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Microprose is back and may use TitanIM/Outerra engine


Galileo

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why do you keep posting these here and without any sort of your own commentary? you seem uninterested in steel beasts altogether, you joined this site recently and all your posts on the site are in this thread promoting outside material. is that correct?

 

it is rather incoherent at any rate. ww2 aircraft interiors, yet microprose's website says that micropose is in the business of "modernized combat simulation" with a picture of an australian abrams tank on the website. ww2 aircraft, modern infantry, tanks, helicopters-

there seems to be no focus. you can get jazzed because of screenshots without any context though, sure.

 

 

Edited by Captain_Colossus
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The last posts weren't so much "about" Microprose, you're creating the impression of simply parroting their propaganda, down to their ridiculously pompous "announcement of an announcement", without adding much of your own lately. Screenshots, I suppose, are okay. Concept art isn't news, just proof that some people can paint soldier motives, and others can stick a logo on it. The question really is, are you just here to partake in a concerted effort of brand necromancy?

 

I don't want to come across as hostile to people for merely mentioning other producs and other companies, I have always found that attitude from other developers petty-minded. But if a first-time poster here plants a thread about sneakers, he gets kicked as a spammer. This thread does not play in the same league but it has been shifting closer to that edge lately; at the very least it's not the style that will win my sympathy and support. If Microprose wanted to advertise on our board they could contact us to ask for our advertisement rates; hint: This is an ad-free site.

 

But here we are: A four-page thread --- about what, exactly?

The announcement that an ex Bohemia manager who has licensed a planetary render engine has acquired the Microprose brand and has formed an alliance with the commercial head/co-founder of Microprose, and none of the creative talents that made the company special, thirty years ago. That's it. Four pages of very little substance inflated by a lot of hot air, the old Bill Stealy sales engine revving up again. Wake me up when there's something newsworthy.

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3 hours ago, bobm said:

> thread about microprose

> wrong to post microprose related stuff

 

okay.....

Even if the Microprose story comes to nothing , what harm is done by discussing it on this foum ?

I would love to see a new Gunship , European Air War , M1TP .

Some people are so negative and bitter .

 

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39 minutes ago, Toastman said:

Even if the Microprose story comes to nothing , what harm is done by discussing it on this foum ?

I would love to see a new Gunship , European Air War , M1TP .

Some people are so negative and bitter .

 

Did you get the point? It not the content...its the style.

And as of now...there is nothing to discuss apart from a few artworks/graphics. 

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Look, I have nothing against discussing other tank games on our forum. We don't have such a fragile ego that we don't permit it. But at the very least, contribute something of your own rather than simply duplicating advertisement, because that's what it is. Take the Apache screenshots, for example. Posted twice, once without a logo in it, then a second time with the Microprose logo.

Go to an Apple support forum and post Samsung ads for the latest Android gadget, and see how well it goes down there. At the end of the day, once that Microprose starts working on a tank simulation we'll be competitors. Simply duplicating their propaganda here does nothing except building uncritical hype. That's something they can do on their own homepage, Twitter, and Facebook accounts. Will they tolerate people crashing their party, telling everybody that Steel Beasts is best? I don't think so.

 

So, as far as reporting goes, nobody here minds that, quite the contrary. But it shouldn't cross the line towards simple duplication of ads. The alternative is to declare discussion of other products and other companies entirely off-limits. I don't want that, it'd be parochial and petty-minded. But I also don't want to be an idiot, inviting his own site to be vandalized by a competitor's hype train. For this to work it requires a modicum of etiquette. I categorically reject the notion that asking for manners is negative and bitter.

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in this particular case my curiosity wants to get to the bottom of it, all there is to it. i will go to bat for any developer who takes the risks and puts a sincere effort into it, my spidey sense is pinging though. since all of this initially pointed to a competitor more similar to arma3 than steel beasts or dcs or il2, say, but then seems to be schizophrenic with different time periods, I am curious by anyone who doesn't seem to see why all of this looks too good to be true. then you add wild bill stealey into it, who also looks a bit odd, and perhaps a couple of others, then the behavior looks odd, that too makes me curious what could be motivating so much effort to spend time convincing people that microprose is back but in such a way that immediately looks opaque and obscure

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That the buildings are the same is no accident, but there's also nothing nefarious about it. We licensed a building artwork package a while ago, and they licensed the same, not the least because we WANT to have similar looking towns between Titan and Steel Beasts, for military customers who want to use both, in the same exercise.

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14 hours ago, Captain_Colossus said:

the buildings in the below video ought to look familiar, they are in steel beasts. at the bottom are screenshots with timestamps where they appear

 

 

 

2.jpg

1.jpg

3.jpg

Just like Steel Beasts!

 

Except...You know...Worse in every way it could be worse. ;)

 

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 i think there is a lot of variation in graphics quality based on end user created object libraries. in some videos the towns look not so good, including the textures, in others they look a lot better- not quite as good they the videos of i've seen of grand theft auto V, which was released years ago, but still close enough, and for an engine as scalable

as it is from the ground to the vacuum of space, and simulate almost any kind of terrain locale, i'm impressed with it. i don't think it procedurally generates some kinds of details that steel beasts might be able to plant in the map editor like smaller flowers, although i could be mistaken

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All I'm saying is what I've been telling critics of Steel Beasts for two decades - judge it by what it attempts to do, not what you want it to be. In some ways it was very clear what Steel Beasts was supposed to be two decades ago, and yet it took us those two decades to improve on a lot of areas simply because it requires a fair bit of effort. The Outerra engine is very good at the big scale, in some areas astonishingly good beyond mere visuals such as the ability to pull the road grid and building footprints in near real-time when doing an accelerated suborbital flight.

I've seen the live demos, I have a bit of an idea what can be done.

Steel Beasts is (much) better at the small scale (and by "small" I mean under 200x200km², and the tactical scale of the Brigade and below).

 

So, the Outerra (Titan) engine appears to be perfectly suited for the maritime and air domain (although much of the Titan team's development focus is at the shooter level). We'll see how well this all lends to the making of entertainment-focused games. What should be kept in mind is that the Outerra engine is in development since 2008 and not many game developers have made something with it. I don't klnow why, but there's the Anteworld demo still in 0.7something state, the Middle Earth (fan?) project, a virtual Mars (still in development, but even then more of a virtual globe than an actual game) ... and ... that's it. For all its capabilities and astonishing fractal beauty, why is it not more popular? I don't know the reasons, but I'm sure there are some.

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Microprose will only do games and not simulations, the "simulations" from the late 80 early 90's we played at the time, are considered Midcore now when compared to real sims (SB Pro , DCS, ....). They seem to have a lot of projects and want to deliver soon (hope it's not vaporware or games like Duke Nuken  Forever  1997-2011). So they will go after games like Arma.  Steel Beasts has nothing to worry about. Even with a big team they didn't have the knowledge of EsimGames (unless they buy the company)

 

PS: If this thread about the come back of MP is to sensitive, you can delete it.

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On 9/6/2019 at 11:30 PM, Captain_Colossus said:

in this particular case my curiosity wants to get to the bottom of it, all there is to it. i will go to bat for any developer who takes the risks and puts a sincere effort into it, my spidey sense is pinging though. since all of this initially pointed to a competitor more similar to arma3 than steel beasts or dcs or il2, say, but then seems to be schizophrenic with different time periods, I am curious by anyone who doesn't seem to see why all of this looks too good to be true. then you add wild bill stealey into it, who also looks a bit odd, and perhaps a couple of others, then the behavior looks odd, that too makes me curious what could be motivating so much effort to spend time convincing people that microprose is back but in such a way that immediately looks opaque and obscure

+1

I also am also wondering what direction micropose are taking.

I am clearly stating the obvious but,

The market has moved on since there hay day. trying to complete against 

DCS Esim etc in the area of fidelity anyway is going to be difficult and expensive.

Games like war thunder and WOT have the light entertainment side of the market.

So it leaves me wondering what there strategy is.

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