S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Series Megathread: Maybe someday mods releasing edition - Games

It has to be X-RAY 2.0 surely

Grigorovich got a lot a shit when Stalker 2 canceled. But during that time, in interviews, he said the current GSC team was not able to do a Stalker 2 justice and he didn't want to waste anymore of his own money on the project. We witnessed this truth when a majority of those ex-GSC members went on to try and do that Areal project and just made themselves look like fools, with the other half going to Vostok to make a mmo shooter. Vostok is good dev but they made a game in a saturated genre, an AI genius wasted his talent making a multiplayer game. I would have to doubt that a STALKER 2 by this new GSC would have A-Life (because a majority of the game logic and AI was done by Dimitri Iassenev of Vostok) but some faith can be place that Grigorovich actually cares about the series and is not just trying to whore it out for cash (unless he had a change of heart or is in dire need of cash.)

If they're going to build an XRAY 2.0 off of the previous versions, the 2021 release could be a realistic approximate, but if they're making the engine from scratch, I doubt it. Surely it'd take 2-3 years to build a whole new engine? There's a tiny little niggle in the back of my head telling me it's Unity in which case I would both laugh and cry at the same time.

With how many open-source third-party libraries there are these days, making an engine from scratch is not as hard as it sounds. Xray is already pretty modular and has a few good systems they can reuse, like the animation manager, movement and path planner, GOAP and some other things. No reason to reinvent the wheel. The problem though is that they would need real software engineers on the team to bring it all together, not inexperienced developers who would excel easier using a WYSIWYG editor, like UE4 or Unity.

We can really only guess what engine and tech the game is going to have. It could be X-Ray, or it couldn't be. Given the guy who created the X-Ray engine left GSC after SHOC, and joined 4A to make the 4A Engine for the Metro games, I would doubt that current GSC has the resources to update an old unoptimized engine to modern standards. You know, things like official 64-bit support, multithreading, PBR, etc. If they're going with a 3rd party engine this time around, I'd say UE4 and Cryengine would be the most likely choices. UE4 due to its extensive documentation and support, or Cryengine due to its visuals and basically being built to handle large open worlds at high visual fidelity (which fits STALKER perfectly). UE4 would definitely be better from a modding standpoint, but I doubt that's a factor at all. I don't see how the game won't have some form of A-Life. AI in games has evolved massively since 2007, so in theory, it wouldn't be too hard to implement something akin to A-Life again.

An Epic Games guy tweeting S2 page link, and then responding "yeah, guess the engine lol" pretty much confirms it's Unreal Engine for sure.

So seems Marked One never destroyed C-Consciousness...all our wishes together bring this. Just give props for Russians to hack n chop into wonderful mods and great quantity of scary quests with good AI. Pls Sergiy. Don't do a mess. I feel some sad that much work was done for XRAY, creating improvements and working towards more good things and now UE is (Possibly) the engine that will be used. This is good though. It will permit easy modding and will attract people to mod it.

https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/1876/5cc3c3d3-4e2d-4980-988a-93febcfd716e/image.png Here's FP Stalkers 2011 to replace the dead link in the OP.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ks7LbQY0N50

Wish I got included in one of those images because there was a time I used to post here a lot.

Looking at your fancy artifact I'm assuming? Ah man, I miss 2011.

eyyy good times

jesus dude... fuck it's been so many years

man this gives me a reason to actually go play and finish the stalker series, my hype has been increased tenfold

honestly x-ray engine is really good engine in terms of handling things, as we see today, it can handle LOOOOTS of stuff including heavy graphic, mods, etc. All what it need is reworked SDK(make it more user friendly...) , better implementation of DX and support for new hardware(multi-threat, etc ). Because thats the main problem. Of course it would also need other smaller changes that will probably stack to big pile of things, but who know, with proper care and some time it cold be updated to fight with any other game engine on market today. Its not like game engine need totally new base to be good, just look at Bethesda games or CoD or Battlefield. Deep inside its still the same thing but they just stack on top of it new features and modules. Its not like you need to invent wheel again. All you need is make it "easier" to manage and be more compatible with modern hardware. Of course for any new gameplay features it would need more work but in terms of graphic and basic functions x-ray would just need refreshment. I personally dont like idea of UE4, because its not like old Unreal engine, its have its own limitations and stupidities, but also in other hand it have its own features that are really nice for game. UE4 is very flexible and even if for most of time I work with Unity, I tried paying with UE and its not bad, but as my friends who work with it more say, it have its own problems especially in terms of AI and scripts, I dont know what exactly what is wrong, they just always say that "it could be better". As some other people, I would like to see stalker on CryEngine(even old one...), because this engine is really nice, it have many features, and even if its not up to date, it still can kick ass in terms of graphic, and as far as I know anyone who have experience with it can make lots of things on it, including complex AI behavior and nice RPG game system. Overall I can deal with UE4, but lets all pray to Monolith that they dont get idea to make it on Unity... I spend lots of time on it doing projects, I played games on it... and Unity for PC suck every hole you can imagine, it rape any hardware, you cant really mod it at all, and its just bad... Mobile games are ok, but holly crap Unity games for PC are just worst thing you can imagine....

Probably should also make X-ray 64 bit too.

Honestly ditching X-Ray at this point might just be the smartest thing they can do. All the engine developers have pretty much left for 4A or left the industry at large and X-Ray as is is disgustingly restricted in memory and processing capability as it only exists in a relatively functional 32-bit build. Not to mention that the back-end of the engine is a stitched together mess of outdated non-standard C++ code which is the reason why it's so prone to randomly crashing to begin with. And don't even get me started on the pipeline. In the end of things, it's more financially viable for them to use UE4. At this point it can more or less perform the same capabilities as X-Ray on new tech and with far less effort. Also, recreating A-Life and making adjustments to UE4 to make it look as sharp and grimy as X-Ray and have it be able to perform the same quirks X-Ray had is in the long run far cheaper than rebuilding an engine that, for better or worse, hasn't been touched in a lifetime.

this makes me incredibly nostalgic

Wait what? That seems highly unlikely to be real.

Sergei Galyonkin the Steam Spy is a close friend of Sergei Grigorovich the Pepsi Man and other GSC developers. He's been implying that GSC won't use X-Ray for STALKER 2 because, well, X-Ray's engine programmers left GSC a decade ago to join 4A.

You say UE4 has limitations and stupidities yet you name none of them?, You also mentioned problems in AI and scripting yet dont really name them? I work with UE4 Daily as a freelance programmer and its one of the most verstaile and flexible engines i have used, heck you even have the FULL engine source code if there is something you dont like about it then you are more than free to modify it or add your own solution to it, be it lightning, animation etc Plus it gives you a fairly robust implementation of Behavior Trees, AI and AI Crowds as well AI Steering. I have worked on very AI intensive projects, simulation and more and i really did not had any issues with it, Its by no means a perfect engine but i feel its wrong to call it limited and stupid. Im sorry if i come out a bit blunt but i did get a bit annoyed that someone is more or less bashing without a valid point the tool i use for my living

That's interesting and I don't really disagree, but my point is I don't think a UE4 dev is going to name the engine GSC are using before they do.

Same with Unity, really. It's not the engine that makes or breaks a game, really - it's how you use it. I would absolutely love it if GSC created X-Ray 2.0 with all the modding capabilities - and more - of the original X-Ray engine, but let's be realistic, it's already been stated multiple times in this thread that from what we know, all the original engine developers have left GSC to go elsewhere. If I had to place money on what engine GSC is using, from what I know right now, it would be "not X-Ray 2.0". And if someone from Epic Games DID tweet out the Stalker 2 release page, it could just be a coincidence, or it could be hinting torwards GSC using UE4. Another possible reason the GSC team has chosen UE4 is because of how UE4 handles mapping. While UE4 DOES include a vertex-based BSP mapping system similar to that of source, the primary mode of mapping for UE4 is with detailed modelling that include collision meshes, very similar to how X-Ray 1.0 handles mapping as well. GSC using UE4 does seem very possible, but my only concern is not with engine limitations, but rather modding capabilities of Stalker 2 if it was based on the UE4 engine. Unless GSC release tools specifically for modding Stalker 2, or change how UE4 handles configuration, a lot of stuff in Stalker 2 could be hard-coded in and would restrict a lot of the customization we're used to in the original Stalker.

UE4 is very easy to enable for modding thankfully. Only real problem is if the game assets will be locked away and encrypted so to speak, although if there's any resident UE4 experts that can chime in on differences between X-Ray and UE4 that'd be great.

I desperately hope the devs make a concerted effort to make the game visually stand out, like the original game in xray did. I know a game's look is very dependent on assets but there's a little something-something about the old engine that I like. Nostalgia maybe.

Anyone get a confirmation on this? If this is true i'm very dissapointed https://i.imgur.com/3Of2nGi.png

Yeah, that's gonna suck. Anyone remember Sleeping Dogs: Triad Wars? That post sounds like a 12-yearold idea guy hungry for a quick buck on steam.

it's a VK shitpost. There's nothing to confirm the information is true and the imagery in the page is fabricated or used to misguide the reader.

what we just need. Disinformation warfare in the stalker world.

Don't worry, I know from a trusty source that STALKER 2 will be a Battle Royale MMORPG Card game with micro-transactions and season passes. It should be out in Early Access during 2021.