I am just starting a new patrol as I write this in a career which I have been playing the last two years. Excuse me I have to lay in a course to North America, Der Fuehrer has declared war on those mongrel Americans. The game of mock neutrality is finally over. Those dogs will now watch their tankers split and burn without site of their beaches! :)

Ah the heavy throb of the diesals and the gentle rock of the boat side by side. Here some shots of our last hours ashore:

http://home.comcast.net/~markshot/tempimages/aod001.jpg

http://home.comcast.net/~markshot/tempimages/aod002.jpg

http://home.comcast.net/~markshot/tempimages/aod003.jpg

http://home.comcast.net/~markshot/tempimages/aod004.jpg

http://home.comcast.net/~markshot/tempimages/aod005.jpg

http://home.comcast.net/~markshot/tempimages/aod006.jpg

http://home.comcast.net/~markshot/tempimages/aod007.jpg

http://home.comcast.net/~markshot/tempimages/aod008.jpg

http://home.comcast.net/~markshot/tempimages/aod009.jpg

The Sun is up! Here is one issue with AOD. The magic red circle that even when submerged gives you visibility information at the surface! :)

http://home.comcast.net/~markshot/tempimages/aod010.jpg

http://home.comcast.net/~markshot/tempimages/aod011.jpg

Bad omen! Only a few hours off the French Coast an Allied search plane forces up to go down. I don't mind the diving practice for the crew, but it bothers me that the Luftwaffe cannot give us air cover at least until we clear the shallows. That fat morphine addict!!!

http://home.comcast.net/~markshot/tempimages/aod012.jpg

http://home.comcast.net/~markshot/tempimages/aod013.jpg

http://home.comcast.net/~markshot/tempimages/aod014.jpg

Two non-graphic things I didn't like in AOD:

1) While the weather seems to be dynamic in that when you go out on deck it has changed since last time, I noticed that while running in high TC it actually repeated itself - foggy at 0200, sunny at 0800, partly cloudy at 1000, overcast at 1400; over and over, every day. Not a big deal, as SH1's weather was variable but stayed the same all day, and changed exactly at midnight every night.

2) Situational awareness. I liked the single white line representing the noise of a convoy far away, but I never liked being able to put up the periscope and automatically see every single ship marked on the map. While I much prefer the way I have SH3 set up (Assisted Plotting Mod - the only ship that appears on the map is the one you mark with the periscope), AOD was still a great improvement on Silent Service, in which every ship showed up on the map even when you were 300 feet down. On the other hand I did have some fun with SS 'dogfighting' with several destroyers at once and firing torpedoes from a safe depth.

No way am I knocking AOD or SH1 - just remembering that there were things I thought could have been better even then; and things I actually prefer in the newer sims.

I never noticed the timing of weather changes. Interesting.

One big difference from AOD and SH1 was that in AOD escorts were constantly banging away with ASDIC. In SH1, they would go to an alerted state only when something happened.

That's why I try to play all three in rotation when I am subsimming as they all have their strengths and weaknesses. I actually have maybe about 30-40 pages of notes on the three comparing and contrasting mechanics. It helps me rapidly transition between games ... so I know what works when.

I've left SH2/PA out of my best list. SH2/PA was a superb piece of modding work. The PA team managed to take a totally deal linear campaign and give it life. Also, their work was so highly moddable that me (a non-modder) was able to write a post processor to correct bugs and enhance their generated scripts.

However, what killed SH2/PA for me was the fact that you could not save and load a patrol. What a shame ... otherwise, I might still have it loaded. Even SH3 has save/load problems, but not to the extent SH2 did. I never understood and anyone could program a game that cannot handle saving/loading. Amazing!

* It's said that SH3 saves shouldn't be done submerged.

Ok, can't resist any longer. This was the first subsim I bought, and loved it even if I preferred Fleet Boats. I reloaded COAD and AOD to my computers several weeks back, and fell in love again. It's great to massage the roots now and then.

Buddahaid

AOD is a pretty awsome game, i always love to ask my sonar man to play the '' Long Long Way to Tipperary " for all the crew members whenever we take out a big fat British convoy. haha, " it's a long long way to Tipperary, and my heart is right there ..." ;)
ohh...! there is an incoming radio message from BdU, sorry guys, i really gotta go. godspeeed!

I wish Vivendi took a team of programmers and handed them over AOTD to give it a modern graphics engine, milk cows and manual TDC. Not even touching a code line of the rest, it would be instantly the BEST ever subsim produced to date. :rock:

Agreed ...

Yes, there are a few game engines that if they kept their core logic and only updated the graphics, they would immediately be winners. I would include in this:

(1) AOD

(2) SMG - Sid Meier's Gettysburg

(3) RTD - Sid Meier's Railroad Tycoon Deluxe

Steve,

One thing I notice about AOD while playing it today is that the cycle of the waves is proportional to the number of CPU cycles. (It's very easy to raise and lower this in DOSBOX.)

Interesting.

It didn't really bother me; it's just that people used to complain about SH1's every-night-at-midnight weather change and say how wonderful AOD was by comparison. When I noticed that it stuck with me. I would park in the fog and go to high TC while standing on the bridge. It was funny.

I totally agree with Gettysburg! There's no good Civil War gams on the market.

Ditto. Gettysburg is one of the very small handfull of games that has never been uninstalled and always gets moved to any new pc I buy. I was thrilled that I was able to get it to run on my Vista laptop.

I actually have SMG archived at the moment (had it as part of the CWC). Also, had WNLB and ANGV, but they don't come close to SMG.

Did you need to use a slow down utility to make adress SMG's map scrolling?

SMG is superb:

* A simple elegant interface.

* Games typically go back and forth until the very end. (which is often extended).

* Every spoken line meant something specific to the game.

I even developed by own mod manager for SMG.

As I write this right now, I am playing RTD.

Want to see my showcase of a Classic Game, then check:

http://www.wargamer.com/forums/tm.aspx?m=307087