To be fair, there must be quite a few Oscar Kleins with interest in tank sims (especially their suspensions) and helo sims. They are more common than you would think.

Aside from all the flaming here, this is still the main reason I won't buy Steel Beasts. For one, the stubborn rebuff of this crew to bring this sim into the 20th century, and the attitude that graphics are for eye-candy pie-heads. Bought the first one, and the downright comical infantry ruined the whole experience to the point it was taken from my HD.

No shadows, no realistic suspension or animations, still. Beg borrow and/or steal it from Battlefront if you have to. Their tanks in CM Shock Force embarrass SB (or should), and it's not even a tank sim. I would argue that the fidelity of their engine is every bit as complicated and realistic as SB. Sims are about immersion for gamers.

If graphics in sims are so over-rated and unimportant, why the 'eye-candy' in LOMAC and IL-2? Why aren't the developers on the sites flaming people for asking for these things? Or (as I suspect) are we just so lucky that SB is available to us lowly gamers at all? I realize we're just second fiddle to the army and should just be happy with the scraps we're given after the 'real' customer is served. What a load of arrogant BS.

Hehe.. you've really done it now aleader

-C-

fire in the hole...*ducks for cover*

Sabot up! Flame on...

You gotta say SB looks pretty good for a 19th century sim.. no visible steam anywhere..

What is the point of flaming? If nothing else, it looks like you are trolling from this reply you just made. Quite simply, if someone doesn't like a consumer product then they do not purchase it. That is the natural way of all things, is it not?

aleader, your opinion is just as valid as anyone else's. The main difference between IL2, CMSF, and Steel Beasts is that the former are catering primarily to the consumer market where good looks are essential for commercial success. With Steel Beasts however the situation is different because about 90% of eSim's profits are made in the market for training solutions where functionality trumps good looks; still, about 20% of our development time (and 97% of all customer support) is spent on the Personal Edition, or closely related to it - clearly a disproportionate amount. SB Pro PE users are anything but second class customers to us.

We at eSim Games like good looks as anyone else, but we must concede that as long as the looks get the job done, the majority of our customers is served better by adding a new feature that enables a certain tactical training scenario that could not be adequately trained before. If that means that we cannot win some consumer customers who place a higher emphasis on visuals, that is unfortunate but the price to pay for superior functionality and code maturity.


Now, we tripled the number of programmers this year, and one of the reasons was that we also want to give SB Pro a facelift. It will come sooner than you think, just not this December; some things simply take more time than is available if we want to maintain the rhythm of a new major PE release every 15 months. We were confronted with the choice to have everybody wait for at least another half a year, or to bring a playable T-72 as soon as possible to the community that demanded it for several years now. We chose the latter option.


Whether I "flamed" Oscar lies in the eye of the beholder. I never, in all the years, rejected the suggestion of animated roadwheels as "rubbish" or anything. I just pointed out that from a functional point of view they add very little, so inevitably it can't be very high on our priority list. (I also pointed out that if he indeed is the same guy that has developed some notoriety on the SteelBeasts.com forum for his solo campaigning for animated roadwheels, in his third year he's beginning to sound a bit repetitive. If you're honest to yourself you'll admit that a mere repetition of the same arguments from the same one user can hardly be the basis to change the course of a development work plan unless the argument is of really exceptional quality). If I came across as a condescending arrogant #%&*$# - that wasn't my intent, but please let me say that maybe you just don't know the full background here.

Our prime consideration is code stability, followed by functional expansion, then low effort-high yield utility value improvements, followed by "better looks". Everybody is entitled to a different emphasis, but as it happens we are in charge of the development of our own software and nobody else. Therefore we will follow our own guidelines as long as we see financial reward from our customers. Other developers do a great job with their products.

Alright folks...screenshot thread... I keep coming back in expecting another screenshot and then leave disappointed. lol

Please take the discussion to the SB Forum below.

Thank you... and welcome new folks, hope you didn't join to become a thorn in my side!

make no mistake, we've wanted to implement shadows, lighting and all sorts of eye-candy for years, but because of the military contracts, and us only having a single programmer, we haven't been able to. then again, it is because of the military contracts that we are still here, if we only worked for the civilian market, Esim would have gone bankrupt 7 years ago. instead, we are doing exceptionally well, and now have the manpower and resources to expand on SB, and make it what it always should have been.
we now have 3 programmers, 3 artists, and 1 sound guy/bughunter, plus some betatesters, compared to 1 year ago, when it was basically only 1 artist, and 1 programmer and 1 sound guy.

FYI, the infantry in SB has received more upgrades than just graphical ones. they're still not where we'd wish they'd be, but they're better now than before (they now duck and start firing when fired upon instead of run around like lemmings getting killed).
i agree that more effective infantry is important to a tanksim, since they will provide a more realistic challenge for tanks, but we're working on a tanksim, so we have a tendency to focus on the tanks, and forget infantry.

Double post, but this is just too cool to miss



Also a cheap shot to save the popcorn thread... :-)

-C-

very very cool.. thx

Very nice vid, considering that we are still a month away from release it makes me wonder as to the vastness of what we are getting here with the update

Recall that infantry sprites in Steel Beasts were industry standard for that generation of games. Panzer Commander- which I never really quite understood at all what people liked - had no infantry at all. M1TP2 and Panzer Elite both had infantry sprites. iPanzer '44 had very crude looking boxes triangles and spheres assembled to sort of look like little army men. They sure weren't sprites, they were worse insofar as how they looked. Of all of them, Steel Beasts is the only product that continues to exist and is still supported by the developer. Think about it. For some strange reason, no one complains about the infantry sprites in M1TP2 and Panzer Elite or their graphical limitations by today's standards. Why? They are dead end products, clearly outdated, the developers have folded up and there is no chance to see anything more than what users can come up with to mod them to the extent that it's possible within the software. Yet people rave about these games though they are very much behind the curve in every possible way- moreso than Steal Beasts. This doesn't make sense to me- Steel Beasts looks and plays better in every possible way. People should be slapping those games down left and right if Steel Beasts is the measure here, but more often than not, they're trying to get them up and running. To each his own, but it sure is inconsistent.

Hmmmm, I'm getting quite excited myself.

Good job team and that was a nice response from Ssnake. Esim continues to be a real good bunch of guys. Best of luck with 2.6 and the future!!! It sounds very exciting!

guess it's all down to the price point. people don't want to pay 125$ for a game.

More new images.

Ssnake sent the following info with the screenshots...

"These show the New Zealanders' variant of the LAV-25 family, the NZLAV-IMV. It is more heavily armored than the Australian LAV (as I understand it, the Aussies wanted to retain the amphibious capability while the Kiwis emphasized protection more; ultimately they are both going together on deployments in the South Pacific area)."

The NZLAV is looking good! Thanks for sharing those guod and Ssnake

WOW!

No shadows and 2D "Sprite"-based particle effects really detracts from the wonderful vehicle models....

I understand that this sim is based on Military Contract sales but since it's "ADVERTISED" and sold on the CIVILIAN COMMERCIAL MARKET it should have shadows and 3D particle effects in this day and age.

I applaud the move to 3D non "Sprite"-based infantry as a move in a positive direction.

If yea don't like don't buy it. I personally can't wait. I do have to say I am very addicted to sims. Eye candy is just that eye candy and when it coems down to it, system working and modeled is more important then shadows.I guess why I still play Falcon after 13 years and I had Steel beast 1 and follow this and a few others.



Bullet