Spring news please

[oscar19681]

Hey i know esim is starting a scenario competition and thats great news to see new scenarios out there. But i,m kinda supprised aside from the the scenerio thing there is no new news whatsoever. No update news no new anouncments etc etc. will there be any soon?

[Kingtiger]

Last time was "summer update" and you been around a while now Oscar so you would know that "summer" is the last day on what counts as "late summer".. September or around there as best I would bet

[Volcano]

How is it that people get into a habit of expecting something?

[Tacbat]

Here's news for you:

"Scientists claim to have found a cure for awakeness..."

[Tango29]

I was expecting a reply like that...:clap:

[dejawolf]

don't need no scientist to cure awakeness, all that is needed is a good solid blow to the head, leading to a comatose state.

[Skybird03]

As an ex-psychologist I must say that Volcano and Dejawolf would make two excellent therapists, probably! :biggrin:

[sabot_ready]

With the current exchange rates between Germany and Australia, I heard Ssnake found it to be cheaper for him to use Sydney time. Therefore in the Southern hemisphere it is currently fall.....looks like we have six more months to go for a spring update.

[GH_Lieste]

Spring news..

Days are getting longer, trees are gaining leaves, there are ducklings on the river and its bl***y raining again.

[Ssnake]

The earliest possible release is after official acceptance of the Pizarro IFV by the Spanish MoD, and then another thorough internal testing phase (six to eight weeks). Informally we have green lights from the Spanish test team, so that's definitely a plus. On the other hand, we're a bit behind the original schedule in other places, so I expect us to start the internal beta test in early June, so a summer release could be expected in mid July or August.

This is only reflecting the current state of things and may be subject to revision.

I have also indicated in other threads that there is the important issue of terrain themes and the bumpiness factors that may influence old scenarios and maps. There are essentially two options - we fix a few terrain themes by our subjective choosing as we see fit, release them with the next update, and be done with it. Or we wait for the community to turn in theme file updates and scenario updates to be included with the next release.

From the lethargic reception of my announcements so far I take it that you rather wait until everything is too late and then scream bloody murder. Let me tell you at this point however that I will have zero sympathy for your cries since there has been ample warning and not a single theme file has been turned in yet other than those that I changed myself. You can limit your activity to pure consumerism and face the consequences, or become active as a community and contribute. The choice is yours.

To those sissies among you who feel offended by my talk I can only respond in advance that this seems to be the only way to raise your attention lately. I don't want to offend anybody for the fun of it but to raise awareness for an important issue. The beta testers, by the way, are free to give advice based on their experiences with version 2.386.

[ashdivay]

yall folks crack me up haha lol !

[fidelthefallguy]

I have also indicated in other threads that there is the important issue of terrain themes and the bumpiness factors that may influence old scenarios and maps. There are essentially two options - we fix a few terrain themes by our subjective choosing as we see fit, release them with the next update, and be done with it. Or we wait for the community to turn in theme file updates and scenario updates to be included with the next release. ..........

..... Let me tell you at this point however that I will have zero sympathy for your cries since there has been ample warning and not a single theme file has been turned in yet other than those that I changed myself. You can limit your activity to pure consumerism and face the consequences, or become active as a community and contribute. The choice is yours.

good point there, I guess you have to put your time and effort in to getting the actual code to work right rather than messing around with theme files... That said. I could spend all week fixing the bumpiness on all of the theme files I have and send them to you, but a, I would rather be playing the game than fixing it, b, until I have a version that actually shows me the results of all that editing its kind of pointless as I can not see the results and don't know if Its what others would consider to be the correct 'bumpiness'. If you released something that allows the effect to be seen it would help and I would be more than happy to fix my themes so that they will work with the new code. until then I'm not going to waist my time fixing something I will more than likely have to fix again when the new code is released.

On your point about people "You can limit your activity to pure consumerism and face the consequences, or become active as a community and contribute." well honestly if you open up the program to allow us to mod more than just a few image files ( ie add new models and weapons) or provide free labor to fix theme maps that should have been fixed before release, and allow the game/sim to grow beyond its very limited original mandate (imposed to serve military customers needs not the communities) to its full potential maybe more people would become more active within the community.

s!

[GH_Lieste]

Currently (2.386) the effect of bumpiness is roughly as follows for a wheeled APC on hard, easy going (High traction/low drag/high hardness):

Bump0, speed = 0.95

Bump0.2, speed = 0.8

Bump0.5, speed = 0.62

Bump1.0, speed = <0.45

The vehicle speed reduces with increases of drag, as currently.

For any bumpiness value above 0, there will be some movement of the vehicle in pitch and heave (I think). There is a co-incidence stabilisation model in place, so that at high bumpiness values the gun will be inhibited for some portion of the time.

These values may be subject to change, but any theme with bumpiness of 1.0 for most terrain types will be pretty hard to live with. As a starting point I wouldn't suggest general good going use a bumpiness above roughly 30%.

Suspension damage greatly increases the effect of bumpiness and can easily immobilise an otherwise mobile vehicle. It might be that once the terrain effects are finalised, that you might need to re-edit and increase bumpiness levels slightly if you want to restrict movement, but the average current theme may not allow any significant mobility at all for many units.

[Ssnake]

good point there, I guess you have to put your time and effort in to getting the actual code to work right rather than messing around with theme files... That said. I could spend all week fixing the bumpiness on all of the theme files I have and send them to you, but a, I would rather be playing the game than fixing it, b, until I have a version that actually shows me the results of all that editing its kind of pointless as I can not see the results and don't know if Its what others would consider to be the correct 'bumpiness'.

Thanks for proving my point that few if any have bothered reading my rather detailed advice in the Mods section. All I ever asked for was that people who created a scenario or a theme file are also the ones to fix the them.

I'm not demanding anything from anybody. All I'm saying is that you as the community have the choice about what will happen - fix it before while there is still time, or fix it afterwards. We, eSim Games, made a mistake with 2.304 when introducing ground clutter with those pesky rocks into forest floors by default. OK, so we learned from this that changes affecting mobility need to be announced well in advance. Which we do this time.

There's a ton of user created content, and there's no way that at team of our size could go out and fix all this (especially not since we don't know if any of the the authors set the bumpiness intentionally to 100%). So, either you do it or nobody will, and you do it before or after.

Freeriding is a strategy of course. One can hope that someone else will do it. It's just that a little work by a few volunteers NOW will prevent tearshed by everybody in a few weeks from now.

All that you NEED to know at this point in order to fix things is that

• higher percentages will restrict the top speed down to a crawl,
• wheeled vehicles are stronger affected than tracked,
• reasonable values are between 0 and 30%
• values beyond 30% will mean "difficult terrain" - ranging from bad to worse.

[Ghost]

...so a summer release could be expected in mid July or August.

Please take that back Ssnake, you know what will happen when that critical bug appears 2 days before planned release and you have to push the release to september...

"But you said july"

"Whine whine whine whine..."

"We hate you"

"I want my money back"

"OMFG how can you do this to me, i have planned my entire summer around the release of this upgrade"

:-D

[oscar19681]

good point there, I guess you have to put your time and effort in to getting the actual code to work right rather than messing around with theme files... That said. I could spend all week fixing the bumpiness on all of the theme files I have and send them to you, but a, I would rather be playing the game than fixing it, b, until I have a version that actually shows me the results of all that editing its kind of pointless as I can not see the results and don't know if Its what others would consider to be the correct 'bumpiness'. If you released something that allows the effect to be seen it would help and I would be more than happy to fix my themes so that they will work with the new code. until then I'm not going to waist my time fixing something I will more than likely have to fix again when the new code is released.

On your point about people "You can limit your activity to pure consumerism and face the consequences, or become active as a community and contribute." well honestly if you open up the program to allow us to mod more than just a few image files ( ie add new models and weapons) or provide free labor to fix theme maps that should have been fixed before release, and allow the game/sim to grow beyond its very limited original mandate (imposed to serve military customers needs not the communities) to its full potential maybe more people would become more active within the community.

s!

I reallt do agree with fidel regarding opening the code to the community so that we can mod much more then we can do now. I mean ive seen some very very good skins out there and can only imagine what would be possible if we could mod 3-d models and ohter stuff.

[daskal]

I reallt do agree with fidel regarding opening the code to the community so that we can mod much more then we can do now. I mean ive seen some very very good skins out there and can only imagine what would be possible if we could mod 3-d models and ohter stuff.

Well even "SB3" has more likelyness then this - but I think its OK this way. SB is unique because some of the models and equipment we get to use in this SIM are modelled as realistic as possible... even if this goes only for 10% of the vehicles that we have.

Opening up the code would cause more harm than good IMO. I think its enough that we are able to change some parts of the SIM to our own taste that do not influence the simulation itself (like skins, textures and sounds).

[fidelthefallguy]

Thanks for proving my point that few if any have bothered reading my rather detailed advice in the Mods section. All I ever asked for was that people who created a scenario or a theme file are also the ones to fix the them.

I can not say I have read every post about this. I don't have the time and often miss them, sorry about that, but my point still stands. I have god knows how many theme files I have made along with edits to existing ones. As I said I could change them and send them to you, but I don't know who else has edited the same file and how. Plus not being able to see the results makes it hard to know if the changes will have effect I want in my maps. I will not endeavor to change default theme files, but my own I will when the code is released and I will be more than happy to provide them for public use once I know they work.

As for opening the code. I did not mean that the code should be made public. Esims would go broke over night and we would be reliant on our selves to fix the major problems and I'm sure no one knows as much about the code as those whom wrote it. I was meaning that the code should be expanded to allow for the addition of 3rd party vehicle's, buildings, weaponry and hight maps. As the community has asked many times for new vehicle's and even older ones to be made playable (don't mention the T-72 ..Doh!) and have been given many reasons for not getting them. These reasons mainly focus on the fact that a, eSims doesn't have the time or staff, b, the military customers don't want or need it, so the community can not have it. c, the code would be too hard it implement. I can understand some of this reasoning. ie lack of time and staff but other reasons are a bit lame and really do have simple solutions is enough effort where focused on them. I believe however that the main reason for not allowing 3rd party mods is that if this happens eSims would no longer be required by its military customers to provide new units and therefor would destroy eSims long term business plan. The up side to this would be that eSims would have more time to devote to new code and maybe even SB 2. all that is just a theory and not meant to be a dig at esims. its Just my opinion formulated from what I have read here on the forums and my own experience with coding and modding.

[oscar19681]

Well the main reason i made this topic was an attempt to awaken the community a bit since it seems to me that the activity has slowly gone down around here. By this i mean that the scenerio,s and mods that are made and such are low to say at least. Guess we,ll just have to wait until june to see some interresting scenarios form the community.

[GH_Lieste]

If it seems slow, and you feel... understimulated, why not create some of those fantastic resources that you want yourself

[oscar19681]

I dont exactly dont know what you mean but if you mean scenarios i have contributed some scenarios just check the download section.

[Tacbat]

Ssnake,

Would it be possible to post up a Youtube video or two of the effects that different values of bumpiness have? Say 50% and 100%, that way we can visualize what will happen.

[Ssnake]

The visual effect isn't terribly prominent. Vehicles wiggle more. It does however reduce their top speed the higher the bumpiness factor is, and it does affect shooting on the move as we will have a new model to check for coincidence between sight and gun position. This means on the one hand that the shot dispersion increases a bit, and that there may be delays between pulling the trigger and the gun actually firing, if the fire control computer blocks the trigger due to a lack of proper alignment.

These are secondary effects. The biggest relevant impact is the reduction of vehicle speeds, and I guess that's easy enough to imagine without the help of a video showing a vehicle moving slowly.

[CalAB]

Fully completely off topic: Is it possible to install some type of library for all the units involved? Open up the page, highlight a unit and it's brought up in modeled detail along with relative info. If it's easy enough could the community have it included into the next update? For newbs like myself it would be a cool scenario designing aid. Maybe you could even change the skins with it and see the effect instantly.

Edited.

Edited again dammit.

[Guest HAVOC131]

wow...ok then. Anyone remember Operation Flash Point? Anyone know why its still very much alive? Its the mods and addons and updates that keep it going. Now I dont have the time or the intell to due much with SB2, but I do want to thank the people who do and hope to see some new content soon. It would be a shame to see a great game like this fade away..... Thanks again, Havoc 82nd AB out.