Steel Fury - Where to Begin?

[Fire4effect]

Hey Guys,

First off, Hello!

So I've been playing tanks with War Thunder for quite some time now and I recently saw some videos of Steel Fury on youtube. I have to say I'm very interested in trying this title out! I wish I had heard about this title back when it came out...even years ago I was looking for something like this! I spent a lot of hours playing Red Orchestra Ost Front as a tanker- the ol' glory days!

I kindly ask for any help/opinions from you guys in setting this all up ...and please pardon my ignorance on the technical side of things, I'm far from a computer wiz but have been playing PC games for quite some time, even back to the days of Castle Wolfenstein on DOS. However I'm no pro in messing around with config files etc..

Well, here's my questions, I appreciate any help in advance:

1. Should I download this game through Amazon? Just wondering if I'm going to spend $20 bucks on a broken product, some of those reviews are quite scary to read, especially the more recent ones, what do you all think? 

(http://www.amazon.com/Steel-Fury-Kharkov-1942-Download/dp/B0042X9RXC/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1450292126&sr=8-1&keywords=steel+fury)


2. Can it be played with a computer that runs Windows 7 (64-bit) and an Nvidia GPU? I saw the sticky regarding Windows 7 users, and I have to say it's quite confusing as to why it doesn't work, in all my experience I've never ran into this situation before, any tips as to where or how I should author the installation to allow a smooth workflow of downloading and installing mods etc?


3. I own an iMac 27" which sports a pretty high native resolution of 2560 x 1600 pixels, will I be able to get this game to scale properly on my machine, or is a bust? I would run this game through bootcamp via windows 7 64-bit.


4. There seems to be a good handful of mods to download, anyone have a list of "essential" mods and proper installation order etc? This seems like the most daunting step as I feel like there's a lot to look into, which I have no pulse on..



And here is a rough overview of my iMac specs:

https://support.apple.com/kb/SP667?locale=en_US

Few points that I topped out regarding the specs- I have an Nvidia 680MX GPU, 3.4GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 (Turbo Boost up to 3.9GHz), 16GB Ram.


-Thanks again for your time, and fingers crossed that I'll be able to experience this game first hand!

[33lima]

Hi Fire4effect!

Re Question 1 - The sim is very well worth $19.99; on ebay.uk, copies were going (or at least, being offered) for about double that recently. Those negatve reviews on Amazon don't appear to be describing the same sim I'm playing. There is a fix for the 'widescreen bug', which anyway affects principally menu or loading screens, no big deal. The reviewer who found the control system complex should try Panzer Elite! These are tanksims not arcade games (no offence!) so there is a significant learning curve and it takes time and practice to learn the keys and how to operate your tank in virtual combat, from one or more of the usable crew positions (gunner or tank commander being the main options). Same with M1 Tank Platoon 2, Steel Beasts, and Steel Armor - Blaze of War - any tanksim since about Panzer Commander. Steel Fury's manual appears to be translated into English from Russian or Ukrainian so it can be a little hard to understand, in places. I made myself a short keyboard guide for the main controls and that helped me, anyway:



Re Question 4 - out-of-the-box, the game is quite limited, just a few playable tanks and just one theatre, Second Battle of Kharkov 1942 as the title suggests. The current 'must have' mod is the Steel Tank Add-on (STA), details here: http://stasf2008.ephpbb.com/t6-steel-tank-add-on-steel-fury

Downloading and installing this is a minor chore but very well worthwhile as it massively expands the sim. Many of the available units are illustrated in this thread, and new missions and vehicles are added regularly eg there is now a mission based on the film 'Fury' featuring a range of US Army M4s : http://stasf2008.ephpbb.com/t22-available-units-in-sta-mod Each of the STA 'Game Mission Packs' includes about 50 missions, on top of those in the basic sim. New missions appear regularly. A new Sturmgeschutz/panzerjager campaign is in the works.

Steel Fury doesn't do fancy stuff like crew management and has a very basic 'player profile and results tracking' facility. But it does well what's most important - letting the player experience virtual company-level all-arms battles as a WW2 AFV platoon commander in a wide variety of vehicles. The AI has some rough edges (tends to be too agressive), platoon command and control is a bit hit and miss and sounds don't attenuate with distance; but overall the experience is top notch. To get this experience the price you must pay is the cost of the sim, the effort to install the STA mod and the time and patience to learn the ropes. Your reward will be one of the best tanksims available.

Getting set up with the STA mod takes a bit of time and care but is not difficult - advice will be readily available on the STA forum. New players are always welcome. The basic drill is (i) download all the stuff listed in the first linked thread above, into the MODS folder in your SF install (ii) 'enable' the mods from there, in the order listed (important) using the included & easy-to-use JSGME (Jonesoft Generic Mod Enabler, a tool used by various modded sims like IL-2 1946) and (iii) play.

Re your other questions, I'm running Vista 64 on a conventional PC with a dated Nvidia GPU (GTS 250) and all is well. The sim doesn't support antialiasing (setting it within the graphics driver corrupts the graphics) so to get rid of rough edges, you can use a little utility called NvidiaInspector.  I see that one ot two Nvidia users have reported problems getting the sim to run but I'm not sure how common this is and in three successive Nvidia cards, albeit older ones but with recent drivers, I have never had a problem that tweaking settings did not solve.

With many games, older ones anyway, the common advice is not to install into C:/Program Files (x86). I simply installed Steel Fury into C:.

Good luck and good hunting!

[Fire4effect]

Thanks 33lima for providing a solid introduction to everything, and prompt response! Didn't think I was going to hear back from anyone for a few days!

A few things:

1. Can the controls be remapped? I noticed a few things there that I would like to tweak. Thank you for pasting your shortcut guide though!

2. Regarding the STA mod- when I go to the link you provided I see a listing of installation instructions, however I don't see the actual files available for download, I must be missing it some how?

3. You mentioned the AI being aggressive, can you elaborate? Does this mean tanks/AT guns see you through bushes and what not (cheap AI)? Is the infantry efficient, as they seem like canon fodder in the videos? Don't get me wrong, it builds atmosphere by 100%, but are they actively targeting and dealing damage to opposing teams assets? Does the AI in the game make a difference basically, or do you just storm through dispatching everything in sight (whack-a-mole gameplay)?

I'm sure I'll have a slew of technical questions regarding more installation procedure etc! But definitely going to download this when I get a chance!

[Fire4effect]

Oh and almost forgot- beautiful rendition of the Jagdtiger!

[Fire4effect]

Hey guys,

Just a quick update, so I downloaded Steel Fury, have it installed and managed to download STA 1.0 Full as well!

I'm still having problems with screen sizing though! I tried two suggested approaches to fix this problem, but to no avail- I'm still having part of the menus and text cut off during the game.

I downloaded the widescreen bug fix .rar which is posted within FAQ- extracted the files into my Steel Fury folder, unfortunately it didn't work.

Than I even attempted to change the screen size through the Steel Fury config file directly (via notepad) as per Lockie's guide, no luck either...

I than saw that the fix is included with the STA 1.0 files, still no luck after starting the game with the Mod enabled?

Does anyone have a guess of what else to try, or what I'm failing to do? Perhaps the mods aren't enabled in the correct order?

I only have (3) mods, and here's the order that I enabled them on the last run:

1. Unofficial_patch_SF_v0.1_eng
2. Compass_mod.v02
3. STA 1.0 full

  Am I missing something?

Also I have Steel Fury installed to C:\Users\My games\Steel Fury....not Program files or Program files x86..

I don't have any alternate drives to install on, just FYI.


-Thanks!

[33lima]

Hi Again

Obvious problem is your install oder, in fact the unofficial patch, which isn't used with the STA mod (English version anyway, no experience of others!). Stick strictly to the install order listed as items 1-8 here: http://stasf2008.ephpbb.com/t6-steel-tank-add-on-steel-fury

Then add any other mods from the later list, under 'recommended mods'.

Just checked and the links to the different elements seem to work only if I'm logged into the forum, for example the link in the blue text 'Steel Sound Mod 2.2 (SSM) takes me to the post with the actual link to the SSM, but the latter is only active when I'm logged in.

Only the sound and STA mods are mandatory but you don't want to be without the 50 or so missions in each of the three GMP mission packs or the two listed game updates. The various 'weather' mods are also recommended - the actually replace terrain textures, not least the snow landsape in the winter weather mod.

I'm not aware that controls can be mapped. A joystick seems to be supported but mine didn't seem to work very well. My old Saitek Cyborg's buttom programming s/w doesn't work with Vista so I haven't tried mapping keys to joystick buttons. There may be a config file somewhere that can be edited.

Re the widescreen bug, if starting with the correct install order and the fix doesn't solve this, you might want to try diffferent combinations of the game's video settings under the Options menu - I have 'Use Desktop resolution' checked - because my flat monitor is set at native res of 1600x900 in Windows - and the one like 'No video mode restrictions' UNchecked.

The AI rough edges I mentioned are mainly:

- tanks and AFVs tend to to advance relentlessly. This is apparent in two main ways - first, your platoon mates will move aggressively towards spotted enemies, breaking formation. It is hard to regain control of them. Some people give up on them but I try to manage my whole platoon and regard their survival as important.



Second, light AFVs like Hanomag half-tracks, accompanying a tank assault, tend to suffer very heavy casualties.



The sim has some settings like 'Always obey orders' and morale settings but they seem to have little effect on this;

- infantry are similarly agressive, advancing regardless of casualties, to the extent a battle may end with isolated individuals still working forward. Sometimes they will break and run but this seems a bit too rare.

Infantry will take on AFVs with AT rifles or bazookas if they have them and will also engage in close combat with amour using hand grenades. They make reasonable use of field defences and their animation and tactics are not too bad eg going prone when engaged and crawling at times, debussing from APCs (which can be scripted into the mission but often happens when their APC is hit). Infantry certainly appear effective in dealing with enemy infantry or emplaced weapons within the limits of the weapons carried. Their agressiveness means casualties are heavy, unlike SABOW they will not surrender. Most SF missions are so full of dangerous kit that the infantry - indeed most things on the SF battlefield - are liable to have a bad time.

Monty, or Stonewall Jackson, would likely have thought most SF mission designs 'quite useless' - you will rarely find the 3:1 superiority generally considered to give you an even chance in an attack, let alone the 6:1 considered desirable. In SABOW, because of the 'wargame' element that lets you take command of a significant part of your side's forces, you may be able to concentrate much superior mumbers in time and space and defeat your enemies 'in detail', as they say; but in SF you are just a lowly platoon leader fighting in a battle whose overall commander probably hasn't managed to organise things so that you 'got there first-est with the most-est'.  At least SF players are unhindered by considerations of getting 'fragged' from below or 'bowler-hatted' from above, for incurring heavy losses. Real units that incurred casualties at the rate SF ones do - via a combination of 'challenging' mission design and aggressive AI - would be combat ineffective after one or two battles, and wars would be over fairly quickly. It helps in SF that - if the mission designer has scripted for it - you can use the 'balance' slider to reduce the challenge that many players crave but real soldiers liked rather less of. But I digress...

Good hunting, now you have the sim, just don't forget to watch your flanks!

[Fire4effect]

Thanks again 33lima,

I'll give it shot later this evening or tomorrow and report back. The problem was that I never registered for the Steel Tank Addon forum! So that should take care of the problem of finding the file links.

Also regarding the weather mods, any recommendations as to which to download?

And no worries on the re-mapping of keys, i'll just pick up the control scheme as is.

Currently I have "desktop resolution" unchecked along with "no video mode restrictions". I have all the sliders maxed out at least I think all of them within the options and the "128 mb graphics card ..etc" pop-up menu can't seem to be closed, so I have no idea if there are other configurables hiding behind it?

Either way, I'll cross my fingers that the correct install order will nip the wide screen bug in the bud!

Also, will I need to do Lockie's "blurry texture" work around (aka- edit the config), or do one of these updates/mods take care of that problem?

[33lima]

I don't recall if I used the 'blurry texture fix', or not...think I tried it, but noticed no difference.

'Weather' mod recommendations would be - all of them! The ones I'd use most are 'scorching summer' and 'winter', but I tend to apply whichever seems best to suit the time of year of the mission or campaign I'm playing. Post #13 in this thread illustrates some of the variations available at the time: http://stasf2008.ephpbb.com/t22-available-units-in-sta-mod

[Fire4effect]

Okay so I got pretty much everything up and running, minus the weather add-ons, and the July and September updates. I had hit my "daily download limit" from 4shared so I'll conquer those another time.

I have to say- this game is quite the gem! I played one of the Game pack missions, it involved setting up an ambush position against a German convoy passing through to Leningrad. I was in a KV-1e, great time.. Kolobanov was the feature in this I believe.

I do have a small issue though regarding a graphical bug I encountered, I get this strange ghosting effect around all the AI units, its not a deal breaker but distracting, perhaps the july or sept. update will take care of this?





Anyone encounter anything like this? I have resolution set to native, and image quality is maxed out in options.

[kapulA]

Looks like it might be a graphics card issue - have you tried disabling forced anti-aliasing in your NVidia/ATI gfx card control panel?

[33lima]

Hmmm. haven't noticed that effect - posted this query over on the STA forum, hopefully there'll be an answer there.

EDIT - if you have 'Run at Desktop resolution' and that's your iMac thingy running at 2560x1600, maybe you need to uncheck that option in SF and select something lower.

Re the Kolobanov mission, this is based on the real-life battle recounted under 'Krasnogvardeysk' in the Wikipedia KV-1 entry, here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kliment_Voroshilov_tank

I believe that another SF single mission recreates the epic stand of a single KV-2 at Rasseiniai, recounted in detail here:

http://tankarchives.blogspot.ca/2013/03/battle-of-raseiniai.html

This pic appears to be one of several, showing this tank after the battle:

[Fire4effect]

Thanks guys, I did try to disable but it did not work, no worries, it's not getting in the way of me enjoying the game.

Incredible- reading about the Rasseiniai incident...very brave men, I can't even fathom sitting that out like they did. I will definitely have to check that mission out. If you have any more links to situations like that, send them my way!

I also did happen to play a few rounds of the Seelow Heights mission with the Tiger tank, another great mission, beautiful map as well, I love the range combat in this game (breath of fresh air), and the IS-2's! What a surprise, that definitely got me shaking.

It's a shame that the Devs are no longer around to release some sort of an updated version of this game model... I get why, but it's fun to day dream and think about the possibilities!

[frinik]

I have been playing Steel Fury since 2008-2009 and still enjoying it. Lima33 has done a very good job of giving you all the right advice and tips so I'll simply advise you to experiment with the game settings and get into mission making of playing with the mission editor. Thanks to Lockie and other talented modders this game is very much alive. Enjoy it !