SUBSIM Radio Room Forums - View Single Post - Playable Subs DEVS-Petition

Jamie · 01-04-07, 09:14 AM

Thank you Xabba, Oneshot, and Co. for your posts above, I appreciate you explaining the situation - thank you again for your help, as always!

Andy,

You can compare DW (or any of our games) to Operation Flashpoint/Bohemia Interactive (or any game/developer which you think applies) and at the end of the day it all makes little difference.

OFP is one of the most modular and mod-friendly games ever to be released, and (my impression from what I have read in Developer PostMortems and the like indicated that) they architected the game from the ground up to be that way. They spent a considerable amount of time in development (4 years, I read? Correct me if I'm wrong) making sure that the game framework was what they wanted it to be. Albeit their initial development was with a smaller team than ours which affords them some flexibility in that regard. But even with that much time for a dev cycle OFP still shipped with its fair share of bugs (many of which were fixed in the last 5-6 years, of course).

My point is that DW has been released. Had we chosen to release 2 new platforms instead of 4 (while still including the SC nuke subs, of course) then maybe we could have invested some funds into the development of the architecture and the creation of community mod tools and editors. Or maybe if we had cut our team in half and lengthened the dev cycle by a year or so then we could have applied some resources on a "part time" basis to work on those sorts of tasks (and tools).... who knows? (but again, I believe the contractual obligations with our DoD/Foreign customers would prohibit some of that - because I know what those agreements ACTUALLY are, as opposed to your speculation in the posts above).

This is all hypothetical, of course, because (as I said) DW is done. For us to invest additional funds to create these new tools (even if it were done in 2005 when the game was initially released) would not be cost-effective.

And to be honest, Andy, you have no idea how many projects are built on the NavalSimEngine here in our company. Tens of millions of dollars of gov't funding for trainers, simulations, and visualization and analysis tools have been won by our company by using our game group's technology (NavalSimEngine, predominately) in the proposal/bidding and eventual implementation (heck, I don't even know all the projects which probably use it). So, I'm sure there are a few things which BIA could learn from Sonalysts in that respect too - don't you think?

Again, I would have loved to make a whole suite of tools which could be used to create all sorts of fun things for DW, but as it turned out the fact that we were finanically prudent and responsible in our development costs for DW will likely allow us to "fight another day" in this volatile PC Gaming/Simulation market when other developers would not have been able to sustain themselves.

To me, that's what's most important.

01-04-07, 09:14 AM	#17
Jamie Sonalysts Inc. Join Date: Jul 2002 Location: Middletown, CT (USA) Posts: 204 Downloads: 0 Uploads: 0	Thank you Xabba, Oneshot, and Co. for your posts above, I appreciate you explaining the situation - thank you again for your help, as always! Andy, You can compare DW (or any of our games) to Operation Flashpoint/Bohemia Interactive (or any game/developer which you think applies) and at the end of the day it all makes little difference. OFP is one of the most modular and mod-friendly games ever to be released, and (my impression from what I have read in Developer PostMortems and the like indicated that) they architected the game from the ground up to be that way. They spent a considerable amount of time in development (4 years, I read? Correct me if I'm wrong) making sure that the game framework was what they wanted it to be. Albeit their initial development was with a smaller team than ours which affords them some flexibility in that regard. But even with that much time for a dev cycle OFP still shipped with its fair share of bugs (many of which were fixed in the last 5-6 years, of course). My point is that DW has been released. Had we chosen to release 2 new platforms instead of 4 (while still including the SC nuke subs, of course) then maybe we could have invested some funds into the development of the architecture and the creation of community mod tools and editors. Or maybe if we had cut our team in half and lengthened the dev cycle by a year or so then we could have applied some resources on a "part time" basis to work on those sorts of tasks (and tools).... who knows? (but again, I believe the contractual obligations with our DoD/Foreign customers would prohibit some of that - because I know what those agreements ACTUALLY are, as opposed to your speculation in the posts above). This is all hypothetical, of course, because (as I said) DW is done. For us to invest additional funds to create these new tools (even if it were done in 2005 when the game was initially released) would not be cost-effective. And to be honest, Andy, you have no idea how many projects are built on the NavalSimEngine here in our company. Tens of millions of dollars of gov't funding for trainers, simulations, and visualization and analysis tools have been won by our company by using our game group's technology (NavalSimEngine, predominately) in the proposal/bidding and eventual implementation (heck, I don't even know all the projects which probably use it). So, I'm sure there are a few things which BIA could learn from Sonalysts in that respect too - don't you think? Again, I would have loved to make a whole suite of tools which could be used to create all sorts of fun things for DW, but as it turned out the fact that we were finanically prudent and responsible in our development costs for DW will likely allow us to "fight another day" in this volatile PC Gaming/Simulation market when other developers would not have been able to sustain themselves. To me, that's what's most important.