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Has it really been 20 years???


hoggydog

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the one advantage i can see with steel beasts 1 is that it could conceivably run on old hardware like an old laptop i bought in 2008 (i can also run the earliest version of steel beasts 2 on it with details dialed down); i don't regard laptops as ideal for entertainment, which is why i haven't upgraded to a newer laptop as long as my old laptop is still running. this doesn't mean that steel beasts 1 in itself is better in some category, rather the opposite- because it is more primitive i can run it on more primitive hardware, for the same reason folks who claim they can't or won't get a credit card or can't afford to upgrade may resort to settling on steel beasts 1 rather than being enthusiastic about compromising.

 

it is doubtful that people are going to show as much interest as they might think in obsolete software in 2019 and going forward when it was a bit niche in 2000 when the public version was available- besides, why go back to something which has less features, when even back then we were pining for more features. steel beasts was good at its time but as many of you might recall we were always pestering for this or that in every area you can imagine. now that you got that and arguably more, it is difficult to conceive how current users of 4.0XX are going to go backwards for any significant investment of time. difficult to go back to a sedan you once you upgraded to the porsche, but that is the illusion of nostalgia: you never felt nostalgic about a thing back then when you had it, it always occurs later when life moved on

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The fastest machine in my household is now a notebook (i7-9700K, RTX2070M); the second-fastest machine is another notebook (i7-8700, GTX1080M), the still-adequate machine on which I can run Steel Beasts 4.1 is a six year-old desktop machine (i7-4770K) that received a memory(16->32GByte), and a graphics card upgrade (GTX980).

So, notebooks can be good gaming rigs (if pricey) these days. I wouldn't bother with them if I weren't forced to travel, and demonstrate our software occasionally.

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I have recently revived one of my older computers I had back in the day and turned it to gaming station for games from mid ~2000s. I'm using a 19" CRT monitor for it, and Steel Beasts was the first thing to be installed on it. I played SB1 this weekend on it, even did some custom skinning and after all these years its still a blast to play.

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My 141% where honestly earned with random chance overlapping a dead and a live target, not by deliberately lining up a dozen vehicles behind each other, or using 3P or KETF rounds. I'm not going to risk the legend, however. It would probably require a lot of retries (although I'm confident that I could still do it, given the right circumstances.

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Steel beasts 1 had  some things that SB pro PE hasn't, colour height gradation of maps, making it easier to see hills and dips. it never ever crashed. and it had fewer bugs. 

AI tanks didn't skyline as often either, even tho there was no "stay" order back then. AI seemed more responsive and deadlier back then. 

unless you got up real close, then you could drive around them and they'd be completely useless. and the AI could shoot straight through dense forest you had no chance at seeing through yourself. 
 

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it also had a much smaller hard drive footprint and much simpler file structure, easier and faster installation and you could conceivably buy a boxed gold version off the shelf. I don't regard these as intentional features but the natural consequence of a more primitive state in the technological and commerce state of things back then:  the same advantages could correspond to any computer game in the 90s and 80s. I would say however that for a time sb1 had shadows and better fire and explosions than the earlier states of sb 2. presently however that no longer is the case. i could understand it if esim closed out in 2003 and you never heard of sb pro, there might be more reasons to keep sb1 around. I don't see the point now though, waste of time even to try and get it to run on modern hardware unless for some reason buying sb pro and/or more current hardware aren't possible 

Edited by Captain_Colossus
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Yeah, well, simpler software means you have simpler code, which means less complexity, which equals more stability. There was also only two playable vehicles as well.

 

Also, color graduated height maps were not realistic at all, it was more of an arcade type thing done to make maps easier to read for a purely retail audience. Steel Beasts Pro PE no longer caters to that customer base. 😛

 

Still, lots of fond memories of SB1 - it was the most realistic tank sim of its day, which is saying a lot considering that there were quite a few of them available in the 1990s.

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It certainly was one hell of an actual SIMULATOR in an era when the only competition was borderline "arcade".

 

Neat to see this stuff released.  Makes me wonder, @Ssnake, was there any other "cut content" or perhaps unreleased expansions or add-ons to the original SB?

 

I always wonder about this kinda stuff.  I remember back in the early 90's, Falcon 3.0 was out, along with it's add-ons Hornet and MiG-29, and for a while games were showing up with adverts for the A-10 add-on they were working on...Which, mysteriously, never did show up!

Edited by Maj.Hans
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I don't remember anything specific, certainly not an unreleased expansion. Remember, up to 2009 Steel Beasts was the product of but a single programmer, and we had about only one or two artists at any given time, Volcano for sound, and then me for customer relations/tech support/beta testing etc.; imagine a lot of 16 hour days for a lot of people for quite some time.

If we had had the time and energy to prepare an expansion, we would have released it. Almost nothing was ever wasted during that time. The exception are the menu backgrounds that I added to the video. We ultimately rejected them because they turned out to be too inflexible for a changed manu structure (note the "Map Editor" entry in the wrong font and without the embossing effect), or because there was no coherence in the art style (camo pattern for the main menu, render shots for some elements, a simulated CRT for the options, ...)

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On 11/7/2019 at 7:48 AM, Ssnake said:

My 141% where honestly earned with random chance overlapping a dead and a live target, not by deliberately lining up a dozen vehicles behind each other, or using 3P or KETF rounds. I'm not going to risk the legend, however. It would probably require a lot of retries (although I'm confident that I could still do it, given the right circumstances.

 

I ended up with crazy high hit percentages like that in Instant Action with the M1A2 in 4.0 as enemy vehicles (sometimes over 100 of them) piled up behind the trees. One of the less mentioned improvements in 4.1 is the Instant Action scenarios are now MUCH more challenging.

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Those were good  years. Many intense and immersive moments, i think only Falcon 4.0 gave me comparable experiences. When I was a little boy, i loved to play cowboys and indians, and sneaking on the "enemy". SB was the perfect digitization of this sort of gameplay.

 

Sometimes my whole life feels like a running simulation.

 

Too bad I need to move on on second to last tracks. But then: still occasionally rumbling around.

Edited by Skybird03
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On 11/8/2019 at 2:55 AM, Ssnake said:

I don't remember anything specific, certainly not an unreleased expansion. Remember, up to 2009 Steel Beasts was the product of but a single programmer, and we had about only one or two artists at any given time, Volcano for sound, and then me for customer relations/tech support/beta testing etc.; imagine a lot of 16 hour days for a lot of people for quite some time.

Interesting.

 

Were there perhaps any aborted attempts to make other vehicles playable?  Like a playable T-72, or perhaps vehicles or features that simply didn't make it into the final product?

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1 hour ago, Maj.Hans said:

Were there perhaps any aborted attempts to make other vehicles playable?  Like a playable T-72, or perhaps vehicles or features that simply didn't make it into the final product?

No.

There were of course of lot of ideas what else could be done, and much of that went later into SB Pro, but the biggest change that happened between the first demo version (or maybe even shortly before it) and the 1.0 release was the total make-over of the sounds. Neither Al nor I had realized how much of, literally, a game changer good sounds were until Volcano came along and showed us what was possible, and I think that the initial reactions from critics and players alike demonstrated that people took notice.

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I think I remember, at one point, stumbling across a sound clip to tell the gunner to shoot at a "Chopper", as well as possibly a completely unused texture for a cargo truck or something.  But I guess you guys didn't waste much time then!  Kinda surprising since it seems like there are so many other games out there from both then and now, packed full of cut content, scraps and tidbits of unfinished features, etc.

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Well, it was literally a "no budget" production. Then we advanced to a "shoestring budget", which was already a considerable improvement. These days we have about seven programmers working, three full-time artists, paid beta testers, and more. So I'd consider us as "still lean" but otherwise sufficiently funded for sustained operations. All this thanks to organic growth, and that thanks to your continued support.

 

Yes, it is true that there once was a texture for, I believe, an Unimog truck (or a MAN KAT I, not sure which). It was planned to go into the final update but the artist couldn't finish certain model changes due to a wild story involving him helping out a neighbor moving house, a non-trivial amount of narcotics hidden in the furniture, a police raid on the moving van, extended pre-trial detention, ... at some point I gave up trying to keep tabs on what was going on.

Another artist dropped out to become a professional spammer, yet another artist told other wild stories that I don't want to rehash. Let's just say that not every artist made it into the team. But, at least the Unimog eventually made it into SB Pro still (well, the ambulance variant is still pending).

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21 hours ago, Ssnake said:

. But, at least the Unimog eventually made it into SB Pro still (well, the ambulance variant is still pending).

Hmm, there is a niceely done UNIMOG ambulance in version 4.161....think its there since 4.0.

Shows you  to much time at work but not much time playing 😉

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