[DedEye]

Excellent ideas and comments in this forum

If I recall; Red Baron, Aces of the Pacific, and AoE all had dynamic career modes that also gave the player the opportunity to participate in historical encounters, for eg. Welch and Taylor at Pearl Harbour. Importantly, you could also skip them.

Scripted missions alone = zero replayability. Scipted missions as flavour = possibilities.

Yes, atmosphere! Eye candy can really enhance atmosphere, but if the sim doesn't have good mechanics and sim elements, eye candy can't save it.

[CB..]

"ATMOSPHERE" thats the thing I agree nice one!
the sky in AOTD is about as simply depicted as yu could get (perhaps not then of course but compared to current games) yet even when played to-day it exudes atmosphere in full measure!! very evocative..

any second year art student can create decent atmosphere with minimal effort and make it work far more effectively than just a blue background with a few cloud textures floating past...


same with the sub interface/guages screens....once yu lower the scope and submerge....yu are basically playing what amounts to an old style "point and click" aventure game!!! (click depth guage to go here///click rudder to go here.//click this to do that etc) with NONE of the expected effects that are so well used in that genre.!!!!.lol....and we spend the most intensive parts of the gameplay submerged with the scope down....(don't the developers actually sit down and play their games these days?) surely they would be thinking about making the most of that envouirment...leaves me scratching my head...any one playing a subsim for any lenght of time must wonder why the largest portion of the visuals in the game are given the least amount of attention graphically.....ok if we have a point a click 2d enviourment for the sub controls and interior...then at least use the normal enhancments avaialable for a 2d point and click enviourment (one day i'll spell that word correctly)
bit more of the animated sonar wheel from SH2...bit more of the scope raise animation from AOTD, bit more of the different sub interiors for each sub type from AOTD...doesnt neccesarily need to be a massive revamp of the genre or anything glossy like that, but to not use the basics is taking the mick he he...yup give us whatever create the most ATMOSPHERE...create an envouirment tat inspires the player and our imaginations take care of the rest!!

[AS]

Now you´re talking about it: Silent Service I, which I played at the age of 12 (?) in my darkened room had a real cunning tower with a blocky guy moving from one station to the other. This can be done better today than in the 80s, but when it comes to the sky-textures and colours, well, no real difference between Silent service and SH2 because even good old C64 could display 16 colours. Yellow, blue and grey where among them

AS

[JagdWolf]

I'm really interested in seeing how they have the crew members interact in the boot. Like, whether they walk through the control room going from stations in the bow to the aft compartments. Complete with background chatter, with maybe perhaps a petty officer telling them to "keep it down" while they travel through the control room.

Or whether they all will come running full blast from the aft compartments when the alarm is given.

All hands forward! Move, move, move!


Maybe a scene of the navigator plotting out the ship's courses while they are being tracked from the listening station and relayed to the navigator.

Or a scene in the forward torpedo room with the crew members cramming a freshly greased fish into the number 2 torpedo tube, with all the grunts, groans, and sounds of the chains lifting the fish into place.


The external scenes running on the surface should be very interesting as well. Whether they will only use a first person point of view, or a God view, or the so-called "three quarter" view so many other games use, or options to use all three. The external view of SHII had a good zoom feature that was pretty cool, so I think it'd be neat if they kept it in this version.

There's many, many questions like this that remain to be answered as to just what it will be like in the final form.

Such as:
I wonder if they will use a crew figure that is easily modded so we can change the uniforms they wear. Allowing us to put on different caps, hats, t-shirts, and different types of coats.

Of course, with an actual crew aboard, there should be a working "abandon ship" option to save the crew in the case when it becomes obvious the boot is going to sink clear to the bottom.

So, life rafts will have to be launched, manipulated, and manned. And if there are life rafts, that will open the door for a working rescue mission for a downed pilot or to conduct a spy mission to America to make it's way into the game.

Hmmm, there's all kinds of things to ponder whilst we wait.

[AS]

I wonder how they are going to deal with the confined space inside the U-Boat - should be a bit of a problem not to be blocked by all those guys running around in the boat. Hope we´won´t get stuck all the time like in the ego shooters, where your stupid AI-guys always block your way in threshholds etc.

If they just let you walk through your crew it would look quite stupid...

Hopefully, they don´t kinda "solve" the problem by fixing our view to an invisible centre point like they do on the bridge and the guns in SH2...

Surely I´d love to walk through my whole boat... I´m still afraid, though, that they only simulate the cunning tower as seen on the scrrenshot... I just can´t believe they do their job right this time...


Cheers, AS

[snave]

... but in the context of improving atmosphere and gameplay. I like the idea of moving backgrounds mimicking the roll and sway of a submarine, I like the idea of `moody` lighting internally and externally, but at the end of the day submarine warfare is about the sound-and-feel more than the look-and-feel. I remember when some of the first sound enhancements were released for SH2, it was a revelation.

But the gameplay was still sh!t.

Then along game the graphics specialists and EBM and other effects were added.

But the gameplay was still sh!t.

Even now I still occasionally play a single mission scenarion here and there - despite the fact that I nnow have a computer and graphics card fourt times as powerful as the one I owned when I bought SH2, I don't conclude that the `low quality` of the graphics impedes the enjoyment of the game one jot.

...but the sh!t gameplay certainly does.

So that's the target for SH3 for me. Improve `immersiveness` through whatever means possible, but with concentration on gameplay and correct interpretation of real sub-surface operations. Less of a `game`, more of a `simulation`. But with the caveat that it isn't practical to take four weeks to get to a patrol area, if my food supplies run low I'll nip to the shop for a packet of biscuits and I really don't need to get my slippers wet just to feel like a submariner, thankyou.

It's a pretty tall order, and the best advice I can give the devteam is to ignore everything that's been done before, but take the best bits of everything and enhance it.

[Drebbel]

[Furia]

I do support the idea of crew members represented on game. It is not that complex to implement and would surely add the "realism" touch we miss on other naval sims.
I already mentioned that games like Operation Flashpoint that so far are the games that make you fell more "INSIDE" de game have soldiers/crew manning vehicles and acting as crew.
Having good parameters on the game is good, proper sound model, proper dynamic model is good.... We already had part of this on games such SHII, SC, 688I.
I would like to see something more.
I would like to see watchstanders on bridge and that if I call ALARMMMM!! the move down through the stairs in a rush...
I want to see crew members manning the AA guns, not just a fancy invisible hand moving and firing it.
I want to see them with frightened eyes when the DC are droping close....
I was to see some sleeping in bunks when naviagtion is nomal...

Some of you would belive this is impossible, much time consuming to develope such fancy feature.You have probaly have mostly played fixed vew panel games fro too long and have missed the last generation of games where this is implemented easily.

In Operatio Flashpoint, you can make the soldiers, run, jump, sit, smile, yell, cry, talk, lay....................... Animations are not science fiction and I really hope to have them implemented.
For those with poor video cards or that prefer clasic approaches uf watching just fixed panels, we could have the same feature as Virtual Skipper 2 (a saliboat simulator), there you select on options if you want to see your crew or not. If you want, you see the crew working with sails, answering your commands, moving around the ship. If you select no crew, you have an empty boat, the sails are raised alone, winches are moved alone....
Virtual Skipper 2 have a very limited market, I guess smaller than a Submarine game (you know, people want to kill people and things to have fun and VS is just a game to play sailboat races)





This sim have the best sea model I have seen on a sim and have a crew that works smartly.
So please update our Naval sims to the 2004 technology. Fixed panel views was nice for Silent Hunter I and AOD and with the otion of "no view crew" thos who do not want it, can just remove it with a click.
It would also be nice to see crews on destroyers and merchies bridges.

[AS]

@ Furia:

I second every single word you say. Finally it´s not only poor me demanding state of the art, contemporary graphics...

I´m pretty sure, though, that other´s comments on your post will be something like "...graphics isn´t important as we want our dynamic campaign blahblahblah...")

Cheers, AS

[Sailor Steve]

There you go again. I'd love to see the crew doing crew stuff, if they look real enough. I'd also love to have a computer that will run all the neat tricks, and someday hopefully I will. I'd also love to have the options just posted on another thread for losing crew members to things like gun accidents and men washed overboard and suicides.

The argument about campaign systems isn't that I don't want the other stuff; it's that the other stuff are cool improvements that should be impemented, but the campaign problem is one place where SHII was a letdown compared to previous sims, and a lot of us are really unhappy about that. If I have to make a choice between gameplay and pretty pictures, I'll take the gameplay first. Hopefully we'll get all of it together.

P.S. Furia: those pics are really cool.

[AS]

I certainly second that, too. Still it´s hard for me to accept that games that have been out already like Enigma, Pirates of the C., Virtual Sailor 2 look much better and more realistic than the screenshots of SH3 which is yet to come... That´s not a promising development. If the dev team is not able to create a proper sea and wave action, why don´t they license already existing engines??? As for gameplay and dynamic campaign... why don´t they license the AOD routines here all the same??? Maybe the reason for the latter is that the guys doing AOD are already dead and buried and so they took their secret how to design a dynamic campaign into thier graves forever

Cheers, AS

[Sailor Steve]

License VS or AoD? You just might be on to something there. Of course they could never talk to the guys who did SHI, heaven forbid.

Joking aside, I have my fingers crossed and my hopes high for what they might accomplish; these pictures are very early release and might not really represent what's coming. That said, I think they look okay so far.

[CB..]

lovely pictures!!
i have a copy of an older similar sim called "sail simulator"
bought out of curiosity whilst browsing thru a local shop. i dont have it installed any longer, as i was annoyed to find that it wasnt available on-line without paying for the latest patch- in spite of it claiming on-line capabilities on the box... :nope:
BUT the thing of it was ...it had all the similar graphical capabilitys as depicted in the great virtual skipper shots on the previuos page (nice one)
animated crew members etc ..and the jist of this is that some how somewhere we have been sold the idea that all this sort of thing is cutting edge graphics needing the latest hardware to display....and that is a marketing lie.. the sort of things we all like to see displayed in games..(doesnt matter what type of game it is in the end) are not cutting edge and can be done and displayed on any reasonable 32/64 mb card..

now then the stormy shot from VS
with the water drops on the screen and the intensly moody atmosphere
that's good graphical work..all the visual elements depicted combine in a cohesive whole to produce a convincing envuirement..yu find yur self wanting to button yur collar against the wind..never mind the sydney opera house modeling in the second shot...wow...we couldnt ask for better port models than that standard...

anyhuw IMO any 32/64mb graphics card can and will show every graphical effect needed to display a truely awesome game world.....if the manufacturer chooses to programme his game to make use of them.....and thats the rub.....they tend not too make use of them.....opting ..it seems.. to implement "esoteric" effects that require the purchase of exspensive up to date hardware....only to find thatan awfull lot of really very "basic" old school effects have been omitted from the game; the manufacturer is relying on the "cutting edge" tag to sell the game to the punters.....lol.....so yu get some fancy new lighting effect.....and very little else....i suspect some sort of commercail deal between game devs and graphic card devs has evolved over the last few years..(which isn't unreasonable) but makes me a little cynical ..too many fanfares give yu a head ache after a while...

and i garrantee yu this...one day yu will walk into the local games emporium to be confronted by the trumpets of progress anouncing that some game or another has included a "dynamic campaign" in their simulator ..flashy sticker on box..much accolades in the gaming press etc.
and this dynamic campaign will be trumpetted as being a cutting edge development...yeagh....the latest thing...makes me sick lol!!!

[Oesten]

The Virtual Skipper 3 shots Furia picked aren't even good ones!

These are much better:

[Oesten]