Uboatsim.com now known as Crush Depth

[celeronpm]

Hi all, I just wanted to share a sim I am working on with everyone. The game is at www.uboatsim.com

I post updates and info on the site regularly and deploy daily builds through the itch.io platform.

My goal is to make an ultra realistic uboat sim; similar to Wolfpack but more in depth.

Check it out and subscribe to the email list for updates.

[derstosstrupp]

Hi all, I just wanted to share a sim I am working on with everyone. The game is at www.uboatsim.com

I post updates and info on the site regularly and deploy daily builds through the itch.io platform.

My goal is to make an ultra realistic uboat sim; similar to Wolfpack but more in depth.

Check it out and subscribe to the email list for updates.

Boy do I like the direction subsims are going, first Wolfpack and then this! Will be following this thread with interest!

[celeronpm]

Video of the diesel engine room:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Bxj9zgLlSs

[bstanko6]

Looking pretty darn good!

[Bonfleck]

Nice work. Please be a forward thinker and make your sim playable on more than the PC platform! iOS and consoles are where the market share is at.

[dsawan]

also, have single-player as well as multiplay. Wolfpak is simply mulltiplayer or co-op on steam

[dsawan]

also, support for 32bit os if feasible. I know the trend is 64 bit but still using a low-end system.

[celeronpm]

https://youtu.be/BejqgcTRnjA

[bstanko6]

That interior looks phenomenal. If this is going in the right direction... it may be the next big release! You need a kickstarter and a crew to help you develop and to release this bad girl!

[Slyguy3129]

Dear Lord! Please let this be a PC exclusive, 64 bit, single player only, dream come true. Wolf pack is such an awful, awful, awful disappointment.

[celeronpm]

Dear Lord! Please let this be a PC exclusive, 64 bit, single player only, dream come true. Wolf pack is such an awful, awful, awful disappointment.

I started this in 2016 but stopped due to both uboot (not called uboat) and marluken (now called Wolfpack). Since I played both recently I realised they don't fill the need I have for a sub sim, I'm back at it. This will be a PC, 64 bit, single player game. Any multiplayer may be a future add-on but not a primary focus for now.

Please follow either the devlog or the FB page on www.uboatsim.com for constant updates.

[Giesemaschine]

Awesome!

[Onkel Neal]

Uboat Sim Update 6/28/19
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fP-mT7nPGEM&feature=youtu.be&fbclid=IwAR1gbbAQvqnTOoKRUon-yNN4VOTJg157RSI04YmQIID3kVTPzGF19rd-3nU

[celeronpm]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZiP6O7lZTGA

[celeronpm]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bjq7F5Td7Lc

[celeronpm]

Lots of work with depth charges - pre underwater blur video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHQeUcz5MSY

[celeronpm]

Multiplayer support!!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NntbhBUj7Lk

[derstosstrupp]

Looking great, keep up the good work!

[arkroyal]

:Kaleun_Thumbs_Up:Look'sGood sofar keep it up:Kaleun_Applaud:

[PL_Andrev]

My goal is to make an ultra realistic uboat sim; similar to Wolfpack but more in depth.


What does it mean "more in depth"?
Could you be more specific?

Anyway, great job, looks really good!
:salute:

[Jojojung]

Looks great!
If you need some more fotographic material from VIIc Laboe give me a pn. A made a lot of fotos on my last year visit.


Greetz

[urfisch]

Absolutely great stuff! Astonishing work. You should team up with some people here from subsim, who already created great visual mods for the interior, like "flakmonkey". And you might could use the 3d data of the control room from sh3, if your game is free to use.


You should also connect with guys from deep water studio (nihilcat or U_Korvettenkapitän) from the steam forums of "uboot", maybe you both can lead uboot the way, it was awaited to be from the subsim community.



If all this doesnt work: Hope, you do not loose motivation, as this could become a really great sim the whole subsim community is waiting for!

[msalama]

Hi all :salute:

An ancient subsim Kaleun here, been mostly flying various DCS A/C lately, but am getting the itch to go silent and deep again :ping: Uboatsim looks awesome, but there doesn't seem to have been any recent dev activity. Is this project still alive???

[celeronpm]

I haven't had time to work on it much due to other projects. I'll get back to it when life allows.

[Aktungbby]

msalama!:Kaleun_Salute: after a six year silent run!

[celeronpm]

What does it mean "more in depth"?
Could you be more specific?

Anyway, great job, looks really good!
:salute:

More Sim vs game. The mechanics of wolfpack are game friendly. I'm aiming for more realistic, think DCS like.

[robthebank]

This looks great! I hope you are still managing to work on it. I don't suppose it would ever be able to be played in VR? Iron Wolf is fantastic and incredibly atmospheric, but doesn't nearly scratch that sim itch..

[Aktungbby]

robthebank!:Kaleun_Salute: after a long silent run!

[celeronpm]

This looks great! I hope you are still managing to work on it. I don't suppose it would ever be able to be played in VR? Iron Wolf is fantastic and incredibly atmospheric, but doesn't nearly scratch that sim itch..

Join the discord at: https://discord.gg/VcQkGTJ

[celeronpm]

This looks great! I hope you are still managing to work on it. I don't suppose it would ever be able to be played in VR? Iron Wolf is fantastic and incredibly atmospheric, but doesn't nearly scratch that sim itch..

I don't have VR hardware, also I develop on a 5 year old PC. Unless that changes probably not 😆

[robthebank]

robthebank!:Kaleun_Salute: after a long silent run!

Thanks! I'm always around, lurking below the surface... :subsim:

I don't have VR hardware, also I develop on a 5 year old PC. Unless that changes probably not 😆

I understand completely. If you ever get a chance I recommend giving a Vive a try. I've been playing Iron Wolf, and its very arcady, but the tension of actually being in the sub under attack is indescribable. I'd pay a fortune for a proper sub sim in VR.

[celeronpm]

https://youtu.be/TksH2PBKy0M

[celeronpm]

Electric motor room panels
https://youtu.be/YkTQXEMRTwQ.

[Newobama_17]

I beg you not to stop your work, this is a wonderful game, it has great

[celeronpm]

I beg you not to stop your work, this is a wonderful game, it has great

Ty. The team has grown and it's no longer just me. Hopefully that eases those concerns!

[Aktungbby]

Newobama_17!:Kaleun_Salute:

[celeronpm]

https://youtu.be/NdalG5UlUWU

[celeronpm]

https://youtu.be/BIFPWDcHWKs

[Texas Red]

Downloading now! Looks great! :Kaleun_Thumbs_Up:

Keep up the good work! :salute:

[celeronpm]

We just launched a new website https://www.uboatsim.com/

[celeronpm]

https://youtu.be/a_NQPqWoy_c

[celeronpm]

https://youtu.be/oLD4wS1SAn4

[celeronpm]

New patch - multiple u-boat support with complete subcompartment culler, sound localizer, etc..
https://youtu.be/vn_uF-SFDco

[celeronpm]

https://youtu.be/P2uCTHlrXD8

[celeronpm]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuFnGXvnm3M

[derstosstrupp]

As always, looking excellent Marius! Everyone, be sure to check out Uboatsim.com and his discord!

[celeronpm]

https://scontent-lax3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/125091435_687376212206748_6247834077326304727_n.pn g?_nc_cat=109&ccb=2&_nc_sid=da1649&efg=eyJpIjoidCJ9&_nc_ohc=6Z9XMaw_j2MAX_awK3_&_nc_ht=scontent-lax3-1.xx&oh=eb73c24cb7b4561f301a72f8ebb0e2f3&oe=5FD6DD68

[celeronpm]

Hello everyone, Crush Depth: U-Boat Simulator is now on steam for your wishlisting pleasure. Please hop on over to our steam page and wishlist Crush Depth!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1397630/Crush_Depth_UBoat_Simulator/

[celeronpm]

https://youtu.be/_qK3Im6Hr1U

The view is better from up here, trust us! Join our patrons who are enjoying the view with the fa 330 autogyro today by becoming a patron too! https://buff.ly/35OELKS

The Fa 330 was a simple single-seat autogyro kite with a three-bladed rotor. It was stowed in two watertight compartments aft of the conning tower and could be deployed to the deck of the U-boat by two people.

When launched, it was tethered to the U-boat by a 150 m (500 ft) cable. The U-boat would tow the helicopter and as the airflow passed on the rotors, they would spin up.The helicopter with its observer-pilot aboard would rise to approximately 120 meters above the surface allowing him to see much farther, about 25 nautical miles (46 km), compared to the 5 nautical miles (9 km) visible from the conning tower of the U-boat.

If the U-boat captain were forced to abandon it on the surface, the tether would be released and the Fa 330 descend slowly to the water.

The Fa 330 was a simple single-seat autogyro kite with a three-bladed rotor. It was stowed in two watertight compartments aft of the conning tower and could be deployed to the deck of the U-boat by two people.

[Jammosito]

I'm starting to think this project deserves its own subforum, you know, with the name change, with it being on Steam, with the amount of progress and the people involved... especially this here gentleman...

Our mission is to depict the U-Boat in the most historically accurate manner possible; not just the technology, but life on board. How are we working towards that goal? I'm glad you asked!
Last week we revealed that we've been collaborating with 104-year-old Friedrich Grade, ex chief-engineer of U-96 (the boat famously portrayed in the book 'Das Boot', and the 1981 film by the same name). He has been consulting with us on aspects of the boat, and life on board, which have been lost to time.

https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/39154400/06c15555b19e2048315eb257f6da8744be87f593.png

Our patrons have been aware of this exciting collaboration for some time; if you'd like to be the first to get similar insights, please consider becoming a patron at https://www.patreon.com/crushdepth
Also, don't forget to wishlist Crush Depth on Steam:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1397630/Crush_Depth_UBoat_Simulator/

Thanks for the support guys. :subsim:

Any chance of getting that subforum, Neal?

[blackswan40]

A Warm Welcome to Subsim Jammosito Salute Sir :Kaleun_Salute:

[Aktungbby]

Jammosito!

[Jammosito]

Hi guys, thanks for the welcome.

:salute:

[Texas Red]

Hi guys, thanks for the welcome.

:salute:

Welcome aboard! Though this welcome is a little late :doh:

[celeronpm]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRR9mYZm2TY

Hello everyone, we are premiering the latest update video in about 4 hours (12PM PST, 9PM Berlin). Some of us will be on YouTube chat and will be happy to chat with anyone that can make it.

This week's video will be a lengthier update as I'll be covering our overall project development methodology, showcase the changes of the last few weeks in aggregate, and discuss some of our exciting short term plans to get you underway in the U-Boat in the MMO as quickly as possible. I hope to see you there!

[les green01]

i cant wait to get this downloaded and give it a spin cause it does look awsome

[Rwearjr]

Honestly can say that this project, and the attention being given here to the player experience, along with the integrity on display via communication to us diehard Kaleuns, the respect of bringing in real engineers from the period (so awesome they are still alive!) Makes this truly the most exciting offering to this SH3, SH5, UBOAT weary simmer in like, ......ever.
Thank you for this, I look forward to downloading the tech demo and supporting you guys, and hope that more here at SubSim find this gem.

[celeronpm]

Honestly can say that this project, and the attention being given here to the player experience, along with the integrity on display via communication to us diehard Kaleuns, the respect of bringing in real engineers from the period (so awesome they are still alive!) Makes this truly the most exciting offering to this SH3, SH5, UBOAT weary simmer in like, ......ever.
Thank you for this, I look forward to downloading the tech demo and supporting you guys, and hope that more here at SubSim find this gem.

Thank you; it would indeed be nice to have better exposure.

[Torpex77]

Great work! :up:

[iambecomelife]

Just became a patron and I highly recommend it! It's a modest expense - freed up some cash by quitting services I don't need - lol.

As a bonus, there are many images, stories, & details that I have never seen shared before on the web, and I've been into submarines for years.

I am no shill - admit I was skeptical - now, assuming the pace of work is maintained, I recommend. :up:

[celeronpm]

Just became a patron and I highly recommend it! It's a modest expense - freed up some cash by quitting services I don't need - lol.

As a bonus, there are many images, stories, & details that I have never seen shared before on the web, and I've been into submarines for years.

I am no shill - admit I was skeptical - now, assuming the pace of work is maintained, I recommend. :up:


Truly appreciate the support and the time you took to let others know. Welcome aboard!

[iambecomelife]

Truly appreciate the support and the time you took to let others know. Welcome aboard!

Thanks! I'm obsessed with submarines and 1940's era merchant ships so of course much of the modeling work is right up my alley....I believe I've identified the tanker that is sunk by U-96 in the 3 part war photograph sequence you posted!

Based on the masts, ventilator arrangement, etc I think it's the "Clea" from Convoy HX - 106. Sunk 02/13/41:

https://www.uboat.net/allies/merchants/ship/760.html

Weird, I know ... :haha: - the ship architecture really interests me.....I'm the amateur ship modeler who created the "Merchant Fleet Mod" for Silent Hunter 3 around 2009, and I am planning replacement ships for Silent Hunter 3/4/5.

[Onkel Neal]

Weekly update #56, 5th of August 2021.


A very short update this week as well, as we're still looking into the possibilities and potential risks of making the change from the Unity to the Unreal engine. I can imagine you might be thinking: 'Why does this take such a long time?' and well, there are a couple of reasons for those which I hope to go into a little bit in this update.

First of all, this is the single biggest decision this project will face for years to come. At this stage of development, we still have the possibility to make the switch. Anything we add to the Unity version of the project will add to the cost of making the switch; for that reason, we've also postponed all development on that part, until we've reached a decision. Other parts of development, such as modeling, ideation, development of pseudo-code, etc. will continue as normal.

We have to make absolutely sure that this is the right choice and in order to do so, we simply have a whole lot of boxes to check. Checking those boxes isn't just simply looking up what possibilities both engines have to offer, but very much a process of getting our hands on it, in the Unreal engine, playing around with it, experimenting with it, until we've gotten enough of a feel for it to say either yes or no to it. In the end, we come up with a very, very extensive list of pros and cons between the two engines - specifically for this project - on which we hope to reach a decision.

Just to give you a couple of examples there, we're looking at stuff like how well the editor is integrated with the software we use for modeling and texturing, what kind of third party assets are available, the speed of the editor itself, the cost of relearning certain parts of the workflow and how that would influence the production speed, what this means for our networking infrastructure, and many, many, many, many, many other factors.

I hope you understand such is a rather time-consuming process since we simply cannot allow a mistake here. A day here can potentially save us a month later. Hitting a wall a couple of months later, a year later, maybe even two years later simply because we didn't do our due diligence during this part of the process is simply a risk we cannot afford.

That's all for this week, just a little update on how we're coming along. It's very likely that this process will take another couple of weeks, so in the meanwhile, I hope to bring you some more news on the other aspects of development. Thank you all for your support, and see you next time!

[von faust]

There is an update on Facebook status of Crush depth page. A new surprise ?

[celeronpm]

Update #60, 10th of September 2021.

Hi @everyone,

First thing to notice of course is that this is the first update in some 14 odd months that doesn't have 'weekly' in the title. It has become more and more apparent to us that there is more value in doing updates whenever it is relevant, than tying that to a strict schedule. Some weeks, we are rather bogged down in technical stuff and although a lot of value is added to the project, not much of that is immediately apparent to the player.
Conversely, there are plenty of other weeks in which we manage to break through a couple of walls in a row, meaning we have to leave out some milestones from the weekly updates so it doesn't become a complete wall of text and/or put them somewhere in between, meaning they don't get the attention we would like them to have.

All that being said, our investigations into a possible switch from Unity to Unreal are nearing its conclusion. There are a few items left we still want to check off. Even though we're close to finishing the process, there are still plenty of reasons left why we might decide to stick with Unity; no decision has been made yet.
We also realize we cannot let this process carry on forever. We have therefore decided to set the deadline (first ever in the project!) for September the 18th, 2021, on which day we will announce our decision.

I'm sure that no matter what we'll decide, it might come as a disappointment to some of you. Such is simply the nature of this-or-the-other propositions. The only thing I can hope is that you appreciate that whatever decision we arrive at, we have done so after long and careful deliberation, and truly believe it to be the best for the project. Thank you all very much for allowing us to undertake this experiment and your continued support throughout.

Until then! :heart:.

Please see above

[Angelis]

I can only speak for myself, of course, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed that they choose Unreal.:yep:

[celeronpm]

Hello everyone,

We are incredibly excited to announce that, after months of careful consideration and due diligence, we’ve decided to move forward with Unreal Engine. Please have a look at our release trailer below. Apart from that, we would like to introduce Code Orchestra, a brand new framework for combining C#, Rust, Python, and UE5. Further information about how we spent the last couple of weeks, as well as what to expect moving forward, can be found below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0DdrZ6FhCPY

Unreal 5.

When Unreal Engine 5 dropped, it would be fair to say that it took the game development community by storm. The technology advancements in the engine, such as Nanite, Lumen and MetaHuman caused a tidal wave which we were swept up in. We were compelled to look further into the technology.

Our aspirations are grand, using the best technology that can cement us as the definitive U-Boat simulator for years to come means we need to use the best technology available. Unreal Engine 5 offers unparalleled revolutionary graphical fidelity easily ahead of all other engines.

When UE 5 features were announced, we developed a system similar to Unreal’s Nanite, attempting to enhance what we had to help us forgo a complete project refactor away from Unity. The example scene below shows fifty billion triangles being rendered using our dynamic mesh quantization technology in Unity HDRP.

https://youtu.be/eGZdh5u0sZI

To illustrate the significance, that scene contains 2500 times the triangles count we had in the entire museum scene of the Unity build. Even though this proof of concept worked, we ran into significant roadblocks in interleaving this subsystem with Unity HDRP (decals, DXR lights, etc) and the Unity Game Editor, due to the closed source nature of Unity. This sealed the door on Unity HDRP meeting Nanite-like performance without investment from Unity.

As a side note, over the last 12 months, we’ve also looked into Unigine, Lumberyard, and other options. Those exercises were short in nature since it became apparent quite early in the process they would not provide significant advantages over Unity HDRP.

Analysis.

During the analysis, our goal was to perform thorough due diligence to ensure we fully understood the cost, ramifications, and benefits of refactoring our project into Unreal Engine. A project refactor will set us back by at least half a year and will require significant re-training for the team. We wanted to ensure that we understood these costs well by going through the effort of attempting to port the project over while leveraging the features we were interested in (Nanite, Lumen, native 64-bit double-precision float support, Metahuman, and more). We also needed to ensure core systems such as weather, water, and physics were customizable enough to allow us to reach the quality and fidelity we aspire to.

Unreal Engine is an extremely capable Game Engine built on a core that was released in the late 90s. The core APIs are not as well documented as Unity’s and the core programming language is C++. We found it significantly more difficult to work with, from a programmatic perspective, than Unity, and it became clear we needed to address this.

Challenges.

Not being able to use .NET / C# / and Rust in Unreal Engine with native-level integration (such as debugging and API support) would cause a dramatic drop in productivity for our developers. Our simulation subsystems are incredibly complex and ensuring we can maintain a high level of throughput, code safety, iteration speed, and polyglot language support etc. is crucial for the project.

Solutions.

To solve this, we leveraged the open-source nature of Unreal Engine 5 and developed a revolutionary polyglot extension framework to allow us (and other devs) to write .NET C# code in Unreal Engine. We’re launching this capability as a separate product, direct to game developers. We’re calling it Code Orchestra!

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/707809928445821001/888546867619725443/logo_dark.png

Code Orchestra

Code Orchestra is a holistic polyglot development solution for multi-framework development in Unreal Engine. Our goal is to bring multi-language and multi-framework support to Unreal Engine and enable game developers to leverage their existing skills in Unreal Engine.

Code Orchestra uses a novel, patent-pending approach (a combination of custom high-performing framework hooks, heavy code generation, IDE analyzers, and other mechanisms) to provide polyglot (.NET C#, Rust, Python) support for Unreal Engine.

Code Orchestra also supports high-performing Rust code for low latency high accuracy simulations and even allows you to use Python for quick and dirty prototypes (with more languages supported on an as-needed basis).

How will Code Orchestra help Crush Depth?

Code Orchestra will allow us to port over years of .NET libraries we’ve written in C#, will allow us to write our high fidelity, high accuracy, performant simulation code in Rust, and will enable us to quickly prototype new subsystems in Python. The end result will be accelerated project development velocity with the incredible Visual fidelity of Unreal Engine 5.

To learn more about Code Orchestra and to try out the beta for yourself, please visit: http://www.code-orchestra.com

Next steps:

Although we have made the decision to move over to Unreal, that transition is still far from over. We have a wonderful opportunity here to analyse and rethink some of the concepts we have developed over the past few years. If we were to just make a one-to-one copy of the current Unity build in Unreal, there would have been no reason to make the switch to start with; we would also be missing out on the opportunity to leverage the exciting new possibilities that Unreal has to offer. It would be a shame to let that opportunity go to waste.

The next couple of weeks will mostly be spent on further developing the frameworks we need to have in place in order to start creating the world we want to create, very much from the ground up. The downside to this is that it will take a while before we can get a first Unreal build-out. The upside is that we expect that build to be of a much higher quality, higher visual fidelity, and more performant than what we were able to offer in Unity.

At this stage, we can't give a reasonable estimate of how long we think it will take us before we feel our first shiny new Unreal build is good enough for a wider release. We have some very exciting ideas there though, of which we will be updating you regularly through our Discord (https://discord.gg/TD67SYR)and other outlets. In the meanwhile, we will keep the current - now already outdated - Unity build up, so you are still more than welcome to hop in and explore some of our concepts.

Rest assured that we would not have arrived at this decision if there was a single shred of doubt that this was not the best decision for our project and our long term strategy. It is a very, very exciting time for all of us and we hope the subsim community ultimately recognizes the effort we are going to in order to realize our dreams of building the most realistic U-Boat simulator.

Ask-Me-Anything session on Oct 3, 2021.

As much as I would like it to be the case, I am quite aware that it's undoable to cover all of your questions that come with such a massive announcement. We are therefore hosting a live Ask-Me-Anything session on October the 3rd, 18h00 Berlin/09h00 Los Angeles, on our Discord (https://discord.gg/TD67SYR). Should you have any questions in the meanwhile, or if you wish to submit a question for us to cover during that session, feel free to leave a message here.

As always, thank you for your tremendous support. We are extremely grateful and humbled by the support you have given us thus far and hope we provide you with enough reason to keep doing so. If not, please let us know what you think we can do to improve. Let's not forget that it is you who we make this for, so if you ever feel we should be doing something differently, have a question, or just want a chat, always feel free to send me or anyone else on our team a message.

[Angelis]

Whoa, this is so amazing! Congratulations and hats off to you guys!:Kaleun_Cheers:

Wünsche euch viel Erfolg und gute Fortschritte. Bin sehr gespannt, wie's weitergeht.

Gute Jagd, ihr Himmelhunde!:D

[AllegPeet]

A sad announcement on the Crush Dept discord server about Paul, one of the devs.

Those who have access to said discord channel may read the general chat channel announcement of July 1st.