From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action


I'd been putting off my purchase of STALKER 2. I enjoyed the first
games, but never to the degree others have; as many things as I liked
about it, I found other things that soured me on the experience. So
when STALKER 2 came out, I knew I would get it eventually... but I'd
rather wait until it dropped in price a bit. Anyway, I knew I wouldn't
be playing it immediately anyway, and the more time I waited, the more
time the modders would fix the more egregious bugs sure to be found in
the game (GSC Game Studio is infamous for its bugs).

Still, when I read that Russia had declared GSC as an 'undesirable organisation' and 'a threat to the foundations of Russia's
constitutional order, defensive capacity and security', I figured that
was as good a reason to finally take the plunge as any.

(It didn't hurt that STALKER 2 was on sale too ;-)

Apparently GSC has been providing financial support to the Armed
Forces of Ukraine (not surprising, since the developers are Ukrainian
and probably object to having their homes bombed), and promote the
"view of Russia as an 'aggressor state'"... which it absolutely is,
since Russia initiated the conflict.

So good job, Russia. Your claim that STALKER 2 "promoting Ukrainian
narratives [and] containing aggressive Russophobic content" only made
me get the game so I could be exposed to their propaganda. That sorta
backfired on you, didn't it? I hope lots of people have the same
reaction.

Slava Ukrani, and if you haven't done so yet, maybe this recent
denouncement by Russia may convince you --like it did me-- to finally
add STALKER 2 to your library. Here, I'll even provide the link to
make it a tiny bit easier: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1643320/STALKER_2_Heart_of_Chornobyl/





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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

The over 5 minutes of waiting for the game to load and to compile
shaders EVERYTIME I started up the game, only to immediately get
killed within 2 minutes stopped me from playing it :-) My fault, not
the games :-) Plus the morbid, always dark, no sunshine atmosphere
became a drag.

Subsequent patches did nothing to speed up or refine the compile
shaders routine every time I played the game.

Other games like Battlefield 6 take mere seconds to recompile shaders
at most. Oblivion Remastered eventually stopped doing it and loaded
the game quickly. Etc....

I agree with the cause though!

-pw
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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

PW <noneused@noneused.net> looked up from reading the entrails of the
porn spammer to utter "The Augury is good, the signs say:

The over 5 minutes of waiting for the game to load and to compile
shaders EVERYTIME I started up the game, only to immediately get
killed within 2 minutes stopped me from playing it :-) My fault, not
the games :-) Plus the morbid, always dark, no sunshine atmosphere
became a drag.

As talked about a while back, a bunch of modern games use "Compiling
Shaders" as a cover for long loading times.

Chances are, it's not actually compiling shaders, it's just unoptimized
and taking a long time to load and lying about why.

Xocyll
--
I don't particularly want you to FOAD, myself. You'll be more of
a cautionary example if you'll FO And Get Chronically, Incurably,
Painfully, Progressively, Expensively, Debilitatingly Ill. So
FOAGCIPPEDI. -- Mike Andrews responding to an idiot in asr
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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

Still, when I read that Russia had declared GSC as an 'undesirable >organisation'
(It didn't hurt that STALKER 2 was on sale too ;-)

Good on you! I pre-ordered it, and have patiently waited to bother installing until major 'A-Life' improvements were announced; I figured that would be with the 2.0 patch.

rms

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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On Wed, 19 Nov 2025 18:07:00 -0500, Xocyll <Xocyll@gmx.com> wrote:

PW <noneused@noneused.net> looked up from reading the entrails of the
porn spammer to utter "The Augury is good, the signs say:

The over 5 minutes of waiting for the game to load and to compile
shaders EVERYTIME I started up the game, only to immediately get
killed within 2 minutes stopped me from playing it :-) My fault, not
the games :-) Plus the morbid, always dark, no sunshine atmosphere
became a drag.

As talked about a while back, a bunch of modern games use "Compiling
Shaders" as a cover for long loading times.

Chances are, it's not actually compiling shaders, it's just unoptimized
and taking a long time to load and lying about why.

Xocyll

*---

Got it! Thanks X!

-pw
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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On 19/11/2025 02:39, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

Apparently GSC has been providing financial support to the Armed
Forces of Ukraine (not surprising, since the developers are Ukrainian
and probably object to having their homes bombed), and promote the
"view of Russia as an 'aggressor state'"... which it absolutely is,
since Russia initiated the conflict.

Someone coined the term westsplaining which is the art of westerners
telling East Europeans that they have got it all wrong about Russia.
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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

Xocyll <Xocyll@gmx.com> wrote at 23:07 this Wednesday (GMT):

PW <noneused@noneused.net> looked up from reading the entrails of the
porn spammer to utter "The Augury is good, the signs say:

The over 5 minutes of waiting for the game to load and to compile
shaders EVERYTIME I started up the game, only to immediately get
killed within 2 minutes stopped me from playing it :-) My fault, not
the games :-) Plus the morbid, always dark, no sunshine atmosphere
became a drag.

As talked about a while back, a bunch of modern games use "Compiling
Shaders" as a cover for long loading times.

Chances are, it's not actually compiling shaders, it's just unoptimized
and taking a long time to load and lying about why.

Xocyll

Wait, but compiling shaders happens before the game is even started.
Does it just preload a bunch of stuff into a shared ram space?
--
user <candycane> is generated from /dev/urandom
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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On Fri, 21 Nov 2025 17:20:04 -0000 (UTC), candycanearter07 <candycanearter07@candycanearter07.nomail.afraid> wrote:

Xocyll <Xocyll@gmx.com> wrote at 23:07 this Wednesday (GMT):

PW <noneused@noneused.net> looked up from reading the entrails of the
porn spammer to utter "The Augury is good, the signs say:

The over 5 minutes of waiting for the game to load and to compile
shaders EVERYTIME I started up the game, only to immediately get
killed within 2 minutes stopped me from playing it :-) My fault, not
the games :-) Plus the morbid, always dark, no sunshine atmosphere >>>became a drag.

As talked about a while back, a bunch of modern games use "Compiling
Shaders" as a cover for long loading times.

Chances are, it's not actually compiling shaders, it's just unoptimized
and taking a long time to load and lying about why.

Wait, but compiling shaders happens before the game is even started.
Does it just preload a bunch of stuff into a shared ram space?

Compiling shaders _should_ happen just once, the first time you start
the game. If you change hardware or if you change certain graphic
settings, it might happen again; otherwise, there's no purpose to it.
It would be like compiling the executable to a program right before
you start it each time.

That's not to say it isn't happening; it _could_ be that STALKER 2
just throws out the compiled shaders everytime you quit the game. But
it would be really stupid to do so.

As was pointed out by others, the compiling shaders message is
sometimes used --intentionally or not-- to hide long load times.

(If you see a 'compiling shaders' on launch but it zips by really
quickly on subsequent relaunches, then its probably not actually
compiling, but is just checking to make sure the shaders are still
valid for the current setup and its just reusing the message. But
we're talking about games that take as long to 'compile shaders' on
each launch as it did the first time).*

For all that their games are beloved and, admittedly, do some
impressive things, GSC Games Worlds does not have a reputation for
writing the cleanest of code. It honestly wouldn't surprise me if they
WERE actually recompiling shaders each time for... reasons. But its
bad practice and one of those things I expect will eventually be fixed
by modders.

Ehn. I'll give GSC the benefit of the doubt. It's hard to code while
your country is being shelled.** Worse games have come out that have
been developed under far better circumstances. That the game came out
at all is something of a minor miracle.















* Also, not all the problems are caused by the game. Some programs
store their compiled shaders in the %temp% directory, and if you
regularly clear that, the game will have to re-do the work. Sometimes
our problems are caused by ourselves ;-)

** yes, I know that much of the game was actually coded in Prague.
Most of the developers were still from Ukraine. It can't be easy
focusing on making a video game whilst friends and family are at
threat.


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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

Still, when I read that Russia had declared GSC as an 'undesirable organisation' and 'a threat to the foundations of Russia's
constitutional order, defensive capacity and security', I figured
that was as good a reason to finally take the plunge as any.

(It didn't hurt that STALKER 2 was on sale too ;-)

Dammit Spalls, are you my clone? That was my exact timeline from reading
the news piece to buying the game (even if I can't run it on my current
PC and it will have to wait until the RAM situation returns to normal).

I would have purchased it even if it wasn't on sale, TBH.


PS: If they think that's "russophobic", they still haven't played
Metro Exodus. There are some rather amusing conversations between the characters that poke fun at current russian state propaganda.
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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On Wed, 26 Nov 2025 14:33:42 +0100, H1M3M <dontaltktome@nomail.com>
wrote:

Dammit Spalls, are you my clone? That was my exact timeline from reading
the news piece to buying the game (even if I can't run it on my current
PC and it will have to wait until the RAM situation returns to normal).

Yes. Don't leave your skin-flakes all over the place if you don't want
illegal clones being made of you! ;-)

And just to confirm, I still haven't played the game yet either.

I would have purchased it even if it wasn't on sale, TBH.

I'm not sure I would have, just because the default price for the game
is $70USD and that's a bit high for _any_ game... but I might have. Or
I might not. I mean, didn't pay for the extra "deluxe" or "ultimate"
editions when I could have).

(Since then, I also threw some cash at United24 to support Ukraine
more directly. They made no promises that I'll get a game out of it,
though, so was it even money well spent?!? ;-)

PS: If they think that's "russophobic", they still haven't played
Metro Exodus. There are some rather amusing conversations between the >characters that poke fun at current russian state propaganda.

Look, there's a lot going on in Russia right now. They'll get around
to calling 4A Games Studio an 'undesirable organisation' eventually.
Give it time.



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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

There are some rather amusing conversations between the
characters that poke fun at current russian state propaganda.

The books are more explicit about this, and I will recommend all three as being well-written and engaging

rms

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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote at 21:30 this Friday (GMT): [snip]

It would be like compiling the executable to a program right before
you start it each time.

Java.

That's not to say it isn't happening; it _could_ be that STALKER 2
just throws out the compiled shaders everytime you quit the game. But
it would be really stupid to do so.

given how unoptimized some games are, i wouldn't be suprised

As was pointed out by others, the compiling shaders message is
sometimes used --intentionally or not-- to hide long load times.

(If you see a 'compiling shaders' on launch but it zips by really
quickly on subsequent relaunches, then its probably not actually
compiling, but is just checking to make sure the shaders are still
valid for the current setup and its just reusing the message. But
we're talking about games that take as long to 'compile shaders' on
each launch as it did the first time).*

I think some games I play like to recompile shaders if I haven't played
for a while, which fair

For all that their games are beloved and, admittedly, do some
impressive things, GSC Games Worlds does not have a reputation for
writing the cleanest of code. It honestly wouldn't surprise me if they
WERE actually recompiling shaders each time for... reasons. But its
bad practice and one of those things I expect will eventually be fixed
by modders.

Ehn. I'll give GSC the benefit of the doubt. It's hard to code while
your country is being shelled.** Worse games have come out that have
been developed under far better circumstances. That the game came out
at all is something of a minor miracle.

* Also, not all the problems are caused by the game. Some programs
store their compiled shaders in the %temp% directory, and if you
regularly clear that, the game will have to re-do the work. Sometimes
our problems are caused by ourselves ;-)

yea, thats kinda what i figured theyd do

** yes, I know that much of the game was actually coded in Prague.
Most of the developers were still from Ukraine. It can't be easy
focusing on making a video game whilst friends and family are at
threat.

that is scary yea
--
user <candycane> is generated from /dev/urandom
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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On Wed, 3 Dec 2025 19:50:07 -0000 (UTC), candycanearter07 <candycanearter07@candycanearter07.nomail.afraid> wrote:

Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote at 21:30 this Friday (GMT): >[snip]

It would be like compiling the executable to a program right before
you start it each time.

Java.

That's not to say it isn't happening; it _could_ be that STALKER 2
just throws out the compiled shaders everytime you quit the game. But
it would be really stupid to do so.

given how unoptimized some games are, i wouldn't be suprised

I mean, I _could_ see an argument for it; it ensures that everytime
the game starts, it is assured that it has valid shaders for the game.
It doesn't assume that the hardware or settings are the same. It makes
sure the compiled shaders match the hardware and everything is nicely optimized.

I didn't say it is a _good_ argument (since there are other ways of
checking) but maybe the STALKER devs were having problems with game
crashes due to shader mismatches and decided this was the 'best' way
of solving the problem.

But more likely, it's just Unreal Engine 5 doing its usual thing.


(TIL: STALKER 2 uses Unreal Engine 5 rather than its own bespoke
engine. <sigh> I understand the reasoning, but man, I miss the days
when every developer and their dog created their own bespoke graphics
engines. ;-)


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