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

What works

Installation

Gameplay - out of the box (Full game completed)

Much of mods, i played:

- Free Play Start by Xiani 0.99

- Zone Reclamation Project (unofficial patch)

- Oblivion Lost 2.2 

What does not

At maximum graphics details keyboard will stop working after some time (when the game loads part of a new map/level territory, it takes one or two seconds) and is not responsive. After changing the graphics settings, from maximum/high to medium or low, this issue was fixed. The game still looks pretty cool. That's just an issue of my limited hardware I think - just not enough RAM.

Workarounds

What was not tested

Multiplayer

Dynamic lighting - because my hardware resources are limited (RAM)

Hardware tested

Graphics:

• GPU:
• Driver:

Additional Comments

Testing Polish Language version of S.T.A.L.K.E.R : SOC. Lubuntu 14.04 2x Intel Pentium Dual CPU E2180 @ 2.00 GHz 1025 MB Ram Nvidia Geforce 9500 GT - 340.96 proprietary driver I played this game under Windows on maximum settings (static lighting) and it worked better than under Wine. When using Wine I have had to use low or medium settings because the game needs more RAM.

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.