S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl - coming September 5th

[Konjad]

It's just gonna be a Metro: Exodus-like game

 

[Gerrard]

muh A-Life
I'm fairly sure we've already had this discussion.

 

[Konjad]

muh A-Life
I'm fairly sure we've already had this discussion.

Don't worry, most gamers don't know what's a life

 

[Ryzer]

Dying from cringe.

Made in Ukraine, using a Russian book and appropriating Strugatsky's brothers work as well as a Russian movie but shhhhhh

 

[ciox]

Devs... I agree...

We all bleed Ukrainian!

But are you making a good game? Looks more like you are making Shadow of Chornobyl: The Netflix Series.

 

[Iucounu]

why wouldn't you show it?

Because it doesn't exist.

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.

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.

Alas that seems more likely.

I don't even think something like A-Life would be possible in UE5, especially not with modern programming in games.

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?

 

[deuxhero]

I'll be surprised if it actually releases, and be even more surprised if it isn't shit.

 

[ciox]

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.

 

[Drakortha]

The developers would sooner spend their resources developing a 1st-Person cutscene where the player character is fighting off a Snork with a knife, rather than develop something like a-life. Because a cutscene fits better into their dumb trailers and it's more easily consooomable.

 

[Baron Dupek]

STALKER's A-Life was never that complex though

and yet concepts like this are nowhere to be seen in other games
almost like devs were not capable to make something like this... or anything that would make gameplay interesting

 

[Hace El Oso]

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.

Yeah, it’s great. What else is there?

Anyway, there's no reason why you couldn't do this stuff in Unreal, it would probably work the same way.

And yet, nobody will ever do it.

 

[Gerrard]

STALKER's A-Life was never that complex though

and yet concepts like this are nowhere to be seen in other games
almost like devs were not capable to make something like this... or anything that would make gameplay interesting

It's almost as if it didn't add anything of worth to the gameplay, autist.

 

[Iucounu]

STALKER's A-Life was never that complex though

and yet concepts like this are nowhere to be seen in other games

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.

almost like devs were not capable to make something like this... or anything that would make gameplay interesting

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.

 

[Ol' Willy]

The closest thing to A-life is AI in grand strategies like Civ or paradox map painters

 

[deuxhero]

X4: Foundations does simulate the entire world, down the supply chain for the lowliest fighter. There's simplified calculations if the player is far away, but the AI does build and can have their supply lines targetted.