARCH=win64
  > winecfg

Note: Securom 7.x DVD protection is fully supported since Wine version ≥1.7.38. So a no-CD/DVD crack or patch is not necessary.

Wine hooks into the Linux udev hardware manager to auto-populate system drives. Mount your optical media drive using your Desktop Environment file manager (dolphin, nautilus, caja, etc.) Locate the symbolic link / virtual Windows drive letter Wine has setup for your install media as follows:

   > cd "${WINEPREFIX}/dosdevices"

   > ls -hl
    total 0
    lrwxrwxrwx 1 ❚❚❚❚❚❚ ❚❚❚❚ 10 Oct 11 19:31 c: -> ../drive_c
    lrwxrwxrwx 1 ❚❚❚❚❚❚ ❚❚❚❚ 25 Oct 11 19:31 d: -> /run/media/❚❚❚❚❚❚/Stalker
    lrwxrwxrwx 1 ❚❚❚❚❚❚ ❚❚❚❚  8 Oct 11 19:31 d:: -> /dev/sr0
    lrwxrwxrwx 1 ❚❚❚❚❚❚ ❚❚❚❚  1 Oct 11 19:31 z: -> /

³  > cd d\:/      

⁴  > wine setup.exe
⁴  > winetricks d3dx9_31 d3dx9_42

The default Unix install location (change as required).

32-bit Wineprefix:

"${WINEPREFIX}/drive_c/Program Files/GSC Game World/S.T.A.L.K.E.R. - Shadow of Chernobyl"

64-bit Wineprefix:

"${WINEPREFIX}/drive_c/Program Files (x86)/GSC Game World/S.T.A.L.K.E.R. - Shadow of Chernobyl"

---

¹ Specify full path; folder should not be created first!!
² Specify full path; folder may pre-exist and will be created if it does not.
³ The virtual Windows drive letter assigned to your optical drive mount path may vary from system to system.
⁴ If you exit from MS DirectX 9.0c installer or it crashes then it is necessary to override the 2 specified DirectX extension dll libraries - the easiest way to do this is using the winetricks script.

Obtain patches to update your S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: SOC install from...

stalker-game.com  patches

modb full patchset

The most up-to-date patch version listed at the (first) official Stalker Game link is 1.0005. A full set of patches for the game are available at the (second) ModDB link.

Version 1.0006 (an unofficial update) is required to access multiplayer servers on the Internet. It is highly recommended to use version 1.0005 for single player gameplay (version 1.0006 was recalled, by GSC, due to some stability issues). Note: some older mods may require version 1.0004.

Ensure the WINEPREFIX path variable is set in the terminal env - before running the patch executable. You must have native Linux execute access on the mountpoint & path. E.g.:

> export WINEPREFIX="❚❚❚❚❚❚"
> wine ~/Downloads/stk-sck-efigspc-patch-5-6.exe

Initially it is important to upgrade S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: SOC to version 1.0006.

Selecting Multiplayer, from the main menu, should show a list of servers. When you attempt to connect to them you should see a popup dialog box:

Connection error: Invalid Host

See bug 4066. Wine currently does not implement the required DirectPlay functionality (some groundwork was laid down in a GSOC 2008 Wine project).

A workaround is to use the native (Windows) DirectPlay dll's (dynamic link libraries) for:

> export WINEPREFIX="❚❚❚❚❚❚"
> winetricks directplay

Executing this command (within your S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: SOC Wineprefix) should allow extended online Gameplay (without any apparent issues).

Dynamic Lighting (DirectX 9c)

• GPU¹:
  Nvidia card (8800 series or newer), with the proprietary driver, is the only documented graphics hardware vendor with near 100% support
  ?? AMD non-legacy Catalyst (potentially buggy / unsupported on newer kernels/older hardware, etc.), FOSS radeon driver on AMD Radeon 5000 series (+)  (data unavailable)
  ?? Intel HD graphics series (data unavailable)

• System RAM²:
  3.0Gb (+)

Static lighting (DirectX 8)

• GPU:
  ?? unsupported older Nvidia, legacy AMD Radeon and older Intel cards (data unavailable)
• System RAM²:
  2.0Gb (-)

---

¹FOSS kernel GPU drivers may have severely limited support for advanced graphical features e.g. soft shadows; lead to graphical errors: smeared skybox, etc. and / or have low FPS.
² System RAM requirements are significantly higher than MS Windows (may depend on Desktop Environment).

press:  ¬  key to access in-game, drop-down console

Commands

rs_stats 1

Enable in-game overlay (display FPS, frame draw times, memory usage,etc.) - statistics for the geek in you!

The path for your Saved Games is set by the main S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: SOC configuration file. To find this file in your main S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: SOC install folder:

find "${WINEPREFIX}" -type f -name "fsgame.ltx"

The default Save Game location is:

"${WINEPREFIX}/drive_c/users/Public/Documents/STALKER-SHOC/savedgames"

As the saved games are "within" the file system hierarchy of your Wineprefix they will also be transferred if you copy or move your S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Wineprefix to a different machine or drive.

Saved games can be shared or transferred between a native MS Windows install and your Wine Wineprefix. However the Wine Wineprefix architecture must match your Windows install...
E.g.

• transfer Saved Games between 64-bit MS Windows OS install and a 64-bit Wineprefix
• transfer Saved Games between 32-bit MS Windows OS install and a 32-bit Wineprefix

The usual caveats apply to transferring Saved Games... The main S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: SOC version, and any installed mod version, should be matched between your Windows install and your S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: SOC Wineprefix.

• use -nointro command line option to skip intro movies
• use -noprefetch command line option to shorten load times

See the S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl page (PC GAMING WIKI site) for additional tweaks, recommended mods/ game versions, etc.