The End Of Steel Beasts

[Rinix]

This has been in my head for a while, ever since Bohemia Interactive made a detailed CV9040 for VBS. But I was forced to confront it last night when I watched the new videos for TitanVanguard. It was a new product, that already had a good portion of Steel Beasts’ vehicle library. Here are the vehicles I noticed in the videos:

• 2S1
• ZSU-23-4
• BMP-1
• BMD-2
• Several Leopard 2A5 variants
• 2 variants of the Leopard 2A6, with and without RPG screens
• M113AS4
• Bushmaster
• Some ASCOD variant, maybe the Pizarro with no ERA
• Ural 4320
• ASLAV-25
• AH-64
• Tiger ARH
• NH90
• CH-47D
• Mi-24V

And that’s not counting the vehicles in TitanVanguard that Steel Beasts doesn’t have, such as the BTR-80A. Or the entire categories of vehicles that are in TitanVanguard that aren’t in Steel Beasts, such as fighters and ships. You might say that TitanVanguard isn’t Steel Beasts-level of armored warfare simulation. You’re right. But if TitanIM could achieve so much already, a Steel Beasts-level of armored warfare simulation is perfectly achievable by TitanVanguard. The same can be said for TitanVanguard’s potential to fully match Steel Beasts’ vehicle library.

Military simulations are expanding in scale and scope. VBS is pushing its limits, with VBS Blue IG rendering the entire planet. TitanVanguard is rendering the entire planet. Both simulators are expanding to include many platforms. Meanwhile, Ssnake only discovered earlier this year that his clients want maps bigger than 100km x 100km. Steel Beasts remains stuck in a tiny corner of the simulation world, with mostly its armored warfare simulation. Meanwhile, the rest of the simulation world is pushing to physical scales that Steel Beasts can’t handle.

And eSim Games doesn’t seem to want to make the slightest progress forward anymore. It wasn’t always that way. Long ago, eSim Games made the difficult transition from DirectX 7 in SB1 to DirectX 8.1 in Steel Beasts Pro, and the transition to DirectX 9 was described by Ssnake as “much easier”. They managed that with 2 programmers who were doing double duty. But now, with 6 dedicated lead and regular programmers available, suddenly making those leaps again seems impossible, as transitioning to DirectX 11 is now described as a “major task”. Ssnake vetoes VR, the same technology that is sweeping the simulation world. Dejawolf is crying about the difficulty of having dismounts bailing out, a difficulty that isn’t an issue at all for other games with tanks, such as Combat Mission ( ), Graviteam Tactics (which has only 3 programmers to eSim Games’ 6 programmers, and only 4 3D artists to eSim Games’ 11), Tank Warfare (see comments about Graviteam Tactics), and Steel Armor: Blaze of War (see comments about Graviteam Tactics).

There’s no “can do” attitude anymore at eSim Games. And they’re being enabled by the community. When BondVillian points out that dejawolf is making unnecessary difficulty, Gibson quickly starts making more unnecessary difficulty to cover dejawolf.

I am forced to ask the question: How much longer will it be before eSim Games’ military clients:

• Decide that they’ve outgrown Steel Beasts,
• Get tired of requiring interconnections between different simulations when they can use one simulator,
• And redirect their customization contract money into improving the armored warfare simulation of VBS and TitanVanguard?

The answer is: Not much longer. There is nothing that Steel Beasts brings that Bohemia Interactive or TitanIM can’t replicate if they put their minds to it. eSim Games has remained viable simply because they’ve gotten lucky, and no one has bothered to eat their lunch yet. Sadly, I know just how Ssnake will respond to this warning: https://books.google.com/books?id=vWBwU5gLo60C&pg=PA91&lpg=PA91#v=onepage&q&f=false

We’re facing the end of Steel Beasts. It won’t come immediately, but it’s already in sight.

[Beef]

I tend to agree with you Rinix. History is replete with examples of people and organizations becoming obsolete after failing to adapt to this ever-changing world. There is a saying I heard once that has stuck with me all these years.

"Change is a dragon. You can ignore it, which is futile. You can fight it, in which case you will lose. Or you can ride it."

When Marine Corps General C.C. Krulak became Commandant of the Marine Corps he formed the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab. From that came a series of exercise named Sea Dragon. General Krulak said the Marine Corps was going to learn to ride the dragon...

eSim's "game engine" (software) is in my opinion quickly becoming obsolete in comparison to the likes of TitanVanguard.

[Asid]

Interesting post Rinix.

The Graviteam and Battlefront teams are actually smaller than you listed. If I remember correctly, some of the esims team came from the community. From a modding background.

You said quite rightly that combining SB with another product can be labour/time intensive as well as costly. The newer products offer everything in one package. That is a big bonus.

The smaller SB maps are ideal for what SB was created for. A crew trainer. Esims are choking on the fact that the maps will be bigger. They think the end user will not be able to stomach the increase in data storage. This is crazy. Most people are used to larger file sizes. If someone has a slow connection then give them a disk option. It's not rocket science. 

You would NOT be able to have a discussion like this on the "official forum" 

As for the community....All I will say is 

[Rinix]

Interesting post Rinix.

The Graviteam and Battlefront teams are actually smaller than you listed. If I remember correctly, some of the esims team came from the community. From a modding background.

They're smaller than listed in the game credits?

You said quite rightly that combining SB with another product can be labour/time intensive as well as costly. The newer products offer everything in one package. That is a big bonus.

The smaller SB maps are ideal for what SB was created for. A crew trainer. Esims are choking on the fact that the maps will be bigger. They think the end user will not be able to stomach the increase in data storage. This is crazy. Most people are used to larger file sizes. If someone has a slow connection then give them a disk option. It's not rocket science. 

Ssnake himself says that Steel Beasts was intended for platoon and company-level training:
 
But the new simulations give room to grow by rendering the entire planet, while Steel Beasts remains with its tiny corner. They also give a variety of platforms, while Steel Beasts remains mostly stuck with armor.

You would NOT be able to have a discussion like this on the "official forum" 

As for the community....All I will say is 

No kidding.

Meanwhile, dejawolf makes more unnecessary difficulty: http://www.steelbeasts.com/topic/4546-steel-beasts-content-wish-list/?page=226#comment-177087

no, that wouldn't work.  for the tanks you would HAVE to add blankframes since they are not present on those models, otherwise the crew would spawn at the center of the vehicle and likely get stuck.

This is another example of the "no can do" attitude at eSim Games. They can't be bothered to implement a variation of the same thing that they do for every personnel carrier they add. And Ssnake reveals that dejawolf is in trouble: http://www.steelbeasts.com/topic/4546-steel-beasts-content-wish-list/?page=226#comment-177095

May I remind those working for eSim that technical details like these are not to be discussed publicly. There's that NDA clause in your contract that you may want to read again.

[Asid]

Battlefront has I think 1 full time programmer. Graviteam has 5 team members but at least 2 are not full time.

SB does have quite a bit of abstraction.

There are other sims out there. With energy and vision.

SB is what it is. It could have been so much more. It is not bad. I still like it 

[wilso845]

 

[Rinix]

That's how I feel about it too, wilso. Anyway: http://www.steelbeasts.com/topic/11869-virtual-reality-support/ More proof that eSim Games doesn't want to make progress forward. Strangely, dejawolf never complained about visibility in the videos that he did, or their descriptions:
   

[Rinix]

http://www.steelbeasts.com/topic/11892-need-help/#comment-177270
This is what's it's come to. They're so overloaded that they can't offer support for a software bug that doesn't involve a 3D model.

Would love to investigate the issue, but the team is fully swamped with other tasks, I'm sorry to say.

[Rinix]

http://simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/4395207/re-fs-sb-4-0-pro-85#Post4395207
I'm not convinced that maps and scenarios are going to keep Steel Beasts going. What good are Steel Beasts' maps when TitanVanguard can replicate the planet? As for VBS, Steel Beasts had to draw its map data from other places, which Bohemia Interactive can hunt down. Scenarios can be recreated given enough time and effort.

No.
We understand that for our army customers the real investment isn't our license price or the development costs (even if they can be substantial). The investment that really matters is training content (=scenario files, maps), so one of our top five development tenets is to ensure backwards compatibility

[Asid]

Esim games is facing a lot more competition. Other developers seem to be embracing new ideas and concepts. Market share will illustrate if Esim games made the correct choices.

As for the terrain issue......There is a lot of data out there which is not extortionate and even in some cases free which far exceeds the current data in SB. The SB devs need to realise that the majority of people are OK with downloading GB's of data.

As I said before. I play it for what it is, even with its limitations and bugs. However, there are always those who will protect SB no matter what and even attack individuals for their requests etc.......

[Rinix]

http://www.steelbeasts.com/topic/11905-mouse-and-text-issues/?tab=comments#comment-177454 As if to prove my point about there being no "can do" attitude at eSim Games, Ssnake made this post in December, in which he said that:

I can't help it that in all the decades since fullscreen mode was introduced by Microsoft (ca 1994) compiler developers still haven't found a way to debug a program running in that mode. And if the problem can only be observed in that mode, and is further dependent on certain hardware and/or driver combinations that are unknown to us, then yes, it approximates "unfixable".
Windowed mode is the workaround. You don't fully like that, and I understand why and it's a perfectly valid opinion not to like it, but for the moment this is the only viable choice. I can but ask for forgiveness here.

Simply Googling for "how to debug a program in fullscreen mode" returned these helpful links:
https://www.gamedev.net/forums/topic/670465-how-to-debug-in-full-screen-mode/
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/bb206358(v=vs.85).aspx
Somehow, no one at eSim Games can be bothered to simply search for "how to debug a program in fullscreen mode".

[Rinix]

If you ever needed proof that Steel Beasts is going to end due to Ssnake being out of touch, this is it. Ssnake insists not once, but twice, that Steel Beasts doesn't have a T-64B. Abraxas has to correct him.

[Rinix]

http://www.steelbeasts.com/topic/12171-larger-briefing-font-for-for-displays-2550x1440/
Increasing the font size in the briefings is apparently too hard for eSim Games. Or they have better things to do.

[Asid]

http://www.steelbeasts.com/topic/12171-larger-briefing-font-for-for-displays-2550x1440/
Increasing the font size in the briefings is apparently too hard for eSim Games. Or they have better things to do.

My expectations are low 

[Cougar11]

http://www.steelbeasts.com/topic/12171-larger-briefing-font-for-for-displays-2550x1440/
Increasing the font size in the briefings is apparently too hard for eSim Games. Or they have better things to do.

My expectations are low 

"This is general blah blah, and our army wants larger font size now!!!" Snake "right away sir, no problem sir, anything else we can do sir?"

Sent from my Moto Z (2) using Tapatalk