It happens that the fiery love of fans goes far beyond the usual framework, and Lost Alpha is one of these examples. This is a child of real fans of the series, undeservedly offended by unfulfilled promises and long expectations. But what was the root cause? We contacted the developers of the Lost Alpha and studied it.
This is the first part of the special material dedicated to the largest amateur modification for s.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of chernobyl. Read our impressions of the updated game on this page.
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Lost childhood
► Dead city – frightening and mysterious.
The original S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of chernobyl – A work with a difficult fate. A child of unfulfilled hopes and a victim of premature birth. There were no half of the promised content in Shadow of Chernobyl, multiple transfers of the release date gave the game a mocking folk nickname.D.A.L.TO.E.P.", And after the exit, many players accused the developers of becoming beta testers for their own money (then did not know the term Early Access).
In general, they spoke a lot of bad things. But even in this form, the formula s.T.A.L.K.E.R. worked. It was interesting to play it, in spite of everything, the enchanting atmosphere of the alienation zone, frozen in time somewhere there, in the Soviet Union, was still not lost after the endless circumcision of the game to please the publisher. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. It became a folk product, and not only in the CIS-many people around the world joined the race for artifacts, maneuvering between anomalies, researching the ghost city of Pripyat and the unravels in the secrets of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Everyone, from small to great, rushed to study God with a forgotten piece of land, which became the will of the developers a place where everyone could feel freedom. Wild, alluring freedom.
► Even after many years, landscapes s.T.A.L.K.E.R. make their way to trembling in the knees.
But not everyone liked it – the thematic forums cracked from the cries of despair and groans of hopelessness: where did everything that we were shown at countless screenshots and in many gameplay rollers had gone? Did all the developers really have a fake video day for the developers? Not at all.
Having rummaged in the bowels of the game, fans managed to get into the light of God many cut pieces-here you have transport, musical instruments, monsters, and much, much more, another. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. It turned out to be very friendly for third -party modifications – thanks to the open architecture and simple, rather flexible internal programming language, nothing worth writing your quest, change the available goods from merchants, force the Gauss gun to shoot 5.45 mm caliber, and so on.
After he arrived and SDK from the developers – cards in your hands, dear fans, do what you want. To collect from this something more or less voluminous, working and full-fledged very few (like a huge modification AMK or Oblivion Lost Remake ). But some did not leave attempts.
► So now the village of Stalkers on the Cordon looks like – pretty overgrown and dilapidated.
In the shadow of Chernobyl
The story of Lost Alpha began in 2008, when the life of s.T.A.L.K.E.R., In fact, she came to an end – the GSC finally left the project, the team split, and the chances of see s.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 cringed to the size of the atom.
Then a group of enthusiasts under the code name Dezoware , set myself the task – to recreate "the same s.T.A.L.K.E.R."Who https://richy-leo-casino.co.uk/ promised GSC. After a year of active work and digging in the game files, it became clear – to do as the developers wanted, impossible. Attempts to revive what, in fact, never existed, made Dezoware go your own way.
► With sunrise, you can breathe a sigh of relief – most of the dangerous creatures hid in its holes and does not lean out.
Direct speech
Zoxfeld , chapter Dezoware
“When old materials appeared on the Web (old assemblies of the game -. Ed.), we realized that to continue to do the same thing that we planned, it is pointless-Lost Alpha will simply become another modification that seeks to realize someone's dream. Do not follow the same road for the same dream, which they refused for a good reason. If we were chasing the dreams of the developers of the old s.T.A.L.K.E.R., We could not create a game his own Dreams.
At the end of 2009, we changed the concept – left the best pieces of “shadows of Chernobyl” and expanded the main core with their own ideas. Ideas accumulated on pure enthusiasm and gained a game form. We were so obsessed that we spent years on a project as a hobby, while the problems in real life have not disappeared anywhere – family, work, relationships and other life events ”.
► What secrets does an abandoned church keep? Surely there is someone's corpse and Khabar warehouse.
The word "team" is not an empty phrase here – an international team of three dozen people working on a remotes and naked enthusiasm was engaged in the project. Organizing such a huge company is very difficult.
Direct speech
Zoxfeld
“In fact, there were more than thirty of us, but many left a couple of weeks or months after joining – enthusiasm quickly disappeared at the sight of hundreds of small routine tasks that were somehow standing in the way to the goal. We are scattered around the world, and we are shared by the language barrier – try to coordinate the whole team in such conditions! Looking back, I can safely say that nothing is impossible, because in the end we did it. And let Lost Alpha now in the Early Access stage, there will certainly be patches and updates to it. As a project leader, I gained vast experience and now I know that it will be different in the upcoming project. ".
► Do not walk around the polluted areas of the zone for a long time – your hero now dies much faster, and a beloved vodka helps to remove radiation from the body poorly.
The publication
The plot Lost Alpha is built on the events of Shadow of Chernobyl – Stalker Men is struggling with his own amnesia and tries to find and destroy a certain arrow. Key moments, plot quests and game events are in the same sequence as in the original, but they were soared so that you play as if for the first time. The game overgrown with a fair amount of details and branches, including side quests from an undeservedly carved group "Sin". The same applies to carved monsters – all of them are safely returned to the spaces of the zone.
► military in Lost Alpha – not necessarily enemies. You can always agree with them – and through their checkpoint they will miss their own, and if necessary, they will support with fire.
The same applies to the map of the zone. She was seriously processed-it became much closer to the “reference” assembly-1935 from 2004 (among fans it is believed that it contains the most accurate and full map of the zone), but with the corrected critical disadvantages and minor inaccuations. Some locations were made from scratch-a dead city and dark hollow were collected, based only on indirect information, such as a photograph of a mini-card, loading screens and concept arts.
► In Lost Alpha added many plot croat scenes. They look frankly outdated.
Direct speech
Zoxfeld
“This is a myth that we built a game on the basis of one of the assemblies merged into the network. Firstly, our game has already been in development since mid-2008, and the assembly-1935 (due to which misunderstandings arise) has officially released the GSC in the spring of 2009. This was done to please the fans – honestly I will say that we put a hand in this. One of the members of our team helped the guys from the GSC find the best, the most complete build for the release (they turned out to be mentioned 1935). We did not use anything from that beta, since we had long had access to SDK objects. From the very beginning, we had binary files of an experimental patch, some objects and half a working SDK – all this had to be assembled on his own literally grains. The exit of the assembly-1935 opened new opportunities for the appearance of remakes of the old s.T.A.L.K.E.R., And she coped with this mission perfectly ".
► do not relax, do not relax for a second! A lot of wild dogs live in the forest, which strive to bite off the lost stalker in the throat.
The re -collected SDK allowed to tighten the graphic capabilities of the project – Lost Alpha supports Directx 10 and complete dynamic lighting. Owners of powerful machines can be more than happy – at the maximum settings of graphics, the old man s.T.A.L.K.E.R. issues such a picture that many shooters of our time will envy. The point here is not so much in the number of landfills per square centimeter of the screen as in a competent game design-Lost Alpha with pastoral landscapes can be enjoyed for hours, and only a dull squeak somewhere, behind the forest, will remind you that you can’t relax for a second for a second.
Direct speech
Zoxfeld
“From the final product, we had to cut out the skills menu and some basic chips, like cooking at the stake and hands on the steering wheel (they looked unconvincing and weakly, we had to refuse them). In subsequent patches and updates, we plan to add a lot of what we turned off, I remind you while the project is in Early Access.
Due to copyright, we could not launch a campaign at crowdfunding sites. Some teams of fashion builders were not afraid and openly asked for money from fans, but this approach is not the best – you can easily encounter copyright violations ”.
► Here in such abandoned houses on the outskirts, bandits love to nest – you will not have time to understand who is in front of you, how to break a bullet in the forehead.
The scale of the work done inspires genuine respect – Lost Alpha is more drawn to a full -fledged addition to a game that is not a sin to sell for money. There is nothing left – to bring the gloss and give the project into the hands of a professional team of testers to identify all bugs ..
… However, this will never happen – Lost Alpha has been and will remain a non -profit project, from fans and for fans. And this is perhaps the best that could happen to the Stalker universe.
Read our review on Lost Alpha on this page.
