I wouldn't call the graphics piss poor. I've seen a LOT worse from more modern games.

Dangerous Waters has more the feel of a military simulator with it's graphics. They made it look like the real naval training sims at the time looked.
Besides. The focus of the game is a naval simulation where you're looking at the various stations (which I think are rendered beautifully). Not on the eye candy on the outside.

Now that is what I called pessimism.

I mean look at Silent Hunter 3. It was successful. and the campaign requires you to transit a long way and lots of nothing's happening in between sinking.

No no, 688 Fast Attack was released some years prior to DW, and even considering the limitations of the time it had 2d stations much more realistic than what we have in DW.
Nobody was asking for DW to sports a SH3-like engine, but for pete's sake will you at least not recycle a 10 year old graphics engine ?
Or if push comes to shove at least update the critical parts such as throwing the 16 bit color out the window and use instead 24-32 bit color. They went cheap, real cheap on the graphics, even on the fonts !!!!
Really have a look at Sub Command, the fonts on the interface of the game (not the 2d stations) are much more polished than what we have in DW.

Perhaps Silent Hunter V would tackle cold war era :DL. My mouth is watering. Though SH IV was a flop.

Nah, at this point in time I just enjoy DW with all its crappy graphics.
Lwami, Alfa Tau and RA really redeem the game, even with subpar graphics and all.

Okay, time to throw in my two cents :)
First of all, graphics: IMHO, I don't think that the graphics in DW or SC are actually that bad. In any case, I don't think that they are so bad as to ruin gameplay. In fact, I think that the platform models are actually nicely done; at least enough to enable the player to conduct a visual identification ;)
As a matter of fact, I'm running the sim (DW, that is) on a laptop computer which wasn't even state of the art at the time I bought it - 1,7 GHz, 512 MB, and a GeForce 440 Go, which doesn't even support DX 9 effects. As a result, the water in DW doesn't look like you're used to on the screenshots, but more like a wobbling blue mass of tinfoil :DL But still, I'm not complaining - even though it would be nice if I had the shaded graphics (like probably everyone else). Given that fact, the water graphics in SC look even a bit better than in DW, but this is due to my hardware.

A huge complaint I have against a lot of recent (or not-so-recent-anymore) games is that they demand one beast of a computer to run on properly. FSX was mentioned, and I think this game is a paragon of absurdity. Seriously: By the time it was published (and I think even now), no one can run it with all the sliders set to maximum and still get a decent frame rate. And I personally don't want to buy a new computer every two or three years, even IF I could afford it (which I can't). I very much prefer a game which perhaps doesn't have state of the art graphics, but runs smoothly, over one which doesn't run properly, or not at all.

I'm glad that DW still works on my computer, although I still have some technical issues with the game/sim/whatever. The sound stutters from time to time or the sonar guy tells me something like "new contact bearing 220 designated sierra 3" about twenty times until I turn the sound off :cool:. Also, I find it quite annoying that even with the 1.04 patch, there still seem to be some bugs - why on earth do I get the "The mission cannot be completed. Report for debrief."-message on the very first mission of the campaign if I use the 688(i)? Is there some "by the way, don't use the 688 because you will be detected immediately"-section in the briefing which I didn't get?

However, I think that there are a couple of other issues which deter people from playing games like DW. One huge complaint is accessibility. Of course, there's a huge manual. I recently ordered it through the subsim page (can't wait to get it :D), but I've already read parts of it, and I must say that it doesn't make the game any easier. There's the old complaint of "It tells you about the what, but not the why". I've read the landlubber's guide, which I found extremely helpful, and am currently working myself through the Orion guide, but honestly: Such things should be put in a manual of a commercially oriented product if people hope to attract people which aren't already entrenched in the matter. It's great to have such guides, but I really don't think that it ought to be the job of the Subsim community to help out new players who don't have a suggestion of a faint and distant clue. Saying that, I absolutely don't mean that such games should be dumbed down! All I want is a proper documentation. For example, there should be sections included like "How to conduct a torpedo attack" or "how to conduct recon missions with the P3" or something like that. If it weren't for the great subsim community, I probably would have lost interest long ago - which I think is a pity.

To sum it up: Make the sim accessible to people who are interested, but uninformed. People who like the subject matter of the game can live with average, even poor graphics, since hardcore sims are already few and far between, but you have to do something to make them stay.

Oh, and by the way: Since this is my very first post here on the forum, I'd like to present my compliments to everyone on this great website :)

Welcome aboard mate!

You have come to the right place. Once you get properly indoctrinated I expect you will find the game superb. Just ask away and you will find plenty of answers many coming from people like myself who have actually been there and done the job.

:yeah:

Wow. People really have something crawling under their skin for sure.

I love DW graphics. It suits the purpose.

What is this "we who play military sims are better than those and those?"

You won't get any more stripes to your jacket, playing these.

This is maybe, the greatest reason why younger people don't come to these kind of games so often. This attitude, what this thread is so full of.

If you want to get stripes go to army, run a marathon, bench press over 120kg, GET LAID MORE OFTEN.

This is so smelly thread, i can even taste it in my mouth. YAK!

What? :haha:.

What's wrong with you mate?

Just that some of us wish DW would not be the last of its kind. What's wrong with that? We love subsims. Who says sub sim or sim lovers are better people than say FPS gamers? we just wish that more people willing to invest some time and effort to try simming games. If some of us think we are somehow better than fps gamers then that is their personal opinion. No need to take offence. Anyway I don't think anyone think that way just that we complained that so few people seem to be interested in siumlation kind of games because they need to learn the game and not just jump right into it anyhow. And this is again a personal opinion yet validated by the failure and rarirty of simming games out there.

Bad day in marshmallow land :haha:

I don't think I have that kind of attidude, but you do have a point mate. On the other hand, it's maybe a bit stretching the point to assume that (self-perceived) hard-core simmers are significantly more pretentious. In fact, a whole lot of people on this forum are willing to help. Just look at the posts :)

As for the lifting-weights-and-getting-laid-part: If I had a) the constitution and b) the opportunity to do that, I wouldn't spend my time playing video games, would I? ;)

All that said, just remember we're only talking about games here! :up:

I'd be happy if a graphics port like SCX II existed for DW.

The SCX II graphics were very, very clean for their time...and much more accurate! With stock graphics the Akula looks like a Victor III and the Typhoon is fugly...

Well well well, you must not have been reading about the RA or AT 3 mods.
Have a look at the modding forum. :salute:

Yep I agree, well said Neal Stevens. :up:

Would be nice if Sonalysts made a new Fleet Command that would be cool. :salute:

Yeah whatever, its always the customers fault nowadays isn't it ? :nope:
SCS didn't understand the market it was catering to, either die hard naval enthusiasts or the more general market.
It developed the sim based on the former premise and marketed it according to the later premise. Their second strategic error was not recognising what other sims were out there and why people liked them.
Silent Hunter 3 was not more easy than DW, in fact played with all the realism settings to maximum it was just as difficult. Manual tma, plotting solutions etc... But it captured a large part of the market (die hard fans and new comers) because of a really nice graphics engine. Ubisoft invested in SH3 and it payed off, SCS didn't invest as much as they should in DW and it showed.
Is it a wonder than the game hadn't sold as they had estimated ?
:salute: