S.T.A.L.K.E.R. possibly stole code from Half Life 2 and Doom 3

[zekrahminator]

All over the interweb, there are intermittent forum posts with a strange topic: how similar S.T.A.L.K.E.R. looks to Half Life 2 and Doom 3. These claims certainly do not go unfounded. Someone, with way too much free time, went through and manually compared the texture directories of Doom 3 and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. You'll see the results in the first two pictures below. A particular texture, lights_impflash.dds, has the exact same name of the Doom 3 version, excluding the extension. Half Life 2 has also been allegedly stolen from. Not only are the file names nearly identical (except for the extension), the images are extremely similar as well. Whether or not anything comes out of this depends on what ID Software and Valve decide to do. Do you think S.T.A.L.K.E.R textures are stolen?



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[L|NK|N]

Wow, no wonder the game doesnt run all that smooth. Tha fan_blade ones do it for me. If this is real, I wonder what'll happen?

 

[Conti027]

i really dont care if it is stolen or not its a sweet game and they dont look the same so i think its fine cause stalker look more realistic when HL-2 and Doom3 look more cartoony so its not like you cant tell the diff. in them

 

[D007]

idk, if someone stole someone elsese hard work, i hope they pay for it.. It's not cool to take the credit and money for someone elses work.. especially if i have to pay twice for it.. i want "new games" not copied edited and resold games like final fantasy x-2 what crap that was...

 

[HaZe303]

Old news! And so what. Everybody does it. And what would you expect?? They are ukranians!!? Just kidding...

 

[L|NK|N]

i really dont care if it is stolen or not its a sweet game and they dont look the same so i think its fine cause stalker look more realistic when HL-2 and Doom3 look more cartoony so its not like you cant tell the diff. in them

I got to play the mp beta and to TBH when i first played it it did remind me of HL2, although some of the textures are more detailed than a valve game. Whats even more crazy is as soon as I saw the lighting effects with an enemy present it totally reminded me of Doom. Now this comes out. Pretty crazy!

 

[JC316]

Hehe, and both Half Life and Doom3 had problems with leaks. The E3 demo escaped from Doom3 and he source code was stolen from HL2.

 

[D007]

I got to play the mp beta and to TBH when i first played it it did remind me of HL2, although some of the textures are more detailed than a valva game. Whats even more crazy is as soon as I saw the lighting effects with an enemy present it totally reminded me of Doom. Now this comes out. Pretty crazy!

thats cheesy, they should refund customers half their dam money back.. thats bullshiz as far as im concerned..thats like making need for spped then making grand turismo the same thing and hey, lets make another car game the same thing too, people are so dumb they wont notice we stole the textures.. it's an insult to the consumers intelligence and they should pay for it. I hope they get sued..

 

[L|NK|N]

Funny

 

[Zero Cool]

as long as the story is different its good imo. but then again if they just stole it from HL2, they did not brake any laws because they redone it, right?

 

[jocksteeluk]

unless they can work out a license deal for them seemingly stolen content this game could by right be taken down full stop, id hate to be one of those people who bought this game fast from release because it may end up needing to be totally remade unless the software was licensed beforehand of course .

 

[AnnCore]

a little off topic, but only a little...

Play Urban Terror 4.0 (http://www.urbanterror.net/news.php). It took Frozen Sand over 2 years to get it out so I doubt they copied anything and to top it off - it's free!

Standalone version comes with the Quake 3 version.

I have Doom 3 and Half Life 2 and got bored of em after a week or so. They all look alike to me and they all play alike and that's what wrong for me with them. They don't play the way I want to play - fast, fun and action packed CTF style online.

 

[Kreij]

It is possible that they simply purchased texture packs from ID and Valve so they did not have to re-invent everything.

or not.

 

[Makaveli]

Does anyone really give a fuck, its not gonna stop u guys from playing the game.

 

[Gam'ster]

Funny

LMFAO, and i hate that T.V/DVD prog most ppl with kids will know what it is.

 

[Conti027]

LMFAO, and i hate that T.V/DVD prog most ppl with kids will know what it is.

hahahaah

 

[TUngsten]

seeing how long stalker was in development, it wouldn't surprise me if HL2 and DuuM3 copped textures from them ukranians

HL2 was great but D00m3 was terrible

 

[DaJMasta]

For light textures? I doubt it.

A lot of them are a very simple operation or render and are fairly standard textures are there.




It's one thing to say STALKER looks like HL2 or Doom3, it's quite another to find similar light coronas and projector textures, tiny little textures which should look pretty similar if they look good. Plus, who would ever notice this texture similarity in-game? They didn't find what they were looking for so they found something else that's close.

 

[GSG-9]

Does anyone really give a fuck, its not gonna stop u guys from playing the game.

I for one do, I have modeled in xsi a bit but at my core I am a mapper, when someone steals contents its a big deal, its not a sign of admiration its a slap in the face.

And when a project as big as stalker is accused of such a thing its a big deal, if its true I have a deep disrespect towards the stalker team members that knew of this and said nothing, and if they are dropped then good for stalker.

If it was stolen, think about the series of events:

Half Life 2 development-
Stalker Development-
Doom3 Development-
Do,,3 release-
Half Life 2 release-
Stalker Release-

They could have taken anything to improve upon what they had, I have issues believe a game in development for 5 years + Can look that good upon release unless they cut corners (Valve used the Havoc engine instead of designing there own, a very smart choice.)

 

[mandelore]

Funny

 

[ex_reven]

I for one do, I have modeled in xsi a bit but at my core I am a mapper, when someone steals contents its a big deal, its not a sign of admiration its a slap in the face.

And when a project as big as stalker is accused of such a thing its a big deal, if its true I have a deep disrespect towards the stalker team members that knew of this and said nothing, and if they are dropped then good for stalker.

Ditto, I was an amateur Hammer Mapper. I only made a few novelty maps for myself and friends to enjoy. But upon seeing the sheer number of textures that existed and were made available by the immaculate work of the Valve team I realised the amount of work, planning and thought that must have occured in the design and the implementation stages of the game.

You could design a map for ANY game with that number of textures.

 

[WarEagleAU]

At least if they did steal it, they should give credit to where it was taken from and possibly pay some royalties.

 

[Zero Cool]

Funny

omfg I cant close the window, its addictive

 

[Wraiyth]

Why is everyone assuming that this was done purposely? Its perfectly plausible (and highly more likely) that these textures were put in there for legit reasons (i.e. quality comparison, in my own engine development ventures I've taken textures from Quake 3 to compare how they look in my engine compared to the native engine) and the person who put them in there left the company, or simply forgot to take them out.
Even if an employee DID put them in there on purpose to cut corners, does anyone have a suggestion on how a company can control this sort of thing to ensure that it doesn't happen? Its simply not possible to physically compare EVERY texture in a build to EVERY texture in EVERY other game. Its something that, while unfortunately, game developers will have to grin and bear. Chances are no companies will take someone to court over a couple of textures, its simply not worth the time or effort. And if whats likely to be an innocent mistake deters people from playing the game, then they're players that are not worth it in the first place.

 

[Completely Bonkers]

Textures =X Code

Could be that STALKER took textures from another game. Shame. Or maybe they BOTH took it from some the same 3rd party? Maybe some textures are out there as freeware. I don't know the answer to that one. But if there was texture ripping going on, then this is naughty but NOT AS BAD as code theft.

If they REALLY took code then they are in for big big trouble.