SB2 officially announced

[Skybird]

http://www.esimgames.com/steel_beasts_2.htm

Not much new info, and no release date, but now it is official that they are working on it.

[NeonSamurai]

Yep only thing of note is this one will be aimed at gamers/entertainment instead of the military, which likely meens a bit more gamey (and more polished in some area's) play, standard pricing, and no usb dongle.


Steel Beasts 2

Target audience: Consumers
Intended use: Entertainment.

The sequel to 2000's Best Simulation Game is in the works!

[Skybird]

They indicated at earlier occasions that for example SB2-improvements in the visual field will be carried over to SBP-Pro sooner or later, too.

Certain aspects that are more interesting for military professionals and are adding complexity the gamers-audience does not need or like, will be left out.

Both titles were described to be - probably - incompatible with regard to online playing, and mission designing.

I think the hardcore guys will stick with SBP-Pro for online play. This does not mean that there cannot emerge a strong SB2-community, too.

Judging by the developement timetable of SBP Pro and the many delays, I do not expect SB2 before second half of 2008. Wouldn't be surprised if it becomes even 2009. But that is just me and my own believing.

P.S. I wouldn't rule out the dongle this early - it worked well with SBP Pro, and is a very reasonable solution that has found wide acceptance in the community. Better than getting some intrusive software installed on your HD.

[HunterICX]

Still seems to me it could be a good sim
but I would like to see if they would keep it opcional to choose between Simple management of the tank and Complex (military) in a sort of dificulty setup of the game.

the good thing about it is.
people that just start playing the game will easily learn the game and what the tank does.
if they want more challenging and more control over the tank they can switch to Complex management to enjoy the game even more

just my 2cts
HunterICX

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by HunterICX

Still seems to me it could be a good sim
but I would like to see if they would keep it opcional to choose between Simple management of the tank and Complex (military) in a sort of dificulty setup of the game.

the good thing about it is.
people that just start playing the game will easily learn the game and what the tank does.
if they want more challenging and more control over the tank they can switch to Complex management to enjoy the game even more

just my 2cts
HunterICX

But is tank handling as it is right now really that difficult...?

Chances are they will simplify things that right now are a bit more complex than is needed for the game market, for example the procedures to call in artillery (which is planned to be turned into an even more realistic and thus: complex one in the future). I could imagine they will have shadows, better infantry animations (maybe polygon-people), bigger smoke fans, better graphic FX in general, maybe functional weather, "über"-night vision screens (like oyu had with SB1), etc.

I considered some of these things (weather, changing time of day, shadows) to be important. However, after getting into SBPro-testing, I immediately forgot all these factors I would have loved to see before. SBP makes you forget that these things are not there very quickly.

I also hope they resist the pressure to include a dynamic campaign. SBP lives very much from good and mean mission designs and clever tactics - and these efforts cannot be succesfully conducted by an AI. What we do not need is a clueless massing of enemy troops like we used to have with M1TP2 (not that I did not enjoy it in it's time...)

[HunterICX]

I've driven a Tank in a very old sim
if I,m right that where the windos 98 Days with in those day state of the art 3D effects.

just browsed tanksim.com and found the name
M1 Tank Platoon 2

it took me a while before I could manage to prevent my tank coliding against things.

I find SBP very pricey, and couldnt find it in any of the local shops here. So I never played it, it looks very nice from what I can see in the screenshot thread. and maybe its something for in the future when I got more free time to get thinks straighten out.

about tanks, I just like to be a big bully on a battlefield

[Konovalov]

I will go for this because I just don't have the time to invest in a sim such as SBP. At least we now know that it is definately coming but as Sky said apart from that nothing new. Hopefully it will be out some time next year. The last tank sim/game I played and own is M1 Tank PLatoon II.

[ReM]

a release date will not be announced before the work on SB Pro PE has been finished

When will that be.....SBPPE is still very much a work in progress.

They will probably need to put some more eye candy in it to satisfy the hordes. Not that SBPPE looks bad, but it looks ...basic.

Looks like buying SBPPE was a good investment, the sequel to SB looks to be years away!

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by HunterICX

I find SBP very pricey, and couldnt find it in any of the local shops here.

The sim is exlusively available only via the publisher'S homepage. It is not and never will be avaiolable in local stores.

Concerning the price, I describe it as two Dangeorus Waters, or 2-3 buggy usual game releases one plays for some weeks and then leave behind. concenring what I got from it so far, it would be justified to have payed twice as much money for it. It's a years-to-come-long love affair. at least for me.

about tanks, I just like to be a big bully on a battlefield

Don't know that feeling. when sitting in my tank I get turned into a magical bullet-, missile- and SABOT-attractor...

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by ReM

When will that be.....SBPPE is still very much a work in progress.

They will probably need to put some more eye candy in it to satisfy the hordes. Not that SBPPE looks bad, but it looks ...basic.

Looks like buying SBPPE was a good investment, the sequel to SB looks to be years away!

Late 2008 I assume, or even 2009.

SBP will always be a work in progress, and that is what it is designed to be. the military always shows up with some new wishes that will hget implemented, and sooner or later find their way into the PE version as well. This process we need to thank for having gotten the formidable and completely simulated CV9040, and the Strv-122 so far (an upgraded Leo2A5 that is), and we will get the Pizarro and the Australian Bushmaster in the future, too. SBP-PE will get upgraded as long as the military market keeps it alive and is willing to pay for ongoing developement.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Konovalov

I will go for this because I just don't have the time to invest in a sim such as SBP. At least we now know that it is definately coming but as Sky said apart from that nothing new. Hopefully it will be out some time next year. The last tank sim/game I played and own is M1 Tank PLatoon II.

Do you mean you do not have the time, or not the money? Becasue I would be surprised to see that great differences between SBP and SB2 as you seem to assume when saying you could not invest time into SBP right now. In fact, learning to control your tank is surprisingly easy - the tricks begin when you need to adress tactics and manouver warfare. And do we really should hope that these aspects - that make SB1 and SBP standing apart from the crowd - get ignored in SB2?

[ReM]

Concerning the price, I describe it as two Dangeorus Waters, or 2-3 buggy usual game releases one plays for some weeks and then leave behind. concenring what I got from it so far, it would be justified to have payed twice as much money for it

I can only second that

[Skybird]

I just stumbled over this statement that the technical director of esim apparently has made yesterday at the simHQ board. Markings by me.

Originally Posted by Ssnake

Hm. Well, I can say that we won't see SB2 before late 2009. I can also say that despite the impression from first, second, and third look, we're still committed to developing SB2 although I am unwilling to provide hard evidence.

What I can say is that I am telling all our army customers that all their SB Pro related projects must be finished in 2008 as we're going to "take a year off" in 2009. Because, "taking a year off" means for us concentrating on development work that we always wanted to do but didn't find the time for it.
I think that having a game version is an important element in our business strategy, which is probably the strongest argument I can bring forward to convince you that we are committed - because it simply makes sense for us.

Needless to say that a lot of the stuff that we're working on for SB Pro in 2008 will make its way into SB2. And it's going to be pretty cool stuff, looking at those army wish lists - going far beyond trivialities like "yet another playable vehicle". I mean, new vehicles are a very tangible benefit, but "cool stuff" for me are features that add a whole new dimension to gameplay. Things without precedence in previous versions. 2010 is going to be an excellent year for the franchise, and I think we have a couple of aces up our sleeves to make the time worth the wait.


(Disclaimer: Yeah, that was the rhetoric equivalent to a smokescreen. Sorry, but it's our policy not to speculate about specifics of our development policy in public. We want to report if something's ready, not impress you with big plans. Sure, we have big plans, but if we fail to implement them we don'twant to do the dance of "Well, y'know, it didn't exactly work out as planned, but we have this consolation prize: Tadaa!")

Note that he mentions the year 2010 - it's now the year 2007, and the sim was released in early 2006 - that is what I call support of a sim! clapclapclapclapclap

[NeonSamurai]

Well as for the dongle, i doubt it will make it to commercial, for one thing, though semi accepted in military or general professional circles (proffesionals hate the things because they often have multiple dongles taking up usb slots and switching them is a pain, its less of an issue for the military), it is absolutly NOT tolerated by gamers.

Most gamers dont have many if any free usb slots (i for example have less then 0 free, to use my joystick i gotta unplug my external hard drive), they arnt gona wana put it in each time they wana play, i also can not think of a single commercial game (not the specialized military sims like sbp-pro or vbs-1) that uses dongles, they are also the most expensive form of copy protection. If they did ship it with a dongle the outcry will be great. Shame the wait is probably gona be pretty long


Also i wouldnt mind seeing a good dynamic campaign, as they already have the mission tools made more or less. But i would expect something along the lines of a fought out war (a truely dynamic campaign akin to EECH or Falcon 4). Canned missions get old after a while, and i never found it any fun to play your own missions, as you know everything about them.

I am realy looking forward to this though as i dont have the money to get SBP-Pro, and its sounding realy good from what ya just posted Skybird. Its been a long while since ive had a good NATO Tank sim, other then OFP and ARMA (but neither are realy true simulations or dedicated tank sims).

[Skybird]

A campaign - like in Falcon 4...? Not gonna happen, i bet money on that. F4 team themselves recommended everyone never to try that stunt themselves, that complicated it is. It costed years until the campaign worked - more or less - as intended, btw. F4 had so many bugs in the first years...

While the EECH campaign is more simplistic, it also is extremely unrealistic, and does in no way create battles that match what would be done by enemy commanders in real life. Dynamic missions, I think, are easier to be done in air sims, than in ground sim, since the starting positions in air sims can be more fluid and thus meeting the way AI wants to handle their automatted generation, without loosing too much realism (see Falcon), while that system does not work well in automatically orchestrating ground forces according to an elaborated tactical plan. I think that is the reason why until today no ground sim I know of has ever offered a reasonable dynamic campaign. Air tactic is very much about timing, while groudn tactic puts at least as much attention, if not more, on positions - and determining these is far more complex and difficult on the ground, than in an air campaign. It is also more decisive. An AI of today cannot acchieve that.

The tanks in OFP I do not consider to be tanks. Not even carricatures. I think of them as hopping tennisballs. I always ignroed them in mission deisgning, they ruined it all too easily. OFP is an infantry sim for me.

On the dongle, in summer 2005 eSim launched a public poll, asking what kind of copy protection people would find acceptable. The big looser was starforce, and any kind of intrusive software. Some thoughts on online registration procedures, which did not raise too much sympathy, too. The great winner was the dongle, which found huge public acceptance after people understood that they had to accept a kind of reliable copy protection anyway, and would not get SBP unprotected at all. Left with the choices that were available, a clear majority supported the dongle. Until today, voices complaining are extremely rare. i remember of only one guy in the past 16 months posting in the SB-forums that his dongle broke. that was because he stepped onto it.

I support it, too. It does protect justified interests of the producer (which esim fully deserves), and keeps my harddrive free of possible malware infestations and intrusive crap that harms my system (like starforce for example did). Many standard protection schemes (CD always in drive, etc), simply do not work reliably, and get cracked pretty soon, usually. Cracking a dongle is more work, and time-consuming, and more difficult to be spread as a "solution" for others as well - and that's what it is about, buzying time, making it hard to spread a crack. It's best for safeguarding company interests, and holds the smallest possible risk for the user.

Anyhow, no word on that question from them. We simply need to wait and see. I don't think they ask their customers a second time on this question anyway, since they already have gotten their answers.