Steel Beasts Dynamic Terrain Will Come After New Terrain Engine

[Rinix]

http://simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/4480549/re-news-about-version-4-1#Post4480549
The discussion continues to go nowhere. I think Ssnake is referring to the time they cut the price to $85, but I might be wrong. In any case, $85 is still expensive compared to other games.

[Rinix]

https://www.steelbeasts.com/topic/12874-steel-beasts-pro-pe-version-41-pre-orders-now-being-accepted/page/4/?tab=comments#comment-191578

Looks like I have to catch up on a few posts, some may already have been answered; nevertheless, here's the official answer:
The preorder bundles serve the purpose to give us a clue how many physical items we have to produce - printed manuals, installation USB drives. Therefore we offer an incentive to order early on - the mysterious surprise item, and a price discount. Now, the manual will of course be part of the installation, as a PDF file. You could have it printed yourself at the local copy shop, but the print will be more costly and come without our nice cover than price of a copy ordered from eSim Games, but if you read the manual on a tablet or if you don't mind alt-tabbing between Steel Beasts and the Acrobat Reader, it's definitely a strictly optional item. Likewise, the installation USB drive will contain both the map installer and the Steel Beasts installer. But both will be downloadable. The thumb drive is therefore again a strictly optional thing, with the greatest utility value to those who have a crappy internet connection where downloading 19 GByte either requires visiting an internet cafe, or a full weekend and then some to squeeze the data through a narrow bandwidth connection.

So, $25.- is all that's needed, in principle. But if you want a printed manual, the $53.- bundle is probably the better option.

https://www.steelbeasts.com/topic/12874-steel-beasts-pro-pe-version-41-pre-orders-now-being-accepted/page/5/?tab=comments#comment-191583
Ssnake responds to our Frankie :

Sorry, no.
WELL, "mostly no".

• We have separated all map installation (save the tutorial, and "empty" map) from the Steel Beasts installer. That way we can update each installer separately, which probably means "never again" for the map installer. The advantage is that the map packes does not have to be downloaded every time that we change Steel Beasts.
• Both the Steel Beasts and the Map Installers will be made available for download. Chances are, we'll put the map installer up for download a few days ahead of the Steel Beasts installer. But if you're on a slow internet connection, the $53.- bundle may still be your better option.
• That being said, if you install 4.1 before uninstalling 4.0 (or 3.0) you could attempt to convert all the maps yourself, substituting internet bandwidth by CPU horepower (and electricity consumption). But this is more of a theoretical option since many of the legacy scenarios came with embedded maps that we couldn't directly convert. It was a bloody chore to do all this. We did it, so that's proof that anyone can do it in principle, but it cost us a fair bit of time and hair pulling, and it's a very error-prone process in that you would probably overlook some cases, etc.; we invested a lot of testing time in the attempt to catch all the special cases, you can't just write a batch file to auto-convert everything. (Well, actually, there are enough command line parameters available now to do a batch conversion, but it still wouldn't work for more than maybe 70% of all cases)

My recommendation would be to order the $53.- bundle, and to email me about refunding the other ticket. If you already activated the other ticket, tell me the ticket number of the bundle, and I will cancel that one instead. No problem.

https://www.steelbeasts.com/topic/12874-steel-beasts-pro-pe-version-41-pre-orders-now-being-accepted/page/5/?tab=comments#comment-191602

Hopefully 4.1 will be out well in time for my 6 week vacation starting on Wednesday.

Unlikely, but chances are you'll get it before the end of your holidays.

https://forum.steelbeasts.org/forum/thread/8656-steel-beasts-pro-pe-version-4-1-vorbestellen/?postID=59297#post59297
Translated using Google Translate:

• The USB stick is red, shapely, looks good due to the eSim logo laser engraving, and is dispensable --- if you have a good internet connection. However, this is not self-evident, especially in Germany. However, if you also want a current printed (English) manual, you should order the bundle for $ 53, -. There will also be an updated manual in German language (as PDF).
• As always, a mix of versions in the network is not possible. This was the same with all previous version jumps (2.5, 2.6, 3.0, 4.0). Old scenarios can be loaded without having to convert them beforehand if the underlying map has already been converted to the new format. That's why we do such an effort with the card installer, so at least all scenarios that are delivered with Steel Beasts, continue to run directly.
• In spite of everything, I recommend loading old scenarios in the editor and then saving them again. The file size will generally shrink drastically because embedded map data and old navmeshes are no longer needed. Scenario sizes below 1.5 MB become normal.

https://forum.steelbeasts.org/forum/thread/8656-steel-beasts-pro-pe-version-4-1-vorbestellen/?postID=59299#post59299
Translated using Google Translate:

On the subject of card conversion under the special condition that you have many own cards in use here:
Basically, it should suffice to convert only once the zugundeliegende height map and then all other editors as a published base map (new concept!) To provide.
That

• Open the map editor
• File ... Converting HGT ... Retrieve map, adjust metadata, save.
• Then make immutable (by status "Published")
• This map package (= a folder with subfiles) zipping, distribute here
• All gardeners download this file, unpack the folder into the new map directory
• Open the map editor
• File ... Converting TER ... Now it is automatically recognized that the HGT file is already converted. As a result, each TER file can now be converted into the same directory as the space-saving delta card, which already contains the base card. These cards should also be published soon to save disk space; Also, only those scenarios based on a published map can be played in network or single mode at all.

The many variations of the associated terrain map can then be redistributed as delta maps. This raises the question, "how to distribute?". It was easy in the past. The map data was in the scenario, the host could send the scenario (and with it the map data) to all clients at the beginning of the session. This sometimes took a long time when many subscribers were aware that the scenario was large due to the embedded map data and the host might not have the best internet connection.

Since high-resolution map data in particular can require a lot of memory, this distribution mechanism is no longer practical. Disciplined groups will certainly be able to distribute all necessary files via a forum / web server to all participants at scheduled meetings. In reality, there's always at least one Kevin messing up and then stopping everyone else. So what do you do?

Steel Beasts behaves in the following way:
The client connects to the host, the host sends the scenario file as usual. Steel Beasts now checks whether the map referenced in the scenario exists locally. If so, it will be read in, the client will go to the meeting room and can choose his page and the associated unit as usual. If not, Steel Beasts automatically connects to a map server and downloads the map data from there. So Kevin keeps the place, but not so bad. Nobody has to look for the link in the chat or explain to Kevin how to use a browser where you might have to log in. (Oh no, no user account has been set up yet ... that may take longer today ...).


Now the highlight:
Of course, even the eSim Games Mapserver will never be able to stock every single card ever created by somebody (or will be created). But: In autumn we will probably bring a first patch for 4.1, in which you can set up yourself a map server (eg on the gameserver in the data center, which you already have), and then everyone can register their address in Steel Beasts , Steel Beasts will then query multiple servers in the order you can set. Of course you should not enter hundreds of addresses there, but three, four, a dozen should already be feasible, without the waiting times are too long.
This allows community-own map servers are built, which are independent of eSim Games (but can be operated in supplement)

And after the Steel Beasts client has downloaded the map from the mapserver (it is automatically unpacked and pushed into the correct directory), Kevin can enter the meeting room. It only depends on how good his Internet connection is.

[Rinix]

https://www.steelbeasts.com/topic/12776-sb-pro-pe-41-new-features-and-stuff/page/16/?tab=comments#comment-191614

Well, usually I try to, but then I found myself in a race with Grenny.
So, this time the bulk of relevant new developments has been revealed. There's still odds and end, and what's more important, I might find the time to work on the one or other tutorial related to the new data structure of maps, and what it means for certain aspects of the user interface. But I suppose I should work on the release notes first. About 104 pages of changelog have accumulated. I can condense that to maybe 80 pages by reducing the font size to 9.5 pt and there are probably a number of entries that are entirely irrelevant, but it's going to take a while.

[Rinix]

http://simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/4480764/re-news-about-version-4-1#Post4480764

So no new playable tanks??....kinda under whelming for three years of not having any upgrades and not getting a terrain patch.Yes there are some nice things,and the price IS equal to the task,but I really expected /hoped for more.At the very least a thermal equipped OPFOR tank or finished ones we already have(ie chally 2).I bought the upgrade regardless but I'm unimpressed so far.Just seems kinda lean compared to previous upgrades which were on a yearly basis(they were yearly right???haven't checked that for sure.) I think I would have preferred to pay the full 40$ upgrade for more playable tanks TBH,but that's your call.

EDIT: Thinking about it a bit more I realize that a counter argument might be made regarding the new non playable content BUT as someone who has made game content in other sim's "without any prior knowledge" of modeling and has produced content in a mater of days/weeks (tanks for arma for example) is the reason I made the comments that I did.

[Rinix]

http://simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/4480805/re-news-about-version-4-1#Post4480805

So no new playable tanks?

This upgrade isn't about new playable vehicles specifically even though it has a number of them, most notably the DF90 and the DF30 (just in case you missed them, although the way you phrased your post sounds as if you're deliberately omitting them to prove your point). But if your definition of "tank" is narrowly focused on MBTs or tracked armored vehicles, then No, there aren't any with crew positions.

kinda under whelming for three years of not having any upgrades and not getting a terrain patch

Yeah... terrain "patch"...
That task ... ballooned slightly. Which I thought was kinda obvious given the fact that it took us three years, but maybe we integrated everything so well that it betrays the unsuspecting eye what effort went into all this.

• High-res terrain means, the grid resolution was increased by a factor of 512, the render resolution even by factor 2048.
  At the same time the map file sizes increased only by a factor of maybe 10...15, and we could shrink the typical scenario file size by a factor of 20.
  And we maintained the ability to edit and modify maps for mission designers with only minimal restrictions. That alone cost one programmer almost six years of work.
• We rewrote the whole lighting code for the render engine, and had to replace every single piece of vegetation artwork in the terrain, and then add a fair bit of new models. This allows representing a far wider range of climate zones/landscape types - like sub-saharan Africa. It looks a lot better. We increased the frame rates, SB Pro PE is very playable now with visibilty set to 7...10 kilometers.
  Hint: Typically frame rates develop in the opposite direction with version updates.
• High-res terrain required an entirely different approach to vehicles; we had to add a suspension model that not only works for the player's tanks, or 20...30 tanks as you would typically see in a racing game. It had to be made to work for several ten thousand vehicle entities to accommodate the needs of some of our military customers. When we shopped around at a simulation-centric exhibition for 3rd party solutions boasting "high performance suspension code" that was supposedly "suitable for large number of entities" -- they meant "up to 100". When we told them "we need it for several 10,000" they visibly paled and became very quiet.
  But we did it anyway. It may not look like much, and yes, the benefit for you is maybe not very high, but our work is dictated by far wider ranging needs. Our team is less than a tenth of that of Bohemia Interactive (since you brought up ArmA III as an example) and still we get things done where others fail miserably.
• A suitable suspension model for all vehicles was only part of the ripple effect that a change in the terrain engine caused. We also had to replace the driving code for all vehicles, which was a bloody nightmare because it was 20 years old and touched everything. Which means that when you rewrite it, you introduce "refactoring bugs" everywhere that must be found and killed quickly before your changes destroy the entire product. But we took that risk because it was the prerequisite for better pathfinding and better AI behavior. Units are no longer water-shy, but they don't drown themselves as often anymore either. And it works down to a framerate of about eight, because we have customers with scenarios so large ... well, see above.
• Right, the terrain isn't just high-res now, it's also deformable at runtime. So engineer vehicles can now dig vehicle emplacements. We can crater the landscape. This opens the path for a lot of nice feature improvements in the future.
• Next up, the new model for high explosive and fragmentation effects. Which tracks up to 20,000 individual fragments per explosion, in real-time, and puts everything on a solid engineering foundation (which it was not, up to now). This will improve the quality of simulation results enormously in the coming years as we refine the parameterization, and further boost the performance in subsequent development steps.

I know of no other simulation even in the professional military field that combines the capabilities of Steel Beasts in a remotely comparable way. There may be specialized applications that can do individual things somewhat better, but none that can do everything, and do it on a single PC, let alone at a comparable price point. And I'm not alone in that assessment. We've worked with research labs that used Steel Beasts for experimentation purposes because there was no other tool that offered both the breadth of scope and the high degree of fidelity in simulation results. None.

Yes. No playable new MBT. I'm sorry. We were kinda busy the last years.

As far as the confusion about the terrain is concerned, the "DTED is dead" video was meant to illustrate the capabilities of our new terrain engine. But the terrain data on which this was based is not available for public distribution, so we can't include it in the coming release. Sorry, no Danish sand dunes for you, we don't have the rights for it. But you will get one or two maps from Finland that are based on LIDAR scans; slightly less in resolution but still much better than anything that was available in the past. And one from BAOR's Sennelager area, Germany.

[Rinix]

https://www.steelbeasts.com/topic/4546-steel-beasts-content-wish-list/page/250/?tab=comments#comment-191691

However, all our work on rewriting the driving code to apply pathfindig also to vehicles are preparatory steps towards the end goal of being able to give movement orders to company sized formations without having to use the kludges like group routes, or the route copy and paste function. It is however something that requires a lot of work to introduce it into a 20 year-old code base (without creating a lot of critical bugs, that is).

https://www.steelbeasts.com/topic/12776-sb-pro-pe-41-new-features-and-stuff/page/16/

I meant that all the map data must be in the same parent folder (you can't distribute them over different drives). Other than that, they are independent from the Steel Beasts installation.

https://www.steelbeasts.com/topic/12891-41-upgrade-with-american-express/?tab=comments#comment-191666
Viper1970 only wants to pay via PayPal or his girlfriend's American Express card. This is the culmination of his frustration.

Don't blame eSim for this, don't blame eSim for that, come on now. It's a company that want's to sell a product, but there is only one single option to buy it and this option is also restricted. It's not the the job of the customer to find a way that makes him possible to buy the product the company is selling. Normally it's the other way arround.

There is another way to buy and its been offered to you at least twice (by myself and others).

What another way? To do an international bank transfer to someone of the community? Sorry but's not an option for me. What's then with the next upgrade you have to pay for again? Maybe 4.185 or so? This whole crazy business again!?

I'm really willing to spent money for my hobby and yes, SB is the only modern tank sim at the moment, but I really never came along such a ridiculous way to simply pay for a product. Even a very small software company, I bought a boot manager from the last days, offers fourtimes as much payment options as eSim does.

If esim only want's to sell SBPE to sellected people which do anything to achieve their condition of payment , or it's not needed to sell it, cause it's just a hobby and there is no real need to sell it to the private user (I also have heard this argument here) then it's ok. It eSim's decision.

I have tons of other simulations I'm really not able to play all of them the rest of my lifetime, so no real need for me to absolutely must have SBPE.

If there will be another way to pay for it in future, I maybe will come back. If not SB is history for me. It could also be possible that another modern tank sim will see the light of day sometime and for this case eSim should really consider to be a bit more customer-friendly. I'm not the only one which isn't very exited with the practise of eSim at the moment. You just have to read in other forums.

https://www.steelbeasts.com/topic/12891-41-upgrade-with-american-express/?tab=comments#comment-191674

If traditional distribution parners were paying their bills, we'd still be selling SB Pro through them. If other web shops in Europe that we contacted about selling our product get back to us, we will sell SB Pro through them. It's not like we're stubbornly refuse to sell Steel Beasts through other channels than our own web shop.
But I have a gazillion people tugging at my shirt about whether there'll be additional videos, when can we expect 4.1, when are the release notes ready, will it be this month, I get error messages from the web shop, are we there yet, ... and one person who insists on using his girlfriend's Amex card. I do my best. If that's not good enough for you, I'm sorry.

https://www.steelbeasts.com/topic/12891-41-upgrade-with-american-express/?tab=comments#comment-191684
 

No worries.

I offered, but you seem determined to "throw your toys out of the cot". I'm not concerned.

Have a good life.

[Rinix]

https://www.steelbeasts.com/topic/12874-steel-beasts-pro-pe-version-41-pre-orders-now-being-accepted/page/6/?tab=comments#comment-191718

I purchased the upgrade license only. Is there a way to upgrade from 4.0 to 4.1 without having 4.023 installed?

Absolutely, it's an independent installation. We actually recommend uninstalling version 4.0 first.

[Rinix]

DF90 now has a Steel Beasts Wiki page: http://www.steelbeasts.com/sbwiki/index.php?title=Piranha_DF90

[Rinix]

From the Steel Beasts forum:

Okay, I can now confirm that 4.1 Release Day will be

• not before Monday 22nd
• probably on Wednesday 24th
• no later than Monday 29th

Final build will be this week, then there's one week for final tests and production of the bundles, commissioning the bundles, shipping.

In the original Steel Beasts and up to about 2015 or so we treated all vehicles as "rigid body point masses", that is, the model slides over the terrain (animated roads and tracks betray the human eye that the're sliding, of course). With a terrain that had a mesh width of 12.5m, slightly wider than the body of the tank, and some movement rules to adjust the position of the vehicle when transitioning from one angle to a new one (e.g. let the tank dip slightly into the terrain as to fake inertia, then accelerate it more up to the point of the greatest divergence between terrain normal vector and tank hull bell normal vector) you could fake relatively well the way how an actual suspension would behave, so the demand for an actual suspension model was rooted primarily in cosmetics, not functional necessity.

Now, a tank's movement in the 3D space can be looked at as a wave motion, if you just look at the angular deviation from a perfectly level resting position. With a given maximum travel velocity for a tank the resulting was sufficiently life-like, both in amplitude and frequency. But as soon as the underlying terrain's mesh width becomes smaller than the tank body, this simple model no longer works; mathematically it fails because over the length of the body you may have more than two reference surfaces, and functionally because the rigid body physics can no longer gradually adjust to a shifting underground. You get a wave motion that simply has a way too high frequency, the vehicle "rattles over the terrain". (That's the "doesn't cope" part you were asking about.)

At that point you have to implement a model of vehicle suspension that can handle a situation where the terrain mesh with is close to the diameter of a road wheel, and then you use each roadwheel's deviation from its equilibrium position to accelerate the actual hull (and while you're at it, you then might also have distributed masses for hull, turret, and gun assembly, as well as for consumables like fuel and ammo). But obviously, if you have 14 coupled springs and five connected mass points, the resulting calculations (a differential equation) are a tad more complicated, and then you don't just want it for one vehicle but "all of them", and then some customers tell you that the only reason they're using SB Pro is because it can handle large battles, and among them is one customer who doesn't need much fighting, but they're simulating a road traffic, and they need all ten extra parties to their maximum unit limit to populate the world with barely enough vehicles to create a credible environment for "the" student (in this case, indeed one single guy acting the role of a convoy leader in a simulator cabin, driving for four to eight hours in a single session, coupled to a bigger exercise where the convoy's location is updated by battlefield management system).

So, while the suspension thing in itself isn't entirely trivial, it's not an entire mystery either. The kicker is, you need a solution that works for several ten thousand entities that all drive around the map at the same time. And as it turned out, available commercial solutions couldn't handle that load, so we had to devise something of our own. I ... allow myself to be proud of the team here. That challenge wasn't entirely trivial.

Also from the Steel Beasts forum:

Actually, I think we made F8 available generally. While we acknowledge the potential for exploit, that's also the matter of usability if you have no way to control the vehicle except indirectly through the map.

[Rinix]

I think the key thing to remember is that this will not be universal, at least to begin with.

Not every map with have the new, finer mesh, as it depends on the underlying source data.

Well, the "Africa" video was based on an old Steel Beasts map in 12.5m resolution that we converted, then modified. Still looks better than before, IMO.
The Finnish Summer Day videos are based on a map generated from 2m resolution LIDAR data, which primarily can be seen at the road bend after which the mine obstacle begins. The cut into the hill slope wasn't procedurally generated, it's original source data. So that's the kind of quality differences that can be observed. But the "wringkling" of the surface that can be seen on both maps is a function of the terrain theme's "bumpiness" values for the individual terrain type.

[wilso845]

Looking forward to this release as I thoroughly enjoyed the mission on Sunday 👍

[Rinix]

Looking forward to this release as I thoroughly enjoyed the mission on Sunday 👍

Thanks.

IMO, the worst that can happen to you is that you might waste disk space in moderate amounts if you convert every map that you have as a base map.
All the legacy maps that we had with Steel Beasts 4.0 and before we originally feared might be up to 500 GByte, then we added compression and thought "maybe only 50 GByte" and now it turns out "just 14 GByte". Which is still a bit more than the maybe 600 MByte in map data that SB 4.0 would install but in the light of the average computer game these days it's still not as dramatic as we originally feared it would be. Which means, a moderate amount of waste is still wasteful, but not such a big deal after all.
Okay, "my" folder of map packages is already 80 GBytes large (thanks to a number of experimental maps from customers that we copied over for debugging/performance tests, so some inflation is bound to happen over time. But that's not related to the map conversion issues.

Interactive map conversion comes with relatively comfortable and error-preventing wizards that should navigate most pitfalls for you. But ideally you would tale a look at the maps that are "yours" first and check which of them are based on the same height map. Then convert the HGT file first. Afterwards you'd convert al the TER variants are are based on the same HGT, and they would be stored as delta maps. Publish them, done. At least in a first step. Then open the scenarios that use these maps, save them again (maybe under a new name), done.

At some point you may then want to experiment with the new features such as road leveling. In which case you'd craete new delta maps of the existing ones, and then gradually replace the old maps with the new ones where you may have altered the terrain profile. It's not THAT dramatically different from how you do it right now, but with more safety features to prevent user error, at the expense of a few new concepts such as "published maps" vs maps that can still be edited.

But Yes: The Release Notes and the user manual will cover these topics.

It's a case of clicking one of 2 buttons and waiting for the result. The main thing most people will need to do is update their themes. Because bumpiness was not previously rendered people used a higher level of bumpiness than works with the new engine.

[Rinix]

Speaking of THM files, these are the issues that I'm seeing over and over again which should be corrected,

• Avoid "0" and "1.0" settings.
• Bumpiness "0" is the Utah Salt Flats, which you find in exactly one place, Utah. And there, only on the salt flats. Bumpiness "1.0" means the coarsest terrain you can think of. Like the boulder fields on the flanks of alpine mountains. Where mountain goats are having trouble. Wheeled offroad vehicles should handle up to 40% bumpiness. Anything above that value would be considered "extremely difficult" with "mobility risk" (even if such a setting by itself will not incur that risk in Steel Beasts). Tracked vehicles may be able to handle up to 80% bumpiness, but that should normally be considered the end of the rope, really. Like, crawling speed at full throttle, or something.
• Traction "1.0" is the equivalent of hot rubber on hot asphalt. That's a rare condition in nature.
• Dustiness "1.0" is "Afganistan", "Gobi", or "Atacama" desert. The kind where you open sealed plastic containers and you still find dust inside. "0" is a wet swamp. Any other place on earth is somewhere between these two extremes. Dry grassland might be around 40%. And of course, if you have "0" and "1.0" dustiness right next to each other it makes for very awkward dust development when you drive around. A transition from 20% to 40% on the other hand is a natural and quite benign effect.
• Hardness should rarely exceet 0.95. Hardness "1.0" is when you don't dig emplacements and foxholes, but you dynamite them, and you need several attempts. Seriously, if it's 95...100% hardness we're talking about different forms of rock. Maybe limestone is just 95% compared to granite at 100%, but it's rock nevertheless. So the terrain texture should also reflect that, if you want to be consistent. So 94% hardness is the kind of concrete-like substance into which fine mud might dry. Realistically, "hard" ground would be closer to 80...90% hardness. And a freshly tilled field would probably be like 40% hardness. A shifting sand dune might be 10%.
• Think of combinations. If it's rock, and really hard, and super bumpy, can it still have a high traction value? Can a watery swamp offer 100% traction? Of course not. Nor could that sand dune of 10% hardness and 90% dustiness. And in all these cases the ground resistance must go up as well. Conversely, if it's supposed to offer high traction, low drag, what type of terrain can it actually be? If super flat and super hard, we're back at the Utah Salt Flats. Yes, they exist in nature, but they are a rare occurrence. "World famous" rare, actually.
• Approach it functionally. If you know that 30% of your map are going to be terrain X and you want it to be traversable by offroad wheeled vehicles it shouldn't have more than 40% bumpiness, it still must offer decent traction (maybe in the 75...85%), the bumpier the higher the drag, so if you settle for a 30% bumpiness value that means it's already pretty difficult, and the drag might be in the 25% range, possibly even higher. Oh yeah, that'll slow everybody down. People will hate that. But it'd be realistic for your average "scrub" terrain, or a particularly knobby grassland. On the other hand, if its farm land, the bumpiness tends to go down, and you don't set up a farm on rocks. So it's got to be relatively soft and low bumpiness terrain. Not every possible combination actually makes sense. Ideally you'd have unity of mobility factors and visual representation, in which case you should pick a fitting texture, and give the terrain type a descriptive name.

[Rinix]

Camo options revealed:

Hopefully I am not treading on Nil's toes or exposing secrets he is keeping for later... If so sorry. This is a great feature in the mission editor and will stop a lot of confusion

[Rinix]

https://www.steelbeasts.com/topic/12776-sb-pro-pe-41-new-features-and-stuff/page/19/?tab=comments#comment-192145

I think those days are gone, or probably far off. Most of what we're getting is for military customers. Maybe I'm wrong.

Yes, that is wrong.   We spent two years laying down plumbing here. Once everything is fundamentally in order, then of course we will want to go back to making fun stuff, from time to time.

Also, the military didn't request more detailed crew served weapons. This was one of our 'pet projects'. Don't forget that (most of the) Steel Beasts developers also play it too.

https://www.steelbeasts.com/topic/12776-sb-pro-pe-41-new-features-and-stuff/page/19/?tab=comments#comment-192150
This list looks impressive at first glance, but these vehicles are only a small fraction of the motor pool, and the whole list gives the impression of asking us to believe that the military clients hardly request anything beyond the occasional vehicle. This is the latest symptom of a real credibility problem for eSim Games. Ssnake is asking us to believe that there's no "enthusiast vs. military" mindset when the military clients get continuous updates for their copies of the PE version, while civilians don't, and the military clients still get the overwhelming majority of development, despite the whole "disproportionate development time invested in PE" mantra that Ssnake loves to repeat. This is just adding to him asking us to believe in the existence of a military customer base that hardly ever reports a bug despite having far more users than the enthusiast community.

• None of our military customers requested the playable
  • T-55,
  • T-62,
  • T-72,
  • BMP-2,
  • BTRs,
  • Challenger 2,
  • Scimitar,
  • Warrior,
  • M1,
  • M1IP,
  • M1A2 SEP,
  • M60A3,
  • Sho't Kal,
  • GTK Boxer,
  • Marder 1A3,
  • Luchs A2,
  • Fuchs,
  • HEMMT,
  • HMMVW,
  • Unimog,
  • Ural-4320,
  • 2.7t 4x4 Technical-F,
  • M88A1,
  • M901,
  • M577,
  • BRDM-2
• None of our military customers requested the new HE model.
• None of our military customers requested the new terrain engine.
• None of our military customer directly requested the new AI; like everybody else they had isolated issues with behavior in specific situations, but it was our decision to move away from the state machine approach with discrete behavioral rules.

These were all common projects/investments that eSim Games made completely autonomous. The idea that there's an "us" (PE users) vs. "them" (military customers) is corrosive, and absolutely not supported by the facts. Only the profits made with military contracts allowed us to work on the important issues. Without military contracts you would have no Personal Edition, or at least none past version 2.4 maybe. So can we please leave this debate behind us, once and for all.