no thats just the internet rumour mill at work (probably part of the reason deep silver thought they'd bought up the stalker IP as well). you only have to look as far as the development of the Lost Alpha mod by Dez0wave as they've made a new version of the x-ray engine for it (its now technically a standalone game) and as such have had to converse / interract / co-operate with GSC over the course of its development (which is still ongoing).

Oh I guess I should have posted this here instead of making a new thread. Here's an in-depth guide from some guy who hates Complete, but at least the information is nice and extensive:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=121125400

Mod Pack 2013 Part 1 & Mod Pack 2013 Part 2
Has anyone tried this one? It looks like it's Oblivion Lost along with a graphical improvement. If it's not too unstable I'll likely try it after Priboi.

Edit: wrong link

No, thats an earlier build of Stalker - ie one of the alpha / beta builds. GSC released a fair few of them after SoC was released.

Will be very buggy and crash happy and you'll likely need the console to advance very far, but worth a look if you're very interested in the series / development / lore.

If your not already aware. David.m.e ModDB page is an invaluable source for STALKER mods.
www.moddb.com/members/davidme

Lots of translated russian mods and he maintains a MEGA download page with current working links to dozens of merged and patched mods.

Upcoming :

S.T.A.L.K.E.R - Lost Alpha
http://www.dezowave.com

Thanks .
I only posted the link of the developer's website .

I tried a few of the mods suggested here.

Complete (SoC/CS/CoP): Great mod. FIxes some bugs and updates the graphics. Doesn't change the gameplay a whole lot. Graphics are a bit cheery in spots, but very nice. I've played all 3 games through with this one. 8/10

Misery (CoP): Beautiful looking and ambitious. Horrible gameplay though, bordering on outright broken. Why is it that everyone who makes a "realism" mod only implements "realism" when it would result in the game becoming more difficult? Any realism that would result in some aspect becoming easier seems to be left on the cutting room floor for some reason. Everyone in the wild is hostile to you, can snipe you from 100m away through the swamp reeds with a broken pistol while you have 3 bullets to your name and can't hit them for the life of you. Oh, and repairing that broken gun you got from the one enemy you manage to kill will cost you 47000 Ru. Radioactive artifacts require a tool and special container to keep in, otherwise you start absorbing their radiation. Realistic, sure, but it gets tedious quickly and detracts from gameplay rather than adds. 3/10

Stalker Soup (SoC): Interesting at first. There's a lot of things added to the game, and the graphics are improved..somewhat. I'm not a fan of the overly grainy look that was added to damn near everything. More weapons and armor added, a ton of new items that have varying degrees of usefulness. Combat suffers from the "realism" effect that Misery has, although not quite to the same extent. You'll find your skull to be a magnet for enemy bullets and many firefights are too heavily based on luck of the dice, depending on whether you catch that fatal bullet or not. In itself, this isn't too big of a problem, but the game has so many added features, it takes freaking AGES to load a saved game, even off of SSD. I figure I spent more time loading the game than playing it with this mod. Some of the additions are just plain annoying (eg. the teleporters added to Agroprom underground). A number of the dialog trees with NPCs are absolutely nonsensical. I don't know if this is due to a bad translation, a bug, or the characters are supposed to be drunk. Gave up on this one and uninstalled when dealing with the military at agroprom. 5/10

I'm planning on trying L.U.R.K. for SoC (after I finish vanilla, of course) because it appears to have a working stealth system, and the overall change list appeals to me. Anyone have any useful comments on it?

Misery Is a weird one. I played about 2/3rds of the game with v1.1 (the original full release) and I actually really enjoyed it. BUT, I had to mod the ini myself to make the game playable. The ridiculous lack of stamina was just horrendous. And this was after a patch by the author to increase stamina. With my backpack half full I could only jog (not run) about 50 metres or less before running out of energy and being reduced to less than walking pace. Considering you play the game as a special forces soldier... yeah, realism...

You are right about the economy as well, although I will say I've never found a mod that actually balances the economy properly in any of the games. I wasn't too keen on the over-the-top, grim dark look that it gives the game either.

I enjoyed the challenge of the mod, but parts of it were more hyper-real than realistic.

EDIT: talking of mods Oblivion Lost for SoC is perhaps my favourite.

The Misery I played was 2.1beta. Apparently a lot of players like v1 better.

Anyone care to recommend any mods or a set of mods together for Call of Pripyat?

Had wanted to give Misery a try but, even though my computer meets the minimum requirements, I just couldn't get it to run at a stable framerate. Besides, having read more in depth posts about the mod here and there, it actually sounds like a pretty dumb mod in its attempt to be realistic. There's aspects there I certainly like but there's a whole bunch of unbalanced crap I didn't even realise before too.

Anyway, as I recall from playing this when it first came out, and then after patches, it's the most stable game in the series in terms of glitches so I was wondering what any of you thought of this simple list of mods to combine instead of one that overhauls the mechanics:

Atmosfear
Absolute Structures / Nature
Massive Simulation Overhaul
Original Weapons Renewal

A few other questions too. Recently played through the first game with Complete installed and, although I overall enjoyed it very much, I did find certain additions poorly balanced, particularly the changes to NPC's that made them blind. So I'm looking for another mod for my next playthrough. Although my initial thought was to give StalkerSOUP a try, I don't actually fancy that very much at all. But has anyone played Autumn Aurora 2? That would certainly be a great one but my only concern is that the more realistic additions are actually just ridiculously more difficult for no good reason, ala Misery again, so any thoughts on that would be great.

Finally, although I'm still playing through it, I might be wanting to exchange the Complete mod for something else come my next playthrough of Clear Sky. To be honest, I actually consider it a little better than the same mod for the first game just for the amazing bug fixes. Still, god knows I'll make my way through it like a breeze sooner or later. Has anyone played Clear Sky: 2014 then? It's not yet finished, I see, but that sounds that pretty great for a compilation mod that doesn't touch the core gameplay itself too much, if at all.

Cheers for any help in advance.

I successfully installed L.U.R.K. 1.1 on the GoG.com version of SoC, so I can confirm it works.

As for the mod itself, it's a mixed bag so far, with some things I really, really like, and some things I really, really don't like.

Positives
It has a nice look, with higher res textures and a darker, browner, more sickly looking landscape overall. A little too much bloom and blur for my taste, but I suspect this can be adjusted. The new UI graphics are snazzy.

It has more kinds of guns and ammo, including the AK-47 (and variants) and its 7.62x39mm ammo which were conspicuously absent from the original game. Also, SKS rifles...yes please.

Med kits and bandages take a small amount of time to use. I quite like this change, even though it can be damned inconvenient at times.

I haven't tested the stealth system much yet, but there was plenty of room for improvement from vanilla, so I'm hopeful.

Negatives
Carrying capacity lowered (yes, lowered) to 40.0. Just silly small, and not convenient or fun at all. If you have a couple of sawed-off shotguns and half a dozen pistols in your backpack, you are immobilized. This should be completely left to player preference, IMO.

All HUD removed, except for the compass and reticle. There is no mini-map. There is no health meter, no fatigue meter. Losing health and energy instead makes blood splotches and what looks like oil stains cloud your vision. I gave this system a fair shot, and I'm not a fan. Again, this should be left to player preference, but as of LURK 1.1, it is not.

If you're of the "harder and less convenient is more fun" school, you might like L.U.R.K. As it is, I like some things about it, but I can't see myself playing through the whole game with it until some of its "features" are selectable.

This is why I consider a nice front end or even a .ini file that lets you enable/disable certain features to be a necessity for any serious partial conversion or "fixit" mod.