S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Lost Alpha

This product is unreleased but remains under active development - information may change frequently and could be outdated or irrelevant.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Lost Alpha

Developers
	Dezowave
Engines
	X-Ray Engine
Release dates
Windows	April 26, 2014
Taxonomy
Monetization	Freeware
Microtransactions	None
Modes	Singleplayer
Pacing	Real-time
Perspectives	First-person
Controls	Direct control
Genres	Action, Shooter
Art styles	Realistic
Themes	Eastern Europe, Post-apocalyptic
Series	S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl	2007
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky	2008
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat	2009
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Lost Alpha (Unofficial)	2014
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl	2023

Key points

Fan game that tries to recreate the original design and atmosphere of S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl as seen early in development.

Does not require any of the official S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games installed.

General information

Mod DB page

Availability

Source	DRM	Notes	Keys	OS
Official website		Free download.

Essential improvements

Patches

Standalone install and new game start needed.

The latest official patch v1.4007 titled Director's Cut is available at Moddb.com.

Skip intro videos

Start game with -nointro parameter[citation needed]

Game data

Configuration file(s) location

System	Location
Windows	<path-to-game>\appdata\user.ltx

Save game data location

System	Location
Windows	<path-to-game>\appdata\savedgames

Video

Video settings.

Graphics feature	State	Notes
Widescreen resolution
Multi-monitor
Ultra-widescreen
4K Ultra HD
Field of view (FOV)		Open console and type fov xx (replace xx with the FOV you want).
Windowed
Borderless fullscreen windowed		Disable fullscreen and set the game's resolution to the same value you use for your screen.
Anisotropic filtering (AF)
Anti-aliasing (AA)		MSAA. Available only for DX10 and DX11 renderers. Broken in 1.3000.
Vertical sync (Vsync)		It is recommended to force Vsync through the GPU control panel.[citation needed]
60 FPS and 120+ FPS

Input

Keyboard and mouse	State	Notes
Remapping		Binding anything to F5 or to any key already being used will crash the game on load.
Mouse acceleration
Mouse sensitivity
Mouse input in menus
Mouse Y-axis inversion
Controller
Controller support

Audio

Audio feature	State	Notes
Separate volume controls
Surround sound		1.3002 onwards only supports non-OpenAL software driver (described in menu as DirectSound), though OpenAL32.dll is still being used, and can be replaced with Win32 OpenAL Soft library, to enhance positioning (Rapture3D 2.7.4 no longer works like in SoC, returning error). Copied dsound.dll to the game directory has priority over OpenAL library, so don't forget to delete dsound.dll if you wan't to use OpenAL (1.4005).
Subtitles
Closed captions
Mute on focus lost
EAX support
Royalty free audio

Localizations

Language	UI	Audio	Sub	Notes
English
French				Fan translation, download.
Italian
Polish				Fan translation, download.
Brazilian Portuguese				Fan translation, download.
Russian

Issues fixed

Unable to save, load or make screenshots

Install in non-default location[citation needed]
Install the game outside Program Files.

Run as Administrator[citation needed]
Right click your game shortcut. Select "Run as Administrator".

Missing footstep sounds

This bug can also cause game crashes.

Disable first person body awareness[citation needed]
While in-game, open console with ~ button. Enter g_actor_body off command.

Various problems on 32bit systems

Delete files[citation needed]
Go to <path-to-game>\bins\ Delete or rename msvcp120.dll, msvcp120d.dll and msvcr120.dll.

Low FPS troubleshooting

Game settings tips for preserving the best graphics and performance

Max out and turn on all settings, and to improve FPS, set sliders and options as following (ready config): Vision distance to 5/11 (0 or 2 causes frequent disappearing of some objects) Objects detail to 3 or 4+ (0 - low texture quality in distant [e.g. on hills in Cordon - avoidable by setting 2-3 points above 0]) Grass density to 0 (or 3/4, 1/4, depends on a taste) In the second place: Grass shadows off (minor visual impact with some performance impact, though depends on API and taste) Sun rays off (like above) HDAO is claimed to be optimized for AMD HBAO for Nvidia cards (the last option) Disable for 1 FPS gain on each (from 23 FPS): Ambient Occlusion (entirely) FXAA Soft Particles Anisotropic Filtering MSAA from x2 to 0 Others: Keep Sun shadows always on (massive change of lighting) V-Sync off (reportedly reported frame lock working sometimes below native monitor frequency - depending on FPS dips; alternatively force V-Sync in your GPU panel) Keep textures in RAM off Object prefetching on (disabled cause stuttering, delete -noprefetch from your shortcut properties). Settings tested on Q9650/HD7870. Some settings may require the game restart, even if you're not asked to do so (e.g. grass density, texture quality, MSAA). Restart the game (instead of just clicking quit the game and load last save) in case of performance decrease after changing details a lot of times. If your game settings stopped to be saved after the game restart, change the settings and save them before loading the game. Run the game only from a desktop shortcut to avoid crash on launch. Alt+Tab ↹ cause engine error (at least with Reshade). As a workaround, disable full screen, and enable it again after task switching. Game utilizes the computing power of more than two cores mostly only during loading (at least distributes load rather linearly only at this moment).

Use compatibility mode of Windows Vista SP2 or XP SP3

Double FPS boost in certain, rather more rare areas with ~>99% GPU usage, and is visible after >1 minute after loading save (e.g. Monolith base. Before and after saves - also settings testing place) Causes very slow level loading times, saves, the main menu, or causes rare hang after pressing ESC. You can preserve FPS gain achieved in compatibility mode by saving the game and loading it in the game launched normally. FPS drops again after triggering progress during quests (e.g. after quest text appearing, spawning new enemies - usually when the game stops for a few seconds, or stutters). Turn on shader cache in GPU driver panel to increase save and level loading times (SSD recommended). Compatibility mode in some cases increases VRAM usage by ~300 MB.

"Can't open video stream" crash

Install Xvid[citation needed]
Install Xvid.

VR support

3D modes	State	Notes
vorpX		G3D Officially supported game, see official vorpx game list.

Other information

API

Executable	32-bit	64-bit	Notes
Windows

Modifications

Reshade by YoYo

Preset contains bigger color saturation, contrast, more lightning effects, slight DOF on horizon elements and a vignette in the game.

Download it here, version with effects included here.

Maddo CoC Reshade

Intended to improve image quality without making drastical changes.

Download it here or here

ENB + SweetFX Mod

Tries to make the game look realistic by adding SSAO, SSIL, Bloom, SMAA, sharpening and color corrections.

Other presets

System requirements

Windows
	Minimum	Recommended
Operating system (OS)	XP	7, 8. 10
Processor (CPU)	2 GHz	Intel Core i5, i7 3.5 GHz AMD equivalent 3.5 GHz
System memory (RAM)	2 GB	8 GB
Hard disk drive (HDD)	20 GB
Video card (GPU)	Nvidia GeForce 9800 GT ATI/AMD Radeon HD3000 series	Nvidia GeForce GT700 series ATI/AMD Radeon HD7000 series