Our project was started in early 2008, with 6 enthusiasts and by the end of it, we had more than 40 active members. Our dream was to make a new stalker game. Why? Because all of us were waiting for this game so much, and in late 2007, sdk was released for it, which opened many new gates. We always wanted to make something unique. Our first total conversion mod was Priboi Story, which was even popular at the stalker dev team (Ruslan Didenko mentioned us many times in interviews, and how Call of Pripyat was influenced by Priboi’s Story). It was awesome for us, we felt we made something great, which gave us more power to work on our little gem. We started to model objects first, then experimented with levels. Our first own made map, a factory level with outskirts and train station took us a year to finish, because there was no documentation about what the engine can take, or eventually how to put the maps back to game. So it all went with trial-by-error.
Here is a video about how it all started, let’s call it a werk movie, or better to say “behind the scenes”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jB3cgSRO_XM
As the years passed by, our project slowly became too ambitious, because first, we were trying to remake a game, which was trashed for some reason, and several months later we realized, if we just trying to remake someone else’s dream, then it will never be totally ours, and we always wanted to make our dream-game, so we changed concept from remaking “the good old stalker”, and tried to make something new, something which was never seen before, and where we can safely say, “we made our dream”. Since we were using SoC engine, which – thank god we had the opportunity – we heavily modified up to nowdays standards, we can not say its totally a new game, but we would say, it’s an alternative storyline on a totally new zone consisting more than 30 levels, on a heavily updated engine, which perfectly fits the add-on cathegory.
The game was leaked in early 2014, which was an unfortunate event, as this project was to be released as a commercial product by GSC Gameworld. Since the whole project and source code was leaked to public, we decided to release the most recent version of it later that year as “early access” and finish it with our fans who were waiting a lot to play it. In 2015 we decided to develop the DC version, which was the true Developer’s Cut. In DC we returned many cut features, which we planned during the years, but could not finish it due to HR issues. The DC came out in 2017, containing 1 more extra level and some prototypes.
Speaking of us, we are a small team of professional programmers, modelers, voice and audio artists, and designers. Our main achievement was to deliver a game to our fans, which is still hardcore enough, with lots of exploring, and with strong adventure and rpg elements. With the cutscenes, newly designed levels, and some old cutout, but remade levels, which never appeared in any stalker games, we could reach what we were dreaming of. This dream couldn’t have existed without many members of GSC, so we still owe them/you a big (tanker) ship of vodka.
The project was officially closed in December 2017, when the last official patch was released. We are glad we made something unique, and this project gave us enough experience to develop more games.
The standalone game project is still being updated by our old members and fans so its better to check our Facebook or ModDB page from time to time!