STALKER: Clear Sky Guide

One year before S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl, the Zone has opened up due to massive emissions. Explore Red Forest, Limansk, Pripyat and more as another STALKER who finds himself trapped in an adventure of survival. Team up with NCP's, kill mutated minions and factions, explore the Zone, loot and complete quests.

Follow my step-by-step guide on installing, configuring and optimizing STALKER Clear Sky in Linux with PlayOnLinux.

Note: This guide applies to the GOG version of STALKER Clear Sky. Other versions may require additional steps.

Tips & Specs:

To learn more about PlayOnLinux and Wine configuration, see the online manual: PlayOnLinux Explained

Mint 17 64-bit
PlayOnLinux: 4.2.5
Wine: 1.6.2

Wine Installation

Click Tools
Select "Manage Wine Versions"

Look for the Wine Version: 1.6.2
Note: Try using stable Wine 1.8 and 1.8-staging

Select it
Click the arrow pointing to the right

Click Next

Downloading Wine

Extracting

Downloading Gecko

Installed

Wine 1.6.2 is installed and you can close this window

PlayOnLinux Setup

Launch PlayOnLinux
Click Install

Click "Install a non-listed program"

Click Next

Select "Install a program in a new virtual drive"
Click Next

Name your virtual drive: stalkercs
Click Next

Check all three options:

• Use another version of Wine
• configure Wine
• Install some libraries

Click Next

Select Wine 1.6.2
Click Next

Select "32 bits windows installation"
Click Next

Wine Configuration

Applications Tab
Windows version: Windows 7
Click Apply

Graphics Tab
Check "automatically capture the mouse in full-screen windows"
Check "Emulate a virtual desktop"
Desktop size: 1024x768
Click OK

PlayOnLinx Components (Packages, Libraries, DLL's)

Check the following:

• POL_Install_corefonts
• POL_Install_d3dx9
• POL_Install_gdiplus
  
• POL_Install_tahoma

Click Next

Note: All components will automatically download and install

Installing STALKER Clear Sky

Click Browse

Select "setup_stalker_cs_2.0.0.8.exe"
Click Open

Click Next again...

Check "Yes, I have read and accept EULA"
Click Options
Uncheck "Create desktop icons"
Click Install

When installation is successfully
Click Exit

PlayOnLinux Shortcut

Select "Settings.exe"
Click Next

Name your shortcut: S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Clear Sky
Click Next

Click Next again

PlayOnLinux Configure

Back to PlayOnLinux
Select S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Clear sky
Click Configure

General Tab
Wine Version: 1.6.2

Note: Click the + to download other versions of Wine. Click the down-arrow to select other versions of Wine.

Display Tab
Video Memory size: Select the amount of memory your video card/chip uses

Close Configure

Launching S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Clear Sky

Back to PlayOnLinux
Select S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Clear Sky
Click Run

Enter a new User name
Select Language
Click "Save and Launch"

Optimization

Click Options

Select a Quality preset
Select a resolution that matches your Linux desktop
Click "Use"

Click Advanced for access to more Video settings

• Adjust all of the following:
• Vision distance
• Object detail
• Texture detail
• Anisotropic filtering
• Grass detail
• Sun shadow
• Lighting distance
• Shadow Quality
• Detail textures
• Detail bump
• Steep parallax
• Sun rays
• SSAO
• Soft water
• Soft particles
• Depth of field
• Volumetric light
• Wet surfaces
• Volumetric smoke
• Vertical sync

Frequency 60Hz

Note: Leave DX10.1 unchecked because Wine is not fully compatible with direct x 10 yet.

Rule of Thumb:
High settings = More detail, lower frame rates
Low settings = Less detail, higher frame rates

Conclusion:
There are a lot of video settings in Stalker, as you can see. I suggest experiementing with the presets first, then manually increase the advanced settings if the game is running smoothly. I was able to crank almost everything to High with my GeForce 550 ti. Clear Sky ran very smooth without any crashing or stutter. Even when I saw the "loading icon" at the bottom of the screen, there was no frame stuttering.

Gameplay video:

Screenshots:

 

Nice to see you got a breakthrough with the launching problems

 

actually GOG provided a launcher. If you try to create a shortcut to the xengine.exe it will crash every time.

 

Ooh, I'll have to try a 60fps recording as well. I'm not sure if my CPU can handle it.

 

Ah, I am really seeing the benefits, specially when you do a lot of gameplay videos.
I wonder if a second Nvidia card could act as a NVENC?

 

Ah, I am really seeing the benefits, specially when you do a lot of gameplay videos.
I wonder if a second Nvidia card could act as a NVENC?

I dont know (SLI dont think works on linux for now)

In your case maybe is better sell your GTX 550Ti and buy 750Ti or GTX 760 if your budget allow it

In my case with previous hard drive (2TB 5900rpm) capture at 3500kbps (for more accurate fps machine performance) and now with new hard drive (2TB 7200rpm) up to 4500kbps

 

I have no idea either. I do have a computer at home with two GeForce 9800 GS's
But never investigated SLI in Linux. I've read comments about it not working so well, but never tried.
I prefer to keep my system fairly simple. Window$ handles SLI just fine, but not all games will. Morrowind for example will only utilize one video card even if the drivers support SLI.

 

For me it work fine with wine 1.7.8 on mint 17 via steam,just remember to disabled overley

 

Awesome! I have a feeling it Clear Sky will work with any wine version newer than 1.6.2. I only test with it because its "stable"
Once Stable 1.8 comes out I'll test with it.

 

Thank you, I was able to get my GOG version of clear sky to install with this guide. I was not able to install my GOG version of COP. I wonder why there are no official installers for GOG stalker games.

 

Do you mean PlayOnLinux installers?
You should be able to install Call of Pripyat with these same steps. Also try using Wine 1.8-staging or Wine 1.8

Where did the installer get hung up?

 

Do you mean PlayOnLinux installers?
You should be able to install Call of Pripyat with these same steps. Also try using Wine 1.8-staging or Wine 1.8

Where did the installer get hung up?

Yeah I'm new to playonlinux and wine, So by official i mean playonlinux installers that are inside the program. There is a lot of other GOG installers.

The installer hangs when a gray blank window pops up with "ok" "cancel" "abort" "restart or retry" its cut off.

 

No problem, I can still help you...
Are you doing a "manual installation" just like the guide above?
You may want to download the GOG installer for COP again. Maybe it was corrupted during the download?

 

Hi, This may be long winded, but here goes. I have the game installed on a windows partition it runs just fine in windows. But I want to go full linux asap and games is the ONLY thing holding me back. And stalker is one of the bests, especially CoP. I manually install CoP with the GOG installer like in this guide. About 90% through the install a gray box with the above description pops up and is unresponsive.

I can only cancel the install at that point but the virtual drive is created now if I run the installer again in the same drive and select overwrite the game installs. I use the same shortcut like in this CS guide.

Once I launch the game an error comes up and says "fsgame.ltx" has duplicate entries" I have maunally fixed them and i have copied over a known working copy of fsgame.ltx from my windows install. They both worked. And the game launches.

But. If I change the dynamic lighting from any thing but static after relaunch I get a xray engine crash every time I try to start the game. I can't remember the exact details of the crash off the top of my head right now. But I'm sure I will reproduce the error again and update.

 

I know the feeling... I have 6 computers in a gaming LAN at home and still run windows on them. There are a few games that won't run so great in PlayOnLinux/Wine and are holding me back. Not to mention drivers as well.
When playing games by myself I only use Linux these days.

Where exactly is the 90% spot when the installer crashes? You mean the GOG installer correct? I've seen this happen many times with GOG games and PlayOnLinux/Wine.
Did you install the packaged gdiplus?
That might fix it...

Did you re download the installer?
I noticed some of GOG's older installers have some crashing issues.

I've seen many GOG games error at the end and it doesn't affect the installation at all... like this:

If your installer is extra stubborn Start over with a clean virtual drive like this:

1. Launch PlayOnLinux
2. Click Configure
3. Click New (bottom left)
4. Follow instructions for a new virtual drive
5. Remember to select 32-bit virtual drive
6. Wine 1.8
7. Components Tab
8. Install d3dx9, corefonts, gdiplus, tahoma
9. Wine Tab
10. Configure Wine
11. Set virtual desktop
12. Copy GOG installer to new virtual drive
13. Paste in drive_c or Program Files
14. General Tab
15. Create shortcut to GOG installer
16. Name it: CoP Installer
17. Select new shortcut (left side)
18. Arguments: -nogui
19. Close Configure
20. Run Cop Installer

This time it should install without using the GOG graphical user interface. It might install completely without any errors.
Then you can go back to General Tab and create a new shortcut to the CoP exe

This is just a different "manual" way to install games, specially stubborn installers. I almost never have to do this, but I've read this -nogui helps when using Wine alone.