Steel Beasts Dynamic Terrain Will Come After New Terrain Engine

[Lumituisku]

I don't know what was posted (I don't visit that site) but it will come someday. Esims is like Eagle Dynamics in some ways......

What was posted was an inside joke from the Il-2 community, referencing 2 weeks to completion. Ssnake's reaction proves that the new terrain engine is coming after December 11 (two weeks after the post was made).

Did Ssnake mention year as well?

[Rinix]

Did Ssnake mention year as well?

No.

[Lumituisku]

Did Ssnake mention year as well?

No.

Atleast he said... After 11th.. so all hope is not yet lost.  Though...  Im not as daring to hope as in the past.

[Asid]

Did Ssnake mention year as well?

 

[Rinix]

http://simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/4394552/re-fs-sb-4-0-pro-85#Post4394552

It will be. I promised high res terrain to be a part of the 4.0 release. OK, we couldn't finish the work for the initial release, and yes, it's now almost 18 months later and there's still no high res terrain for you, but it will be made available, for free, to owners of 4.0 licenses. I made that promise, I intend to keep my word.

[Asid]

Some of the language in that post is unbecoming of a developer 

[Rinix]

Some of the language in that post is unbecoming of a developer 

What about it is unbecoming of a developer?

[Asid]

What about it is unbecoming of a developer?

The general tone. As well as words like "leeches". It is the same tone which comes across as arrogant at times. I understand having pride in your work but I feel that one should address concerns in a different manner.

MY OPINION

[Rinix]

The general tone. As well as words like "leeches". It is the same tone which comes across as arrogant at times. I understand having pride in your work but I feel that one should address concerns in a different manner.

MY OPINION

Oh, I see, the use of "leeches" occurred a few posts above the one I linked to. And you are right about Ssnake's tone. He's had... problems with that. Here's another example: http://www.steelbeasts.com/topic/3732-well-its-a-new-year-so-why-dont-i-head-over-the-trench/#comment-58918

[Rinix]

To clarify, here's what Ssnake said in the post I linked to earlier: http://www.steelbeasts.com/topic/3732-well-its-a-new-year-so-why-dont-i-head-over-the-trench/#comment-58918

Of late I have noticed that e-sim has when confronted with suggestions regarding potential enhancements or additions to this simulator, given what seems to be becoming the standard response.

Just as well I could point out that time and again I have been confronted with basically the same questions that I answered countless times before. At the very least I take it from your remark that I have remained consistent in my answers for the past years. You may not have meant this the be a compliment, but I take it as one.
As long as the fundamental business situation doesn't change, I wonder what makes you expect changes in the answer?
Anyway, I suppose you are venting in an attempt that goes a bit deeper than the "polite standard response", so here you go:
I suppose we could try to change our business model in favor of WW2 stuff and micro transactions, but I think I also mentioned since 1998 that our personal interest is not WW2 but contemporary armor, partly as a matter of personal preference and professional background, partly because WW2 has been approached by so many other game developers, partly because it would mean to give up the one reliable and established market for training solutions for which we fought with nails and teeth for the better part of a decade.
Like it or not, the harsh reality is that eSim Games follows a business strategy that isn't compatible with your ideas of how we should run our business. We do what we think is best for the long-term interests of the company, and the #1 priority is to survive as a business entity. The Game Developers' Cemetery is full of companies and teams that didn't make it past their fifth year, and especially independent developer teams have, on average, a life expectancy that approximates that of fruit flies.
Our experience with game publishers hasn't been particularly encouraging to put it mildly, and both were said to be the nicer guys of the lot. Game sales are extremely cyclic and unpredictable by nature. You invest money for years, and if you don't get back your investment within three months after releasing a title chances are that you are and will remain financially screwed. Excuse me, but if there is a viable alternative of government agencies who will honor contracts to the letter, who enter long-term software maintenance contracts with the resulting stable and reliable cash flow to allow us to plan for two to five years ahead, I will pick that option. I may be self-employed, but I still like to not be awake at night worrying how I might pay the dues next month or whether I may just digging an even deeper hole with a certain development decision that will cost more money with unclear chances for a positive return on investment.
Maybe you consider this mindset as entrepreneurial cowardice. I call it due diligence and responsible decision-making. Four people are now working full-time for eSim, another four are part-time working on Steel Beasts. My job as "the commercial department" brings the responsibility to make sure that all of them can rely on regular payments without the need to get the company owners into irresponsible, personal debt. Unlike certain high-paid business executives I do not take this responsibility lightly. We created jobs that exceed the quality of burger-flipping considerably, and I have every intention to maintain these jobs for as long as possible.
I have been ridiculed by personal friends as a daydreamer for working on a crazy thing like Steel Beasts in the first place, fought against nay-sayers in the military that PC based training tools would never be a viable alternative. I can certainly endure forum wisecracks on the sidelines suggesting how I should run our business. But I expect that, even if you can't accept my decisions, at least you will respect them for what they are - expressions of my free will, accepted responsibility for the well-being of all the people who are financially dependent on eSim's commercial success, and the pursuit of happiness by following a certain business vision.
I hope that you can learn to accept Steel Beasts for what it is instead of concentrating on what it doesn't even attempt to be. My yardstick to measure success is how closely SB Pro approximates the ideal, a comprehensive and thorough survey simulation of contemporary, armor/mech centric combined arms combat at tactical level. If you can't subscribe to this end-state, I suppose the resulting product isn't your cup of tea.

The addons we do get whilst appreciated and finished to a very good fine standard do seem to be a tad random and I can only assume to be some 'wouldn't it be nice if' idea from some grey suited bureaucrat who was filling in a feed back sheet to kill off another hour of his/her day.

You have a strange way to express the appreciation that you claim to be feeling. I concede that there indeed is some element of randomness in the additions, but since you aren't interested in the background because it's "the standard answer" that you get "from all the other software houses" I'm not sure if you are actually interested in a true exchange of opinions.
I'm not saying that we have no other choice. Everybody always has a choice (the question is whether you can accept the consequences). But I think I made clear what our goals are, and where our priorities lie. The rest follows from those fundamental decisions.
Limitations that we experience in our freedom to develop "other stuff" which is less dictated by our army customers' training requirements can only be overcome by growing our development capacity. I think I said this as early as 2006 that we would like to take a bit of time off to hire additional programmers, but that we couldn't do this before approximately 2009 due to formal and informal business commitments. Okay, it took us a year longer than anticipated in 2006. Staying the course in our business was at times like wild water rafting with an oil tanker. I am extremely proud that we managed to fulfill these commitments and delivered about 75% of what was promised during that time, and I am very happy to report that with the expansion of the team we have now prepared the ground to service the demands of our customers better than ever before.
eSim Games is my first business, and I am not ashamed to confess that we had to learn how to run our business on the go. We overestimated certain trends and underestimated others, that's just the nature of running a business. Not every plan survives contact with reality. All in all I think that things turned out remarkably well. Steel Beasts has made tremendous progress from its early days to now in pursuit of the ideals that I described above.
We managed to follow an idea that formed in 2002, at a point where it was everything from clear whether the whole venture would actually work out. The development path that we took may appear be a bit winded, labyrinthine even to some. Consider a streak of lightning that follows the path of least resistance through the atmosphere; it ultimately follows a straight and simple course to channel two points of differing electric potentials. Just like that, we have an idea where we want to go, and a dynamic business environment represents the convective currents of an atmosphere that force occasional twists and turns in the direction. Still, by looking at where Steel Beasts was in 2002 and comparing it with what it is today, even a casual observer should be able to make out that all in all we have been following a pretty straight course.

[Rinix]

These posts from PzAbt 911(v)'s forum are from October, but they are still useful:
https://www.steelbeasts.org/showthread.php?8338-Neue-Gel%E4nde-Engine&p=58365&viewfull=1#post58365

Due to other circumstances, however, it has unfortunately come to collisions with deadlines for other projects, which we must treat with priority. After all, just about half of our programmers are still working on the PE version at the moment.

https://www.steelbeasts.org/showthread.php?8338-Neue-Gel%E4nde-Engine&p=58393&viewfull=1#post58393

I wonder if Christmas is going to happen, to be honest.

It was planned at the end of September. That didn `t work. Now we have plenty of deadlines on other projects where we are contracted. The end of the year is always hectic. Rather still would be expected at the end of January / mid-February. At some point I have to consider the workforce.

[Lumituisku]

In all honesty.. probably better if it doesnt come during chrismass... Im intending to play steelbeast with my finnish friend Mika and some others. id hate to put them to do long download of update or something.  Though there is always possibility that I just ignore the update as long as I can...  but if it comes... Im not sure if I will be able to ignore it. >.<   

[Rinix]

http://www.steelbeasts.com/topic/11950-can-you-still-buy-a-dvd-copyprinted-manual/?tab=comments#comment-178016

We have withheld a new production batch mostly for two reasons,

• the new terrain engine, originally scheduled for summer 2016, would require a rewrite of significant parts of the manual
• the new terrain engine will bring a split of installers, one for the program code, and a separate one for the maps

It took longer than expected, unfortunately.
My workaround advice for people with really bad internet connections: Download in an internet café, print the current PDF manual in a copy shop. Not a great option, I give you that, but maybe not the worst thing either if downloading 5 x 600 MByte is absolutely no option for you. Eventually we will make a new production run, I'm just hesitant to order it now when we expect it to become obsolete in less than a year.

http://www.steelbeasts.com/topic/11950-can-you-still-buy-a-dvd-copyprinted-manual/?tab=comments#comment-178020

Well, we would always offer the DVD and manual as separate items that you could order independently from the license. I mean, what good is a time-based license when you have to download the installation files anyway (your first post suggested that this would be a problem)?

So, the decision to go for one license type or the other should be made independently from the question whether physical media are up for sale. Chances are, before we start the actual production we'll offer a preorder option so we can better estimate production lot size. Most likely there will be a special preorder bundle offer.

[Asid]

Esim games still has an issue with download size.....

[Rinix]

Esim games still has an issue with download size.....

Yeah, the last 3 "patches" have been full installers.