General "Imperial U Flotilla 1914-1918" discussion thread

[Deamon]

If you have general questions about IUF or want to make some comments post them here please.

Deamon

[Mush Martin]

hello to a fellow afficianado will check back reg to watch progress with great anticipation .

( Ahhh! Think of it Hienie The Kapitan he would do the math in his head and we would point the boat and torpedos loss and sometimes they would not even leave the tubes)
your not alone.
MM. :|\\

[Deamon]

hello to a fellow afficianado will check back reg to watch progress with great anticipation .

You are welcome mate :|\\

( Ahhh! Think of it Hienie The Kapitan he would do the math in his head and we would point the boat and torpedos loss and sometimes they would not even leave the tubes)
your not alone.
MM. :|\\

Nahh, they used torpedodirectors and other devices, you could do angle shots too. It was much more sophisticated than many believe.

Deamon

[Mush Martin]

hello to a fellow afficianado will check back reg to watch progress with great anticipation .
You are welcome mate :|\\

( Ahhh! Think of it Hienie The Kapitan he would do the math in his head and we would point the boat and torpedos loss and sometimes they would not even leave the tubes)
your not alone.
MM. :|\\
Nahh, they used torpedodirectors and other devices, you could do angle shots too. It was much more sophisticated than many believe.

Deamon

Its not really that Im unaware its just that thats my favorite Kurt Jurgens quote and I love doing the impression. Ill be back soon with some more useful input.
MM

[Capt Hook]

Bought three games thru Amazon.com. That one "Shells Of Fury" should hold me till then.

[Stormende]

Got Shells of Fury a week ago and... I miss the details!

I hope this mod will be SH3 or SH4 based, if it is then surely will kick ass.

:up:

Can hardly wait to see and play it!

[Deamon]

Got Shells of Fury a week ago and... I miss the details!

I hope this mod will be SH3 or SH4 based, if it is then surely will kick ass.

:up:

Can hardly wait to see and play it!
There is a misunderstanding though. Imperial U Flotilla is not a mod!

But many people seem to think so, even though I have stated clearly on my website that it is an independend project.

And it will not be released any time soon. IUF is a very ambitious project and will take its time.

But you are welcome though! Although the development in the recent years was going steady, I have made no project updates for the public for a long time now cause I just want to focus on development only.

SOF has its merits but overall it indeed lack details. IUF is getting a lot of details, hence the long development time. It's a hard task to come up with the details alone not to mention to implement them. Overal it is a very time consuming task but we make steady progress but the finish line is still far away. But it is very exciting to recreate this subject in the game prototype and play around with it.

Anyway, I doubt any commercial studios will ever deliver a proper WWI subsim unless it shows that this subject has enough commercial potential which can be shown only by some indies if at all.

[Stormende]

Hola Deamon, first let me congratulate you for such ambitious project, second I believe the developers have not really looked into this sub era long enough to discover its potential but your approach sounds right to me.

Just one thing, I thought (and seems I was not the only only one) that this was a mod, read your about section in your web page and it is not clear to me. Are you going to build the game engine as well or use an existing one? If so, which one will it be?

I would really like to test this game as soon as you have some beta ready if possible.

Thankx in advance and keep the good work!

:up:

[Deamon]

Hola Deamon, first let me congratulate you for such ambitious project,
Thanks, but you should rather feel sorry for me, cause its a huge, long, risky and often intimidating task, that I basically committed my life to. This is only something for people with no life and too much free time :D

But every significant progress gives you a thrill. Hammering something out that has never existed before is the ultimate satisfaction.

second I believe the developers have not really looked into this sub era long enough to discover its potential but your approach sounds right to me.I believe the same but hardly any commercial studio would like to risk to enter a new field, although with time more and more companies will be forced into still open niches. As you can see with Shells of Fury it already happened to WWI u-boats. But the implementation was a failure in many ways but similar is true for silent hunter. Such titles rather only tap the true potential of this subject.

I think most commerical project decisions these days, are business decisions. It's about business not visions. I am however vision driven. The revolutionary games were vision driven, I believe. I discovered the potential of this subject and had a strong and clear vision and this vision drives me ever since.

In this context I don't see myself as a part of the game industry. I am after ideas not after games but computer games( as long as there are no holo decks ) happen to be the best platform to resurrect, explore and experience a certain subject, provided the given subject is properly implemented. And this is exactly what I am after. I am studying this subject extensively on all levels and try to capture the essence of it in the game, this is what the vision was about, cause I realized its potential before I even finished one single book. This really goes beyond pure destroying of targets. In IUF the focus is much more balanced between the various aspects of the matter. Aspects some of which don't even exist in the naval games. The focus in the naval games tends to be very narrow on the action only. It seems the devs have also overlooked how much this 'secondary' aspects actually enhance the combat experience.

For example, usually in games you operate your boat a little bit like a car. The mission starts and you just hit the pedal and of you go. This really takes the life out of the game. In truth there is so much involved just to get the boat going. You never see that in a game. Seamanship is never an issue, the weather never harms your boat and you can run flank all the time, but yet it is supposed to be about operating a naval vehicle. In truth such a boat is a complex aggregate of engines, mechanisms and all sort of systems and provisions. Operating it is a complex and collaborative task that also involves planing and calculations. I think you hardly ever notice that in naval war games. This games are more about the process of destruction itself than the navy and seamanship. And they are not even really good at that. There is really not much more that you can do than looking for targets and destroy them ( but even this can be already very interesting when you make a science, an art and a sport of it ).

This is exactly what I want to change in IUF. The focus shifts a great deal towards seamanship, navigation, ship operations and even maneuvering. I am after a complete experience. The growing complexity of IUF will require in the end to resort to standard operational procedures, just like in reality, which is even more true for tactical engagements, instead of maneuvering the ship spontaneously like a car without much thought and planing. I want to reflect the fact that you need competence to operate a boat and I want to refine the process of hunting.

What has port maneuvering to do with attack procedures ? Both involves ship maneuvering, observation and counting in of all relevant environmental parameters, the parameters of the boat and its state, both requires to know the capabilities and response characteristics of your boat in different situations. I believe the average subsim player know much less about his subject than a flight simer about his subject. This is perhaps the reason why most people don't even realize how much this games suck. I want to change this with IUF. Perhaps most subsimers don't know how interesting all of this stuff is. I want to confront the player with all the things he didn't even knew about.

A dynamic and advanced simulation ensures an almost unlimited amount of situations and outcomes and a never ending learning curve. Playing and learning at the same time. That's it! This is what games are really good for.

After I finally started the development of the prototype 3 years ago, I quickly realized what a poor job the popular sims do in simulating the basic aspects of a naval sim. They are usually about good grafics and fighting. But the basic matters, like a proper simulation of the ship dynamics system for example, that has so much impact on combat and overall gaming experience, are ridiculously neglected. In fact it's so dumbed down that even my first crude ship dynamics system was way better than that of SHIII and still I found even port maneuvering somewhat interesting, in SHIII. I always started and ended a mission in the port when I docked the ship properly. Tactical maneuvering was even more fun, working out standard attack procedures for the different situations I get into.

Anyway, I really have no interest to produce something simplified and mitigated like Shells of Fury or even silent hunter( yes, in my opinion silent hunter III sucks too! never even tried IV ), I want DETAILS! All the details that I found out about during years of research. I build the game piece by piece, starting with the most fundamental things and when they reach a sophisticated state I move on to build the next layer of the game upon it. I don't rush out for shooting and blowing stuff up. This are things that will come only in the end. It is so important to work out the fundament of the game properly, cause the potential of the whole game raises or falls with it.

Most people have no clue how interesting this stuff realy is. But more don't need to be said at this point.

All of this of course comes not without a price. But the results so far are rather promising. The early results have already shown how different the game turns out when the basic features are worked out properly and as indicated above it turns out that the sims today can't get even the basics right.

After doing so much research and study of the subject I started to see all the flaws of the games and especially after getting so spoiled by my own game prototype, I can't even play this games anymore.

The true potential that is really in there will have to be seen once my own system is complete but I believe the suspense of disbelieve in the todays games is still rather far below of what the potential of this subject can really deliver. So in IUF I want to see how deep the rabbit hole goes.

Just one thing, I thought (and seems I was not the only one) that this was a mod, read your about section in your web page and it is not clear to me. Well, interestingly the top frame, when you navigate to my site actually clearly says that this is a stand alone project and besides that I mention the word Silent Hunter or mod not a single time on my website and the IUF forum is not a subforum of the SH forum but it seems many still think that it is a silent hunter mod, lol. An interesting effect. I need a psychologist to explain this.

Are you going to build the game engine as well or use an existing one? If so, which one will it be?For the engine I use OGRE and its plug-ins, why ?

I would really like to test this game as soon as you have some beta ready if possible.Let me see what I can do. But so far I have only pre-alphas to offer which turned out better than what even I would have expected.

[Highbury]

Just wanted to pop in and say I am still following and cheering for this project. Like any selfish person I would love the expedience of having the models in SH3/4 but we would certainly loose something from the overall package, so I am willing to wait as always :)

Keep it up, there are still many enthusiastic people waiting.

[Deamon]

Just wanted to pop in and say I am still following and cheering for this project. Like any selfish person I would love the expedience of having the models in SH3/4 but we would certainly loose something from the overall package, so I am willing to wait as always :)
Ahoy, Highbury. Thanks for the cheers.

Yes my models will not appear in any mod( except a basic model of the the U-Deutschland that I had donatedto USS Sea Tigers mod ). I don't even show the latest models anymore. Hence the stuff you see on my site is dated. But most progress is now on the coding side of the development. Hence there is not enough eye candy for regular updates ( excluding highly classified material :D ). This is one of the reasons why I went silent. But the main reason is simple because of the competition.

It is never a good idea to go public in a state where not even a game prototype exists. People will have to be patient then for a long long time.

It would have been better to work for something like 5 years on the game before even announce the project.

But on the other hand it also had a lot of benefits to do so. But now I just want to work my ass off for a few years, especially after I have accomulated a lot of material, enough to keep me busy for a long time.

Also, in the past some people tried to convince me to make IUF a SHIII mod. But this was not an option of course cause SHIII is nowhere near of what I expect from a subsim and to realize my vision and ensure future developments into an ubersim, I need independence and full control. People who urge me to make a SHIII mod don't realize my ambitions. People really have no imagination what is comming down their road. I believe people will be quite shocked when they get to play IUF the first time. Most people have no clue how much effort is really put into IUF and how serious we take this venture. The silence around us is misleading, I want people to understand this.


Keep it up, there are still many enthusiastic people waiting.Yes, I know. There are surely some enthusiasts watching the project from some distance away wondering if it will be ever accomplished.

I have a somewhat bad conscious for not having made any updates for a long time now. But at some point in the future, when I reach alpha and lots of stuff to show have accomulated, I will finally break the silence and make updates on a regular basis, till then I want to prepare some special things. I am sure people will be positively surprised. I can assure to anyone that the project is still going steadily, infact the productivity increased over the last few years significantly. This is one of the reasons I stopped to make updates. I am simple to focused on the work. But the team is still too small. I need artists badly, who share our ambitions.

But right now I prefer to remain silent and just focus on the work untill I hit at least alpha. This should be in about 2-3 years. Sorry for the inconvinience for anyone who looks forward to this project, but the level of ambitions leaves no options for the long waiting. But I am sure people will be surprised by the results, in the end.

Highbury, have you ever done any moding work ?

[Highbury]

Highbury, have you ever done any moding work ?

Depends on what you call modding.

With more games then I can count, and more hours then I care to admit, I have edited ini, cfg etc etc files to make games behave more in a manner I would like. Or add new models to games. My ability to actually model is 0, and textures at only a basic level (I have edited existing textures to my liking but creating my own is probably well beyond my ability). So basically I have just been a dabbler.

[DJ Funk]

IUF public relations officer stepping out of the shade here :woot:

In the team I am also responsible of general audio direction & sound engineering.

Our team director has got more tasks than one man can sufficiently handle so from this point on I will try to answer any of the questions here & keep you guys posted. Any specifics or technical stuff I can’t address my buddy Deamon can still answer but other than that he will be busy coding rest assured & the less he writes here the more he is able to make real progress.

We’re heading towards Alpha now…

[iambecomelife]

It's good to see a buzz again at this old sub-forum!

I am very interested in the details of how you will be handling prize warfare. It's the exact opposite of the "Sea Quake" game mode you get in too many naval sims, where there are two opposing factions and you blow pretty much anything out of the water.

There are just tons of potential scenarios that no prior subsim has ever scratched the surface of:

-Firing shots across the bow, forcing ships to heave to. Most games have such primitive AI that any shot will be interpreted as hostile; hopefully, IUF will be able to distinguish b/w warning shots and shots fired in combat.

-Inspecting paperwork for ships, and examining cargo.

-Destroying wireless sets before ships may proceed.

-Using launches to send over boarding parties. Ordering freighters to lower their own boats so that the officers can be interrogated.

-Destroying vessels with scuttling charges, after allowing the crewmembers to abandon ship. If I'm not mistaken, scuttling charges were often used to save valuable torpedoes & deck gun shells.

-Taking officers, captains, and other valuable personnel prisoner.

-Having a chance to seize code books, valuable documents, etc. Perhaps being rewarded extra for capturing important people or things.

-Broaching enemy cargo for your own use (food, supplies, &c). This was fairly common when WWII U-Boats encountered drifting merchant wrecks, so I imagine that WWI boats did the same.

-Neutral ships that may or may not be carrying contraband. Varying behavior/AI of merchant ships, depending on whether they are guilty of smuggling cargoes to the Allies.

-Appropriate penalties for sinking merchants without warning early in the war.

-Interrogating survivors about convoys & ship routing. Offering medical aid, food, & the course to land.

-Becoming famous or infamous depending on whether you stick to the prize rules, or if you act like a bloodthirsty psychopath. Sub commanders who are cruel to other seafarers should receive reprimands from their own side, or perhaps low morale amongst their crew.

There are just so many possibilities for a WWI sim, and yet people call the era "boring" & say that the future of subsims is "obviously" modern nuke boats, or more WWII combat. I say, no way! :)

[DJ Funk]

These features and perks of the WW1 submarine war era have certainly already been written on the IUF project todo list but are in the advanced concept section at this time. Being in a small Indie team means you only get to do one item at a time and the current development cycle of the project and prototype kinda tells you what the next biggest or most important feature to have is and should be implemented. We’re still some time from these features to become feasible to implement & thus the debate of them is still open.

I fully agree the possibilities are pretty much endless here up to the point I find it funny why and if people really think WW1 is that boring. Or have we already grown bored of WW2 and think well WW1 must be that much more boring because in technological terms it was ancient?

There are so many uncharted waters where we sail right now yet so many things haven’t changed at all. For example sea is still the same it was a hundred years ago. It still poses the same problems when casting off, anchoring, maneuvering in tight corners and navigating when you take away the GPS map and replace it with a sextant. You still need to look at the weather and wind conditions when you plan your moves just like it was back then. You still need to use aid of light houses, land signs and markers when you come back to port from open seas.

Even seagulls are still the same!

What makes real difference between the good old times and the modern naval warfare I think is that the further back you go the more human it gets. Your enemies and friends get closer to you and you will get to interact with them more instead of looking at a blip on a screen, painting a target reticule on it with a mouse and hitting a fire button. I wonder which one (scenario) has got more potential and possible intriguing outcomes? :ping:

[Deamon]

@iambecomelife:

check your PM's please.

[Rockin Robbins]

Just wanted to pop in and give a note of encouragement from a guy who would definitely love to see a WWI U-Boat simulator. I hope you're not running out of steam and love what you're doing here!:up::up::up:

[DJ Funk]

Running out of steam?

Not going to happen. Not in our lifetimes I’m afraid :O:

We’re having great fun in developing and being free of budget and deadline constraints have its perks both ways. The pace isn’t mindboggling but then the atmosphere inside the team is always fresh and innovative. We’re in a good way of doing something that has never been done in a way that has never been seen before. This is a true dream project for me where ambitious dreams and goals meet years of meticulous research and feature development. There’s no reason not to be excited about it as long as there is progress and dedicated people pitch in with their talent.

[keltos01]

Running out of steam?

Not going to happen. Not in our lifetimes I’m afraid :O:

We’re having great fun in developing and being free of budget and deadline constraints have its perks both ways. The pace isn’t mindboggling but then the atmosphere inside the team is always fresh and innovative. We’re in a good way of doing something that has never been done in a way that has never been seen before. This is a true dream project for me where ambitious dreams and goals meet years of meticulous research and feature development. There’s no reason not to be excited about it as long as there is progress and dedicated people pitch in with their talent.

look here too :

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=155091

still going strong : we are uniting to make that mod happen !

keltos

[DC SH4 TJH]

Hello everyone

I have just discovered this sub forum of Subsim and the indie subsim IUF. I want to congratulate all involved with this project, for working hard over the years, and I hope that the sim is released some day.

Also, I was wondering what the current status of the sim is, ie. is it advanced in development?

Congratulations, again!

Thomas

[Deamon]

Hello everyone

I have just discovered this sub forum of Subsim and the indie subsim IUF. I want to congratulate all involved with this project, for working hard over the years, and I hope that the sim is released some day.

Also, I was wondering what the current status of the sim is, ie. is it advanced in development?

Congratulations, again!

Thomas
Ahoy Thomas,

what concerns the status, well, the game itself is still pre-alpha. Progress was rapid and we had some advanced features in place already that would make any sub lover drivel. But then i had to put the development on hold for 1,5 years now in favour of a new development tool that will help to multiply the development speed afterwards. It's almost finished now and i can't wait to put it into action and catch up with the lost time again. :salute:

This was a long and daunting task but a vital investment into the future of the project. That is part of the reason why there is no life sign from us for such a long time now. Development takes this kind of turns in projects like this sometimes. But the bottom line is the project is still going well contrary to the impression it may create from the outside. I deliberately shun the public light. I don't want to expose myself to public expectations anymore untill the proof of concept is complete. Only from that point on i would consider it truly fail safe. Then the world will hear from us again.

It all takes so many years but that's how it is if you do most of the work alone. It's easy to get a lot of encouraging words but you will hardly find any helping hands. So here we go.

[iambecomelife]

Ahoy Thomas,

what concerns the status, well, the game itself is still pre-alpha. Progress was rapid and we had some advanced features in place already that would make any sub lover drivel. But then i had to put the development on hold for 1,5 years now in favour of a new development tool that will help to multiply the development speed afterwards. It's almost finished now and i can't wait to put it into action and catch up with the lost time again. :salute:

This was a long and daunting task but a vital investment into the future of the project. That is part of the reason why there is no life sign from us for such a long time now. Development takes this kind of turns in projects like this sometimes. But the bottom line is the project is still going well contrary to the impression it may create from the outside. I deliberately shun the public light. I don't want to expose myself to public expectations anymore untill the proof of concept is complete. Only from that point on i would consider it truly fail safe. Then the world will hear from us again.

It all takes so many years but that's how it is if you do most of the work alone. It's easy to get a lot of encouraging words but you will hardly find any helping hands. So here we go.

I know the feeling! It's lonely working by yourself, and very hard, but you get to do things at your own pace, instead of rushing out a substandard product.

I would like to have my own World War I mod done in time for the 100th anniversary of WWI, or maybe the 100th anniversary of the "Lusitania", but I doubt I will be able to do it. Simply making minor adjustments to environmental variables in "Silent Hunter 4" can take most of a day. I have tremendous respect for people like "Deamon" who don't even have a finished gaming platform to work off of, like I do. :up:

[Nagel]

I was hooked on Imperial Uboats after I read Fips.
I would definitely be on board for a WWI uboat Sim!
glad to see that there's interst here.

[Railgun]

Certainly interested here too .

Thanks in advance to all involved.

RG

[Deamon]

I know the feeling! It's lonely working by yourself, and very hard, but you get to do things at your own pace, instead of rushing out a substandard product.

I would like to have my own World War I mod done in time for the 100th anniversary of WWI, or maybe the 100th anniversary of the "Lusitania", but I doubt I will be able to do it. Simply making minor adjustments to environmental variables in "Silent Hunter 4" can take most of a day. I have tremendous respect for people like "Deamon" who don't even have a finished gaming platform to work off of, like I do. :up:
Thanks iam, i have great respect for you too. You are just as unstoppable as i am. It seems that exhaustive development periods do not scare you away. This is the most rare quality. We are like the last remaining dinosaurs that refuse to go away. :)

It's just a pitty that we are not working together, since we are such a rare and scattered bunch.

And to anyone else, i hope you folks know that you will have to be very patient with me. :-?

[Deamon]

I was hooked on Imperial Uboats after I read Fips.
I would definitely be on board for a WWI uboat Sim!
glad to see that there's interst here.
That is exactly how i got into it, although in my case it was "Raiders Of The Deep" that started the process. Before that i had no idea or relation to this subject. Then through some circumstances when i started to read "Raiders Of The Deep" which was the first book on the matter i ever read and boy i was hooked barely half into the book. Hooked is really the right term here. You really aren't expecting anything when you open your first book and then you just get blown away.

[andrzejos]

Certainly interested too .

[Raider M]

I have been looking forward to this one for a long time. Save the Ales!