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S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Team Not Art Thieves

Posted by Zonk on from the in-the-clear dept.

Via Kotaku an Inquirer article reports that, despite earlier claims to the contrary, it looks like the folks behind the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. title are not guilty of art theft. It seems both Half-Life 2 and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. use textures from a pack produced by Marlin Studios. The similarities are there because both teams used pre-canned materials for their titles, not because of any tom-foolery on the part of GSC GameWorld.

4 of 62 comments (clear)

  1. Fantastic News! by Murrdox · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I'm a big fan of S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

    The game is very original, and I see a lot of promise in this game in the way of mods, expansions, and sequels. This game is so good it made me feel like I was playing a first-person-shooter version of Fallout. In fact, I recently reinstalled Fallout, and am beating it again. If S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is good enough to remind me of such a golden age game, they must have touched on the right nerves.

    Hopefully any previously mentioned projects will take less time to develop than the game itself did! :)

    I sort of doubted the original allegations were true, and figured that some kind of licensed or public domain material must have been involved in this. Glad to hear that is in fact true.

    This developer shows promise, and it would be unfortunate if its reputation were inappropriately tarnished.

    1. Re:Fantastic News! by Osmosis_Garett · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I'm a big fan of Sci-Fi. I had some hopes that STALKER would indeed be a FPS version of Fallout, and indeed it does give me that sensation as I play it from time to time. Unfortunately, this game fails because of some seriously surprising oversights. I am constantly finding the AI doing incredibly stupid things; I took out a small army of military from the third floor of a building with my handgun, for example. I've tricked squads of soldiers by hiding in a bush in front of them and shooting as they sneakily approach. I dont even want to talk about the 4 foot barbed wire fence which i cant seem to climb over, or the bugs i keep discovering.

      Perhaps my hopes were too high for this game, and I do intend to keep playing it until its finished, but I cant recommend this game to anyone.

  2. Re:In the minds of the consumer by Clever7Devil · · Score: 1, Interesting

    When it's so noticeable that the creators get accused of stealing artwork? Yeah.

    I understand the concept of using tools (Engines, Texture Sets, etc.) to create games. I also understand that it is unfeasible for studios to reinvent the wheel every time they make a title. But when a game is accused of stealing artwork because its graphics are so rehashed, I think it is indicative of a problem. Like I said, these things won't likely affect sales.

    --
    "By the time they had diminished from 50 to 8, the other dwarves began to suspect 'Hungry.'" -Gary Larson
  3. I like this by obeythefist · · Score: 2, Interesting

    So, game developers are not constantly re-inventing the wheel... this is great. How many times in an FPS have you burst into an office, seen a desk, a chair, etc, then wondered how long it took developers to model it, texture it etc? Probably not many. But I have! Really, a few good chair models is all we need. This will hopefully free up development time for more important things like design, AI, plot and innovation.

    Even better, these kinds of resources need to be made available to small time and independant developers. Writing a 3D game would be a lot easier if a huge number of the objects were already done.

    --
    I am government man, come from the government. The government has sent me. -- G.I.R.