S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Using Unlicensed Assets From Doom 3?

segafreak writes "ShackNews reports that S.T.A.L.K.E.R.:Shadow of Chernobyl may contain unlicensed assets from other commercial games such as Doom 3 and Half Life 2. Though this has yet to be confirmed by any of the developers involved, if true this would be somewhat worrying. 'Responding to inquiries made by Shacknews, id Software CEO Todd Hollshead stated: I've seen a post on a web forum that claims DOOM3 assets are used in another game, but we've been working hard on Enemy Territory: Quake Wars as well as our own internal project and have not had the time to fully investigate or otherwise verify that the claim is true. Only from what I've seen on the Web, it's concerning. However, it may turn out to be nothing.'"

Specifically...

[ACS Solver]

It seems that Half-Life 2's normal maps and water are used. For those too lazy to read TFA. Wouldn't it be ironical if the reason Stalker finally turned from vapourware into a real product is that they "borrowed" HL2 and D3 assets...

Two CEOs in, one CEO out!

[davidwr]

I say let the corporate execs fight this out the new-fashioned way...

An in-game cage match.

Interesting

[Dr. Eggman]

While the Mapcore post that first made the alert was made on April 1st, I have remained skeptical mostly because of the very generic nature of the naming systems. How easily could two different companies come up with nearly identical images called "grate7" or "fanblade." I dabble in texture making a little and, for me atleast, all water normal maps turn out nearly the same, so I don't think I see the HL2 connection. We do know the developers are fans of HL2, though, as they refer to it directly in the game [gamespy.com]. I am significantly less skeptical about the Doom3 connection, however, once I noticed a certain file entitled "hellgate1"

Procedural texture generation

[Anonymous Coward]

What could have happened, judging by the images, is that both teams used the same 3rd-party procedural texture generation tool (or public domain source code) and both kept the default "seed" for the random number generator rather than plugging in a new number.

Re:Possibly not stolen

[freshmayka]

Commercial businesses provide a ton of licensable and even public domain content for developers to use. It's like stock photography but for things that game developers need like textures, bump maps, sound effects, etc.

It's also possible being that HL2 and Doom3 are highly moddable games that an individual on the STALKER team borrowed assets because they needed quick place holders but then they forgot to replace them - or it's also possible the assets they borrowed are in the public domain.

Still, I've seen this getting a lot of coverage on the web and some people even insulting the developers saying things like "only russians steal". It's quite ridiculous considering the artists clearly spent thousands of hours designing unique assets for this title. It's like harping on three or four words used in a novel that also appear somewhere else.

Even if this was flat out stealing assets from one game to use in another, it appears to me not unlike stealing a high-hat from one song to complete your song. It's such a small piece of the artists work that it seems silly to consider it a stolen asset used to get rich quick - so sue the crap out of them. What is more likely is the asset was just "the right one" and the artist used what worked best in that situation.

Still, if the files in question are actually (c) to a specific company, I still think it's unlikely they'd take much legal recourse over it. It'd be hard to prove it has caused major damages or that it's been the sole reason STALKER is making money.

oh and for reference, I understand what it's like to have your violated. my music is all over russian mp3 websites being sold and I don't see a penny. But hey it's getting out there! :D

Re:The infamous gunshot noise

[blincoln]

There's an infamous ricochet sound that's appeared in dozens of movies.

According to one of my music/audio professors back at University, the reason for that is that it's very, very difficult to get a real ricochet to happen (I assume this is qualified by "...in a way that's safe for the shooter and audio engineer."). I seem to remember something about the people who recorded it having someone shoot thousands of rounds to get a handful of ricochets on tape.