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

[JerikTelorian]

Originally Posted by arl85

and now some questions:

1. is there any advantage in stopping damaged systems while repairing? is there any "danger" in repairing a working damaged turbine, for example?
2. how does the algorithm for selecting a crew member when ordering "repair" or "assess damage" at cursor work? it seems that when I order "assess damage" a crew member is called, but when ordering a repair from the "damage assessment" view, another different member is called.
   is it only related to assigned compartment/task permission or are experience in specific field and equipped equipment also considered ?
   
   

Regarding point 1, in my experience turbines and diesel engines should be shut down immediately when they break, as the damage can increase rapidly if the system is pushed while broken.

[Alfa15]

Geoff,

First off all. Thank you for the best cold war/modern sub game ever! I like most of you have spent countless hours playing SHIII with GWX, which I loved, and I havent played for a while.

I have always dreamed about an excellent cold war/modern war submarine simulator and this is so excellent. I stumbled across this just a couple days ago.

There is one feature that I really want. Is it possible to play the game in real time? So instead of a minute passing every second, the game would operate at real time. They way it is now can be a little arcadey when in combat. If it could operate at real time, so that you have time to manuever and everything, that would be great! With torpedoes moving in real time too.

I have lowered the game speed in the game options, but, that is more just a frame per sec speed, and lowering it too much makes it impossible to play. Unless you fine clicking non stop until you hit it during the frame.

Also, are you planning on adding countermeasures or am I just missing that?

Lastly, this would be so great on ios! Any plans for that? I know you want this game to be free, but, I would easily pay for this on ios.

Thanks!

[Jimbuna]

Welcome to SubSim Alfa

[ReallyDedPoet]

Welcome Alfa :-)

[Pwnzorlol]

I love this game, but I keep encountering a bug everytime I play. Whenever I launch a missle, it launches fine, but most of the time it impacts wherever I sent it, it crashes the game. This isn't always the case, sometimes it impacts, but then when the other nations launch missles as well the next missle impact crashes the game. Is there any fix? I have tried increasing my memory and running as admin, but I still get no luck

[TheGeoff]

Originally Posted by arl85

Hi,
first of all I want to express all my admiration for this incredible work you are doing!

I just want to report you a couple of things:
it seems that in several screen (ex: periscope) you can change depth using +/- keys, but in F1 help this info is missing (at least in periscope mode).

Strictly related, I found that only in map mode you can see ordered speed (but not ordered depth) so I suggest to always display speed, depth and heading together with ordered one

and now some questions:

1. is there any advantage in stopping damaged systems while repairing? is there any "danger" in repairing a working damaged turbine, for example?
2. how does the algorithm for selecting a crew member when ordering "repair" or "assess damage" at cursor work? it seems that when I order "assess damage" a crew member is called, but when ordering a repair from the "damage assessment" view, another different member is called.
   is it only related to assigned compartment/task permission or are experience in specific field and equipped equipment also considered ?

finally a bug report: while trying to save my sinking sub, I locked some bulkheads.
after a while, game started complying about "unable to find path". I thought "it's normal, no problem".
But after several cycle of different crewmembers complaining game hanged as how it was in a infinite loop. I'll try to give you more info next time.

Glad you're enjoying the game! Thank you for these reports, I'll look into fixing them for the next update.

To answer your questions:

1. Some systems can explode if they are running with certain components damaged. For example - if a turbine is badly damaged, and you repair the rotor before repairing the speed governor, the rotor will spin too quickly and rapidly tear itself apart again. If you are unlucky, the repairman might be hit by shrapnel or the turbine may catch fire. To avoid situations like this, you should shut down the machinery before attempting repairs. It's especially useful for damaged nuclear reactors - if you shut down the reactor you can run the pumps at a lower speed, which will decrease the rate of radiation emission.

2. This is a bit of a bug. When you order repairs from the damage assessment screen, the game searches for a nearby crewman who is qualified and isn't busy. The guy performing the damage assessment counts as busy, because he's performing a damage assessment. This should be fixed some time soon!

Originally Posted by Alfa15

Geoff,

First off all. Thank you for the best cold war/modern sub game ever! I like most of you have spent countless hours playing SHIII with GWX, which I loved, and I havent played for a while.

I have always dreamed about an excellent cold war/modern war submarine simulator and this is so excellent. I stumbled across this just a couple days ago.

There is one feature that I really want. Is it possible to play the game in real time? So instead of a minute passing every second, the game would operate at real time. They way it is now can be a little arcadey when in combat. If it could operate at real time, so that you have time to manuever and everything, that would be great! With torpedoes moving in real time too.

I have lowered the game speed in the game options, but, that is more just a frame per sec speed, and lowering it too much makes it impossible to play. Unless you fine clicking non stop until you hit it during the frame.

Also, are you planning on adding countermeasures or am I just missing that?

Lastly, this would be so great on ios! Any plans for that? I know you want this game to be free, but, I would easily pay for this on ios.

Thanks!

A few people have asked for a real-time mode so I'll look into adding it in a future update. It will require changing a few things around but shouldn't be too difficult. Good suggestion!

Countermeasures are planned, but they haven't made it into the game yet. Possibly next update - they're a pretty important part of submarine warfare so I'll add them as soon as possible.

iOS compatibility is unfortunately not possible as far as I know. Compiling the game for iOS or Android would require the entire game to be rewritten in a different language, which is not something I plan to do any time soon. People have managed to run the game on a Windows tablet though, and Sashkakuhta managed to get the game running on an Android phone using a Wine emulator: http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/show...36#post2262136
So it might be possible using some kind of emulator... let me know if you try it!

Originally Posted by Pwnzorlol

I love this game, but I keep encountering a bug everytime I play. Whenever I launch a missle, it launches fine, but most of the time it impacts wherever I sent it, it crashes the game. This isn't always the case, sometimes it impacts, but then when the other nations launch missles as well the next missle impact crashes the game. Is there any fix? I have tried increasing my memory and running as admin, but I still get no luck

How long ago did you download the game? A couple of weeks after the release of the last version I updated it to fix this (hopefully it worked!). Try redownloading the game and see if the bug continues to occur.

[Pwnzorlol]

I just redownloaded the main version on the front page (.27) and it still continues to happen. I think the bug is still there

[arl85]

Can someone explain meaning of skills and use of equipment?
I think I figured out some of them:

SKILLS

• trained/skilled/expert welder - faster hull repairs
• trained/skilled/expert repairman - faster repairs
• trained/skilled/expert firefighter - faster at fighting fires
• strong - ?
• tough - will it become tired later?
• leader - ?
• technician - ?

EQUIPMENT

• toolbox - faster repairs
• welding torch - faster hull repairs
• fire extinguisher - faster fire fighting
• gas mask - ?
• thick leather gloves - ?
• chemical suit - ?
• radiation suit - reduced radiation absorbed by crew member
• self-contained breathing apparatus - crew member can breath in flooded or without-oxygen compartments.

any idea about the "?" ones?

edit: I found that seems you're unable to reduce water to less than 1 cm even with 2 pumps at max power.

[Sashkakuhta]

Geoff,
Some time ago you posted a post where you said that you going to port Sub Commander to a BlitzMax language. I wanted to say that it's may be capable of compiling for android (and even for some ARM-linux based devices) using custom build tools, those are summary called bmx-ng. Main problem is that there is no proper documentation for those tools. I wasnt able to make a 100% working setup, because theres no even installing instructions at the moment.

[arl85]

another report: is it intended that if you reduce secondary pump speed to zero the primary cool pressure light turns on? (together with secondary light also) also I found no way to turn it off (raising or reducing primary/secondary pump speed, etc...)

[JerikTelorian]

Originally Posted by arl85

Can someone explain meaning of skills and use of equipment?
I think I figured out some of them:

SKILLS

• trained/skilled/expert welder - faster hull repairs
• trained/skilled/expert repairman - faster repairs
• trained/skilled/expert firefighter - faster at fighting fires
• strong - ?
• tough - will it become tired later?
• leader - ?
• technician - ?

EQUIPMENT

• toolbox - faster repairs
• welding torch - faster hull repairs
• fire extinguisher - faster fire fighting
• gas mask - ?
• thick leather gloves - ?
• chemical suit - ?
• radiation suit - reduced radiation absorbed by crew member
• self-contained breathing apparatus - crew member can breath in flooded or without-oxygen compartments.

any idea about the "?" ones?

edit: I found that seems you're unable to reduce water to less than 1 cm even with 2 pumps at max power.

"Strong" seems to mean that they can carry more equipment (a toolbox and a SCBA and a welder and a fire extinguisher, etc.) without getting "Tired" so fast. They also seem to tolerate bad conditions (radiation, high pressure in a compartment, etc.) better.

I believe that Gas Masks reduce exposure to radiation if it is in the air. I'm not sure on the Leather Gloves but I think they're for firefighting.

[Tango589]

Is it possible to improve the Weapon Status screen, so not only will it show definite targets identified by periscope/radar/lookout, but also include targets picked up by the sonar ie. lines of bearing and approximate locations of targets by triangulation (linked in with the TMA idea mooted by someone else previously)?

[TheGeoff]

Originally Posted by Pwnzorlol

I just redownloaded the main version on the front page (.27) and it still continues to happen. I think the bug is still there

Thanks for checking, I'll see if I can figure out the problem.

Originally Posted by arl85

Can someone explain meaning of skills and use of equipment?
I think I figured out some of them:

• trained/skilled/expert welder - faster hull repairs
• trained/skilled/expert repairman - faster repairs
• trained/skilled/expert firefighter - faster at fighting fires
• strong - ?
• tough - will it become tired later?
• leader - ?
• technician - ?

EQUIPMENT

• toolbox - faster repairs
• welding torch - faster hull repairs
• fire extinguisher - faster fire fighting
• gas mask - ?
• thick leather gloves - ?
• chemical suit - ?
• radiation suit - reduced radiation absorbed by crew member
• self-contained breathing apparatus - crew member can breath in flooded or without-oxygen compartments.

any idea about the "?" ones?

edit: I found that seems you're unable to reduce water to less than 1 cm even with 2 pumps at max power.

You guessed most of them correct. For reference, these are the main effects of each skill and piece of equipment:

• Welder - Faster hull repairs, slightly faster object repairs
• Repairman / Technician / Engineer - Faster object repairs, slightly faster hull repairs
• Firefighter - Faster at extinquishing fires
• Strong - Can carry more equipment without tiring, faster at loading torpedoes
• Tough - More resistant to fires and radiation, becomes tired less quickly
• Leader - Inspires nearby crew to work faster. Better leaders have a stronger effect over a larger range.

• Toolbox - faster object repairs
• Welding torch - faster hull repairs
• Fire extinguisher - faster fire fighting
• Gas mask - Increases resistance to radiation, but crewman will become tired more quickly. Significantly slows down strenuous tasks like loading torpedoes.
• Thick leather gloves - Slightly more resistant to fires and radiation, slight boost to torpedo loading speed.
• Chemical suit - Slightly improves radiation resistance.
• Radiation suit - Significantly improves radiation resistance.
• SCBA - Same as gas mask, but the crewman can also breathe underwater or in areas with no oxygen.

Originally Posted by Sashkakuhta

Geoff,
Some time ago you posted a post where you said that you going to port Sub Commander to a BlitzMax language. I wanted to say that it's may be capable of compiling for android (and even for some ARM-linux based devices) using custom build tools, those are summary called bmx-ng. Main problem is that there is no proper documentation for those tools. I wasnt able to make a 100% working setup, because theres no even installing instructions at the moment.

Thanks for pointing this out, looks like it could work! I'll try to port the code across to BlitzMax soon and see if I can use those build tools. Unfortunately porting it across will take a while, I was pretty bad at coding when I started this game and I put everything in subroutines instead of functions

Originally Posted by arl85

another report: is it intended that if you reduce secondary pump speed to zero the primary cool pressure light turns on? (together with secondary light also) also I found no way to turn it off (raising or reducing primary/secondary pump speed, etc...)

Thanks for the report, it's definitely a bug. The primary coolant pressure doesn't actually drop, so I'm not sure why the warning light comes on - I'll look into it.

Originally Posted by Tango589

Is it possible to improve the Weapon Status screen, so not only will it show definite targets identified by periscope/radar/lookout, but also include targets picked up by the sonar ie. lines of bearing and approximate locations of targets by triangulation (linked in with the TMA idea mooted by someone else previously)?

I originally planned to do this but never got around to implementing it when the sonar was actually added! I'll probably put it in for next time - would be nice to be able to use the WSC map underwater.




I haven't worked on Sub Commander much lately, I will probably get back into making more regular progress in a few weeks. Currently all efforts are focused on the (so far unnamed) 3D submarine simulator

Exciting news: originally the 3D sim was going to have fictional submarines roughly based on real designs, like Sub Commander. After extensive research and discussions with several naval museums, however, I've come to the conclusion that it's possible to fully simulate actual, historical submarine classes in the game. So you won't be running around some generic, fictional sub, you'll be aboard a meticulously detailed recreation of an actual boat.

So far I can confirm that the Foxtrot-class will definitely feature in the game

[Nickvr628]

I volunteer for submarine duty to beta test your 3d sub game. I am longing for a submarine game until subnautica releases their first "real" submarine that you can walk around in.

[Aktungbby]

Nickvr628! Belatedly on your third post!