JamesT73J
03-09-10, 06:22 AM
Hi all,
It may be because I'm a little older and wiser, and have observed this before with titles past. Or, it may be because I'm a little fed up with the loudest negative voices; I'm not actually sure.
SH5 has been released to huge expectations; arguably greater than any preceeding U-Boat simulation. This is largely due to the after-market open source support - the shine & polish that Silent Hunter 3 & 4 now exhibit thanks to work by a talented modding community. An effort that - in time and therefore monetary terms - the developer cannot hope to compete with. It is literally thousands of man hours. A superb case study on the fruit of organised open source collaboration.
SH5 is a solid base to work from. Fundamentally, it is stable; it has bugs. This is not unprecedented in a simulation release. In fact, it is now an the norm for mainstream niche releases.* As has been iterated before, developers are very likely working to extremely tight deadlines, and they are exercising good discipline (believe it or not) in focusing on what works. I am positive they want more time to complete their schedules, however this costs money, and therefore margin. This means that features are dropped or non-functional, legacy bugs are still not sorted out, because it has likely already been established that investigating those will compromise the deadline. Remember, the goal is to ship the software on the contracted date.
Is this a good thing? Of course not. Am I happy about it? No.
However, these are the conditions in which the Silent Hunter series have come to us. The community prime-movers are already producing content that warms the heart, and in time (I've no doubt UBI are making money on this) the patches will come.
Speculatively, SHV will not be fully fixed by the publisher. None of the predecessors have been. The reasons are outlined above. That is the reality of the situation, and unfortunately, we the consumers have to deal with that.
I've read a post on this forum stating that UBI should drop the SH series, and another publisher should have a go. Who, exactly? I've read posts stating that the game doesn't work. It empirically does work. I've read posts stating that it is inferior to GWX. Of course it is. SHV was never going to compete with five years of development from a huge base of talent.
There have been complaints that only one U-Boat is modelled, and that the war ends in '43. From a development point of view, it does make sense. The boats themselves are way, way more detailed; I expect there simply wasn't scope (time!) to incorporate more than one basic type. As for the finish date, it is possible they're looking at DLC post-'43. Things were very different in '43-45. Chances are they're looking at a development fork to incorporate the tech changes on both sides. FIDO, Hedgehog, Squid, Naxos, Snort masts done properly etc, along with the X-boats, Monsun missions etc.
As for DRM, to borrow a phrase, hard cases make bad law. That's all I'll say on the ethics of it. As for the operation, I'm not surprised it went tits-up. Online resources always do, first time. It is deeply frustrating. I'm sure they'll sort it, not that this is an endorsement of the idea.
Patience, patience.
James
*There are exceptions. DCS/Eagle Dynamics are interesting. Freed from UBI and sustained from freelance work, they produced Black Shark. Stable, impressive, and they take their time. Check them out. Esim (Steel Beasts ProPE) seem to follow the same practice. These are all too rare examples, though.
It may be because I'm a little older and wiser, and have observed this before with titles past. Or, it may be because I'm a little fed up with the loudest negative voices; I'm not actually sure.
SH5 has been released to huge expectations; arguably greater than any preceeding U-Boat simulation. This is largely due to the after-market open source support - the shine & polish that Silent Hunter 3 & 4 now exhibit thanks to work by a talented modding community. An effort that - in time and therefore monetary terms - the developer cannot hope to compete with. It is literally thousands of man hours. A superb case study on the fruit of organised open source collaboration.
SH5 is a solid base to work from. Fundamentally, it is stable; it has bugs. This is not unprecedented in a simulation release. In fact, it is now an the norm for mainstream niche releases.* As has been iterated before, developers are very likely working to extremely tight deadlines, and they are exercising good discipline (believe it or not) in focusing on what works. I am positive they want more time to complete their schedules, however this costs money, and therefore margin. This means that features are dropped or non-functional, legacy bugs are still not sorted out, because it has likely already been established that investigating those will compromise the deadline. Remember, the goal is to ship the software on the contracted date.
Is this a good thing? Of course not. Am I happy about it? No.
However, these are the conditions in which the Silent Hunter series have come to us. The community prime-movers are already producing content that warms the heart, and in time (I've no doubt UBI are making money on this) the patches will come.
Speculatively, SHV will not be fully fixed by the publisher. None of the predecessors have been. The reasons are outlined above. That is the reality of the situation, and unfortunately, we the consumers have to deal with that.
I've read a post on this forum stating that UBI should drop the SH series, and another publisher should have a go. Who, exactly? I've read posts stating that the game doesn't work. It empirically does work. I've read posts stating that it is inferior to GWX. Of course it is. SHV was never going to compete with five years of development from a huge base of talent.
There have been complaints that only one U-Boat is modelled, and that the war ends in '43. From a development point of view, it does make sense. The boats themselves are way, way more detailed; I expect there simply wasn't scope (time!) to incorporate more than one basic type. As for the finish date, it is possible they're looking at DLC post-'43. Things were very different in '43-45. Chances are they're looking at a development fork to incorporate the tech changes on both sides. FIDO, Hedgehog, Squid, Naxos, Snort masts done properly etc, along with the X-boats, Monsun missions etc.
As for DRM, to borrow a phrase, hard cases make bad law. That's all I'll say on the ethics of it. As for the operation, I'm not surprised it went tits-up. Online resources always do, first time. It is deeply frustrating. I'm sure they'll sort it, not that this is an endorsement of the idea.
Patience, patience.
James
*There are exceptions. DCS/Eagle Dynamics are interesting. Freed from UBI and sustained from freelance work, they produced Black Shark. Stable, impressive, and they take their time. Check them out. Esim (Steel Beasts ProPE) seem to follow the same practice. These are all too rare examples, though.