Status Update - 29.02.24

Hey everyone, I didn't plan to write this wall of text, and I understand that some of you (or many) will not read it completely, but I encourage you to read it fully to understand current situation.

Health Issues

I honestly don't wanna write anything about it to excuse myself. Nor bragged about it, but I want to be transparent with everyone, especially when seeing long-standing fans of ETSM that brought them together.

It's all started in early 2022 with well known events, It was really hard for me to leave my country, but I had to, since then it was rip and tear experience and adaptation which took slightly too long, afterwards I was diagnosed with PTSD.

Hiding that was incredibly hard, and day after day it was growing worse and worse. I tried to distract by working on what I liked the most, but it's just almost faded especially with Epic Thunder, It's not because losing interest in sound mod.

I played War Thunder for over 10 years and seeing same stuff over and over again is a bit exhausting, there are other reasons which also hit me.

But none of that will impact release date, because I have accountability in front of you all.

Stolen Content

Firstly, I don't want to point at somebody and voicing names, but if it goes further I will have to make another public statement.

In late 2022 I discovered that some "modders" using my work and mixing with their own, I tried to initiate private talks about that, but no dice. Thankfully, local WTLive moderators knew my work and DMCA'd it. It's not over though, so-called "modders" still using my work, and it requires through research once again to clean up my content.

I care about it because you paid for it, you paid for each and every sound that has been used exclusively in Epic Thunder. I'm lucky that those guys are total amateurs, knowing absolutely nothing in sound design.

The whole topic will drift into public field once I gather all information regarding it and if nobody will answer me in private talks.

Just a small reminder that I have full timeline of all ETSM versions starting from 2018, with all source files metadata.

Billing/Payment

As long-standing tradition, I'm halting payment once work is stopped/blockers on personal field. It's been 3 months since billing is stopped and next month is not an exception, It's fair punishment for me, despite all health issues.

Release Date

It was really, really painful to chose because, mod is not perfect by any means but at same time I have to finally release something especially when player can experience at least 85% of mod features.

Long-awaited launch trailer is done, and I'm happy and excited to show it to you once mod releases. I choose pretty iconic date for that - 04.04.24. It's set in the stone, because I simply cannot miss such date.

Now when you know release date, do not share it too much, just keep it in mind.

Director's cut version

After basic release it is planned to keep posting unseen versions here with all features included. Unfortunately, some features will be stripped in release version (sound loss thingy), Gaijin never answered fundamentally what is that, but at same time it's a good opportunity to separate unstable/experimental version with public and stable one.

Future public versions

Like I said many times and I will say that again, public support will not stop and Patrons will have two weeks in advance to try out new public version before releasing patch in WT Live.

Thanks for reading, stay safe and healthy!