Working on a new submarine sim: Sub Commander - advice needed!

[P-Dup]

I have some suggestions for this great game:

- I think there should be a possibility to mark positions on the map, where you spotted a ship by RADAR for example, so you can better track their general course and possibly their speed. Also the RADAR officer could give an approximation after some time of tracking a ship an the RADAR screen.

- As someone said before, the sonar should display the approximate distance to a contact, at least on the tactical console, so you don't have to guess if it is within torpedo range or not when submerged. (I don't know if this would be technically and historically realistic with only an passive sonar, though.)

- In my opinion it is a little bit to easy to sink enemy ships with the torpedoes. I think sometimes a torpedo should miss, even when firing at an unsuspecting enemy. Also not every hit should destroy the target immediately. I think the possibility of only crippling ships or having them sink slowly, so you don't know if it is really destroyed or maybe can still fire at you, would really contribute to the atmosphere.

- Sometimes it is a little bit annoying that you can't see hull breaches, when they are on a square where a piece of installation is.

[Jimbuna]

Welcome to SubSim jartoch

[Dilqui]

Originally Posted by P-Dup

I have some suggestions for this great game:

- I think there should be a possibility to mark positions on the map, where you spotted a ship by RADAR for example, so you can better track their general course and possibly their speed. Also the RADAR officer could give an approximation after some time of tracking a ship an the RADAR screen.

- As someone said before, the sonar should display the approximate distance to a contact, at least on the tactical console, so you don't have to guess if it is within torpedo range or not when submerged. (I don't know if this would be technically and historically realistic with only an passive sonar, though.)

- In my opinion it is a little bit to easy to sink enemy ships with the torpedoes. I think sometimes a torpedo should miss, even when firing at an unsuspecting enemy. Also not every hit should destroy the target immediately. I think the possibility of only crippling ships or having them sink slowly, so you don't know if it is really destroyed or maybe can still fire at you, would really contribute to the atmosphere.

- Sometimes it is a little bit annoying that you can't see hull breaches, when they are on a square where a piece of installation is.

Hey man. I was the one who suggested the distances bit. I think the radar track and course would be a great idea, but wouldn't make much sense, since you can just directly head towards it. What would be more accurate would be some sort of TMA (Target Motion Analysis), which works off sonar, but it wouldn't be very douable, unless it was done automatically, and we got the track by auto.

Also, regarding the sonar: It is impossible to tell how far a boat is by PASSIVE sonar alone. Passive sonar is just listening at the water for sounds. Imagine trying to tell how far someone is by the intensity of their scream! You can get an idea, but not precise range. What I was suggesting was adding ACTIVE sonar, which is the pinging thing you hear in movies. It sends out some noise, and hears for the return. Active sonar will give you bearing and distance. Problem is, active sonar can be heard behind it's useful range. What this means is: While the active return might not see anything, someone could detect it. And an intercepted sonar return, while it does not give away distance, gives away your bearing, which means that the subs and other vessels know where to shoot to. So far, the only way to get distance accurately is by radar, which means you have to raise the scope, and possibly be torpedoed by that plane which was tailing you. (Seriously: US's P-3 orions are Satan on earth. If you don't get what I mean, get the US to declare war, and try to recon one of their ports. Jesus Christ!) And if the plane was not tailing you, it will be soon enough. While sonar might give away your location to underwater targets, at least it will not give it away to the P-3's.

And finally: Your section compartment. I really like the idea. Problem is, it would need to be proportional to the size. A small warship, because it's fast and a pain in the posterior, should be easy to take out, but larger warships should take 2-3 hits or more. It would certainly make it more tense. Otherwise, everything makes sense.

Also, sorry if this is too long. Might have gone a bit overboard, and watching some Dangerous Waters certainly did not help Hope this helps!

[Sashkakuhta]

Well, i just wanted to say that i managed to run the Sub Commander on android, using not-fully-free port of Wine called ExaGear Strategies.

Sub Commander itself loads very-very slow, but as far as i can say it runs fast enough to be playable.

Mouse emulation works OK, but its pretty uncomfortable to call a keyboard when you need to press a key, but its definetely more playable than i expected.

Photos (I wasnt able to take a screenshot when in emulator)




Also, im a blitz coder too, and as a blitz coder im assuming that loading bar is decorative, but im certainly can be not right as i dont seen the source codes.

But i love this game, and i wish it to relase someday

P.S. Sorry for my English, its not my primary language

[Aktungbby]

Sashkakuhta! Borodin! and jartoch!

[Jimbuna]

Welcome to SubSim

[TheGeoff]

Originally Posted by jartoch

Hi TheGeoff, I wanted to thank you for this awesome little game, its introduced me to submarine sims which im really liking so far. I also noticed some things:

- Internal Space in the reactor antechamber is spelled with a capital S while this is not the case in all the other rooms.

- Also, when you shut down the turbines, and you restart them, they are instantly back at their RPM, or is this because of the momentum they have?

- When I was sitting in the starting port at 30M depth i did not strike the seabed, but after a few minutes i suddenly started getting messages saying 'you struck the seabed' 'the sub lifted of the seabed'. These came really quickly after one another.

Also, suggestion, is there maybe a way to get a nice fade effect on the radar?

Thanks for pointing these out. The turbine speed one is because the turbines don't have a detailed mechanical model in the game yet, I'll get around to coding it one day. The others are just bugs - good to know about!

When the game is ported to BlitzMax, it will be much easier to do fancy fade and transparency effects for the radar and other sensors

Originally Posted by P-Dup

I have some suggestions for this great game:

- I think there should be a possibility to mark positions on the map, where you spotted a ship by RADAR for example, so you can better track their general course and possibly their speed. Also the RADAR officer could give an approximation after some time of tracking a ship an the RADAR screen.

- As someone said before, the sonar should display the approximate distance to a contact, at least on the tactical console, so you don't have to guess if it is within torpedo range or not when submerged. (I don't know if this would be technically and historically realistic with only an passive sonar, though.)

- In my opinion it is a little bit to easy to sink enemy ships with the torpedoes. I think sometimes a torpedo should miss, even when firing at an unsuspecting enemy. Also not every hit should destroy the target immediately. I think the possibility of only crippling ships or having them sink slowly, so you don't know if it is really destroyed or maybe can still fire at you, would really contribute to the atmosphere.

- Sometimes it is a little bit annoying that you can't see hull breaches, when they are on a square where a piece of installation is.

Good points. Active sonar with range-finding will definitely be added soon, and I might redo the radar screen eventually too.

As for the torpedoes - from my research and from talking to former submariners, I understand that modern torpedoes are so powerful they will split most small or medium size ships in half. Large ships should be a bit more resilient, and I'll make sure the game reflects that when they are added. Which should hopefully be soon, by the way - I've just started on the code for aircraft carriers.

Originally Posted by Sashkakuhta

Well, i just wanted to say that i managed to run the Sub Commander on android, using not-fully-free port of Wine called ExaGear Strategies.

Sub Commander itself loads very-very slow, but as far as i can say it runs fast enough to be playable.

Mouse emulation works OK, but its pretty uncomfortable to call a keyboard when you need to press a key, but its definetely more playable than i expected.

Photos (I wasnt able to take a screenshot when in emulator)




Also, im a blitz coder too, and as a blitz coder im assuming that loading bar is decorative, but im certainly can be not right as i dont seen the source codes.

But i love this game, and i wish it to relase someday

P.S. Sorry for my English, its not my primary language

This is incredible!! I would never have expected it to work on android Well done!

Hopefully, the game will eventually not require a keyboard - all functions will be controllable by clickable buttons. That way no keyboard emulation will be necessary for touch screen devices, making the game a lot easier to play.

The loading screen is definitely not decorative, it is displayed while the game is reading from config files, loading units etc. Loading the map is by far the slowest part, and that's what the loading bar shows - each pixel of the loading bar represents about 700,000 square kilometers of the map (about 1100 squares). The map is about 5MB total, so blitz takes a while to load it all on slower computers.

[Myxale]

Sweet Android.

This game is the perfect companion for and Android device. No more lame candy crutch ( or was it rush?) Instead some imagine playing SC when the fancy strikes.

[submersiblevalor84]

I'd like to see the following implemented in future releases:
-Cruise missile-capable subs
-Aircraft and Assault/Helicopter Carriers
-Iowa-class Battleships
-Additional aircraft types (Interceptors/Multirole/Bombers/Rotary-Wing)
-Escort Missions
-Joint-Operations Mission (With friendly task units and aircraft)
-Ranking system for completing missions successfully
-Command not one, but multiple subs when at higher ranks

[Dilqui]

Hey there! It's me again, with a new suggestion.

I was recently in a transit to recon Capetown. On the way there, however, I found several vessels. At the time, I was below the layer, and wanted a quick identification. So, I used the targeting computer to get a nation. Problem is, thought, there is no way, rather than zooming out and checking in the map (and this can be impractical or impossible sometimes) of whenever the vessel's country is currently at war, and if you are authorized to engage them.

What I was thinking was adding something like a War Listing of sorts, were you can double click on it, and the list of all countries at war with you are displayed. An extension of this could also involve allies. Even better, you can have a "Friend or Foe" counter in the targeting system.

Just a suggestion I was thinking about. Hope you like it!

A fan,
Dilqui

[TheGeoff]

Originally Posted by submersiblevalor84

I'd like to see the following implemented in future releases:
-Cruise missile-capable subs
-Aircraft and Assault/Helicopter Carriers
-Iowa-class Battleships
-Additional aircraft types (Interceptors/Multirole/Bombers/Rotary-Wing)
-Escort Missions
-Joint-Operations Mission (With friendly task units and aircraft)
-Ranking system for completing missions successfully
-Command not one, but multiple subs when at higher ranks

Good suggestions. Hopefully one day all of these will be in the game - they're now all on the list of future features. The only one I'm not sure about adding is the last one, but we'll see. Maybe it will be possible.

Originally Posted by Dilqui

Hey there! It's me again, with a new suggestion.

I was recently in a transit to recon Capetown. On the way there, however, I found several vessels. At the time, I was below the layer, and wanted a quick identification. So, I used the targeting computer to get a nation. Problem is, thought, there is no way, rather than zooming out and checking in the map (and this can be impractical or impossible sometimes) of whenever the vessel's country is currently at war, and if you are authorized to engage them.

What I was thinking was adding something like a War Listing of sorts, were you can double click on it, and the list of all countries at war with you are displayed. An extension of this could also involve allies. Even better, you can have a "Friend or Foe" counter in the targeting system.

Just a suggestion I was thinking about. Hope you like it!

A fan,
Dilqui

Good point Dilqui. I liked this suggestion so much that I implemented it immediately - in the next version, your allies and enemies are all listed on the map screen:



Work on the next version is progressing slowly but surely. So far it includes several nice improvements to the user-friendliness of the game, many realism improvements (some suggested by a former submariner), a few new cities, and a LOT of bug fixes. But before releasing the update I still want to redo the main menu, and add a proper options menu to eliminate the need for messing around with gameoptions.ini.

[Tango589]

I can't wait, it all looks very good!

[Dilqui]

As the title says, I did not expect you to implement that so quick! Nice to see an active developer who takes part in the community.

I can hardly wait for the next version! I want to ask, but at the same time, I feel as thought it would put you under pressure...
Is there currently an estimate of when the next version comes out? I don't want to put any extra pressure or anything; you can just say you don't know. But it would be nice to have an idea of when it comes out.

Also, has active sonar been implemented yet? I just really want to know.

...look at me. I am blabbering like a fool now.

Anyways, I will sign off now, before I say something stupid.

The Fan,
Dilqui

[Dilqui]

I was browsing Youtube, when I found THIS:



It's a playtrought of sub commander! It's version 0.23 in the video, so no nukes. However, that is not the main jewel! Give the video a quick look: Especially somewhere around the 4-5 minute mark...

Tell me what you think!

[TheGeoff]

Originally Posted by Dilqui

As the title says, I did not expect you to implement that so quick! Nice to see an active developer who takes part in the community.

I can hardly wait for the next version! I want to ask, but at the same time, I feel as thought it would put you under pressure...
Is there currently an estimate of when the next version comes out? I don't want to put any extra pressure or anything; you can just say you don't know. But it would be nice to have an idea of when it comes out.

Also, has active sonar been implemented yet? I just really want to know.

...look at me. I am blabbering like a fool now.

Anyways, I will sign off now, before I say something stupid.

The Fan,
Dilqui

I don't have an estimate for when the next update will be released - it mostly depends on how long the menu takes to redesign and how many other features I decide to add along the way. Maybe it will come out next week, if I get the main menu done over the weekend, but probably not.

Active sonar has been added ready for the next release. It tells you the exact bearing and distance to your sonar target, but will alert nearby warships to your presence. Most importantly, it makes a cool 'ping' sound

Originally Posted by Dilqui

I was browsing Youtube, when I found THIS:



It's a playtrought of sub commander! It's version 0.23 in the video, so no nukes. However, that is not the main jewel! Give the video a quick look: Especially somewhere around the 4-5 minute mark...

Tell me what you think!

That's great! I'm impressed that he managed to accidentally find the 'destroy hull' and 'start fire' keys so quickly

I know about a couple of other people who have made some nice videos about the game too:
Effing Controller has made a couple of cool videos, the first one is here: (the stuff around 6-7 minutes is great)
IchBinJaeger has made about 5-6 videos now, including one where he starts a nuclear war with a giant custom built submarine. His first video is here: