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

What works

• DirectX 8 - Static Lighting, DirectX 9 - Dynamic Lighting, DirectX 9 - Full Dynamic Lighting.
• Mouse and keyboard has same behavior as on Windows.
• Loading and Saving games.
• Sound.
• Framerate about the same.

What does not

At the near end of installation a error message will pop-up. Possibly because the installer is trying to install required software like DirectX Redistributable. No need to worry. It does not make the game unstable.

At the end of installation you have the option to "Launch" the game right away. If you do so, texture rendering is broken and shows multicolored boxes, all around the screen, in-game.

Workarounds

At the near end of installation a error message will pop-up.

Just click OK.

At the end of installation you have option to "Launch" the game right away. If you do so, texture rendering is broken and is showing multicolor boxes all around the screen.

Do not click "Launch" at the end of installation. Instead just exit the installer.

What was not tested

I have tried to walk around the first map. No idea how stable it is in individual levels.

Hardware tested

Graphics:

• GPU: Intel
• Driver: proprietary

Additional Comments

I personally do not like how macOS is handling shortcuts to Wine applications. It does create .desktop file, but I have no idea how to launch it. I had to launch it from Wine Terminal. I have to create functional shortcut to desktop.

I have used the downloaded .exe installer (called backup by GOG) from the GOG library webpage.

Version used is 1.0006 (gog-7) as of 23.01.2020.

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.

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.