Proto:S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl/Build 749

Build 749 of S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl was compiled on April 19, 2001, back when it was a sci-fi game called Oblivion Lost. This is an extremely bare-bones prototype that only has you, a gun and a static level for you to explore. There is no inventory, no enemies, and no menu.

Renderer
The renderer is broken by default. If you boot up the prototype, you'll see that there is no loading screen, and, when you get into the game, everything is black and the crosshair is some sort of. If you fire the railgun, the texture used for hitting the wall is the skybox's texture. Thankfully, there are some fixes out there.

HUD


The HUD consists of just a health and ammo readout. It uses Comic Sans font and is a green color. Perhaps they were trying to get for the reward for “world's ugliest HUD”.

Crosshair
The crosshair looks similar to and behaves exactly like the one seen in the Serious Sam games.

Player Model


Hitting 2 in-game allows you to play in third person view. Your character appears to be some sort of mushroom thing with fleshy-looking textures and a gun on top of it.

Health and Death
By default, you can take damage from high falls. If you die, you will be unable to move around, but you can still look around and fire your gun.

Loading Screen


The game's loading screen features a nude woman showing her back, ass and a shadow of her boobs. It was either a joke or someone wanted a boner before they started testing.

Fan patches remove this in favor of the loading screen used in Build 1098, but adding it back it is as simple as copy and pasting the nude image from the original prototype and pasting it into the patched one.

l1_day
Build 749 contains only one playable level; l1_day. This level takes place in an Aztec temple and the surrounding countryside. Past the temple is a lake and a tiny river. There are some mountains past the river and lake that you can't access.

The texture for the level's skybox and the skybox mountains is called, l1_ruins, which might be an earlier name for this level.

Level List
System.ltx contains a list of levels. The only level that sounds like it was meant to be a real level is "l1_day", which is the level you play in the prototype. The rest appear to be either junk or test levels.

[levels] level_000=demo,					data\\death\\,		level level_001=demo,					data\\test\\,		level level_002=demo,					data\\L\\,		level level_003=demo,					data\\m\\,		level level_004=demo,					data\\cs\\,		level level_005=demo,					data\\l1_day\\,		level
 * level(internal)
 * caption						| level path      | level ini name
 * caption						| level path      | level ini name

Weapons
Build 749 has only one weapon: the railgun from Quake III Arena. Its obviously a placeholder for real weapons, but has some differences compared to the one in Quake 3. First, the Build 749 version lacks the glowing parts on the body that the Q3 version does. Second, the gun has a different beam compared to the one in Q3.

Textures and some definitions for the Quake 3 Machine Gun and Rocket Launcher can be found in the game's files, but there doesn't seem to be any way to actually use them. There are also textures for weapons made by GSC in the texture folder, but again, there doesn't seem to be any in-game guns that use them.

Graphics
The real meat of this prototype is the huge amount of unused graphics hidden in the game's files.

Woman character
Several textures for a woman character can be found. She would be a blonde wearing a strange, futuristic outfit with the usual cleavage. Interestingly, there are two face textures for her: one is complete and dated October 26, 2000, while the other (merely eyes and lips on a skin-colored square) is dated November 9, 2000. It seems they were working on a new face for the model at one point.

Health Item


Very early graphics for health items show that it was supposed to involve some sort of yellow liquid.

Medieval Textures
Some of the unused textures seem to be for some sort of medieval area. One of the graphics is notably different in style from the rest of them, while another appears to be a tiny photo of medieval artwork from Britain. The rest are a light grey brick wall with different objects on each texture, such as one having a wheel in front of the wall, while another will have some wooden bars.

Egyptian Textures
There are several rough-looking Egypt-themed textures that are used. They feature various stereotypical Egyptian subjects, like gods and scarabs. A majority of them were last worked on on March 1, 2001, a month and a half before the prototype was compiled. The various time periods shown in the prototype seem to suggest that you'd visit various time periods in Oblivion Lost.

Skybox Textures
There are four unused skybox textures in the game's files. All of them have the same design. Skydome.tga is 512x256 and has a slightly yellow tint, skydome_save.tga is 1024x256 and has a blue tint, skydome_save2.tga is skydome_save with more pronounced fog at the bottom, while skydome1.tga is a copy of Skydome.

clouds.tga


A texture that has an ugly green cloud. Probably meant for a skybox.

clouds2.tga


Another cloud texture. It has a different shape and color compared to clouds.tga, but is still fantastically ugly.

arcticup.tga


Looks like a part of a skybox. You can barely make out a cloud or two because of how dark blue it is.

krsh06.tga


A texture for some sort of roof.

bomba2.tga


A concrete texture with a sign that says “B-1” on it. Who knows what this was supposed to be for.

Lightbro.tga


A small, white brick wall.

water.tga


An unused texture for water. This one has a different design and is smaller when compared to the water texture used in the prototype.

bush.tga


A texture that consists of leaves. A copy of it exists as x.tga.

Plants
Several unused textures of plants exist in the game's files. Some are 64x64 size, while others are 256x256.

Rocks
There are three tiny sprites of rocks in the texture files with the file names dtpatch stone1.png, dtpatch stone2.png, and dtpatch stone5.png. The numbering jumps from 2 to 5, suggesting that two other rock sprites were made at one point.

Ground15.tga


Dry and cracked ground.

Sten03.tga


A basic-looking floor made out of cobblestone.

Sandstone Textures
There are two unused textures for sandstone. The first one is called sandstone_material is doesn't have a lot of details, while sandstone_sand is double the size of the previous texture and looks like it was taken from a photo.

Dinoskbm.tga


A small blue square. There doesn't seem to be a point for this thing.

snow.tga


An ugly-looking texture that looks like various splotches of white. If you squint hard enough and have a good imagination, it can look like snow.

Paper12l.tga


A strange-looking white texture with some noticeable bumps on it. Who knows what this was meant for.

face.tga


Seems to be a part of the face for some strange monster that has blood-red skin and a greenish eye thing. This was probably meant to be an enemy, but no enemies can be fought in this prototype.

eye.tga


Also seems to be a texture for a monster, but this one is different from face.tga's. This one has light scales. Judging by its eye, it was meant to be some sort of lizard creature.

Body Parts
Textures for ribs, a skull, body tissue, and veins are unused. Based on how bloody they are, these look like they'd be used for gibs. Note that the tissue texture is twice as large as the rest of the textures.

gun1c.tga


Appears to be a very early texture for some sort of weapon. A part of the gun on the right side looks like a barrel holding part from a three barrel minigun, so it was probably meant to be a minigun. A minigun does appear in Build 1098, so this was probably an early design of it.

Warrio3g.tga


A texture for some sort of gun. A stock, grip and trigger can be made out, but there's no sign of what type of gun it was supposed to be for.

mines2.tga


Despite the name, this actually appears to be a texture for a rocket. Probably going to be used with whatever rocket launcher GSC was cooking up at the time.

Angel_o.tga


A white square with three copies of a small shape underneath it. No idea what this is supposed to be.

Leopard Stripes


A texture that has mediocre-looking leopard stripes. It would probably be used for Aztec-themed levels because similar-looking stripes are associated with the Aztecs.

Lighter2.tga


A texture for some sort of futuristic-looking light fixture. The colors for the fixture with the green light are washed out compared to the one with the white light.

Mahines.tga


Texture of a strange, futuristic device with a big blue light. No model for this exists.

Coil
Two textures with “coil” exist in the prototype. The first one is a small red coil, while the second one has yellow glow throughout most of the body.

Tank
Several textures for a tank are scattered throughout the prototype. There is no code nor model file for it. However, judging by how prominent usable vehicles are in prototypes throughout Stalker's development (including the next known build, 756), they most likely wanted it to be usable.

Energy-red1.tga


Some sort of red energy beam.

enviro.tga


Appears to be an green energy ball. There's no way to determine what it was meant for.

raketamobil.tga


Texture for some sort of vehicle. Includes headlights, a door and a window. The slot on the bottom left of the texture look like something you'd see on an APC.

tire.tga


A texture for a tire. Probably for a vehicle.

Menu Cursor


A cursor for a menu. Since there is no menu in this prototype, this goes unused.

X-Ray Engine Logo


A logo for the game's engine. There are two copies of this texture; xr_logo.tga and scarab_a.tga.

Yellowtrans.tga


A tiny texture with some sort of yellow wave in the center. Based on its name, it was probably meant for some transparency effect.

Y and Z
Two unused textures that have either a black Y or Z on a white background. Now you know your ABCs!

ColorBox
Several unused textures with the name "colorbox". The first texture, Colorbox1, shows some letters in various colored boxes. The rest involve a small box with bubbles in it that has various text on it and some slight color changes to the image with the bubbles.

"Counter-Strike" Textures
Some textures from Counter-Strike 's de_dust map are scattered throughout the prototype's graphics. They are a wall, a floor, and a crate texture. These were most likely temporary textures.

"Quake 3" Textures
Textures for Quake 3 Arena 's rocket launcher, machine gun, and red armor can be found in the game's files. There are also textures for machine gun, railgun and rocket launcher ammo boxes from the same game.

Environmental Map


Several instances of a texture that consists of an orb with an image of some sort of bar or restaurant in it. This is actually a sample environment map texture for creating reflections. It seems they wanted to add reflections early in the game's development.

Sounds
A vast majority of the game's sounds are from Quake 3 Arena: firing guns, picking up names, whatever. The player sounds appear to be from a soundset for one of the woman player models (the one used by characters like Hunter). Its very likely there are just placeholders until the sound artists could start making new sounds.

Despite a majority of sounds being from Quake 3, there are some interesting sounds.


 * Track0.wav - The song Earth, created by the Eastern European band Masha and the Bears.
 * Track1.wav - A brief, epic-sounding fanfare.
 * Track2.wav - A song from Quake 3.
 * Track3.wav - Another song from Quake 3. Don't you get the feeling the devs really, really liked Quake 3 when Stalker was first being developed?

Enemies
While there are no enemies encountered in the prototype, C++ code governing their intelligence can be found in the game's files. Based on the available code, there would two types of enemies: Alien and Jumper. The intelligence code was written by Oles Shishkovtsov, one of the programmers working on Stalker that left GSC Games and founded 4A Games.

Text
This prototype has some interesting text.

Options
Text for an options menu can be found in the system.ltx file. There are some brief descriptions for options relating to video, but the rest of the functions, like changing audio, just have "???" as their comment.

;Menu................................................................................. [menu] hint_pos	= -0.75, 0.75 options_ok	= 92 237 162 299

[m_video] OnExit = "vid_restart"
 * 1) 0=2 "Fullscreen" "rs_fullscreen" "Toggle Windowed/Fullscreen"
 * 2) 1=4 "Resolution" "vid_mode" "Change resolution"
 * 3) 2=4 "Color depth" "vid_mode_bpp" "Change color depth"
 * 4) 3=4 "Lighting model" "rs_light_model" "Lightmaps are better :)"
 * 5) 4=3 "Geometry Detail" "rs_geometry_lod" "Change geometry detail"
 * 6) 5=3 "Texture Detail" "texture_lod" "On LOW-Memory video boards can add some FPS-es"
 * 7) 6=4 "Texture Format" "texture_format" "The best one are 16/32 bit"
 * 8) 7=4 "MipMap Generation" "texture_mipgen" "Choose algorithm of mip-map generation"
 * 9) 8=4 "Texture Filtering" "texture_mipfilter" "Tri-linear gives you the best quality :)"
 * 10) 9=3 "Texture Contrast" "texture_contrast" "Adjust this only if you like colorful images"
 * 11) 10=3 "Lightmaps Contrast" "texture_lm_contrast" "Adjust this only if you like colorful images"
 * 12) 11=2 "Grayscale Textures" "texture_mono" "Try it. Isn't funny? :)"
 * 13) 12=2 "No Vertical Syncronization" "rs_no_vsync" "Recommendation - turn it off"
 * 14) 13=2 "Triple Buffering" "rs_triplebuffer" "May add you some FPS-es in fullscreen modes"
 * 15) 14=2 "Full Scene Antialiasing" "rs_antialias" "If supported - incredible visual appearance!"

Texture Substitutions
At the start of system.ltx is some sort of texture substituting system. A majority of them are commented out.

; Texture substitutions [tex_subst] clouds.tga=STD:[sky]clouds,STD:[sky2]clouds2|sky energy_red1.bmp=STD:[energy]energy_red1|vengine
 * perila=STD:perila,REFL:health2|lmap
 * mod041=STD:mod041,REFL:tut01|lmap
 * mod031=STD:mod031,REFL:tut01|lmap
 * mod021=STD:mod021,REFL:tut01|lmap
 * mod011=STD:mod011,REFL:tut01|lmap
 * Kam01=STD:STEN03,REFL:health2|lmap2x
 * STEN03=STD:STEN03,REFL:health2|lmap2x
 * krsh06=STD:krsh06,REFL:health2|lmap2x
 * land_00=STD:land_00,LMAP:[rotate]tut01|lmap
 * 2001=STD:2001,LMAP:[rotate]tut01|lmap
 * brik1=STD:brik1,LMAP:[rotate]tut01|lmap
 * health.bmp=REFL:health
 * fog_g=SP_ENV:fog_g|vengine
 * arcticup.tga=STD:arcticup,STD:[sky]clouds|sky
 * 1) fireframes=STD:[fire12345]fireframes|vengine

Misc. Code
The folder that has code for controlling enemy intelligence also has some raw .c files related to shaders, transformation (seems its for the skybox) and a test.