Don't worry, most gamers don't know what's a lifemuh A-Life
I'm fairly sure we've already had this discussion.
Made in Ukraine,
Dying from cringe.
If you want to be optimistic, it could be that AI work does not have much to show before it's almost fully completed (unlike say level design, where you can finish work on just one small area and show). Also I recall the original A-Life inventor joined the Navy, which might delay work even more, even though others might be able to reverse engineer the original ideas. It could also be that even many old Stalker players are clueless about A-Life to this day, so trying to educate them (not to mention newcomers) about it would be a waste of marketing resources.Because it doesn't exist.why wouldn't you show it?
Alas that seems more likely.Come on man, put two and two together. They got the money from Microsoft, they'll get money from all the nostalgia driven players of the originals, they'll get the money from people who don't even care about the game but want to support Ukraine. Journalists will also love them because of that. And if anyone dares criticize the game, they will be accused of being a Putinophile and a fascist. It's a win-win situation for them. They can just put together a linear, setpiece driven shooter and call it a day.
ARK Survival Evolved (using UE4) has similar AI with roaming creatures. A crucial difference is that ARK creatures go into stasis at a certain distance from the player, preventing true Stalker-like migration. But it seems possible to disable with the -PreventHibernation launch parameter (at least on Steam), so I'm sure there are no UE engine limits except performance. In the X-ray engine I've learned that a simplified "offline" version of the gameworld was used in order to improve performance, so maybe something like that would have to be custom made for Stalker 2. Or maybe today's PCs are powerful enough that such an offline version is no longer needed?I don't even think something like A-Life would be possible in UE5, especially not with modern programming in games.
and yet concepts like this are nowhere to be seen in other gamesSTALKER's A-Life was never that complex though
STALKER's A-Life was never that complex though. From what I remember once creatures were too far from you, or in another level, they were turned into abstract pieces of data, like numbers in an array.
These abstract pieces had very simplified pathfinding and behavior, and would perform a kind of RPG auto-battles to determine who won if they bumped into enemies, if they survived anomalies, and stuff like that. This is what made it possible for you to leave a level and then find all the stalkers dead while you were away. It's also why you sometimes found weird stuff like 15 perfectly cloned mutant corpses sitting in a circle. This abstraction is what made A-Life possible on old hardware.
Anyway, there's no reason why you couldn't do this stuff in Unreal, it would probably work the same way.
Anyway, there's no reason why you couldn't do this stuff in Unreal, it would probably work the same way.
It's almost as if it didn't add anything of worth to the gameplay, autist.and yet concepts like this are nowhere to be seen in other gamesSTALKER's A-Life was never that complex though
almost like devs were not capable to make something like this... or anything that would make gameplay interesting
I already mentioned ARK Survival Evolved, but The Long Dark also has a kind of faux A-Life. Animals will mostly roam within the small area where they spawned, but gradually move spawning location any time the player goes in and out of buildings (the latter loads separate mini levels), thus giving an illusion of long term migration. In addition to this, wounded animals seem to flee in semi-random directions (not sure about how that works, it seems they usually die in similar locations anyway). Bears and wolves may pick up your scent, close in on your location, and once seeing you start stalking you directly. Sometimes a wolf may (randomly?) get close to a deer or rabbit, start chasing it and sometimes kill it.and yet concepts like this are nowhere to be seen in other gamesSTALKER's A-Life was never that complex though
I guess most studios lack the ambition, just like they no longer bother to make their own engines. Maybe it's also considered a waste of money on average players, that rush through every game they play without replaying any of them. But if you want people to keep replaying and recommending your games even after 15 years (like original Stalker) I think it's worth the investment.almost like devs were not capable to make something like this... or anything that would make gameplay interesting
Why would the characters speak English with a Ukranian/Russian accent?Watched latest trailer, realized that they're using American voice actors and not Ukrainian actors speaking English with a Ukrainian accent.
Total fucking bullshit.
I'm a Ukrainian American who has never been to Ukraine and the main appeal of the original games were the genuine Ukrainian atmosphere, almost as if I was visiting Chernobyl and Pripyat in-person.
It doesn't make sense to use American voice actors in this context, it's about as bad as American movies that hire British actors to play a European character, regardless of whether they're from Brittain or not.
Fuck, I would accept American voice actors doing their best to speak with a fake Ukrainian/Russian accent, LOL... But I'll settle for using Ukrainian audio in-game with English subtitles!
A-life was pretty basic and didn't add that much to the actual gameplay, it's probably not that hard to recreate it in Unreal.
I have no fucking clue man, at least they claim so on the website?A-life was pretty basic and didn't add that much to the actual gameplay, it's probably not that hard to recreate it in Unreal.
So surely it’ll be done then, right? Right?
A-Life 2.0 life-simulating system builds a holistic live environment where player's actions have an impact on the world of the Zone.
but the dude responsible for it is dead, so whomever picked it up after him will have some work to get back to it"It won't have A-Life" -> How the fuck can we know, the devs claim it will have.
The guy responsible for A-life is Dmitriy Iassenev. Yes, he went to war, but as far as I know, there is nothing on him being dead. You must have confused him with Volodymyr Yezhov.but the dude responsible for it is dead, so whomever picked it up after him will have some work to get back to it"It won't have A-Life" -> How the fuck can we know, the devs claim it will have.
A-Life is what makes freeplay (and replay) interesting. The actual quests (like "Bring the leg of a boar") are just excuses for the player to go out in the Zone and experience the A-Life. If you just play it for the actual quests you're missing 90% of what the game is about.SoC was a great game, but it was a mostly linear story romp with some repetitive side missions added for flavour. A-life was pretty basic and didn't add that much to the actual gameplay,
It shouldn't be, if the will and know-how is there. But all those cheesy cutscenes cost money too, and most game developers today seem unable to customize third-party game engines.it's probably not that hard to recreate it in Unreal.
If all these cutscenes were only made for marketing they don't make much sense to me, so I assume they'll be used in the game too. And (unlike the more vague, dreamlike cutscenes in SoC) it seems these are mostly used to deliver dialogs for specific quests, so in a worst-case scenario every single quest will have one."The trailers show only scripted cutscenes" -> Yeah, I hate cinematic trailers too, but they really don't tell us anything about the gameplay and how often these cutscenes will occur.
No, in SoC you can freeplay as much as you like and explore much of the Zone (even many areas ahead of the plot) while ignoring the main story. Furthermore, much of the backstory and lore is only revealed by exploring and talking to random NPCs, something players rushing through the game will miss completely."I just want to explore the zone, not follow some story" -> Fuck off Anomaly fanboys, the original game was mainly story driven.
Yes they claim it will have all the previous games' levels, and then maybe also new areas in between these levels. That may sound good for marketing, but it's a lot of space to fill with content.If anything, I assume the zone will be bigger and more open than in SoC.
It can always be made dumber, especially if the goal is to help console gamers."Difficulty will be dumbed down" -> Again, fuck off Anomaly fanboys. The original game was never some hardcore survival game, it was mildly challenging at times on master difficulty.
I believe it when I see it. That marketing so far focuses on cutscenes may say something about the type of game GSC wants to make, or the type of consumer GSC is targetting."It won't have A-Life" -> How the fuck can we know, the devs claim it will have.
Bullshit. You could take a break from the main story and just explore the Zone. In fact, most of my playtime was focused on me just wandering around (S.T.A.L.K.E.R. had great atmosphere that suited exploration). You could finish the story part really quickly if you beelined for it and it wasn't even that good (I'd call it serviceable, at best)."I just want to explore the zone, not follow some story" -> Fuck off Anomaly fanboys, the original game was mainly story driven. If anything, I assume the zone will be bigger and more open than in SoC.
True, but Stalker at least had semi-realistic take on shooting compared to more mainstream shooters out there (bullets could go off target, you had headshots, different ammo for different weapons, etc.), at least before you were in the endgame. You also had some light survival elements (I am including anomalies in that).the original Stalker was non-stop shooting