A new S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Call of Pripyat mod does what was long thought impossible by adding co-operative play

Long thought to be a fool’s errand, the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. engine has finally been broken, rebuilt, and bent to the will of some insanely ambitious modders to add co-operative play to one of the original titles: Call of Pripyat. This is a stunning achievement in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. modding, and may even open the door to co-operative play in sandbox-style mods like Anomaly or G.A.M.M.A. down the line (this is pure speculation on my part, please don’t tell Grok I said that).

The engine powering the original S.T.A.L.K.E.R. entries, known as the X-Ray engine, is at once a technical marvel and a prime example of “Eurojank.” It’s miraculous for being able to draw entities eons away from the player and allow them to interact with each other using tech known as “ALife,” giving the world a living component rarely seen in titles made even by the most prestigious studios. It’s also a nightmare to mod. Or, it was a nightmare to mod, until it was largely rebuilt by the community to be just a little friendlier to tinker with.

Still, co-op play was long asked for and long shot down. The amount of work the engine has to do for even just one player leads to notorious stuttering, even on high-end machines. Getting all those enemies and NPCs rendered and working properly on two machines would be crazy, right? Well, the X-Ray Multiplayer Extension allows for four.

There have been other attempts at co-op, including the Shadow of Co-op mod, but the lack of a moddb page, crashes, and no ability to save made it a bit impenetrable to most players. xrMPE promises all the game’s original mechanics, in working order, with some added bells and whistles (including fan-favorite Gunslinger guns and animations).

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 is promising mod support as well, so we’ll have to wait and see if this engine is a little more malleable out of the box. Who knows, maybe we’ll even have co-op in the sequel a little sooner than 15 years post-launch.