Steel Beasts 5.0 Thread

[Rinix]

https://www.steelbeasts.com/topic/4546-steel-beasts-content-wish-list/page/343/#comment-241238

At this point, TBH, I want to leave the V4 engine largely alone, and focus on the V5 engine development. There are many things that hold us back - DirectX 9 being an obvious part - so ... in a nutshell, we could give the whole building a lick of paint, but at some point you have to acknowledge that paint isn't the problem, but the walls.
The V4 engine is essentially a dead end. It probably looks okay-ish for another two years or so, but every day a programmer spends on embellishing V4 is a day he doesn't work on V5. Not only does that prolong the V5 development time. Almost every new feature that we develop for V4 also needs an extra effort to be converted to the new engine. Not only would we be slowing down the important work by opportunity cost, we would also increase the workload.

[Rinix]

https://www.steelbeasts.com/topic/17731-whats-your-fps/#comment-241510

There are no guarantees. Generally, last year's high-end graphics cards fare better than this year's mid-tier ones (e.g. any model with a ...70 or higher in its name from NVidia, or the corresponding counterparts from AMD) will usually fare well. The ...60s, even "Ti" variants, will work fine most of the time if you're willing to reduce level of detail, the ..50 models, well, if that's your budget limit, be ready to reduce screen resolution and details.

In SB Pro, depending on the scenario, the CPU can become the bottleneck. This is not a call to go for the highest performing single-thread processor on the market! Rather, maybe some scenarios are overly ambitious because people like to push the envelope when making them. If there are enough enemy forces in close proximity, line of sight calculations will kill pretty much any system simply because their computational demands scale exponentially.
And while SB Pro in its current form is a single-threaded application (and will remain so until version 5 comes along), there are parts of the game that are, indeed, using multithreading. This will become noticeable in scenario loading times.

So, I think that any CPU that is recommended for your choice of graphics card will do fine; if in doubt, go for the fastest processor with the most cores that still ist at ca. 65W thermal design power. A few years ago my sweet spot was a 16 core Ryzen. Beyond that point (Threadripper, i9, ...) their prices go up steeply, as do the cooling requirements, and the resulting noise pollution in your computer room. These are also factors that should be considered. I really don't want to have to use noise-cancelling headphones while playing a computer game, and install an AC unit to shed the waste heat. As it is, the 65W from that Ryzen are exactly at the edge between "performant enough" and "heating up the office in an annoying manner".

[Rinix]

https://www.steelbeasts.com/topic/17776-template-creation-question/#comment-241892
This is in reference to the future increasing of the maximum number of slots in a unit template:

Not in V4; the unit IDs fit into some specific integer byte length; changing that means changing everything. Features that require tho "change everything" are reserved for V5+.

[Rinix]

https://www.steelbeasts.com/topic/17818-vehicle-crew-models/#comment-242420

It's not very complicated, actually. The helmets on each character have a certain protective value, "armor thinckness" if you will, that's matched against types of small arms projectiles. A "9mm" rated helmet might stop a rifle bullet at long ranges, if it hits the helmet-covered area. That's all part of what we do.
But there's vehicles were we have 3D characters representing vehicle crews, and there are older vehicles where they are a box inside the turret/hull. here it gets a bit more complicated. As they are on the way out, I'll spare you the details.

[Rinix]

The TPD-K1 sight for the T-72B3 will have its behavior fixed in version 5.0: https://www.steelbeasts.com/topic/17857-t-72b3-gas-tpd-k1-elevates-when-reloading/#comment-242861

[Rinix]

https://www.steelbeasts.com/topic/17864-soviet-night-sights/#comment-242892

Steel Beasts explicitly does not simulate night combat to a degree that we would consider it adequate. We do have day/night cycles, and there's some approximation in place for scenarios starting at dawn or to be completed by dusk. But we never claimed that all vehicles would behave adequately at full night conditions because a lot of other stuff would need to be in place, like illumination fire missions, flare traps, flare guns, active searchlights (NIR and white light), and the associated AI. In fact, when we introduced day/night cycles in version 3.0 and 4.0, I explicitly pointed out such limitations. Guess it's about time to remind everybody about this.
I wouldn't mind at all to see all such elements in place one day, but that will require a new render and simulation engine.

[Rinix]

https://www.steelbeasts.com/topic/17864-soviet-night-sights/#comment-242949

Well, the decision to develop a new render and simulation engine has been made a good while ago, for good reasons (and night combat capability was not the center of our justification for that approach). Still, if we're doing this anyway we might just as well attempt to make things pretty and add more functionality.

[Rinix]

https://www.steelbeasts.com/topic/17753-steel-beasts-content-wish-list/page/348/#comment-243094

Improvements of AI and user interface are definitely on the agenda for our future V5 development. Suppressing on the move is definitely desirable.

[Rinix]

https://www.steelbeasts.com/topic/17753-steel-beasts-content-wish-list/page/350/#comment-243730

No, version 5 is still a good distance out. But given that there's been an unbroken rythm of a three-year release cycle since version 3.0 (2013; 2016 (4.0), 2019 (4.1), 2022 (4.3)), the assumption that there might be a version 4.4 or 4.5 in 2025 is not entirely unfounded. I also wouldn't rule out a 4.7 and 4.9 PE release, as a PE 5.x release can only happen after all version 4 content has been converted (you wouldn't want to give up on established (major) features, I suppose, though some functional loss might be tolerable if restored later).

For our military customers, we'll follow a hybrid transitional strategy where they will use late version 4 and early version 5 applications in a mixed environment where V5 gradually replaces V4 usage as one by one the existing features get migrated (or new applications get added).

[Rinix]

https://www.steelbeasts.com/topic/17753-steel-beasts-content-wish-list/page/350/#comment-243796

The two things I wish would happen sooner rather than later is to let there be platoon sizes larger than six and to let the creator of the mission assign the symbology to a unit.

https://www.steelbeasts.com/topic/17753-steel-beasts-content-wish-list/page/350/#comment-243800

These are V5 topics, I must say.

[Rinix]

https://www.steelbeasts.com/topic/2106-read-this-if-you-have-windows-and-an-x-fi-sound-card/#comment-244145

Not yet, no. But the sound engine will be replaced for V5, potentially even earlier.

[Rinix]

https://www.steelbeasts.com/topic/17753-steel-beasts-content-wish-list/page/352/#comment-244164

We'll show something when there's a good opportunity, and something worth showing. Until then I won't report much. But as I told before, V4 will stick around for a while. Even if the engine was complete already (which it is not) we'd still have to convert all the artwork (easy-ish) and almost every V4 feature (hard).
Only when all that is complete will you PE players get to see V5. Our military customers will have mixed use for a transition period as more and more V5 modules gradually replace V4, but that's not an option for the Personal Edition.

[Rinix]

https://www.steelbeasts.com/topic/17459-steel-beasts-works-on-linux-wine/#comment-244762

That being said, will the SB5 code base be less dependent on Microsoft/Windows APIs? You bet. Just in case.

[Rinix]

Planned features:

One for the Ver 5.x List:

The ability of Ver 5.x Briefings to support say graphics and HTML.

For example, then the bits of the Idistaviso OPORD could be in the Briefing (rather than hope people read it). Similarly it would be great if you could put links in the Briefing to the Wiki, so you don't have to write pages on how to fly a Munin, etc.

Yes, these are planned features for V5.