HMS Marulken to become Subsim Project

Zerim · 06-22-16, 02:53 AM

So, I downloaded the game ~2 days ago based on a recommendation from some of my friends from Eve Online, so I'd like to chime in and speak as someone who knows very little about submarines and hasn't played a sub game before.
I'm very happy that it's been funded, because what you have at the moment is special. This game has the potential to be quite popular among mainstream gamers (your own Google Analytics may provide insight). At the moment, the game, as incomplete as it is, isn't just some obvious clone of another game, and it provides extremely memorable gameplay for groups of friends, with serious, tense, scary, funny, and enjoyable moments, somewhat similar to Keep Talking And Nobody Explodes or Spaceteam. I'd like to offer a few pointers, though as you've decided to fund development, it's your money, so feel free to disregard them.

1. Mainstream gamers do not care about the submarine type, and they won't care about what's historically accurate (beyond tangible things like armament, instrument quality, or other special equipment). I'm sure the controls at each station in the current game are dumbed down compared to real life, but they're still not 100% intuitive--please try to avoid making them unnecessarily complicated in the name of accuracy. If you happen to have an abundance of development time, consider a simple mode (i.e., similar to current) and a realistic mode for some stations. That said, elements of realism can make a game really educational and interesting if you don't scare the player away.

2. I'm sure this will sound almost as bad as #1 to many of you, but don't obsess with the story to the detriment of gameplay; the alt-history Swedish setting was cute, but unless you hire a professional writer or an enthusiastic historian, people will likely hit escape to skip the roleplay portions, as we did. However, that doesn't mean good historical story elements would go unnoticed--I'd love to be thrown into this guy's situation and have to solve it. (I'd personally rather have two somewhat historically inaccurate submarines in different eras than one perfect WW2 submarine. Just don't rule out the possibility of a later DLC release with Cold War-era boomers with similar gameplay :)

3. Be careful not to uproot everything that's done if you're going to be changing a lot--Unity is a great choice of an engine, with a nice asset store, and it should allow you to move into VR, which to me is an obvious step for this game. I'm surprised at how good the game already looks, especially the ocean waves and the smoke around the generators; avoid going full ARK: Survival Evolved (which is UE4 and visually pretty but crippling-ly optimized) unless you're certain you could deal with the downsides. Custom 3D game engines are the death of small teams.

4. Don't be afraid to monetize the game some to offset expenses as you develop, especially if the demo goes viral before the 'corrected' version is complete. That said, you can't and shouldn't rely on the chances of it going viral, and don't over-promise or under-deliver like ~75% of Steam Greenlight games. I wouldn't hesitate to drop $5 on the game as it currently is if it had a few more core features (listed below), as this is exactly the kind of game I'd buy for a few hours of weekend fun assuming core functionality is in place.

So, things that need to be priorities (aka, I'm just gonna make the post longer and throw suggestions for the game as-is)-
1. Game saving and loading. I soloed the current mission (6-8 kills!), and it took me a few hours in one sitting. For long duration missions, saving is a must; without it and autosave, expect people to ragequit and leave bad reviews.
2. Player models for multiplayer. I know they've posted some WIP 3D models, but invisibility is an awful placeholder--just a standard Unity player capsule would be way better than nothing, and should really be in the very next version.
3. Tweaks to the user interface/experience, both in the menu and in game.
In the menu: various things like mouse-over color changes are simple to add and very helpful to the user.
In the game: the papers ('O' and 'F' keys) being affected by lighting will lead to some great gameplay as people try to read their orders as their lights flicker due to lack of power... however not being able to read because it's too bright in the EWAR room is lame. In addition, WASD should work if you're not holding right click. Consider the option to make right click a toggle instead of a hold.
As a bonus: the fact that radio broadcasts are in German is a nice touch, but having to open up Google Translate doesn't help immersion, no pun intended. If you plan on having realistic languages, add a translation cheat sheet or AI crew translator or something.

tl;dr- The core gameplay has tons of potential mostly regardless of historicity. Good luck with its development!

daft · 06-22-16, 03:19 AM

Firstly, awesome news! I really approve of the new direction!

Secondly, you're moving to Sweden?! Now, I haven't been the most Active member on Subsim, but I've been here for a looooong time now (before my current forum nick namn I had another which I lost the password to), and Subsim and consequently you Neal, have come to mean quite a bit to me throughout the years. So IF you really are moving to Sweden (Stockholm I assume), I insist that I finally get a chance to meet up and buy you a couple of beers.

nsomnia · 06-22-16, 07:22 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zerim

Just don't rule out the possibility of a later DLC release with Cold War-era boomers with similar gameplay

We've got you covered, check back this weekend (Very very late Saturday GMT or Sunday) mail has been shipped out and should be arriving in port anyday now.

:

Edit: Just noticed top 100 of 35,500 on indieDB in my siggy, thanks for the publicity Neal & Co!

StandingCow · 06-22-16, 07:57 AM

Awesome news! So... question... should we (if we still want to put money toward this game) donate what we kickstarted to subsim or will there be a future pre-order link put up?

Onkel Neal · 06-22-16, 08:45 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by daft

Firstly, awesome news! I really approve of the new direction!

Secondly, you're moving to Sweden?! Now, I haven't been the most Active member on Subsim, but I've been here for a looooong time now (before my current forum nick namn I had another which I lost the password to), and Subsim and consequently you Neal, have come to mean quite a bit to me throughout the years. So IF you really are moving to Sweden (Stockholm I assume), I insist that I finally get a chance to meet up and buy you a couple of beers.

Yes sir, thank you, looking forward to it. I also plan to visit the U-Boat in Kiel, for research and honor.

Quote:

Originally Posted by nsomnia

We've got you covered, check back this weekend (Very very late Saturday GMT or Sunday) mail has been shipped out and should be arriving in port anyday now.

:

Edit: Just noticed top 100 of 35,500 on indieDB in my siggy, thanks for the publicity Neal & Co!

Outstanding! Please be assured, as my role of Admin with Subsim, I will always back your effort and support you. There is no such thing as too many quality subsims.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zerim

So, I downloaded the game ~2 days ago based on a recommendation from some of my friends from Eve Online, so I'd like to chime in and speak as someone who knows very little about submarines and hasn't played a sub game before.
I'm very happy that it's been funded, because what you have at the moment is special. This game has the potential to be quite popular among mainstream gamers (your own Google Analytics may provide insight). At the moment, the game, as incomplete as it is, isn't just some obvious clone of another game, and it provides extremely memorable gameplay for groups of friends, with serious, tense, scary, funny, and enjoyable moments, somewhat similar to Keep Talking And Nobody Explodes or Spaceteam. I'd like to offer a few pointers, though as you've decided to fund development, it's your money, so feel free to disregard them.

1. Mainstream gamers do not care about the submarine type, and they won't care about what's historically accurate (beyond tangible things like armament, instrument quality, or other special equipment). I'm sure ... I have read every bit, thanks --NS

tl;dr- The core gameplay has tons of potential mostly regardless of historicity. Good luck with its development!

Zerim, thanks for taking the time to share your views. They are gold, you are right about the value of appealing to casual gamers. I have always believed that a good sub game should have scalable options and good tutorials where a newbie can pick up the game quickly and enjoy the hell out if it; it should also be able to represent historical and physical reality, and options for that are mandatory. I want the ship models, capabilities and tactics to represent real life, with concessions to game play only as needed.

Thanks also for the other game suggestions, I will investigate them. If a game does it right, then I like to study it for keys to success.

Quote:

Originally Posted by StandingCow

Awesome news! So... question... should we (if we still want to put money toward this game) donate what we kickstarted to subsim or will there be a future pre-order link put up?

Yes sir, hold on to your $$, when the game is ready, we will put it on Steam.

nsomnia · 06-22-16, 09:57 AM

Any plans on releasing more details? Is Subsim/Sweeds on a 50/50 basis or do they have a bit more say knowing how game development works etc?

I understand keeping business CLASS however.

HawkCZ · 06-22-16, 10:39 AM

Really glad to hear that the game got funded and that we'll have it here one day.

When I first heard about this game, I thought: "Wow, is this like SH but with multiple people in one sub? Awesome!"

We immediately downloaded the demo to try it. That's when I started to be skeptic about the fun that the game could offer. Sure, the idea of controlling the sub with bunch of friends is great. But how long can it last? The full game offered "a campaign". Thing is, it looked more like a number of separated missions which would probably be always the same, so the replay value would be pretty low. The reason why I like Silent Hunter is based primarily on the campaign it offers. You get a sub, massive scale map and almost 6 years of war to play with. In the newest dev update, it was mentioned that the U-Boat version of HMS Marulken will offer dynamic generated missions. Does that mean something like the campaigns in Silent Hunter? Or just the separated missions I mentioned earlier that would just get more randomized? I think there's a big potential in the Silent Hunter type of campaign and in the big variety of its randomized features (weather, day/night cycle, ships that you may come across, etc.) and it would be great at least as one of the playable game modes. But that could be just me..

I also agree about the opinion on difficulty (=realism). Adding the realism settings would be a good benefit, since the casual gamers would be able to play the game, while experienced sub captains would find it a challenge and would enjoy the authenticity and realism.

Another gameplay feature that could be worth thinking about is including proper damage model and repairs of the sub. Imagine a following situation - destroyer attacks you with depth charges and damages the sub. Water starts flooding the interior. Some of the crewmembers must leave their stations to seal the cracks in the hull, repair some of the modules in the sub (engines and such) and perhaps place water pumps to pump out the water. (Or whatever they did IRL). Everything could be done using minigames. On the other hand, I realize that having this mechanic in such a small sub like the one that is currently in the game would be almost impossible.

Other things that I suggest (other than those that were already announced):
• Adding active sonar
• Using sonar to measure depth below keel
• Improving AI of enemy ships (Sometimes it felt really weird in the demo; eg. going 2,5km past a destroyer without him noticing us, and similar events, it just sometimes felt too easy)

(I realize that most of my suggestions is just Ctrl + C from Silent Hunter, since it is the only series I've played so far, sorry about that.)

I wish you the best of luck with the development and I am looking forward to any kind of news!

Aktungbby · 06-22-16, 10:45 AM

HawkCZ!

nice balanced opinion/review first post!

horsa · 06-22-16, 11:07 AM

Bold move, Neal. Best wishes for every success with this venture

TheQuack45 · 06-22-16, 05:17 PM

Really glad to hear about this, I had concerns regarding the potential of the alternate history idea. I'm not sure if I entirely believe if Onkel Neal is serious about the moving to Sweden part, but if that really is the case I want to hear how it goes initially... But anyway I'm happy to hear that Neal is going to be heavily involved with the process going forward, I have high hopes for this project.

Can't wait until the game goes up on Steam so I can get hold of the next build!

Zerim · 06-22-16, 06:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Onkel Neal

I want the ship models, capabilities and tactics to represent real life, with concessions to game play only as needed.

I agree there. A more experienced crew should be able to use tactics like hiding behind the noise of a target's engines, or avoiding flipping switches/diving too fast making lots of audible noise that AI could detect, or charging batteries only at night.
What I meant more specifically was concerning the accuracy of, for example, 3D models. If/when you get to modeling e.g. the actual (which is a bit more complicated than the current decoder), realistic usage would be fun to a point, but I wouldn't spend an entire week perfectly recreating its internal wires and behavior unless I was sure it would add to game play.
Or, if you add a day/night cycle, a 24-hour cycle rarely works well in video games. But again, your call :D

Aktungbby · 06-22-16, 07:09 PM

Zerim!

p4p3rm4t3 · 06-22-16, 08:43 PM

An interesting development. I can't wait to see what surfaces.

cherbert · 06-23-16, 03:29 AM

This is excellent news and makes commercial sense.

I had no intention of backing the project because I simply don't have an interest in the history of Sweden. If the Kickstarter still existed I would back it like a shot. Just please make a dynamic campaign without map restrictions.

Ever since I have seen this game I kept saying to myself I wish this was set in the uboat war in the Atlantic. I couldn't believe it when I saw this announcement.

NightFromTheWest12 · 06-23-16, 10:17 AM

First of all Congrats for your sponsors. I am glad to see that this game will make it to release. Now there is a request I have. Would you be able to allow the demo to stay up until release? I was planning to play it and make it a part of my YouTube Channel and help spread the word about it. That is all I wanted to know. Thanks and have a good one.

06-22-16, 03:19 AM	#2
daft Captain Join Date: Jan 2002 Location: Sweden Posts: 493 Downloads: 15 Uploads: 0	Firstly, awesome news! I really approve of the new direction! Secondly, you're moving to Sweden?! Now, I haven't been the most Active member on Subsim, but I've been here for a looooong time now (before my current forum nick namn I had another which I lost the password to), and Subsim and consequently you Neal, have come to mean quite a bit to me throughout the years. So IF you really are moving to Sweden (Stockholm I assume), I insist that I finally get a chance to meet up and buy you a couple of beers. __________________ And God said: \"Let there be Narrowband!\"

06-22-16, 07:57 AM	#4
StandingCow Weps Join Date: Jan 2007 Posts: 355 Downloads: 17 Uploads: 0	Awesome news! So... question... should we (if we still want to put money toward this game) donate what we kickstarted to subsim or will there be a future pre-order link put up? __________________

06-22-16, 09:57 AM	#6
nsomnia Weps Join Date: Nov 2012 Location: Canada Posts: 370 Downloads: 44 Uploads: 0	Any plans on releasing more details? Is Subsim/Sweeds on a 50/50 basis or do they have a bit more say knowing how game development works etc? I understand keeping business CLASS however. __________________ Current Project [ Operation Trident (Working Title: Project RedWater) ColdWar Subsim] :: Development Log w/ Dwnloads

06-22-16, 10:45 AM	#8
Aktungbby Gefallen Engel U-666 Join Date: Jul 2013 Location: On a tilted, overheated, overpopulated spinning mudball on Collision course with Andromeda Galaxy Posts: 27,918 Downloads: 22 Uploads: 0	Welcome aboard! HawkCZ!nice balanced opinion/review first post! __________________ "Only two things are infinite; The Universe and human squirrelyness; and I'm not too sure about the Universe"

06-22-16, 11:07 AM	#9
horsa Pacific Aces Dev Team Join Date: Jul 2002 Location: Halifax, England Posts: 502 Downloads: 44 Uploads: 3	Bold move, Neal. Best wishes for every success with this venture __________________ "You need to put your behind in the past". Kumba

06-22-16, 02:53 AM	#1
Zerim Nub Join Date: Jun 2016 Posts: 2 Downloads: 0 Uploads: 0	So, I downloaded the game ~2 days ago based on a recommendation from some of my friends from Eve Online, so I'd like to chime in and speak as someone who knows very little about submarines and hasn't played a sub game before. I'm very happy that it's been funded, because what you have at the moment is special. This game has the potential to be quite popular among mainstream gamers (your own Google Analytics may provide insight). At the moment, the game, as incomplete as it is, isn't just some obvious clone of another game, and it provides extremely memorable gameplay for groups of friends, with serious, tense, scary, funny, and enjoyable moments, somewhat similar to Keep Talking And Nobody Explodes or Spaceteam. I'd like to offer a few pointers, though as you've decided to fund development, it's your money, so feel free to disregard them. 1. Mainstream gamers do not care about the submarine type, and they won't care about what's historically accurate (beyond tangible things like armament, instrument quality, or other special equipment). I'm sure the controls at each station in the current game are dumbed down compared to real life, but they're still not 100% intuitive--please try to avoid making them unnecessarily complicated in the name of accuracy. If you happen to have an abundance of development time, consider a simple mode (i.e., similar to current) and a realistic mode for some stations. That said, elements of realism can make a game really educational and interesting if you don't scare the player away. 2. I'm sure this will sound almost as bad as #1 to many of you, but don't obsess with the story to the detriment of gameplay; the alt-history Swedish setting was cute, but unless you hire a professional writer or an enthusiastic historian, people will likely hit escape to skip the roleplay portions, as we did. However, that doesn't mean good historical story elements would go unnoticed--I'd love to be thrown into this guy's situation and have to solve it. (I'd personally rather have two somewhat historically inaccurate submarines in different eras than one perfect WW2 submarine. Just don't rule out the possibility of a later DLC release with Cold War-era boomers with similar gameplay :) 3. Be careful not to uproot everything that's done if you're going to be changing a lot--Unity is a great choice of an engine, with a nice asset store, and it should allow you to move into VR, which to me is an obvious step for this game. I'm surprised at how good the game already looks, especially the ocean waves and the smoke around the generators; avoid going full ARK: Survival Evolved (which is UE4 and visually pretty but crippling-ly optimized) unless you're certain you could deal with the downsides. Custom 3D game engines are the death of small teams. 4. Don't be afraid to monetize the game some to offset expenses as you develop, especially if the demo goes viral before the 'corrected' version is complete. That said, you can't and shouldn't rely on the chances of it going viral, and don't over-promise or under-deliver like ~75% of Steam Greenlight games. I wouldn't hesitate to drop $5 on the game as it currently is if it had a few more core features (listed below), as this is exactly the kind of game I'd buy for a few hours of weekend fun assuming core functionality is in place. So, things that need to be priorities (aka, I'm just gonna make the post longer and throw suggestions for the game as-is)- 1. Game saving and loading. I soloed the current mission (6-8 kills!), and it took me a few hours in one sitting. For long duration missions, saving is a must; without it and autosave, expect people to ragequit and leave bad reviews. 2. Player models for multiplayer. I know they've posted some WIP 3D models, but invisibility is an awful placeholder--just a standard Unity player capsule would be way better than nothing, and should really be in the very next version. 3. Tweaks to the user interface/experience, both in the menu and in game. In the menu: various things like mouse-over color changes are simple to add and very helpful to the user. In the game: the papers ('O' and 'F' keys) being affected by lighting will lead to some great gameplay as people try to read their orders as their lights flicker due to lack of power... however not being able to read because it's too bright in the EWAR room is lame. In addition, WASD should work if you're not holding right click. Consider the option to make right click a toggle instead of a hold. As a bonus: the fact that radio broadcasts are in German is a nice touch, but having to open up Google Translate doesn't help immersion, no pun intended. If you plan on having realistic languages, add a translation cheat sheet or AI crew translator or something. tl;dr- The core gameplay has tons of potential mostly regardless of historicity. Good luck with its development!

06-22-16, 10:39 AM	#7
HawkCZ Swabbie Join Date: Jun 2016 Posts: 6 Downloads: 25 Uploads: 0	Really glad to hear that the game got funded and that we'll have it here one day. When I first heard about this game, I thought: "Wow, is this like SH but with multiple people in one sub? Awesome!" We immediately downloaded the demo to try it. That's when I started to be skeptic about the fun that the game could offer. Sure, the idea of controlling the sub with bunch of friends is great. But how long can it last? The full game offered "a campaign". Thing is, it looked more like a number of separated missions which would probably be always the same, so the replay value would be pretty low. The reason why I like Silent Hunter is based primarily on the campaign it offers. You get a sub, massive scale map and almost 6 years of war to play with. In the newest dev update, it was mentioned that the U-Boat version of HMS Marulken will offer dynamic generated missions. Does that mean something like the campaigns in Silent Hunter? Or just the separated missions I mentioned earlier that would just get more randomized? I think there's a big potential in the Silent Hunter type of campaign and in the big variety of its randomized features (weather, day/night cycle, ships that you may come across, etc.) and it would be great at least as one of the playable game modes. But that could be just me.. I also agree about the opinion on difficulty (=realism). Adding the realism settings would be a good benefit, since the casual gamers would be able to play the game, while experienced sub captains would find it a challenge and would enjoy the authenticity and realism. Another gameplay feature that could be worth thinking about is including proper damage model and repairs of the sub. Imagine a following situation - destroyer attacks you with depth charges and damages the sub. Water starts flooding the interior. Some of the crewmembers must leave their stations to seal the cracks in the hull, repair some of the modules in the sub (engines and such) and perhaps place water pumps to pump out the water. (Or whatever they did IRL). Everything could be done using minigames. On the other hand, I realize that having this mechanic in such a small sub like the one that is currently in the game would be almost impossible. Other things that I suggest (other than those that were already announced): • Adding active sonar • Using sonar to measure depth below keel • Improving AI of enemy ships (Sometimes it felt really weird in the demo; eg. going 2,5km past a destroyer without him noticing us, and similar events, it just sometimes felt too easy) (I realize that most of my suggestions is just Ctrl + C from Silent Hunter, since it is the only series I've played so far, sorry about that.) I wish you the best of luck with the development and I am looking forward to any kind of news!

06-22-16, 05:17 PM	#10
TheQuack45 Swabbie Join Date: Feb 2015 Posts: 7 Downloads: 1 Uploads: 0	Really glad to hear about this, I had concerns regarding the potential of the alternate history idea. I'm not sure if I entirely believe if Onkel Neal is serious about the moving to Sweden part, but if that really is the case I want to hear how it goes initially... But anyway I'm happy to hear that Neal is going to be heavily involved with the process going forward, I have high hopes for this project. Can't wait until the game goes up on Steam so I can get hold of the next build!

06-22-16, 07:09 PM	#12
Aktungbby Gefallen Engel U-666 Join Date: Jul 2013 Location: On a tilted, overheated, overpopulated spinning mudball on Collision course with Andromeda Galaxy Posts: 27,918 Downloads: 22 Uploads: 0	Welcome aboard! Zerim! __________________ "Only two things are infinite; The Universe and human squirrelyness; and I'm not too sure about the Universe"

06-22-16, 08:43 PM	#13
p4p3rm4t3 Watch Join Date: Sep 2014 Posts: 22 Downloads: 15 Uploads: 0	An interesting development. I can't wait to see what surfaces.

06-23-16, 03:29 AM	#14
cherbert Engineer Join Date: Apr 2005 Posts: 210 Downloads: 86 Uploads: 0	This is excellent news and makes commercial sense. I had no intention of backing the project because I simply don't have an interest in the history of Sweden. If the Kickstarter still existed I would back it like a shot. Just please make a dynamic campaign without map restrictions. Ever since I have seen this game I kept saying to myself I wish this was set in the uboat war in the Atlantic. I couldn't believe it when I saw this announcement. Last edited by cherbert; 06-23-16 at 03:40 AM.

06-23-16, 10:17 AM	#15
NightFromTheWest12 Watch Join Date: Jun 2016 Posts: 17 Downloads: 1 Uploads: 0	Request For Demo. First of all Congrats for your sponsors. I am glad to see that this game will make it to release. Now there is a request I have. Would you be able to allow the demo to stay up until release? I was planning to play it and make it a part of my YouTube Channel and help spread the word about it. That is all I wanted to know. Thanks and have a good one.