Stalker Feature Cuts, Coming Next Year

[Liquidize105]

Stalker (http://www.stalker-game.com/index_eng.html) is not going to be all that they've promised, but it is being dragged by the hair to a store near you for an early 2007 release.

Read about what has been cut and what hasn't in Atomic's E3 Report (http://www.atomicmpc.com.au/article.asp?SCID=27&CIID=37941&p=1).

Some of it is true, some isn't. Obviously, we know now the game is still on track and that the release will indeed be early next year. A major development did however occur - around a year ago THQ brought in freelance developer Dean Sharpe to transform the game from an undefined mess of potential to a sprawling masterpiece.

...

One thing we noticed during a area change was a loading screen. Sharpe said that not only do these loading screens appear between areas, but also as you walk about the world. So the game unfortunately doesn't feature a seamless world as we once believed.

...

What was most surprising however was Sharpe revealing that 'I may or may not take out the vehicles - I haven't decided yet'. Vehicles were a big part of the game's original feature-set. If they were to be removed it would pose more than a few design problems, considering the size of the 30-square kilometre area covered in the game.
THQ brought in a pimp, plain and simple. GSC Game World's head has been shoved into the toilet.

On a separate note, you have give 3DRealms credit for sticking to plan A.

[Deadend]

Welcome to the real world, where impossibly ambitious games get reality handed to them. I hope it still turns out well.

[bapenguin]

just when I was starting to forget about this game....

[Zurik]

Or you could say impossibly ambitious games get dumbed down to horribly buggy, half assed games.

[Grifter]

Who the hell is Dean Sharpe, what has he done and why the hell should we care?

[hotdrop]

yeah im thinking stalker is probably gonna suck

[bto]

Stalker....stalker....hmmmm does ring a bell. Can't recall.

[falcon]

Looks like THQ finally threw down the gauntlet to get this game out the door and they forced the devs to scope it back. Typical iron triangle solution for those in the project management business...

[Mitza]

http://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,23211/

Impressive :)

[MrPoo]

I still remember seeing the leaked pre-alpha running on a friend's system. It was pretty dammned impressive--spooky as hell. The atmosphere was top-notch. Graphics and sound were pretty awesome.

Not sure what happened, but maybe that was the only level they ever had compiled?

Slightly OT: Anyone else waiting in fevered anticipation of Armed Assault for the PC?

[Liquidize105]

THQ flew in a guy to introduce some semblance of order to the story, and along the way he started giving it the chops. Cutting seamless transition? Cutting Vehicle? I mean GSC originally had 2 versions of the game, one open-ended and one scripted/on rails. They went with the open-ended only after their Artificial Life showed promise.

Oh you haven't decided? Well how about we flip for it? Way to run your mouth off like that and make light of a major feature. Instead of trying to preserve the features that have kept people waiting all this time, this joker is rearranging the anatomy of whole thing.

Feel free to go off-topic, this just sucks too much for anymore morbidity :p

[Worldcrafter]

yeah im thinking stalker is probably gonna suck
I think it will more likely turn out to be mediocre quality with rough edges and pieces that feel tacked on. However, if the gameplay is solid enough, and interesting enough, it could still be fun to play. The load screens sound annoying, but if they work like Oblivion's, then it shouldn't be too bad.

I'm still looking forward to this game, and I'm glad it is getting wrapped up. I just hope the spirit of the game that intrigued me in the first place remains intact.

[dotbomb]

Too funny. Nothing like hiring a guy who has no clue rather than just killing the project and saving money.

[Maskatron]

http://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,23211/

Impressive :)


That was good for a laugh. :D

[PixelSamurai]

I love loading screens in my sprawling masterpieces!

[Rafer]

http://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,23211/

Impressive :)

Hey, Metal Warriors is actually a pretty good game.

[Demo_Boy]

Methinks most of the hyped features of Stalker were listed in a publisher approved doc in order for the dev to get the signoff moey to start the game.

The dev works on the game he knows he can make while the publisher pimps the impossible featureset.

Advance X years, the dev hasa game, but its only a fraction of the impossible list that got them the money.

Publisher, upset that it does not have all the features, hires the Finisher since they have no confidence in the title but have too much wrapped up in it.

Result? Game will be tight, but nothing like the feature list.

Who's at fault?
The publisher for demanding an impossible list?
The dev for committing to an impossible list?
The game community for demanding an impossible list?

Does everyone get what they deseve?

Discuss.

[Deadend]

I think the devs are to blame on this one, as I really doubt they realzied the scale of what they were really trying to do. THQ also thought it was doable, even though no one had done it before.

The most disapointing cut for me is the addition of loading screens, I thought those would be dying off, unless it has something to do with the pixel shaders and detail levels.

[torrefaction]

This dude worked on Zombies ate my Neighbors. I'm not sure I wanna right him off just yet! :-P

[Zanzibar]

Methinks most of the hyped features of Stalker were listed in a publisher approved doc in order for the dev to get the signoff moey to start the game.

The dev works on the game he knows he can make while the publisher pimps the impossible featureset.

Advance X years, the dev hasa game, but its only a fraction of the impossible list that got them the money.

Publisher, upset that it does not have all the features, hires the Finisher since they have no confidence in the title but have too much wrapped up in it.

Result? Game will be tight, but nothing like the feature list.

Who's at fault?
The publisher for demanding an impossible list?
The dev for committing to an impossible list?
The game community for demanding an impossible list?

Does everyone get what they deseve?

Discuss.

Yikes. Where to start with this one.

Devs should not commit to creating features they don't have specific methods in mind of how to accomplish them. Every game proposal has both a Design Doc and a Technical Design Doc; the DD has what they want to do, and the TDD has how they want to do it. TDDs don't generally read as "I have no fucking idea how we're going to do this, but it sure sounds like a cool idea, doesn't it?"

Publishers also should recognize when the Dev is pulling the how-to's out of their collective asses. It's also up to them to oversee the milestone schedules and recognize early that the Dev isn't making enough progress.

EDIT: I should probably say that it might very well be only one or two features that turned out to be near-showstoppers. The game looks good, so if THQ was getting milestone reports saying 'We've made more improvements to the levels, but we're still having AI troubles and zone-loading problems', then THQ might have given them a pass. I don't know what the holdup is, so I shouldn't give a blanket statement that implies that the developers were making up how they were going to accomplish features X, Y and Z. There are always 'gotchas' uncovered in any design process.

[Hieremias]

On a separate note, you have give DNF credit for sticking to plan A.[/I]

Umm, no you don't, not when you look at where Plan A has left them.

Please don't (yet) compare Stalker to DNF. Stalker was too ambitious and unweildy for the developers, but there has always been an enormous amount of information available about the game and now it looks like we will see it released before too long.

DNF has been in "development" (if you can call it that) for over a decade, and there hasn't been so much as a hint of a screenshot or gameplay video since the Clinton administration. It is the joke of the gaming industry.

I think most gamers are still hoping Stalker will be good, that it'll deliver on at least half of its promises. And nobody can deny that all those shots and videos are cool. I don't think any gamers with an ounce of common sense hold a shred of hope for DNF.

[Wyrm]

I stopped caring about this game a long ass time ago. Sounded cool at first, and they overhyped it without ever having much to show for it.

FEAR came out, and that satisfied my FPS horror appetite for the time being. So did Condemned for the breif 6 hours that I played it, but eh.

Games like this make me wish you could rent PC games.

[schnodder]

i hope this game is not Vista-only. :confused:

[ElectricMonk]

THQ flew in a guy to introduce some semblance of order to the story, and along the way he started giving it the chops. Cutting seamless transition? Cutting Vehicle? I mean GSC originally had 2 versions of the game, one open-ended and one scripted/on rails. They went with the open-ended only after their Artificial Life showed promise.

Oh you haven't decided? Well how about we flip for it? Way to run your mouth off like that and make light of a major feature. Instead of trying to preserve the features that have kept people waiting all this time, this joker is rearranging the anatomy of whole thing.

Feel free to go off-topic, this just sucks too much for anymore morbidity :p

You've clearly never been involved with game development. In the real world things have to ship eventually, and the more features you have the less likely that will happen.

if STALKER wanted all their features they should have planned the project better and not require some other guy to help fix the project.

[ElectricMonk]

Yikes. Where to start with this one.

Devs should not commit to creating features they don't have specific methods in mind of how to accomplish them. Every game proposal has both a Design Doc and a Technical Design Doc; the DD has what they want to do, and the TDD has how they want to do it. TDDs don't generally read as "I have no fucking idea how we're going to do this, but it sure sounds like a cool idea, doesn't it?"

Publishers also should recognize when the Dev is pulling the how-to's out of their collective asses. It's also up to them to oversee the milestone schedules and recognize early that the Dev isn't making enough progress.

EDIT: I should probably say that it might very well be only one or two features that turned out to be near-showstoppers. The game looks good, so if THQ was getting milestone reports saying 'We've made more improvements to the levels, but we're still having AI troubles and zone-loading problems', then THQ might have given them a pass. I don't know what the holdup is, so I shouldn't give a blanket statement that implies that the developers were making up how they were going to accomplish features X, Y and Z. There are always 'gotchas' uncovered in any design process.

The design document model is fundamentally flawed, because the DD is only ever an estimate, and that model has no room for flexibility. In reality 45% of what is in a design document is never used, so they should not be treated as 'blueprints' even in the hypothetical sense.

Almost all games so far have used this method to create a game, but that is in the process of changing: You should look into agile modelling.

[Liquidize105]

You've clearly never been involved with game development. In the real world things have to ship eventually, and the more features you have the less likely that will happen.

if STALKER wanted all their features they should have planned the project better and not require some other guy to help fix the project.
Well, that's great and all, but like you said, I'm not involved in development. I'm on the side of the consumer, and in the end what matters is if they can do it, not why. THQ has come this far, this kind of deprecating behavior is not going to earn them any fandom at the 11th hour.

Which brings me to another point:

I think most gamers are still hoping Stalker will be good, that it'll deliver on at least half of its promises. And nobody can deny that all those shots and videos are cool. I don't think any gamers with an ounce of common sense hold a shred of hope for DNF.
Half of the promises of Stalker compared to the full shebang DNF is still aging away at, good enough I'd say. When it does hit retail, everything else would be forgiven if it turns out to be good.

[Reanimated]

lol, I downloaded the leaked alpha of this game like over a year ago. I had forgotten all about it.

[Windaria]

I've had a chance to actually experience the game 1st hand, and talk with Dean.

Stalker is a game that suffers from insane feature creep. The game is too big, and showed no chance of ever being finished. Dean went in to try and get the game done. He had to move from the U.S. to the Ukraine for a year just to be around to apply pressure on the dev team to finish the thing.

You're dealing with a dev group that piled on endless content, but never polished or finished anything up to be shipped. You go 3+ years generating content... you have enough content! A standard play through of Stalker, knowing where everything was located, was taking 24+ hours to complete. That's knowing everything. When you had no clue, you could wander for weeks. The open enviroment was a cool idea. It was much like Oblivion, but it lacked even the limited direction that Oblivion provided. THQ sent Dean there to hopefully fix the game, and get somehthing that could ship this decade..

This game was a hair away from being cancelled. Not because it wasn't good, but because THQ was loosing all faith in the developer to be able to actually finish the product.

On a good note. The network head to head combat is apparently very good. The dev team plays it and improves it a lot.

[Heretic Machine]

Daikatana 2!

[Dag-Sabot]

I dont know if im sick or what, but I never tire of "Vapour Ware" jokes.

[Liquidize105]

That's good to know, Windaria.

I suppose the moment THQ sent in their own like Eidos did with Ion Storm Dallas, Stalker became the new Daikatana. 2 of the major fansites have gone on to boycott Stalker to protest the information vacuum (a good move by THQ). A shame really, the fact that Dean has to conventionalize Stalker, but without it it's mess.

[ProfPuppet]

I've had a chance to actually experience the game 1st hand, and talk with Dean.

Stalker is a game that suffers from insane feature creep. The game is too big, and showed no chance of ever being finished. Dean went in to try and get the game done. He had to move from the U.S. to the Ukraine for a year just to be around to apply pressure on the dev team to finish the thing.

After learning a bit more about the inside stuff that goes on in the gaming industry in school, I'm occasionally amazed that we get great games with all the burning hoops and deathtraps that you have to go through to get a game made. If what you said is true and the game still sucks, so be it. They were reaching too high and lost sight of the basics, is what it sounds like, and the best games do this too. (Oblivion's really bad UI design is an example of something basic that seems to have been overlooked in the press to add more content.)

I wonder if Duke Nukem Forever has become the laughingstock of the gaming industry because they didn't have anyone put their foot down and say "Fuck it guys, stop putting things in. Polish, burn, ship, and we can add more stuff on in patches and expansions."

[Draft]

THQ brought in a pimp, plain and simple. GSC Game World's head has been shoved into the toilet.Once again, you simply astound. Jesus christ, how you can cut that eastern european 3D realms any slack is beyond me. STALKER looked amazing back when it was a FPS morrowind- now you'd call it what, a FPS oblivion? The developers fucked up, the game was doomed, and if it comes out even halfway playable, Game World had better line up to kiss Dean Sharpe's ass, because he just saved their jobs.

[Captain Awesome]

Much like DNF, this game contracted a severe case of "Feature-Creep"

[Mason]

They were reaching too high and lost sight of the basics, is what it sounds like, and the best games do this too. (Oblivion's really bad UI design is an example of something basic that seems to have been overlooked in the press to add more content.)
Not at all the case with Oblivion. They have a very modular UI system, which is why people can change menus deep within the game with simple XML mods. The UI system itself is very professional, its shipped implementation is poor and clunky, but that part wouldn't be handled by the same people who were creating quests or other world content.

And from what I understood about Stalker, it sounded like a lot of abstract features with very little coherent vision of the play experience. Having too much of the wrong stuff in their design is a problem, but too little of the right stuff (clear statements about gameplay and pacing which can be used to reject potential content) is also an issue.

[Heretic Machine]

I still don't understand why people think Oblivion's UI is so bad... My only complaint in the Magic UI, which is extremly disorganized. Other than that, the rest seems fine and dandy to me, a big improvment over Morrowind to be sure.

[Liquidize105]

Stalker still looks amazing, and I call it for what it is. 3DRealm's been a running joke for years, so don't think that by giving them a little credit for sticking to their guns is going to clear their sky of storm clouds. Their ability to make DNF into a good game still remains to be seen, believe it or not.

Stalker is different. People who've followed it for the past 5 years, including those who dangled on the edge of disinterest managed to hang on because of the promises made. You wouldn't believe the kind of questions people asked during interviews. Now the promises are being scaled back.

It's probably going to be a very playable game in 2007, the sad part is all the press over the years have already conditioned people to expect more. IW is a decent game, but bad press destroyed the game's creditability simply because people expected more.

[Mason]

I still don't understand why people think Oblivion's UI is so bad... My only complaint in the Magic UI, which is extremly disorganized. Other than that, the rest seems fine and dandy to me, a big improvment over Morrowind to be sure.
When you're dealing with lists as large as you end up with in Oblivion, some extra features would be nice. Collapsing categories, deprecating spells, sorting equipment by slot, that sort of thing. Plus the default UI size for the PC wasn't wise, scaling it to the resolution makes a ton of difference. Possible addition of multiple hotkey pages. Basically, PCify it a bit more.

[Zanzibar]

That's good to know, Windaria.

I suppose the moment THQ sent in their own like Eidos did with Ion Storm Dallas, Stalker became the new Daikatana. 2 of the major fansites have gone on to boycott Stalker to protest the information vacuum, more bad press is sure to follow. A shame really, the fact that Dean has to conventionalize Stalker, but without it it's mess.

I didn't know that about the information vacuum boycotts. Honestly, I fail to see how it's a bad idea at this point to focus on the game rather than keeping the community in the loop. How much info was being disseminated to the community up until the lockdown? If they were promising X and Y, and now one of them needs to be cut, then sure, stop the information and focus on finishing the goddamned game. Serves them right for promising X and Y to begin with. Don't mention ANYTHING you can't guarantee.

[Liquidize105]

It's not, it's a good move that comes too late. The Russians handle PR themselves up to that point.

[torrefaction]

The design document model is fundamentally flawed, because the DD is only ever an estimate, and that model has no room for flexibility. In reality 45% of what is in a design document is never used, so they should not be treated as 'blueprints' even in the hypothetical sense.

Almost all games so far have used this method to create a game, but that is in the process of changing: You should look into agile modelling.

This is someone who obviously knows what he's talking about. My company is moving in this direction (Hint:100% of the Fortune 100 use this product.), and it seems to be improving a lot of things. Design documents are a joke, because half the time, the document doesn't get communicated right. Too many things are left up to interpretation, and you deliver a feature/product that the customer doesn't want.

Agile development fixes this, by consistently providing prototypes. This way, you can see if your going in a direction that's appropriate.

[Pretzel]

Stalker is different. People who've followed it for the past 5 years, including those who dangled on the edge of disinterest managed to hang on because of the promises made. You wouldn't believe the kind of questions people asked during interviews. Now the promises are being scaled back.

Sounds like a classic newbie game developer problem. Take a group of talented group of people with high ideals, but little experience in what it takes to complete a project, then put them in front of some adoring fans and they'll promise the moon.

Two features that always stand out to me as a sign the design team is "pie in the sky"-ing it are continuous worlds and "artificial life" ai. The continuous world is possible, but is a fairly difficult problem that usually requires certain compromises (something that idealistic teams tend to have a hard time doing).

The "artificial life" thing though is always a big sign that there's going to be some heartache in the future. Usually it's because they got some guy who's got a master's degree in AI or something. He's never made a game before, but he thinks all game developers suck at AI and he's going to show them how it's done. He immediately makes grandious plans about all the amazing things that the ai is going to do, such as the rabbits on the country side will actually forage for food and hide from predetors, while the foxes will hunt the rabbits for food, and the humans will have ordinary lives and things they have to worry about, etc. Generally a lot of things that have nothing to do with the main goal of the game. At some point, 4 years down the road, there still isn't a game to play. They've got tons of amazing art and characters modelled and maybe some demos of rabbits running around foraging, but the AI can't fight you, or just aren't any fun to fight. Usually a team revolt happens around this point, with the AI guy getting fired, or he leaves with half the team to start up their own company because it's management's fault the game sucks (this company will exist for about a year until they realize the AI guy is an idiot). At this point, the publisher comes in, cleans house, and quickly shoves the game out the door. Fans are all certain that the game was pure gold prior to the publisher sticking it's head into it (this is usually accompanied by comments from the team that left about how great the game was going to be when they were there). After a week or two of internet gaming sites bashing the game and writing articles about how great it could have been, the game is quickly forgetting, except as a punchline on internet gaming forums.

Anyway, that's how I think this script is going to play out. Sorry for any spoilers.

[tombofsoldier]

Any good game devoloper now that it is above all important to make a single plan from the beggining and stick to it all the way through. It was certainly an ambitious game, but like what was promised in Half Life 2, Halo 2, or Oblivion it couldn't be stuck too. Still, those games were good, so hopefully this will turn out to be at least close to those.

[Pretzel]

Any good game devoloper now that it is above all important to make a single plan from the beggining and stick to it all the way through. It was certainly an ambitious game, but like what was promised in Half Life 2, Halo 2, or Oblivion it couldn't be stuck too. Still, those games were good, so hopefully this will turn out to be at least close to those.

Actually, that's a common misconception. It's almost impossible to make a plan that you can stick to 100%. A good game design needs to be flexible to adapt to changes. You can't just sit down and write a game design and know it's going to be fun. What if that super-new-game-idea-that-no-one-ever-tried-before isn't fun? What if the super-new-ai-that-handles-300-guys-at-a-time is too slow? What if your spicy new renderer can only draw one guy on the screen at a time because the levels are too complex?

You can't just make a big design doc and then turn your brain off and become some kind of game content production line. It doesn't work that way. A game design is a plan for what you'd like to do, but it still hasn't been proven, and it's awfully hard to predict what's going to happen 2-3 years in the future.

[Steele Johnson]

3DRealms sticking to plan A? lol If their plan A is never producing a game, I suppose you're right.

I guess plan B would be to actually ship a game. :D

[Saladin]

Or you could say impossibly ambitious games get dumbed down to horribly buggy, half assed games.

Reminds me of Horizons.

[Rafer]

Sounds like a classic newbie game developer problem. Take a group of talented group of people with high ideals, but little experience in what it takes to complete a project, then put them in front of some adoring fans and they'll promise the moon.


Pretzel, I think your post just described Trespasser (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jurassic_Park:_Trespasser) perfectly. It almost exactly the same situation, newbie PHD developer, promises of sophisticated AI, I hope this game turns out better.

[Heretic Machine]

Reminds me of Horizons.

We don't mention that game by name anymore.

[robotfighter]

It's time to just pack it up and put this game out to pasture. By the time it ships, all that cool-ass graphics tech they were showing is going to be looking very dated.