Spintires - Old Soviet trucks, mud, a map, and a compass

Lessons learned immediately:

  1. Jeep for scouting. Not truck loaded with glorious logs.
  2. Jeep parking brake ineffective on 70 degree slope.

Comrades, how do you raise and lower the crane on the D537?

WASD turns and retracts and extends
Space bar rotates the head, as does R and T

But how to raise and lower?

I have answered my own inquiry! Now I shall reclaim spilled logs before it grows dark. Again.

November 1, 1974

Mr. [REDACTED] require me to present full report of trip to [REDACTED] with medium logs.

Lack of scouting made no problem for Mr. [REDACTED] to observe that night falling would require immediate departure. In D-537 I made progress up coast until I find steep sand bank to which truck may not pass over. In attempt to reverse many rocks in sand made to turn truck over and medium logs spill.

Phone no answer.

Detach trailer, but weight of truck flip both it and truck in narrow muddy pass. Spend all night to unflip and attempt clear medium log from trailer and then crane to use with pick up trailer and bring back to lumber yard. Reattach at lumber yard and load new medium log.

Phone to request jeep surveil however report jeep at 95% damage in far north at fueling station.

Leaving this note at yard and depart again for north with fuel 97/500L. I have been told this is a game.

I. Arshavin

November 2, 1974

Awaiting fuel.

Best AAR ever!

The dev talks about why they have been so silent.

http://www.oovee.co.uk/forum/topic/10478-oovee-updates-regarding-spintires/

We openly admit that communications between Oovee and our customers have been weak over the last few months. Our customer base grew far beyond what we initially expected and we needed to cater for that quickly – the development plans became sketchy and before we knew it we had a runaway train. Please accept our apologies.

We are changing the way we work, for good! Oovee is now being streamlined and the way we work is much more structured, and that’s thanks to the recent team meeting we had from both sides of the pond.

Mod support is coming as well as an experimental patch branch and a cockpit view.

They also confirmed they will make a Spintires 2.

What’s a patch branch?

Why do I want this game so bad? I keep seeing it on here and thinking “it’s a game about driving a truck through the mud.” Then I come back and it calls to me.

It’s a beta patch you can enable through Steam. Arma 3 does it as well as a lot of other games. It lets you test out a patch, but you can revert to the “clean” official build at any time.

Not sure if I’m right in this case, but I think it’s a code branch that you can download to try out the new stuff without changing the original game. Kind of like opting in to a beta.

I was so much more eloquent.

It comes with the sex appeal. It’s a package deal.

“Mr. McMaster will see you now. Grrrrowl!”

Thanks, lads!

Jason, I’ve spent quite a few hours playing this game and I loved every dreary minute.

New stuff coming!

WE DRINK

Soviet power supreme.

Picked this up on the steam sale. I just love the slower pace and mulling over a stuck truck or whatever other problem you’re facing. Yesterday I started my second map, plains, hardcore difficulty.

Hmm, what to do. First I’ll take this on-road tanker C6522 out to the middle to act as a refueling point. Swap out off-road tires, lock the differential… ok this thing is not getting 100 feet on its own.

So I decide to tow it with the C255. The 255 is a big flexible vehicle that can go through almost anything. Tow the tanker through the river, past the lake, through the mud, then the rocks, to the station, fill it with gas, and tow it through a g-damn bog, even needing to winch the C255 a few times, and leave it in the middle of the map as a refueling point.

Time to leave the tanker and go exploring east. Beautiful map. See a bridge through the trees but need to go around to find the road. Running low on gas, just de-cloak this part of the map and head home. Run into very difficult terrain, mud, hills, and run out of gas. Stranded C255.

All I’ve got left is the mid-size, but capable, C4320. Will I get stuck and have to abandon the map? Should I bring extra fuel and head for the 255 or go for the garage unlock and hope there’s some other vehicles there? Can the 4320 make it from the tanker to the garage and back on one tank of fuel? Decisions, decisions.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen this before.

Pavel Zagrebelnyj, the one-man show behind Spintires has been in a financial dispute with the publisher, Oovee since the game launched. He claims they owe him thousands of dollars. They claim he was paid and the contract is fulfilled. (Details here.)

Here’s where it gets weird. It seems Zagrebelnyj has programmed intentional time bombs into Spintires. He sabotaged his own game during the last patch in the event he didn’t get what he wanted out of the publisher.

He can say “goodbye” to ever working with another game publisher again. Actually, does anyone know if publishers sue developers for this kind of behavior?