[Mr. Tibbs]

Lost Alpha is an ambitious mod for Shadow of Chernobyl that aims to recreate content that was cut from the game between alpha and release. It includes recreations of cut locations, a new renderer and advanced alife implementation.

Thanks to some silly beta tester leaking an early build, Lost Alpha will be releasing next week. The developers Dezowave were in talks with GSC Game World about the possibility of releasing Lost Alpha as an official expansion pack.

Quote

Some testers have decided to ruin years of our hard work and have leaked an unfinished render-test build of Lost Alpha to the public. This leaked version is not finished and not prepared to be released by any means. It contains render bugs that we've been working on since last year among the other ones that prevent smooth gameplay. This unfortunate event crosses out any chances to release LA as an official addon to STALKER series.

It won't be completely finished as we wanted it to be but at least stable and finishing the game would be possible. This can be called 'early access,' which means patches, updates will be added in the future.

http://www.moddb.com/mods/lost-alpha

http://videogamists....-alpha-preview/

http://www.escapistm...re-Release-Leak

[Jimmy]

What a fucking asshole. We should lynch that guy. I'm not even kidding.

[Mr.Deviance]

What I don't understand is, why the fuck does this event kill any chances of this ever becoming official shit?
Haven't other games leaked before and they still got to sell?
What's wrong with such an accident?
Surely, if GSC is denying this to be released as an official expansion, then either they are bunch of pretentious fucktards or this leak proved that what they actually had there, was pure crap and opened up GSC's eyes which lead them to politely refuse their crap.
I haven't checked any of this so I am simply making wild assumptions here but that's the first thing that comes to my mind when I hear that some molested faggot of a child leaked a bit of this mod and now all of a sudden there is no more chance at making it official stuff...

[Carl Winslow]

Mr.Deviance, on 19 April 2014 - 03:20 AM, said:

I haven't checked any of this so I am simply making wild assumptions here

...that just about sums up alot of your posts really...

[Mr.Deviance]

Colon Semicolon, on 19 April 2014 - 07:27 AM, said:

...that just about sums up alot of your posts really...

In your unimportant opinion only, of course.

[Person of Color]

Colon Semicolon, on 19 April 2014 - 07:27 AM, said:

...that just about sums up alot of your posts really...

DURRR HI I'M COLON SEMICOLON AND I JERK OFF TO MACHINES

[Hank]

Mr. Tibbs, on 18 April 2014 - 09:06 PM, said:

Thanks to some silly beta tester leaking an early build, Lost Alpha will be releasing next week. The developers Dezowave were in talks with GSC Game World about the possibility of releasing Lost Alpha as an official expansion pack.

Why does a leak jeopardise a release of the finished product?

[Mr. Tibbs]

In the comments on the MODDB page, one of the team members said that the leak caused GSC Game World to lose faith in the them. They managed to come to an agreement that they could still release what they have.

GSC's probably stuck in the past. This isn't they first time they've overreacted. Remember when they shut down STALKER 2? Over the next few months, members of the team managed to source multiple publishing deals (including Devolver Digital) that would've included GSC retaining the rights to the series, but they still refused to move forward.

I'm surprised Dezowave managed to wrangle the STALKER source code from GSC.

[Bloodshot]

Mr.Deviance, on 19 April 2014 - 03:20 AM, said:

Surely, if GSC is denying this to be released as an official expansion, then either they are bunch of pretentious fucktards or this leak proved that what they actually had there, was pure crap and opened up GSC's eyes which lead them to politely refuse their crap.

Nah, that'd be unlikely seeing as how they sent GSC regular builds of their game and actually had some members work with them on it too.

GSC = Sergei Grigorovich. The guy canned STALKER 2 because he didn't need it anymore (already rich from the other STALKER games sales)

Essentially, if the deal went through it would've been a sort of payed release published by GSC (it probably would've been pretty cheap ) - but now that there is an extremely buggy but near full release floating around that kind of hurts the incentive for GSC spending time and money to publish/market something that's already available and users don't have to pay for.

[Mr. Tibbs]

After a few hiccups Lost Alpha's out! It's completely standalone.

http://www.moddb.com...-alpha-released

Quote

We started to develop Lost Alpha in the summer of 2008. The project first started out as a modification to add back the cut levels which all Stalker fans knew of. After a while, it became more than just a modification, it became our dream game, how we saw S.T.A.L.K.E.R. We hope to give you the same feeling when you first played S.T.A.L.K.E.R. A new chapter with familiar elements without which S.T.A.L.K.E.R. would not be the game we all grew to love. Lost Alpha was a labour of love. We are passionate about it and we hope you all will enjoy it as much as we enjoyed creating it!

So what now? It was a hard decision to release the game in such a quick, and unplanned way.
I have to say, I'm very proud to our active team members, because we created something which is beyond our imagination. It looks awesome, it plays just fine, but somehow its still not perfect. However this is subjective to what we call perfect. We learned that if we only polish one part of the game, the rest will never fit. It was hard for us to find the golden way, because this is our first big project, but overall I would say we did a good job. On top of that, we will try to update the game whenever we can to make it even better than it is now. Keep in mind, we made all of this in our free time, and mainly for free to play, we did our best to make it very close to our dream game. We feel we succeeded in that, now the question remains: Is it close to what You have dreamed of? Let's find it out together in the Zone!

[Mark]

Great news until I saw its a 7.5GB download. I'll pass. Even though I have a high speed connection, I don't have the patience for that large of a 4 part download.

[Mr. Tibbs]

There's a torrent. http://gameupdates.o...ils.php?id=5770

[Mr.Deviance]

After seeing the first 10 minutes of gameplay, I am sold.
It feels like the maps were completely remade from scratch!
It's the same game with a different interpretation that to me looks so much more detailed and different at the same time.
The familiar places are where you would expect them to be if you played the official game and have they have the same purposes but they look completely different and much better!
After playing it for 10 minutes and getting used to it and then thinking about the original shadow or Chernobyl release, the vanilla game strangely starts feeling like it's an alpha and this lost alpha is the proper polished game instead lol...
It also feels like they've put a bit of effort into putting more coherence into the things that might have been a bit confusing or unexplained in the original game.
Things like the anomalies being explained right at the beginning of the game, or that very quick tutorial that helps you get accustomed with the mechanics of the game, without making you walk 10 miles back and forth before giving you the more important missions.
That first mission also makes more sense at that factory now that you see a cutscene there, not to mention that you actually find your crew under that bridge where it would have made sense for them to be in the original stalker game too.
I've also noticed that your main characters will always speak english now if you set the game in english.
No more russian speaking mixed with english speaking when the game is set to english.
The graphics too seem a lot better too.
This lost alpha is definitely worth replaying stalker and beating it again based on the first 10 minutes of the game that I've seen.
And ohh all that beautiful dense and diverse wild vegetation added to the first level makes everything much less depressing than it was in the original game, while actually pushing the original immersiveness even further.

[The Commander]

What, I liked the Russian mixed with English...

[Idiotska]

It's buggy as hell. Just like the real S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games on release!

[Kid]

Bloodshot, on 19 April 2014 - 02:51 PM, said:

Essentially, if the deal went through it would've been a sort of payed release published by GSC (it probably would've been pretty cheap ) - but now that there is an extremely buggy but near full release floating around that kind of hurts the incentive for GSC spending time and money to publish/market something that's already available and users don't have to pay for.

Is very sad to hear of the leak but if it is true that GSC had plans to market the game then it seems they missed out on some good money because right now Lost Alpha is #1 on MODDB's "Most Popular Mods Today" listing!

This is a very good stalker addition, while it is still buggy and not fully optimized, I still donated to the Dezowave team and I hope others who enjoy this does the same.

[The Commander]

Idiotska, on 30 April 2014 - 02:41 PM, said:

It's buggy as hell. Just like the real S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games on release!

I know right!

If you click the contacts button in the PDA it CTD...

I did find some community patches from the official site in the forums to fix some of the issues.

[Mr. Tibbs]

First patch is out with loads of fixes.

http://www.moddb.com...a-v130013-patch

Quote

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: LOST ALPHA Patch v1.30013 (3rd of May 2014.) The patch is savegame compatible, so You do not have to start new game for this patch, but for maximum experience (and because of Murphy's law) it's highly recommended. If you installed 3rd party / user made fixes and mods for Lost Alpha, it's highly recommended to reinstall the game to have a clean install before you apply the official patch. This is required to avoid conflicts with the 3rd party content. We can not give support for such cases

- game binaries are working with administrator privileges now, avoiding problems with User Access Control (UAC) subsystem
- game will work on windows xp, although dx10 cannot be used
- quicksave / quickload buttons now can be remapped
- fixed serious bug with wrong ui_movies.xml which prevented to play half of the game
- fixed storyline battery task in sarcofag
- fixed flying tree and geometry on Yantar level
- fixged geometry on Garbage level
- fixed the crash on r1 (static lightning) render when player entered 'Great Metal Factory' level
- fixed rat monster crash and effectors bug
- fixed random crash related to pda contacts section
- temporaly disabled legs/shadow in options, if you have it enabled, please type this to console: g_actor_body 0
- with removing visible leg feature, the missing footsteps and self shadow works again by default
- "la options" debug menu is disabled on widescreen
- crows are again killable
- ak74, ak74u, L85, G36 sounds synchronization fixed
- proper fix for safe crash
- missing "chmieltist" beer drinking sound fixed
- missing p90 model added
- brightness, gamma and contrast sliders fixed
- no available phrase to say, dialog[yantar_sakharov_start_talk] fixed
- no available phrase to say, dialog[agr_ratcatcher_start] fixed
- no available phrase to say, dialog[dol_specnaz_leader_dialog] fixed- several (hopefully all) missing descriptions added back
- crash when player ESC from solitare and hex viewer fixed
- restored working class for hex viewer, text viewer, image viewer, console
- fix for artefact merger
- crash in repair window fixed
- wrong passwords for doors in pda fixed
- loading last save overlap window fixed
- added marker for 'strelok's flash' and 'yantar wires' because many users reported it's too hard to find them
- fixed camera position to climb out of UAZ jeep
- fixed OnMouseAction crash (Tetris in LA PC)
- Veles gives correct download module, so no need to buy it from Barman
- updated mi24 model, should fix "callback kils bone matrix bone: front_gun_tower"
- improved tasks and task completion on agroprom
- fixed luminocity and distance for stalkers to default value, ai works better
- removed the strange reverb when eax is enabled, and added more stable sound dlls
- temporary fix for missing suit upgrade
- fixed incorrect mag size for upgraded pb1
- added vehicle prices to dialogue
- corrected outfits icons and soldier outfit
- new helicopter sound with tuned volumes
- helicopter in cordon patrols less often
- helicopter windows in agroprom fixed (were transparent on r2-3 renders)
- added pda articles for downloads
- missing vehicle icons were added
- several vehicle properties were changed
- topoliny puh anomaly not glitching anymore
- car fuel should work now
- various small tweaks and fixes

[Idiotska]

pffthahaha what the fuck is this shit dezowave
Dropped this mod like an anvil.. can't take the railroading and fanfic-tier story. 7 years of waiting for this, people (and they wanted us to pay for it, too.)

[Mr. Tibbs]

The director's cut is finally out!