Dear customers,

 

Today I’d like to share some straight talk with you about our current and future plans for the Sturmovik franchise. I took over as Lead Producer in August 2016 with the goal of improving Sturmovik and bringing it more in line with your original expectations, while at the same time bringing the product’s technology into the future. Matter of fact my goal was to improve, what I call the four key pillars combat simulations – technology, features, content and community. 

 

The past 9-10 months has seen Sturmovik be improved in many ways with new technology, more content and additional features being developed with more still to come. I also hope that some new out-of-game initiatives will further strengthen our small community even more.

 

Our Kuban development phase is going pretty well, but we always have challenges we must overcome due our overall lack of resources relative to our goals. However, we are confident Battle of Kuban will set the standard for WWII themed simulations and give you the simmer many years of enjoyment.

 

So, let’s talk about what happens after Kuban for a moment. When we announced battle of Kuban I made it clear that our intention (assuming it is possible) was to do something different, something many have asked for that would shake up the norm - The Pacific Theater starting with the Battle of Midway. It’s been over a decade since a new Pacific themed product was developed and I hope we can change this. After much research and thought we have come to understand that this will be an extreme challenge for us on every front.

 

It is such a challenge because we need to create large capital ships like aircraft carriers and their accompanying technology as well as create Japanese built airplanes. The Japanese airplanes pose the greatest challenge because we know little about their operation and there is not a lot of detailed documentation in either English or Russian. There is quite a bit in Japanese, but that means we need translators who can helps us which adds to our budgetary expenses in an already tight budget. This has added a new level of complexity we have not dealt with before. This is important to understand because the community has certain expectations of what level of fidelity we can achieve based on our previous products. Meeting those expectations with our Japanese airplanes might be very hard both in the visual realm and in the flight dynamics. For us to make the Pacific product a reality and worthy of the Sturmovik name we need your help. We cannot possibly locate everything we need ourselves.

 

What we need are detailed sources of information about Japanese airplanes such as engines, their systems, weapons and their flight performance in whatever language you can find, but we are especially interested in finding detailed Japanese documents that explain in detail how these planes operated, what their cockpits looked like and their performance. I have started a section in the forum where you can help us locate such information. If you want to help us please visit this section and contribute.  Please read the instructions I have posted there before you post so we can be efficient. 

 

Additionally, I have posted several “help wanted” posts in our Jobs and Contractors section of the English language forum. We are looking for testers, talented artists and other creative people to help with various aspects of development or community related projects. Please check them out and if you meet the requirements please contact us. 

 

If you like what we have been doing with Sturmovik please consider purchasing all we have to offer or encourage your friends to make a purchase so we can afford the resources we need to venture the Pacific and beyond. We recently began selling Scripted Campaigns made by our own BlackSix. These are excellent campaigns and this kind of fun content helps sustain us during long, expensive development cycles. Please give them a look in our store if you haven’t already. There is no magic solution to our resource issue, we need your continued financial support to get the job done and keep going! 

 

And finally, I can’t leave you without some development shots. This time I present you some more Hs-129 development shots. And don’t worry the Spitfire is coming along as well. It’s just not ready to be shown yet.