What would bring modern submarine simulations back to life?

[Rosencrantz]

At first: Thank you guys for taking part in this discussion! After few weeks abroad I was glad to find so many posts!

I found many good points from the replies most of which are probably very true. However I also got a feeling that at times we maybe somewhat missed what I originally thought this discussion could be or could bring or lead us to.

What I mean is that we can of course say "lack of market is a problem", or "most of the people are looking for the easy entertainment", or "hardcore simmers - if they do exist - are all aliens". All these claims might be true, but they still don't answer to the original questions; What is or should be salt of the good subsim or Why did we interested in subsims (submarines) at first place (= what is that we have found that others haven't).

And to make myself clear: I'm not dreaming about indoctrination of masses to become as good subsimmers, but I still can't believe that exactly everything is already done. But sure, maybe I'm just one **** of a dreamer.


Greetings,
-RC-

[Flamebatter90]

The answer is easy: Someone willing to make one.

[Julhelm]

Originally Posted by magicstix

Mostly because in a cooperative setting, you don't want someone unqualified being captain of your sub. :P

Here's an actual counter example:
If you're on the blue force, and your side only has 20 F-18s, you don't want someone unqualified flying the F-18s and crashing them, using up all of your side's resources.

That's only true in a multiplayer environment, and even then content locking is stupid. So what if someone 'unqualified' crashes the planes? Somehow BF, ARMA and a host of other games manage to make this work without locking people out of 'the fun stuff'. I think it is wishful thinking to believe players would actually enjoy spending entire games doing nothing but staring at a simulated sonar CRT and not being allowed to do anything else lest they qualify. That sounds like a surefire way to scare off any but the most fanatic of sub enthusiasts.

[zachanscom]

Originally Posted by Flamebatter90

The answer is easy: Someone willing to make one.

that's the answer in a vaccum.

but in reality, who is going to risk years of development, thousands if not millions in budget on something that might not sell. how will he recoup his development costs?

if everyone bought study sims, all developers will be making study sims.

but that's just not what happens. companies need to make a profit.

[nsomnia]

This is a great thread why have I not seen it! We are going to start slow with a free demo, see what players like and dont like, improve, release another one, then go the WoTA route and build a real game based off of this free demo level with updates and trailers. I've got the next year of 5-16 hour days dedicated to it. Ive got a co-founder with equal input. Once we can start selling early access (I prefer early access to kickstarter) then we get the fundion required to hire specialists (like a specialist programmer to do the things our programming skills are not up to par with)

Currently we can produce a basic game because we can both do decent programming, I'm a great modeller, I have a part time character modeller on board. I've got veterns I talk to to get the realism done and were going for the whole arcade mode with the "advanced" features just tucked away in a hotkey or menu, like any good flightsim for example. You can get flying in DCS titles fairly easily after you read the manual for a few minutes, but mastering it is hard. Take something like SH though that has the difficulty settings you can change while in port, thats the direction we are taking.

This thread has been a gold mine of info! thank you guys! I wish I had seen it earlier.

The problem with indie games is they lack a budget and thus and they take forever to build, or dont come with quality.

Sorry to bump an old thread but I loved the discussion here.

[Pigmachine]

Originally Posted by zachanscom

that's the answer in a vaccum.

but in reality, who is going to risk years of development, thousands if not millions in budget on something that might not sell. how will he recoup his development costs?

if everyone bought study sims, all developers will be making study sims.

but that's just not what happens. companies need to make a profit.

The Steel-beasts Pro Pe, way seems to work OK.
With stuff for the military, and a little tuned down stuff for the pretty hardcore tank simmers.

But I guess so much is classified even on the older subs, that they just aren't allowed to recreate something decent enough.
(said by a guy who read the first and last page on a 4 page discussion)

[Einhanded]

Go for modern tech. Go Virtual Reality.

I've been having a really great experience using an Oculus DK2, and more recently, an HTC Vive; It never came to mind until now how amazing a first person experience in a submarine might be. I could see it as either a sit down or room scale experience. This would be HIGHLY immersive and insanely impressive

HMS Marulken really comes to mind. Either multiplayer or single player I feel like this tech could use more games/simulations. A lot of underwater diving experiences have risen with great success, but nothing quite as technical as say, having to report back to your captain what has shown up on your radar.

It's hard to explain the experience if you haven't put one of these things on your head. It really puts the player actually inside of the game. feel the creeks and sweeps. As your ship crash dives you would actually feel the nose tilt an insane degree. If any leaks occur, they splash on your face and hinder your vision. If motion controls were used, you would be physically turning valves and pulling leavers. The more I think about this the more I actually want this in my life!

[Rockin Robbins]

Modern submarines have several problems not even related to the game itself:

• There is no compelling reality story line to drive the imagination. No real conflicts. No sinkings. No memorable actions to capture interest.
• There are no compelling people, commonly known and admired, who are associated with modern subs. No Eugene Fluckey, no Gunther Prein......nobody!

Without a compelling back story and personalities sales prospects are grim.

[BarracudaUAK]

I was going to ask this a while back, but I forgot where the thread was...

By "modern submarine simulations".... what did the OP mean?

I can see it 2 ways:

A Simulator/Game that focuses on "modern submarines". (Like 688 Attack Sub, etc.)

Or a Simulator/Game with any submarine that uses/runs on "modern" hardware and graphics. (for example: Silent Hunter 5 compared to Aces of the Deep.)

Barracuda

[Julhelm]

Originally Posted by Rockin Robbins

Modern submarines have several problems not even related to the game itself:

• There is no compelling reality story line to drive the imagination. No real conflicts. No sinkings. No memorable actions to capture interest.
• There are no compelling people, commonly known and admired, who are associated with modern subs. No Eugene Fluckey, no Gunther Prein......nobody!

Without a compelling back story and personalities sales prospects are grim.

Our cold war subsim just punched through the top 20 on Steam Greenlight, after 4 days. That while being in competition with some 1900+ other games.

[Dowly]

Originally Posted by Julhelm

Our cold war subsim just punched through the top 20 on Steam Greenlight, after 4 days. That while being in competition with some 1900+ other games.

Getting your game Greenlit is not exactly an achievement these days.

[Julhelm]

The point is our previous WW2 game took several months to get greenlit. Our cold war game managed it in less than a week. So the idea that customers are not interested in the modern stuff 'because it didn't happen' doesn't really hold merit.

[nihilcat]

Originally Posted by Einhanded

Go for modern tech. Go Virtual Reality.

I've been having a really great experience using an Oculus DK2, and more recently, an HTC Vive; It never came to mind until now how amazing a first person experience in a submarine might be. I could see it as either a sit down or room scale experience. This would be HIGHLY immersive and insanely impressive

HMS Marulken really comes to mind. Either multiplayer or single player I feel like this tech could use more games/simulations. A lot of underwater diving experiences have risen with great success, but nothing quite as technical as say, having to report back to your captain what has shown up on your radar.

It's hard to explain the experience if you haven't put one of these things on your head. It really puts the player actually inside of the game. feel the creeks and sweeps. As your ship crash dives you would actually feel the nose tilt an insane degree. If any leaks occur, they splash on your face and hinder your vision. If motion controls were used, you would be physically turning valves and pulling leavers. The more I think about this the more I actually want this in my life!

We have a working VR version of UBOOT. It needs a few months of work to make all game features useable though (like map and periscope).

We may release it as a DLC some day. It's indeed interesting experience to get around the ship, give orders and the sea sickness is not virtual.

[R-T-B]

The answer to me is simple...

You don't need anything more than a good, scriptable framework, with access to everything (and/or source code, though this is probably not likely). Once you have that, you can relase frankly, the most arcadey game on the face of the earth, and as long as the framework is moddable enough and the basic elements there, modders can fix it.

That's pretty much what made SH3 what it was. It's hopefully someday going to make SH5 playable for me as well (gave up on modding that a while ago due to being unable to get a crew roster working).

If I were in charge of the community, rather than the recent bid to try to get SH5's game tools via donations, I would've tried to assemble a massive bid on an older games source code, such as SH3 (without name rights of course, Ubisoft would never do that).

We could do miracles with that.

PS: Yes, I have been on a silent run for a while. Real life, and all that.