Environment Setup

This page gets your development environment ready for Anomaly scripting. You'll need the game installed, a code editor configured to understand Anomaly's file types, and some familiarity with where things live on disk.

---

1. Install S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Anomaly

Anomaly is a free standalone mod — you don't need to own any S.T.A.L.K.E.R. game on Steam.

1. Download the latest release from ModDB
2. Extract to a directory with no spaces in the path (e.g. C:\Games\Anomaly) — the X-Ray engine has issues with spaces
3. Run AnomalyLauncher.exe once to configure graphics settings, then launch the game to verify it works

Installation path

Avoid C:\Program Files\ and C:\Program Files (x86)\. Windows UAC restrictions on those folders will cause problems with file writes. Use a path like C:\Games\Anomaly.

---

2. Install the modded exes

The community modded exes maintained by themrdemonized (xray-monolith) replace Anomaly's vanilla engine binaries with a version that includes stability fixes, DLTX (LTX patching), DXML (XML patching), and other improvements. They are a hard dependency for the majority of modern Anomaly mods and are effectively the standard engine for the community.

1. Download STALKER-Anomaly-modded-exes.zip from the xray-monolith releases page
2. Back up your existing bin/ folder
3. Unpack the archive on top of your Anomaly installation — it replaces files in bin/

Note

If you are only writing mods that use vanilla scripting with no DLTX or DXML, you can skip this step. But since most mods you'll encounter and most tooling assumes the modded exes are present, installing them early saves friction.

---

3. Set Up VS Code

VS Code is the recommended editor. It has extensions for every file type you'll encounter.

Install extensions

Extension	ID	Purpose
LTX Support	AziatkaVictor.ltx-support	Syntax highlighting for .ltx config files
Lua	keyring.Lua	Lua language support for .script files
Shader languages support	slevesque.shader	HLSL syntax for shader files
Audio Preview	sukumo28.wav-preview	Preview .ogg sound files in-editor

Configure file associations

Anomaly uses non-standard extensions for standard formats. Add this to your VS Code settings.json (Ctrl+Shift+P → "Open User Settings JSON"):

{
    "files.associations": {
        "*.script": "lua",
        "*.ltx": "ini",
        "*.s": "lua",
        "*.ps": "hlsl",
        "*.vs": "hlsl",
        "*.gs": "hlsl"
    }
}

This gives you Lua syntax highlighting and autocomplete in .script files and INI highlighting in .ltx files.

Open gamedata/ as a workspace

For the best experience, open the gamedata/ folder (from your Anomaly installation, after unpacking — see below) as a VS Code workspace. This gives you visibility across scripts and configs together — essential even for pure script work, since you'll frequently need to look up section names and properties in LTX files alongside your code.

Tip

If the Lua language server feels slow, VS Code's files.exclude and search.exclude settings can tell it to skip binary asset folders like textures/, meshes/, and sounds/. This keeps indexing fast without losing access to scripts and configs.

---

3. Unpack the Base Game Scripts

Anomaly ships its game data as compressed archives in the db/ folder. Before you can read the base scripts or configs, you need to unpack them.

1. In your Anomaly installation, navigate to the tools/ folder
2. Run db_unpacker.bat — this unpacks scripts and configs only (fast, recommended for scripting work)
3. Alternatively run db_unpacker_all.bat to unpack everything including textures and sounds (slow, only needed for asset work)

Unpacked files appear in _unpacked/ inside your Anomaly folder. You can browse these as reference — don't edit them here. Your mod files go in gamedata/ (see Gamedata Structure).

Tip

The GitHub repo Tosox/STALKER-Anomaly-gamedata contains the already-unpacked base game scripts and configs if you want to browse them without running the unpacker.

---

4. Understand the Game Log

The engine writes a log file to appdata/logs/xray_<username>.log. This is your primary debugging output — printf and log calls from scripts appear here.

During development, tail this file while the game runs:

PowerShellCommand Prompt

Get-Content "C:\Games\Anomaly\appdata\logs\xray_yourname.log" -Wait -Tail 50

No built-in tail on cmd. Use a tool like Baretail or open the file in VS Code (it auto-refreshes).

The in-game debug console (~ key) also accepts console commands and shows recent log output.

---

5. Mod Management

For developing and testing addons, Mod Organizer 2 (MO2) with the Anomaly plugin is the standard setup in the community. It lets you enable/disable addons without touching the base game files.

However, for simple script development, you can also work directly:

1. Create a folder for your addon anywhere on your machine
2. Mirror the gamedata/ structure inside it — scripts go in gamedata/scripts/, configs in gamedata/configs/, textures in gamedata/textures/, and so on
3. Copy your gamedata/ folder into the game's installation directory to test, remove it when done

Most modders graduate to MO2 quickly once they have more than one addon to manage.

---

6. Optional: Dev Tools

stalker-anomaly-devtools (by ChristopherCapito on GitHub) is a performance profiler and logger for scripts. Install it like any addon. Once active:

• Press F11 in-game → DevTools → Profiler → Enable Profiling
• It tracks execution time per function across all scripts
• Export results as CSV or flamegraph for analysis

Useful once your mod is working and you want to make sure it isn't tanking FPS.

---

Quick Reference: Key Paths

Path	Contents
<anomaly>/gamedata/scripts/	Lua scripts (.script files)
<anomaly>/gamedata/configs/	LTX and XML configuration
<anomaly>/gamedata/configs/text/eng/	English localization strings
<anomaly>/gamedata/configs/ui/	UI layout XML
<anomaly>/appdata/logs/	Game log output
<anomaly>/appdata/savedgames/	Save files
<anomaly>/db/	Packed archives (don't edit)
<anomaly>/tools/	Unpacker batch files