S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Way of the Wolf
Status Update #2
Introduction:
This week I'll be telling you about the creation of the WotW Team (and some brief words about its members), give you a look into the work that's been going into the mod since the last update, supply some more general info on the mod and announce the launch of the new EuroStalker fansite/community!
The Way of the Wolf Team:
Way of the Wolf, being a Total Conversion, is a lot of work. Because of this, I've got a few people who will be helping with development! So, here is the Way of the Wolf Development Team as it currently stands!
Beac: That's me! Team Leader, Lead Designer, whatever you want to call me. I don't want to talk about myself too much, but I work on pretty much everything everyone else doesn't, and combine all our work together!
Specialty: SDK Work/Level Editing
Joshy: The Team's American! Joshy is a fantastic artist, modeler, texturer etc. He's working on all kinds of very interesting stuff we'll be showing off in the future, and it's great to have him on board!
Speciality: Art, Modeling/Texturing
Equin0x: A personal friend of mine, Equin0x is responsible for the creation of new music and sound effects for the mod. Expect great new ambient and battle tracks, sound effects and more from this guy!
Specialty: Sound
Paravin: A brilliant (and often creepy as hell) writer, Paravin's going to be working on a lot of the creative writing in Way of the Wolf! Remember the random PDAs in Redux? Many of those were written by this guy!
Specialty: Writing
So - that's the team so far! A very fine team I'm sure you'll agree, and we'll be doing our very best to make Way of the Wolf the greatest Total Conversion the series has ever seen!
Are you a scripter/programmer familiar with the STALKER coding system? If so, there's room on the team for you! Send me a message, and we can talk!
Mod Progress:
So what's been happening since the last Status Update?
- Compiling - STALKER modding is very advanced in some areas, and in some areas, quite antiquated. This is one of those areas. After any work in the SDK, a level must be compiled through multiple command line processes - it's tedious work, and a full quality compile of the Cordon takes seven and a half hours!
- Modifying level geometry - Thanks to Joshy, levels in WotW will have modified geometry to differentiate areas from their SoC/CS counterparts - hopefully this will make exploration interesting even to veterans of the Southern Zone.
- Waypoints - This is one of those very advanced areas I talked about before - waypoints added in the Level Editor, correctly named, will auto-generate jobs for NPCs in smart-terrains. This means that a group of waypoints named 'smart_terrain_name_guard_1_walk' will automatically create a patrolling guard job for any NPC in the named smart terrain, with no need to set up additional logic. Stuff like this makes my life a lot easier!
- Dynamic Lighting - As you see from this screenshot, great dynamic lighting is one of the benefits of the CoP Engine, and I've been experimenting with it! You can expect some great lighting in the mod!
General Information:
Short but sweet this week! I really need to get this section sorted out for next time... Anyway!
I'm happy to announce something that will hopefully please a lot of people - Way of the Wolf will feature entirely new levels, created from scratch. We're not ready to talk about them yet, but they will hopefully present a new, very atmospheric, very original experience.
EuroStalker Launched:
I've been working on a side project to WotW recently - EuroStalker - the first true English STALKER fansite/community!
Launched less than a week ago, EuroStalker already has over 115 members and nearly 900 posts, spanning 57 different threads. All English speakers are welcome, so join the rapidly growing community today, and check back often for the latest in STALKER news!
That concludes WotW Status Update #2!
Until next time, keep an eye on this page for mod updates, and follow us on Twitter for the latest development info!
Gotta keep Stalkin'
- Beacon
Way of the Wolf Team Lead
More great news ! Some points of interest for me...
- I really enjoyed the Redux PDA's, so I'll be looking forward to some more " creative liberties ".
- I always love to see new atmospheric/ambiant tracks and EquinOx
looks to have some fine skills.
- As always, quality fresh content is a welcomed sight, so I'm looking Joshy's work with the levels too. I feel that some skilled ( labor resonable of course ) geometry modifications would be a tremendous boost to the project. We all love the story and the game-play, but would just love to do it somewhere new ! Besides, it's only suitable for the project you have in mind.
- The work with the Waypoints sounds great as well ! Good luck with all !
That EuroStalker is a very cool ( and damned busy ) site Beac ! Excellent link post ! I've got to find time to look through it all !
Thanks, I enjoyed making the PDA's as much as you people like reading them. :)
Me too! It's nice to have a fun thing to do when a lot of the normal work is so tedious!
Thanks dude, need to live up to the expectations :)
So you no longer work alone. It's quite promising.
Excellent update, good luck guys! And now a question from someone addicted to Redux difficulty: will WotW use the Redux approach regarding food, ammo, damage, and general game difficulty?
I'm afraid not, at least not by default. If there's enough interest, I may well attempt a Redux-level difficulty option or something for the installer, but I don't promise anything!
Count me in as interested, I'd like a Redux difficulty option. And: Yay, update! I quite enjoy seeing what's going on.
I think you have gathered a group of followers, who have greatly enjoyed Redux for its difficulty, and would love to see the same in WotW, even if optionally!
Its great that you've got a team you're working together with on WotW now.
Trying to do everything yourself is just an insane amount of work, and in order to actually get the mod done sacrifices probably would have had to been made; whereas now each development aspect gets more detail and quality from the specific skill sets of everyone.
Yeah, and it definitely opens up new possibilities for the mod as well as splitting the workload a bit!