The Antisocial Gamer

  The latest project chat focused on changes to colour and lighting. The updated pass already makes the battlefield feel more natural and balanced compared to earlier builds. There was also a mention of possible night operations. Nothing confirmed yet, but the screenshots give a good sense of how different the game might feel under moonlight. Small steps — but these changes add atmosphere and weight to Tank Squad’s battlefields.   Possible night operations? New lighting and colour balance pass     Earlier look for comparison

It’s been a long drought since Steel Fury and T-34 vs Tiger . No sim has really captured the feel of the open Russian steppe since those two. This week we saw the first in-game glimpse of Ponyri on the Tank Squad Discord. Ponyri isn’t out yet — this was an early test shot — but it already shows where Tank Squad needs to grow if it’s going to handle the steppe. The Steppe in Reality German Panzer III on the open steppe, September 1942 (Bundesarchiv). Endless horizon, no cover — this was the reality Tank Squad is trying to capture. The Steppe in Tank Squad   First in-game glimpse of Ponyri in Tank Squad. At 1.8 km, the steppe demands more than short-range AI and corridor combat. What the Dev Said Robert [HQ] didn’t sugar-coat what Ponyri revealed in testing: “we’re playing with Ponyri distances and we have to uplift the rest of the game for it, on such distances enemy AI is still pinpoint accurate after 1 shot” “most of the time some of these hits just bounced off ...

  TL;DR: After Dev Status #80, the Tank Squad Discord lit up with discussion. Topics included fighting from the commander’s hatch, campaign economy, spotting mechanics, and combined arms. The devs (Rabbit and Robert) gave refreshingly open replies — showing where the game is evolving. Official devlogs tell one story. The Discord often tells another. It’s usually a steady space with a sim-leaning crowd, but when the devs do weigh in, it feels more open and direct. For me, that side of development is refreshing — so here’s a digest of what was said after Dev Status #80, with my own thoughts woven in. The Commander’s Hatch Apocalypse, a veteran tanker, summed it up: “Commanding an armored vehicle happens from the hatch… If you want your game to be immersive then it needs to allow players to do that.” Rabbit (dev) admitted: “we backed down from this, since we had this option somewhere in the development process, but it was wonky. We will rework firstly how commanding work...

This one caught my eye — not for the stairs, but for the bigger ideas tucked in underneath. TL;DR: Dev Status #80 may look small, but it teases big things — Ponyri 1943 campaign, procedural missions with even “roguelike” potential, smarter AI spotting, and the Ferdinand on the horizon. Patch 1.1.3 is planned for 29 October, 18:00 CEST . On the surface, the 80th development update for Tank Squad looks modest. Movable stairs in the repair yard, Steam lobby invites, a patch full of fixes. But tucked inside is the roadmap to something much larger: operational campaigns, procedural replayability, AI improvements, and new vehicles. This patch isn’t live yet, but it shows where the game is heading. Movable Stairs The repair station now has movable stairs. No more awkward jumping just to climb on your tank. You interact with the stairs, move them around, and drop them into position. A small quality-of-life change, but one that makes the workshop feel lived-in. Steam Lobby & Frie...

This is my first little test for Steppe 43 – my low-poly tank models running inside a simple HTML/JavaScript setup. I’m not a coder, just curious how far I could push it with a lot of A.I. help. Just an experiment and a vibe. Why I’m sharing it here: To show what’s possible even for a non-coder. To put something small but real out into the open. To see if others are curious about pushing HTML/JS + low-poly tanks further. It’s early days, but I’m pleased with how far it got. I’ll keep dropping updates if and when there’s something to show. Tags: #Steppe43 #LowPoly #GameDev #HTML #JavaScript #AI #Experiment

I’ve been modelling WW2 vehicles in SketchUp for over 15 years — mostly for Panzer Elite , and more recently for OSTPAK 3 . But the truth is, most of my models have just sat on my hard drive, unseen and untested. Some are over 15 years old. It always bugged me. So this year, I finally decided to give them a new home — not as game-ready mods, but as proper, lit, walkable 3D scenes in Unreal Engine 5.6 . 🛠️ From SketchUp to Blender to Unreal The biggest hurdle was finding a clean path out of SketchUp without breaking everything. I now export as .OBJ , clean up in Blender , and then export as .FBX into Unreal. It works. No weird scaling, no flipped normals, just clean geometry. Along the way, I discovered Imphenzia on YouTube. His method for pixel-painting low-poly models really clicked with me — I now use a stylised WW2 palette and paint each face directly in Blender’s UV editor. No textures, no UV islands, just clean blocks of colour. Fast and satisfying. 🌱 Unreal, Not Unity ...