Actually anybody can change these to their own level of enjoyment, it doesn't take long to figure out what to do, and then you just punch in the numbers that you think might work... you can get your game to your level of enjoyment within couple of hours...
You should also be able to change the accuracy of the guns, since there are a lot of complaints about that... I personally love the realistic feel the guns have right now, I'm tired playing laser tag all the time.
Anyways, here is a quick tutorial on how to edit settings, and what to look for...
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1) Download Free Hex Editor.
http://www.handshake.de/user/chmaas/delphi/download/xvi32.zip
2) BACK UP YOUR .DBA file. just copy/paste it into the same directory.
Windows will rename new file as CopyOfgamedata.dba
3) Open XVI hex editor.
You have text editing on the right side.... It will look confusing at first, but don't worry, its really simple once you get into it.
4) In Hex Editor, press Ctrl F . This will bring up "Search" option. IF shortcut doesn't work, just go to Search -> Find at the top.
5) To change your damage model, search for the following
bip01_pelvis
it will highlight the "b" of bip01_pelvis, so you know where to look for it in the text editing portion.
6) Now, the character is broken down into segments, there are hips, spine, upper arm, thigh, etc....
Each one of those gets 3 different values.
you will see something like this...
1.5 , 4 , 1.5
or
0 , 0 , 0
Now the first integer is your hit value.
Thats the one we will be editing.
Second integer is the index of animation. DO NOT touch this one.
Third integer is the wound value. I left those at default.
7) Go down the list of all body parts and change values to your liking.
Here is my settings....
Pelvis 0.8
Spine (all of them) 1.0
Neck 0.8
Head 1.5
(all minor stuff like eye lids, fingers and jaw are left at 0.0)
clavicle 0.9
Upper Arm 0.5
Forearm 0.3
Hand/Foot/Toe 0.1
Thigh 0.8
Calf 0.5
Now these settings allow me to take some damage, but still be easily killed by the modified weapons.
NOTE: Setting hit value to 0.0 didn't produce any results at first (I died just as fast as before). And then after editing the file a couple of times, it started to crash STALKER at setting of 0.0
So I don't know if I were doing something wrong, or if 0.0 is just not allowed. (However eye lids and fingers get 0.0 damage). I was probably just editing it wrong.
8) Now we can modify WEAPONS...
Search for
[wpn_abakan]
Thats the first weapon on the list, so it will put you right where you need to be.
9) Now do a search for
hit_power
This value determines the hit value of the gun.
There are 4 values for this.
Each value represents the difficulty level you choose at the begining of the game..
So first value is for Novice, second value is for STALKER etc.
10) Modify the values to your liking...
My formula was to double the value, and then add 0.2 to the result
so if a gun had 0.5 value, my new value would be 1.2
You can modify all 4 difficulty levels, or just the one you are playing on right now.
11) Keep searching for
hit_power
and it will jump you from one weapon to another, since hit_power is the same command for all weapons..
NOTE: There is alos hit_power for silenced version. You will encounter those if you keep hitting search for "hit_power". I haven't touched those, but you are more than welcome to experiment.
NOTE2: Some hit_power values do not have 4 different settings, I don't know why, but some of them just have 1. I didn't touch those, but again you are more than welcome to experiment.
NOTE3: Be careful not to change any other characters in the file, just change the numbers
NOTE4: If after saving this new gamedata.dba file you load STALKER and it doesn't load, or loads but crashes to desktop during a level load, you messed up in the editing of gamedata.dba....
Start from the beginning with your backed up file.
