S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow Of Chernobyl will provide players with extremely dynamic gameplay of fast and tough combats, where players are to oppose dangerous and wise enemies, a large set of multifarious weaponry, possibility to control various machinery, incredible detailing and game world interactivity, story-driven single player with original team gameplay, a well-balanced multiplayer with numerous modes: DeathMatch, CTF, Cooperative, various team games and much more.In 1986, the world's most horrific nuclear disaster took place in Chernobyl. After subsequent unexplained explosions in 2006, a military exclusion zone is set up preventing access to the area. Stories of huge anomalous energy disturbances and sightings of strange creatures within the Zone are widespread. Players assume the role of a S.T.A.L.K.E.R., a mercenary paid by scientists and other undisclosed groups, who is trying to regain his memory. Players will experience a unique "Survival-Shooter" game that combines action, stealth, survival and Role-Playing Game (RPG) elements to create an incomparable experience in the Zone.
Developed by GSC Game World, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl delivers an immersive storyline that seamlessly blends with a living, breathing, non-linear open-world environment featuring accurately modelled real-word buildings and locations from around the devastated Chernobyl power plant.
Features :
- Levels combining closed spaces as well as enormous open areas
- Visualization optimized for hardware TnL (both FF and shading capable parts)
- Continuous level of detail technology for all the geometry
- 100 000 polygons per frame at 60 fps on average hardware
- Detailed character models (500-10 000 polys)
- Powerful skeleton-based animation allows usage of motion-capture hardware and produces smooth and realistic motion of characters
- High-speed blended animation system capable of up to infinity number of bone interpolation & modulation
- SSE/3Dnow! Technologies used for skinning and forward kinematics
- Vertex shaders used on shading capable hardware
- Detail objects (grass/small stones/etc)
- Portal-style, non-linear subdivision based visibility detection system
- Optimized for T&L hardware in the way of grouping primitives to large-size batches
- Greatly reduces overdraw - which is the main slowdown on even high-level video boards
- Usage of antiportals (aka Occluders) for occlusion culling
- Intelligent hardware state caching technology
- Both Direct and Radiosity lighting models
- Colored dynamic lights and dynamic "soft" shadows
- Character shadowing
- Intelligent light sources selection, clipping, merging
- Makes possible more than 50 dynamic lights per frame at reasonable FPS-es
- Ordinary stuff: flares, coronas, etc
- Intelligent shader subsystem
- Dynamically generated textures
- Reflections, chrome effects, etc.
- VR-Simulation engine optimized for massive payload
- High-performance collision detection allowing simultaneous motion of large number of characters in high polygonal environment
- Realistic physics simulation (ballistic, motions, fluid engine, snow, rain, explosions, etc.)
- Motion compensation scheme
- Hides many visual artifacts produced by FPS-es instability
- Particle system with real physics
- High quality HRTF 3D-sound with clipping and partial wave tracing
- "Low-penalty" & "low-delay" reaction technology (less then 1ms to start HRTF 3D Sound Source to play)
Developed exclusively for Windows PC, the game is scheduled to ship to retail outlets March 20.
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