S.T.A.L.K.E.R. (Stalker) Thread

Most Wanted Banana said:
  • Waste time and resources teaching a group of new developers how to use some obscure slavjank engine that's literally only used on three games.
OR
  • Hire a bunch of experienced developers that already know how to work on an established engine.

I would have loved for S2 to have been developed on an updated version of X-Ray, but GSC isn't a high-budget AAA studio that can afford to pay and train a bunch of programmers to use some obscure engine that they'll probably never use again in their lives. That's just unrealistic.
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Maybe done waste a good chunk of your talent by either firing them or letting them run off to the Ukraine war like a bunch of retards going "Dis gonna be eazy goin safari, lulz! Dem ruskies are all backwards an dumb!"
 
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I would've been fine with UE5 if the game didn't run like shit.
 
BradeRunna said:
Watching some videos about STALKER anomaly and GAMMA had me thinking if there was a way to remove the mutants and anomalies from something like Anomaly you could literally have a singleplayer version of Escape from Tarkov.
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IIRC there's a mod or built-in setting that lets you adjust spawn settings in Anomaly so you can turn the mutants down to 0 and jack up the humans. There's a Mod Configuraton Menu well... mod for it you should look into, as well. Can't do anything about the anomalies though.
 
Most Wanted Banana said:
  • Waste time and resources teaching a group of new developers how to use some obscure slavjank engine that's literally only used on three games.
OR
  • Hire a bunch of experienced developers that already know how to work on an established engine.

I would have loved for S2 to have been developed on an updated version of X-Ray, but GSC isn't a high-budget AAA studio that can afford to pay and train a bunch of programmers to use some obscure engine that they'll probably never use again in their lives. That's just unrealistic.
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I played STALKER 2. I doubt any of the people that worked on the game knew what they were doing. If they hired "professionals" to make that slop shit show then they got ripped off.
The tired cat said:
Maybe done waste a good chunk of your talent by either firing them or letting them run off to the Ukraine war like a bunch of retards going "Dis gonna be eazy goin safari, lulz! Dem ruskies are all backwards an dumb!"
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The game was in development long before the war started. I like STALKER fansoys use the war as an excuse for the shit state of the game. It's really pathetic.
Snekposter said:
IIRC there's a mod or built-in setting that lets you adjust spawn settings in Anomaly so you can turn the mutants down to 0 and jack up the humans. There's a Mod Configuraton Menu well... mod for it you should look into, as well. Can't do anything about the anomalies though.
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I think there is a mod called Escape from Pripyat. I don't know if it does exactly what I said.
 
harbringer883 said:
Did anyone else find STALKER GAMMA to be better than STALKER 2?
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No. I am enjoying 2 for what it is, but I always enjoyed the story, atmosphere and feeling that wandering the zone gives me. I am not into the ARMA faggotry with a billion weapons that all need servicing with the correct oil and other gay milsim shit.

So GAMMA was just a complete waste of time. If you are into heavy micromanaging and think all games should be murderously slow, tedious, "soulslike", prone to failure then gamma would be the game of choice. 2 has its issues, but on the whole, an enjoyable experience.

People who play Tarkov should just be killed, for the betterment of the rest of us.
 
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BradeRunna said:
The game was in development long before the war started. I like STALKER fansoys use the war as an excuse for the shit state of the game. It's really pathetic.
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To be honest, the games actual development cycle is up for question. Heck, according to some leaked stuff, it started as far when CoP came out. They certainly later used plot threads from that old script for this version of the game.
 
BradeRunna said:
The game was in development long before the war started.
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The tired cat said:
the games actual development cycle is up for question
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We know from leaked alpha prototype photos they were doing experiments in UE in 2018, but we also know from interviews with past developers that preproduction lasted from 2018 to 2020, where it started active development. The interview reveals that the development is complete pandemonium, maybe because the writer did die in 2020 due to covid, but what we know is that they went back for majour re-writes and re-pre-produced the game while they had people still making the actual game being left in the dark as what they were supposed to do, so they just make what they want and make headcannon for those parts. This lasted until 2022 which was when they clamped down and started to actually make the game like a normal studio, this means that beetween 2020-2022 they basically had to cut or throw away massive swathes of work that was not in line with the new vision the game had, despite having finished their second pre-production late and trying to match their dev time with their pre-prod time, they still went thru rewrites which required developers to cut stuff they worked on because it was no longer necessary. The reason why the game is half baked is not because they hired a bunch of hack frauds, it is because they don't know how to make a Triple A game in Modern Day, I assume that the director, Yevgeny Grigorovich, who worked on the original games, assumed it would be much like those times, and you can see an tremendous ammount of similarity beetween this story and the story of development in SOC. I also assume this is why that developer leaked the merged build which was inconsistent with release docks.
Fruttasecca said:
Its really crazy what modders were able to pull out of the x-ray engine. That thing is pure Slavic mysticism code and they replaced it with fucking UE5.
Bunch of lazy hacks.
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The X-Ray engine is a complete and utter shitshow, people who have never worked in it will forever think it is a genius piece of software while people that currently do work with it, hate it. For us to get where we are has requried a acumulation of work from various people of over 20 years.
The simple gist of it is, if they wanted to do that, it would be necessary to have a clear picture of their requirements before they started development, but because GSC kept doing rewrites, this list of requirements wouldn't be static and rather would jump erratically, this makes work on a project hard, and work on an engine even harder has what they need to do and work on would be changed at a drop of an hat. If GSC choose to update X-Ray back in 2020? It would've been a shitshow, even if GSC decided that they wanted to use one of the open source projects from back then, it would still be a shitshow as they would've needed to add in a lot to make X-Ray stand up to Triple A, when you look at it realistically if they used X-Ray, they would be even more fucked then they are now.
 
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ParasiteSteve said:
No. I am enjoying 2 for what it is, but I always enjoyed the story, atmosphere and feeling that wandering the zone gives me. I am not into the ARMA faggotry with a billion weapons that all need servicing with the correct oil and other gay milsim shit.

So GAMMA was just a complete waste of time. If you are into heavy micromanaging and think all games should be murderously slow, tedious, "soulslike", prone to failure then gamma would be the game of choice. 2 has its issues, but on the whole, an enjoyable experience.

People who play Tarkov should just be killed, for the betterment of the rest of us.
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You can not be serious. The story in STALKER 2 is practically non existent. The first 3 games had much more pronounced and defined stories, actually functional AI and an atmosphere, not whatever that UE5 slop in STALKER 2.
 
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harbringer883 said:
You can not be serious. The story in STALKER 2 is practically non existent. The first 3 games had much more pronounced and defined stories, actually functional AI and an atmosphere, not whatever that UE5 slop in STALKER 2.
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The "story" of Stalker 2 can be summed up as "Guy's apartment gets blown up. Wants new apartment."
 
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harbringer883 said:
You can not be serious. The story in STALKER 2 is practically non existent. The first 3 games had much more pronounced and defined stories, actually functional AI and an atmosphere, not whatever that UE5 slop in STALKER 2.
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Yeah the story is kinda barebones, its mostly about other people. I like the atmosphere, and it plays well enough for me but I understand it is struggling with some set ups.

I am not saying its as good as the OGs (I always liked clear sky and never understood the hate it got), but its still a solid game. Music is good as well, because they mostly ripped off the other games which is a smart move.
 
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harbringer883 said:
You can not be serious. The story in STALKER 2 is practically non existent. The first 3 games had much more pronounced and defined stories, actually functional AI and an atmosphere, not whatever that UE5 slop in STALKER 2.
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COP's story was completely flat, Stalker 2 at least tried to do something, I don't subscribe to the whole "EVERYTHING STALKER 2 DID IS SHIT" because I do genuinely like some of the things there. But I'm also not blind to the shitshow it is as well.
I think the ways they changed the factions is interesting, most people disliked that because they are parasocially attached to their own vision of said factions but it genuinely did look like a faction that had lost sight of what it was originally supposed to be, and I think it worked considering how many people got upset.
I think the overall plot of Spark is interesting, using the zone to create a world wide ilusion paradise for everyone, it plays into hard sci fi concepts while making it about the zone.
I think the way they handled story variation is sloppy, what is and isn't possible for the zone to do is complete dynamic and changes depending who you side with (ex. C-Con can story someone in it for eternity or not).
The ending I don't agree with, most of them, Noon being wasted? I never was attached to the monolith like I see some furries and tranny's being so I don't actually care, I feel like it shows the desperation of Strider quite well in that regard.
I think there is good things about Stalker 2, namely, the gunfights, the artifact collecting, the artstyle, and a lot of story concepts and overall tone, I also think there's a lot of wrongs, like the overall AI, A-Life being a meme shitshow, the weapon rooster, parts of the story, certain retcons etc.
 
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Frightened Rabbit said:
COP's story was completely flat, Stalker 2 at least tried to do something, I don't subscribe to the whole "EVERYTHING STALKER 2 DID IS SHIT" because I do genuinely like some of the things there. But I'm also not blind to the shitshow it is as well.
I think the ways they changed the factions is interesting, most people disliked that because they are parasocially attached to their own vision of said factions but it genuinely did look like a faction that had lost sight of what it was originally supposed to be, and I think it worked considering how many people got upset.
I think the overall plot of Spark is interesting, using the zone to create a world wide ilusion paradise for everyone, it plays into hard sci fi concepts while making it about the zone.
I think the way they handled story variation is sloppy, what is and isn't possible for the zone to do is complete dynamic and changes depending who you side with (ex. C-Con can story someone in it for eternity or not).
The ending I don't agree with, most of them, Noon being wasted? I never was attached to the monolith like I see some furries and tranny's being so I don't actually care, I feel like it shows the desperation of Strider quite well in that regard.
I think there is good things about Stalker 2, namely, the gunfights, the artifact collecting, the artstyle, and a lot of story concepts and overall tone, I also think there's a lot of wrongs, like the overall AI, A-Life being a meme shitshow, the weapon rooster, parts of the story, certain retcons etc.
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Its ok
You just have shit taste
 
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BradeRunna said:
I think there is a mod called Escape from Pripyat. I don't know if it does exactly what I said.
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I don't have it installed but I'm pretty sure Anomaly has built-in settings for pop density and spawns you can adjust, and I think you can even choose specific factions and mutant types, like getting rid of controllers and upping bandit counts.
 
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Snekposter said:
I don't have it installed but I'm pretty sure Anomaly has built-in settings for pop density and spawns you can adjust, and I think you can even choose specific factions and mutant types, like getting rid of controllers and upping bandit counts.
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If only more games implemented this, but for upping beautiful women and getting rid of minorities
 
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Blackstar said:
Noon was a massive waste. They created a faction of former Monolith based off of what we saw in CoP only to barely flesh them out and then return them back to Monolith.
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Noon are so cool.
I wish we had seen more of them.
Maybe when I do my secret be playthrough, I will spend more time with them.
 
Are there any decent S.T.A.L.K.E.R. "inspired" games on Steam?

I was browsing the store early today and noticed ASKET and MISERY, both look meh but they led me other games, stuff like The Zone: Stalker Stories, ZED ZONE, CHERNOBYL: The Untold Story or the absolute kino S.E.X. Z.O.N.E. ☢️.

Has anyone played these or similar games? Are they any good? I know I won't get the same experience as with the original games, but if they're good on their own, that's still great.
 
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