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SUBSIM Year in Review: 2001
When you’re a journalist for a computer game website, the latter half of December is the time you summarily review the highs and lows of the year. When you’re a hack for a naval/submarine simulation website, some years make summing up the year in naval/subsims a fairly simple task—t’weren’t none. That was not the case in the Year 2001. For the first time since 1997, a nuke subsim was released. For the first time since 1996, a WWII subsim broke the surface. I actually have something to write about. So, without further deliberation, here is the Subsim 2001 Year in Review.
Subsim.com's growth spurt
With Combatsim going subscriber only at the end of 2000, we braced for a wave of new readers. The initial shock was less than expected but as the year progressed we had to switch hosting services twice due to rapid growth. Subsim.com (SUBSIM Review) went from a robust 800,000 page views per month in January to over 8 million per month in December. With the release of two new subsims in the fall our unique visitor count has reached 22,000 per week. Needless to say, this is costing a serious amount of money to maintain the download sections, news, and forums and we depend on the generosity and consideration of our viewers to buy a game through the SUBSIM Store to keep us online. Jason, Frank, and myself have been joined by a promising cadre of new staff: HerrBaron, Vickers, RamRod, Woof, Jagdwolf, Takeda Shingen, and See Falke have volunteered time and talent to help Subsim Review serve the naval sim community with the same high standards as we have for five years.
Sea Dogs
Yeah, this pirate-role-playing game was actually released in late 2000 but it maintained enough momentum and excitement to be included in the Year 2001 review. Imaginative and visually wonderful, Sea Dogs brought Russian developer Akella to the fore of quality naval sims. Sea Dogs was more than a simulation, the role-playing aspect greatly added to the human element of the gameplay. Where most naval sims are empty ships commanded by the player, SD included AI characters with roles to play, experience to build, and an opportunity for the player to virtually interact. SD also offered a host of management duties and most players took to them with relish. Far from the norm of "sailing and sinking", Sea Dogs demonstrated that the more the player is allowed to control and manage, the more stimulating the sim experience can be. Imagine a future U-boat sim where the control room has AI characters that can be interacted with. Sea Dogs has shown us the future.
Age of Sail II
Talonsoft let this ship out of the yard before the tar was dry. Akella’s superb graphics once again made looking at this sailing sim a joy but the technical problems threatened to scuttle it. Incorrect briefing info, formation problems, beaching ships, and large scale scenario slowdowns caused AOSII to be immediately besieged by unhappy players. Talonsoft provided a steady stream of patches, fixes, and upgrades that eventually saved the day and the end result was a nice little game. A sequel—with ironclads, no less—is in the works.
Indie subsim developers
Force85 continued work on the intriguing nuke subsim Navsim: Sea Power, surprising us with new screenshots and features. "Sea Power will allow the player to command any submarine or surface ship in the scenario" and includes a dynamic campaign system An alpha version demonstrated some of the potential. Leif Andersson’s Type VIIc Project has progressed substantially from its early days. With the stated goal of having "a fully working 3D U-boat in which you can walk around freely in a Quake-like style", this undertaking has players around the world checking the Indie Subsim Developers (On Target Subsims) Forum daily for news and updates.
Then there’s Red Oktober’s Nuclear Sub Force: Cold War Patrol. Late in the year programmer Mike Hense released a demo of his upcoming indie subsim. With a lot of attention to details, icebergs, controllable ballistic missile subs, and the possibility of a actually walking through the boat and interacting with a virtual crew, NSF raises the hopes that players may get to experience a fresh slant on subsim action.
Silent Waiter II
The wait for Silent Hunter II entered its fourth year. Anticipation grew, not to be outdone by expectations. The release date shuffle continued its cruel dance with the calendar as SHII was slated to be released in early 2001, then May, then July, August, and finally, mid-October. Some players grew cynical, others were too weary to whine, while a few employed their skills at parody. The best was the Silent Waiter II commentary. It portrayed a computer game of the future called "Silent Waiter II", where the player was teased with phony release dates, rumor and innuendo, taunts and threats on forums about a game from the year 2001 called "Silent Hunter II":
One day future gamers will play a game where late 20th century sub gamers wait endlessly for the computer game about WW2 U-boats to be released. It will be called Silent Waiter II.
Those future gamers will pretend to be us, waiting and lurking in cyberspace for the SH2 title to steam into the horizon. A typical historical mission would be set in 1999, where the gamer plays one of us, to see if his patience would last as long as ours did, or whether he fails the grade and gives up. The object of the game is to wait as long as you can, while complaining as little as possible, until the game is released. While you are still alive.
Who said subsimmers aren't witty? Complete text can be found here.
Wolfpack League
The Silent Hunter II Online Fleet was just four months old when 2001 began. Over 1000 players had signed up to play SHII and Destroyer Command with the belief they wouldn’t have long to wait. No one imagined the wait would last out the year. WPL admin didn’t sit back and jell, though. They processed new members, cleaned non-entities from the database, brought up Bravenet chat rooms, created mirror pages in seven languages, created custom mugs and mousepads, and engineered a database/scoring system. And what a scoring system! Created by Rudi Peck, it tracks tonnage leaders, individual stats, flotilla rosters, and has a personal dossier for each WPL member. Mid-year Subsim.com redesigned the WPL scheme to be one of three legs under the Sub Club (www.subclub.cc) triad. As of the end of 2001, Sub Club/Wolfpack League has 4400 members on the rolls.
Sub Command
The first subsim in over four years debuted in September. Operating in stealth mode, EA and Sonalysts snuck up from behind players waiting for Silent Hunter II and yelled, "Sub Command!" The rumors were right, the follow-up to 688(I) gave the player command of three subs, including the Russian Akula, and dropped the Jane’s moniker. Sub Command delivered top-notch game play and graphics and the campaign is very diverse and interesting. Sonalysts actively visited the Subsim.com Radio Room forums and kept tabs on player gripes and wishes—the first patch solved a few issues but the real work has been concentrated on the master patch that is expected soon. Sub Command picked up the Subsim.com "Pride of the Fleet" award and shows us just how far subsims have come since 688 Attack Sub.
Raising the Kursk
Against the odds, the Russians made good on their vow to bring their stricken sub home, most of it anyway. With the expertise of a Dutch salvaging team and British divers, Kursk concluded her fateful journey in the port of Roslyakovo, near Murmansk on October 10. After many weeks of prepping the sub for lifting, the actual raising operation was astonishingly trouble-free. The battered bow and forward torpedo compartment was sawn off and left behind. Russian naval authorities state it will be retrieved in the summer of 2002.
Silent Hunter II
Las Vegas bookies will need to scale back their lifestyles now that there will no longer be any gambling on the release date and fate of this long-awaited, oft-delayed, down-for-the-count twice, WWII subsim. In 2001, SHII finally became a reality. Forged in the fiery pits of trough sim sales and corporate shipwrecks, SSI can proudly boast that they survived, SHII survived, and they both have their name on the box to prove it. Silent Hunter II hurdled onto the shelves without multiplay or scenario editor, AI that needs an overhaul, and too few missions; but one cannot overlook the improvements in graphics, sounds, ship physics, and details over its predecessors, SH1 and Aces of the Deep. Not to mention it runs on Windows 95/98. We’re waiting for SSI and developer Ultimation to cock the hammer on their other barrel, Destroyer Command, but most of all we’re patiently waiting to see to what extent the AI can be improved. Fixing a few blind/uber-escorts and an editor are all that hold this title back from attaining classic status.
What a year. Thanks for support and participation in the subsim community. Happy holidays and the best in the new year!
Neal Stevens
Editor,
SUBSIM Review
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©2002 SUBSIM Review
Your thoughts on the subject?
I think . . .Past editorials:
November 2001
January 2001
June 2000
Feb 2000
June 1999
May 1999
November 1998
October 1998
September 1998
August 1998
