Would it be possible to render the entire map?

somedude88 · 11-22-17, 08:49 AM

Like in the silent hunter series? Obviously with time compression. I kind of miss that, because it sort of put you in the world to traverse instead of having to look at a 2D Map. It would also make surfacing and diving more involved in the game along with having to use the radar/ESM periscope more to find your contacts instead of a popup window saying you found them. I don't know if it would make the game more tedious but, sailing on the surface, finding targets, emergency diving when a plane appeared and ballasting tanks when your badly damaged sub survived a pounding was half the fun. This transient 2D map stuff between instances sort of pulls you out of the battlefield you're fighting in.

XenonSurf · 11-22-17, 09:20 AM

I think it was a design choice by the devs. Yes it would be possible, but they would need to change the whole mission system together with it, so that's not the future...

Currently the missions are designed in a way to shuffle the ship positions at the last moment so you face a different situation each time, and the spawings follow a concrete piece (extract) of the map. Once you enter a mission it's decided that you will fail or succeed, there is no free 'disengage' and 're-engage' at a later point, so the whole thing is not trully dynamic,
there are no dynamic positions through the world for the objects you could meet like in SH3 or SH4/5. And no editor to globally change these. The result is however as good as for a 'complete' map to follow, you get to play trully different situations each time, and you can edit the ship/sub composition to your liking if you want.

The game has difficulties not making the ships go into the land, so this is the drawback of not setting exact ship routes like in a global map. Global ship routes would be predictable and thus not interesting...

Tinman764 · 11-22-17, 11:52 AM

I can't really see much point for a lot of game play in the world map. It worked well with Silent Hunter because of the technical limitations on the UBoats forcing them to run mostly surfaced.

There's no reason for a modern nuclear sub to run on the surface and drawing out prolonged movement in the world map would just get boring.

If you really wanted to bring in a gameplay element to the world map travel, you could make it a turn based strategy game. Give the player a course plotting tool and a range of movement they can plot until the next map update (satellite pass, U2 or whatever). The player plots a course, the AI plot theirs and the turn plays out until the next map update.

11-22-17, 08:49 AM	#1
somedude88 Torpedoman Join Date: Dec 2010 Posts: 120 Downloads: 54 Uploads: 0	Would it be possible to render the entire map? Like in the silent hunter series? Obviously with time compression. I kind of miss that, because it sort of put you in the world to traverse instead of having to look at a 2D Map. It would also make surfacing and diving more involved in the game along with having to use the radar/ESM periscope more to find your contacts instead of a popup window saying you found them. I don't know if it would make the game more tedious but, sailing on the surface, finding targets, emergency diving when a plane appeared and ballasting tanks when your badly damaged sub survived a pounding was half the fun. This transient 2D map stuff between instances sort of pulls you out of the battlefield you're fighting in.

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11-22-17, 09:20 AM	#2
XenonSurf Sea Lord Join Date: Apr 2008 Location: Germany, Italy Posts: 1,703 Downloads: 107 Uploads: 4	I think it was a design choice by the devs. Yes it would be possible, but they would need to change the whole mission system together with it, so that's not the future... Currently the missions are designed in a way to shuffle the ship positions at the last moment so you face a different situation each time, and the spawings follow a concrete piece (extract) of the map. Once you enter a mission it's decided that you will fail or succeed, there is no free 'disengage' and 're-engage' at a later point, so the whole thing is not trully dynamic, there are no dynamic positions through the world for the objects you could meet like in SH3 or SH4/5. And no editor to globally change these. The result is however as good as for a 'complete' map to follow, you get to play trully different situations each time, and you can edit the ship/sub composition to your liking if you want. The game has difficulties not making the ships go into the land, so this is the drawback of not setting exact ship routes like in a global map. Global ship routes would be predictable and thus not interesting...

11-22-17, 11:52 AM	#3
Tinman764 Chief Join Date: Dec 2010 Location: U-32's Wintergarten Posts: 325 Downloads: 177 Uploads: 0	I can't really see much point for a lot of game play in the world map. It worked well with Silent Hunter because of the technical limitations on the UBoats forcing them to run mostly surfaced. There's no reason for a modern nuclear sub to run on the surface and drawing out prolonged movement in the world map would just get boring. If you really wanted to bring in a gameplay element to the world map travel, you could make it a turn based strategy game. Give the player a course plotting tool and a range of movement they can plot until the next map update (satellite pass, U2 or whatever). The player plots a course, the AI plot theirs and the turn plays out until the next map update.