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

Meh, yet another thing that GSC will milk for what it's worth to excuse even more delays and get more pity bucks from idiots who will do anything to support this poor Ukrainian studio that had predatory preorder options years before the war even started with the game still not being out yet.
I mean, these are the same mouth breathers who put their dev build on their google drive, didnt bother to password close it or make it private AND shared it on a public Discord server. Heck, thats not getting them pushing the game back even before the war started, despite making claims that it was all ready. Plus the recent "demo" trailer showed that they STILL dont have a properly workin AI in that game.

Huh, almost as if it's a dev build that's not meant to be played by the end user so it hasn't been optimized, plus it probably has a whole bunch of debug code running in the background, hindering performance.

I'd say save your performance shittalk until they finally manage to release the 1.0 retail version, it's still possible that it'll be improved by then after they've finalized all the major parts of the game and can focus on optimizing it.
So why is it that when the build for Atomic Heart was public, it was way more stable and playble than the build for STALKER2? Hell, evsn during GamesCon the version that journalists were allowed to play ALSO ran like shit and crashed apparently 5 times for some people.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Falcos_Commisar
So why is it that when the build for Atomic Heart was public, it was way more stable and playble than the build for STALKER2?
Because it was basically a release candidate and not a beta? Atomic Heart got leaked close to the official release date, so the leak was more complete.

Meanwhile GSC has moved the release date multiple times since their game is still a mess, which is shown by the leak which happened way earlier than the current promised release date.

And again, this isn't the first time GSC was this incompetent, the first game in the series went through a similar development hell with multiple release date moves, to the point that people believed it was vaporware.

Simce you want to make this a Ukraine vs Russia issue, then you can interpret it as hohols being incompetent while the great Ruzzia being the savior of gamedev.

But at the same time I can bring up Postal 3 as proof that this shit isn't exclusive to a nation you dislike.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Falcos_Commisar
Because it was basically a release candidate and not a beta? Atomic Heart got leaked close to the official release date, so the leak was more complete.

Meanwhile GSC has moved the release date multiple times since their game is still a mess, which is shown by the leak which happened way earlier than the current promised release date.

And again, this isn't the first time GSC was this incompetent, the first game in the series went through a similar development hell with multiple release date moves, to the point that people believed it was vaporware.

Simce you want to make this a Ukraine vs Russia issue, then you can interpret it as hohols being incompetent while the great Ruzzia being the savior of gamedev.

But at the same time I can bring up Postal 3 as proof that this shit isn't exclusive to a nation you dislike.
The build of Atomic Heart was a build from several months before release and yet still had more stability than GSCs leaked build or the version presented at fuckin GamesCon, a version mind you they claimed was from a finished version and yet it STILL ran like shit and even managed to crash for some journalists. Frankly, it feels GSC is doing jack shit and just riding of all the pity bux wave (which is dropping more and more with each day). Seriously, latest vid and it STILL shows the AI in the game doesnt exist.

Ah yes, Postal 3 a game that RWS had a bigger hand in (script wise, concept, picking the source engine and even coding the Dudes model and some locations and were ones pimping the game), while Akellas fault was mostly picking a studio that has never even touched the Source Engine. Bottom line, you can pick a better example of the Russian game dev shitting itself, trust me theres numerous examples you can find, Postal 3? Eeeh...not really Id say.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: Falcos_Commisar
And again, this isn't the first time GSC was this incompetent, the first game in the series went through a similar development hell with multiple release date moves, to the point that people believed it was vaporware.
I was following the development of the first game back when it was being called Oblivion Lost. When Shadow of Chernobyl finally came out I had previously given up on it ever coming. With the jank it had on launch it was apparent they'd had some issues with development but the atmosphere really did a lot to make up for it. The first bloodsucker encounter in Agroprom underground is still in my top 5 moments in gaming. With Call of Pripyat it seemed to me that the studio had finally figured out how to make a non janky Stalker game. Clearly that didn't last.
 
I was following the development of the first game back when it was being called Oblivion Lost. When Shadow of Chernobyl finally came out I had previously given up on it ever coming. With the jank it had on launch it was apparent they'd had some issues with development but the atmosphere really did a lot to make up for it. The first bloodsucker encounter in Agroprom underground is still in my top 5 moments in gaming. With Call of Pripyat it seemed to me that the studio had finally figured out how to make a non janky Stalker game. Clearly that didn't last.
I remember the Doom 3 vs STALKER graphics 'battle' in magazines at the time. I played both. Doom 3 was so so but worked, STALKER on release was absolute shit that should have never seen the light of day. There's jank, and there's crap. I don't think I ever finished a STALKER game or played longer than a few hours tbh. Not surprised STALKER 2 is going the same way as Vampire the Masquade 2
 
I don't see сталкер 2 doing as well as the trilogy.
I think all ukraine happenings and the hype might interfere in the long run.
I think the current playerbase will not care for it or have any interest if the game doesn't have gameplay like modern stalker mods or "tarkov-likes"
I think only oldfags will enjoy it for the sovl, atmosphere and story.
The same way we had slavjank Fallout 3, we might have a slavjank Starfield (even the release dates match,they're both 1 year after lol)
Sadly, this will be a swan song for GSC and for Stalker, which will only live on if the autistic CoP mod makers learn to use Unreal Engine🤞
 
  • Like
Reactions: Falcos_Commisar
which will only live on if the autistic CoP mod makers learn to use Unreal Engine
And that's the issue. Unreal is a shitty locked down engine with next to zero modding potential unless the devs take care of implementing that themselves.

I've said multiple times and I'll say that again: STALKER 2 won't even have the saving grace of getting community mods, because it was only possible because of GSC's janky in-house engine that was very open, with GSC releasing the dev tools for it. Then GSC's lax copyright stance on assets did the second half of heavy lifting to let STALKER live on as a collaborative community project.

If you have an Unreal game and an X-Ray game, look into it's files, and try to see how much you can look through with a Notepad and an image browser. You'll be able to make your character immortal, insanely fast and being able to carry an inhumane amount of weight without being tired with just a fucking Notepad with an X-Ray game. With Unreal you'll probably have to resort figuring out Assembly calls of the .exe to manipulate the engine through Cheat Engine or a .dll hook, which takes way more knowledge than how to edit a text file.

I strongly believe GSC called it the "X-Ray Engine" because it's insanely transparent. It takes minimal knowledge and toolset to modify. Not to mention that GSC, much like CD Projekt Red and CroTeam released their own in-house tools for messing with the engine so other people could have fun with it too. And much like CD Projekt Red and CroTeam, they also abandoned it after it got too messy for them and jumped to Unreal, killing off that part of their fanbase.

Honestly I'm going schizo and starting to believe that there's been some deliberate sabotaging going to kill off Slavjank in-house engines in the name of forcing everyone to use Unreal. CroTeam's Serious Engine was the most technically impressive of them all, where it looked great, was very capable and was insanely optimized, but with Serious Sam 4 it became a complete shitshow, after which CroTeam switched to Unreal. And The Talos Principle 2 demo runs like dogshit compared to the first game without looking any better.
 
Honestly I'm going schizo and starting to believe that there's been some deliberate sabotaging going to kill off Slavjank in-house engines in the name of forcing everyone to use Unreal.
I think the fact outsourcing is becoming more common alongside massively inflated studios is the reason behind moves to third party engines. Training a pajeet on Unreal is a thousands times easier than training him on a inhouse engine, you throw the pajeet at a youtube playlist of Unreal tutorials and in a few weeks he's copy and pasting like a pro. Inhouse Engines are still popular in the Indie game sphere for all the reasons you mentioned, but those teams stay so small that you don't need to worry about new hires quickly out numbering people able to teach the engine to others.

As for if there has been purposeful sabotage? I doubt it, Most companies would gleefully force devs to use a shitty inhouse engine over a good 3rd party one instead of paying licensing fees, EA did that with Frostbite even when other engines were better suited for certain games.
 
Honestly I'm going schizo and starting to believe that there's been some deliberate sabotaging going to kill off Slavjank in-house engines in the name of forcing everyone to use Unreal
With the recent Unity fiasco I would understand your worry. It's almost like they're trying to monetize every aspect of gaming, including game dev, and forcing people to use the same big platforms so they can control what kind of people make what kind of games.
But that's kinda dystopian, and schizo as you said. I think it's just the market doing its thing. Because of the Unity scandal some people might switch to Unreal now, but I bet that if Godot wasn't open-source, and if it was a publicly traded company, it would be a good long-term investment right now. Next 5-10 years we'll see an increase in it's market share.
 
I don't know why this keeps cracking me up.

I wonder if the leaning will be nextgen leaning, perhaps introducing a slight shuffle if you overlean. Leanstrats.
Well it's an important mechanic in the game. Removing it would just make it a standard run and gun, which isn't how stalker should play at all.
 

New trailer just dropped. Seems pretty hype. Is it just me or does the guy with the AK look like Prigozhin?
 
  • Like
Reactions: wopirish
Back