Captain_Colossus

Thanks for the comments, though I'm not sure it's very practical to have a template for dirt layers. Each skin is different and mixes colors differently, and so on. I often recycle some details which are unessecary to create from scratch over and over such as the glass for vision blocks, but that's so much different than the way weathering or dirt effects would interact with individual skins.

Desert skin for the M1A1

Finishing on a little odds and ends, regretably, the track texture is reversed, but it will be optional anyway.

Sounds like you might be having a Codemeter issue, it's not Windows 7, if Codemeter isn't working properly, you're not going anywhere. You should elaborate about what's not working- maybe your problem is that Codemeter license needs an update, nothing more- or the dongle could be damaged and needs to be replaced.

Conceptually, it's not so much a matter of stopping it- ERA doesn't simply put up armor thick enough to stop it, the point is to violently spin or snap the penetrator so that it becomes unstable in flight- it's not simply continuing in a straight line. The idea is to impart yaw forces so that it changes enough course to become dampen the effect. Compound laminate armors work in a similar way on the HEAT jet as well, for instance, the idea of the ceramic tiles in the M1 Abrams sandwhich isn't to put up a barrier to stop it, but like ERA, the ceramic material reacts and shatters in the face of the HEAT jet, hopefully enough to disrupt the flow.

They are different things anyway. Shtora is just one tier of protection- IR dazzlers, jammers- which works in conjunction with a hard kill system like Arena.

What I don't think they're going to do is simply have a reaction like go to the ground and then stand up again and resume a defined path into blasts, gunfire, and so on. In peacetime, civilians might stop what they're doing and investigate a disturbance- a loud explosion goes off, and they might go check out the commotion. But when it's known they are in the middle of a warzone, the behavior is quite a bit different- if it weren't, there would be no such things as an exodus of refugees fleeing centers of heavy fighting. You'll never be able to model the complex behavior of human beings in every circumstance, that's certainly not a realistic goal. At the same time, it's not possible to forsee and script escape routes for every civilian on the map under every circumstance, it's not practical to do that now with the infantry. So, while I'm not saying that Steel Beasts believably mimic human behavior so as to pass the Turing test, I'm saying I think it would do well to have a greater range of behavior.

If neutrally aligned parties and non-combatants are planned for the future, I hope there's some logic which makes them behave as such, that is, if there's a tank battle in the middle of the street, civilians don't simply hang around because they weren't given explicit orders to exit or retreat. I think there should be an implicit intent worked into the routines for both combatants and non-combatants to leave a combat area without given orders to do so- for example, failing a morale check and recognizing a hopeless situation, even dismounts wouldn't necessarily wait around to see if they die in place. After certain conditions are fulfilled, it may make more sense for exposed infantry and civilians to retreat to a sensible direction- towards the edge of the map, out of sight, running for cover, anything more than taking up a prone position at a map checkpoint and waiting forever until given orders through direct human intervention. I don't doubt eSim has already thought of this, but it may be a difficult matter of developing believable, automated routines I've never quite seen done in any other program before.

Notwithstanding the particular units stationed around Caen, the most common tank issued to German units was the Panzer IV. Whether by mistaken ID or whether it was nerves, the Tiger in particular tended to gain such a reputation that nervous Allied crews would report anything as a possible Tiger- if a Sherman brewed up and no enemy could be identified, or the threat seemed particularly strong, a Tiger must be shooting. There are also arguably the more dangerous threat with no correlation in Steel Beasts- the towed anti-tank guns, and the self propelled anti tank guns (maybe the M109 and 2S1 could fill in for those). If you tried to flank the Tiger, there might often be StuGs or towed 75 and 88 mm anti-tank guns deployed off axis with panzer troops to stumble into if they tried to flank or bypass a known or suspected Tiger. These threats were extremely difficult to detect, and often gave the greater credit to the Tigers for the high tallies on poor crews.

Simply, this means a line that is perpendicular to the surface- its 'normal'. A two dimensional square has many normals- there are many lines perpendicular to its face if you were to imagine a square drawn on a piece of paper and perpendicular lines extended upwards in three dimensions. The line might refer to a point of light or the path of an object like a SABOT penetrator. Curved surfaces such as those of the pan shaped T series tank, or surfaces which show the imperfections of the armor casting will have lots of interesting interaction with light sources with normal mapping.

Or used to discuss impact angles- for example, we say that modern long rod penetrators tend to 'normalize'- i.e., don't behave like full caliber shells and deflect off of oblique angles but rather bite and turn into vehicle surfaces.

Not normal as in a statistical average, what is meant here is that a light source will come into contact and reflect on vehicle skins. Up until now, shadows and light reflections were only mimicked in the artwork, but Ssnake gives indication here that this will no longer be the case. So, there will have to be some kind of update to the textures, otherwise the artificial shadows and lights will interfere with the real time lighting effect or they will not mix correctly. So for example- the reflection on the T-62 turret is merely simulated, it will always be in the same place regardless of orientiation and lighting conditions, it will not work with a real time, dynamic light source.

Water. I wouldn't mind the 3D engine as it is now for another 5 years but for the opaque blue water textures. Functionally, this also means leveling the sharp, steep slopes that rivers tend to create, making it difficult to script water crossings as units get hung up on river banks and shores.

Doing the faces on the figures is turning out to be the largest bottleneck time-wise, I'm still refining it so it doesn't look like a mask stretched over the model.

Since the original Steel Beasts demo I have not: Married Spawned children Died Missed an update Would you believe there is a positive correlation?

I haven't forgotten these, trying to balance spending time with it, real life, girlfriends, and whatnot. I'm fine tuning the infantry, shouldn't be too much longer, meanwhile added T-62.

So I'll preface what I'm going to say next, lest anyone think my first best passion in life is not studying and conquering women but being pedantic with ordinary meaning of words with y'all. You wouldn't call the grammar police, though- that covers the rules and structure of language, not necessarily its meaning (pragmatics, semiotics, semantics, etc.). Remember, women interest me more, but it's true what I said.

Pulling a con, swindle, scam, or committing some kind of act of fraud are synonymous with fleecing. That's really your word choice? Ok, up to you...

The difference between fraud and annoying people with information requests could entail criminal intent and/or perhaps some kind of civil liability. Now while I understand the courtesy and the need to keep up good relations, I've never known people at Tanknet to be too humble, either. It's a very ego driven forum for a game of one upmanship between the rivet counters. I doubt there's too much in the expectation of compensation other than perhaps at most credits given in the manual. In those cases where there is adult behavior at Tanknet, I don't think they are that naive to believe that they are being conned or something for free information. They will either take the time to be bothered to give it or they won't, but I'd be pretty sure the expectations are rather set up front. Pages of requests are probably more a matter of etiquette, I agree there.

That's not the phrase you really mean- unless you have a known reputation to pull off a fraud scheme, a flim flam.