One of the Mezha authors sent me an interesting link to an article by the writer and soldier of the Third Separate Assault Brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Oleksii "Consul" Rains, dedicated to the game Stalker 1: Path of Fire, which, according to Rains' research, was also created in Ukraine in 1994. I can partially confirm these conclusions and slightly supplement the material of "Consul".
The Ukrainian writer Garm Vidar (Sergiy Ivanov) (1954-2020) mentioned in the article, who is supposedly the author of Stalker 1: Path of Fire, was indeed involved in game development. In the summer of 1997, I spoke with Ivanov about the projects of his studio Future-Art, which at that time was renting premises in the building of the Children's Academy of Arts in Obolon.
During the conversation, Ivanov mentioned scrolling arcade games Future-Art, made at a fairly serious level, some of which were sold in the USA. But he did not name any of them. Later, the writer/developer even says that "several times Future-Art was simply robbed by overseas partners." So perhaps this also refers to Stalker 1: Path of Fire, because the company MM Software Productions, which is considered the official developer of this project and supposedly had an address in the USA, did not create any more games.
Interestingly, in a 1997 interview, Ivanov also talks about how Future-Art worked on the graphics for Duke it out in DC (1997), an add-on to the legendary Duke Nukem 3D (1996), and an add-on (most likely referring to Plasma Pak) for Blood (1997) from the recently closed Monolith Productions. Duke Nukem 3D and Blood are already a significant level, to get the right to work on such games, especially a studio from Ukraine, you had to prove your skills and it seems that Future-Art did this back in 1994-1996. This also partially confirms Oleksii Raines' conclusions.
In addition, Future-Art, along with Tavex, should be considered the first Ukrainian game outsourcing studios. The founders of the powerful outsourcing industry that exists in Ukraine today.
My story about Sergey Ivanov's company Future-Art was published in the weekly "Computer Review" No. 23 for 1997. You can see a scan of this material below.
I crossed paths with Garm Vidar once again, while working on the first issue of "Domashny PK" in 1998. The thing is that in the first issues of DPK, fantastic stories by Ukrainian authors were published on the last pages. And in the first issue, it was Garm Vidar's story "The Illusion of Happiness". A scan of the relevant pages of DPK No. 1/1998 is below.
As for the work of Garm Vidar (Sergey Ivanov) on the script of Oblivion Lost and STALKER: Oblivion Lost, that is true, Oleg Yavorsky, at that time PR manager of GSC Game World, confirmed it to me. But in the credits of STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl, neither Sergey Ivanov nor Garm Vidar is mentioned, on the other hand, there is no plot or script section at all. It is believed that the script of the first STALKER was created by Alexey Sityanov.
As for GSC Game World's cooperation with the Strugatsky brothers (one of them, because Arkady Natanovich Strugatsky died back in 1991), here Alexey Rains is a bit wrong, GSC representatives tried to come to an agreement with Boris Strugatsky, but at that time the writer was already over 70 years old, he didn't really understand what these computer games of yours were (this is reminiscent of Andrzej Sapkowski's initial attitude to the games based on "The Witcher"), in addition, Strugatsky at that time was under the powerful influence of his own students, who almost completely controlled the writer's life. It's not worth mentioning that most of those students now happily support racism. So, it was not possible to come to an agreement with Boris Strugatsky, he distanced himself, which is why "Roadside Picnic" was mentioned only as a "source of inspiration" for STALKER in public communications, but the game was not made according to the book.
But writing STALKER with dots is an initiative of the publishing house THQ. As Oleg Yavorsky recalls, the decision actually came to GSC from THQ lawyers. Most likely, they "drilled" the US trademark database, saw the already mentioned Stalker 1: Path of Fire there (presumably from Future-Art) and, in order not to expose themselves to the danger of a lawsuit, suggested modifying the name.
The very first STALKER can be played even today via DOSBox online. For other details, I refer you to the article by Oleksii Rains.