Demo musings...

[Safe-Keeper]

I know Silent Hunter III never got a demo and that Silent Hunter 4 probably never will either, but I thought I'd start a pesky thread on it anyway.

What would you want in a Silent Hunter 4 demo?

I'd personally go for the ability to start a career and play two or three patrols, for then to have you automatically retire. This career could have a good share of features, to really get the player interested, but probably not more than a single submarine. In addition, it'd be nice if you had a multi-player scenario (just one) to play around with.

What about the rest of you? I realize this is a sort of pointless thread, but if you were Ubisoft, what'd you include in the demo?

[CCIP]

Aren't you often forced to retire after two or three patrols in the career game anyway? :hmm:

Well, considering the biggest obstacle to the demo has always been quoted as the huge size of the game map and the resources associated with it, I would seriously cut it down.

I would limit it to a single war patrol (but with a career-style video briefing and debriefing followed by a nice 'buy me!' screen :p) in an area with lots of islands but not an overly-long sailing range (somewhere in the south pacific), played perhaps on an early fleet boat (P-class or something along the lines). To give it a good flavour, it'd be nice to make the mission have multiple goals - start with troop insertion, then patrol for some shipping, then photo recon, then lifeguard. Add a good bit of traffic including a high chance of encountering a well-guarded task force and a convoy, and air attacks to boot.

That'd easily be several hours of mostly-intense gameplay and, for those who'd be interested, both give a good look at the mechanics and a very thorough exposure of what you can do.

Oh, and also a couple of training missions, a couple of practice quick missions and a multiplay map or two in the same map area using the same resources would be nice.

Pipe dreams, of course :|\\