Wake up, sailor! Read forum before spamming!
TMO or OM for SH4 and OH2 or MMM for SH5.
:03:

And RFB and GFO and FOTRS. :sunny:

Ok pal, we're all friends here. :timeout: :D I stand corrected. I dont spend much time in the 4 and 5 forums. I dont own the games, my machine isnt powerful enough. I hope i dont make anybody mad enough to need heart pills. I forgot who posted that, but, I sorry! Im just expressing the opinions i have. I have no experience with programming other than a crash course on Flash Programming i had a couple years ago and never stuck with. :arrgh!: Too complicated for me. All the people who dont have any experience with programming are the ones who complain. Flash Programming was hard for me. 3D game programming is probably evil torture. If you arent a programmer, you shouldnt complain because you havent tried. I have complained in the past, but the past is past. I will complain less because I kinda have an idea how hard it is. If you make an effort and get an actual product, you're farther along than me. An effort is about how far I got a couple years ago with Flash.

I'd say the people who don't have any experience programming are the ones saying how easy it is and how the modders can not only fix all that which the professional devs were too incompetent to get right and even create new AAA-level U-boat hardcore sim from scratch.

Anyway, my point is a lot of the people who post on forums vastly underestimate just how much work goes into a modern sim. All of the current products have evolved over the course of more than a decade. In the case of MSFS that is 30 years of evolution. It is unrealistic to assume people working in their spare time can develop a product with the same production quality, scope and fidelity over 2-3 years, which is the window you have before your assets and tech become obsolete. I just can't see why this should be such a controversial opinion on this board.

So yes I agree with Ducimus that we aren't going to see anymore subsims (at least not indie ones) unless people lower expectations of complexity and fidelity to the point where they might accept SFP1-type game with submarines that can be done by a smaller team working fulltime.

In college I was a CIS major because i didn't have the mathmatics to be a CS major. At the time, designing/making games was my dream. I believe that is the standard lament of an IT puke this day and age. I took several programming courses. Visual basic to start, then Java, and then to C++ doing win32 console apps, SDI with Doc/View, and other business related things like ODBC. Hell, i took the advanced programming course twice, just for fun. And then I fell into my current job because i couldn't find an entry level programming job, and all those skills (assuming I ever really had them), went away from disuse. I remember logic, but not so much the syntax. These days after 12 years in my current field, I would not put ANY OF THAT on my resume. It's a dead issue.

Anyway, my point is, when I took on making a supermod for SH4, I gained a newfound appreciation for just how much work goes into these games. On top of doing my normal job that paid money, i was doing my "modding job" that didn't pay any money. The two combined, i was sitting in a computer chair for anywhere between 16 to 18 hours a day. That is painful, and there just wasn't enough time in the day to do everything i wanted to do. Through all that, the thing is, your never REALLY editing the game. All your editing is configuration and resource files, and often enough trying to illicit a behavior the game was never coded for through said resource files.

As an aside, I will never bust my ass like i was doing, ever again. It just takes too much out of your personal life.

I took COBAL 68, RPG II, and Basic in college but, never could get hired into a entry level job, so all knowledge went away over time. I do remember how hard it was writing the programs, and debugging them, till they did what you wanted them to do. Believe me, it takes alot of patience to set for hours going over pages and pages of code to find one little error. That is why I never complain about how long a mod is taking to develop.

GW BASIC and QBASIC, here. Debugging programs was a massive hassle back in the old days before all of the nice, spiffy compilers and debuggers we have nowadays, not to mention how mundane OLE is compared to back then when it was all new and spiffy. I wanted to program computers when I joined the army, but the "needs of the service" had me fix radio scramblers, instead. All my programming savvy rotted over time. I can stumble through XML with mixed results and ActionScript is an alien mess to me.

Where did you join the army? Which country do you live in? Just wondering, I have great respect for anyone who wears a uniform so their fellow citizens can sleep safely at night.


Again, i have little to no programming experience. I dont see myself ever doing that. I see myself flying an A-10C over some battlefield in the near future, not programming the weapon systems. :cool:

I took QBASIC and TurboPascal classes in highschool but I never had the talent for it. Then when I was in the navy I was a combat systems operator and stared at radar search plots all day and spent my spare time learning 3d modelling instead. To this day the only programming I've ever been good at is ISO G-code for CNC multiaxis machines :)

Hell, I'd be happy if someone simply updated the DOS version of Aces of the Deep; sharpen the graphics/resolution up a bit, add new textures to the pre-existing screens, include new/updated sound files for voices, engines, etc. and you're set. Gameplay-wise, there is very little (personally) that I would change. Hmmm does anyone know how moddable a DOS game is....:hmmm:

To be fair there is a big difference between parting with $50 and dedicating several years of your life to accomplish what you are suggesting - and I challenge you to truley enjoy any game you spent years working on, to a large extent you'll be sick of the sight of it and you will know it inside out, so there is not alot of fun to be had in the fruits of your labour.
The things you love can rapidly become the things you hate once they switch over from a leisure activity to obligatory one.

But yeah the games industry is pretty much done with sims. The market for them has shrunk while development costs and consumer expectations have gone through the roof.
So it comes as no surprise.

Reminds me of something I heard a long time ago: "When your hobby becomes a job it ceases to be a hobby."

Quoted for truth.

I don't have ANY Silent Hunter title installed anymore. SH5 is something that was stapled on top of SH4, with SH4 being something duct taped over SH3. In all three cases, it's the same sim, new shiny wrappers, with each new iteration bringing more bugs to the table.

Corrected for posterity.
:03:

I do some 'messing about' in C, C++, Visual Basic, and other scripting for different programs.
But I would not enjoy a large scale project myself.

I'm enjoying messing with many different things for SH3/4/5 right now and that's plenty.

Now show me the money? And it's a different story, maybe.
:hmmm:

Makes me think,
for those of us who are still facebook friends with former SH team member Dan Dimitrescu, you will notice he NEVER posts about his escapades in SH3/4/5, even though he poured his heart and soul into those projects at the time, I cant blame the guy, as I've had a taste of it for myself, I used to love installing mods for SH3 and discovering all the shiny new toys, then I worked on GWX 2.0, but did i want to play it afterwards? not really....
Then theres the IOS racer i worked on for over a year, do I even play that? No! it just brings back too many agonizing memories!
I reckon it must be the same with actors that dont like to watch their own shows or Musicians that dont like to listen to their own albums, painters that dont like to look at their own exhibits etc.

Playing games is for fun, but making them is bloody hard work, motivation is one thing you need, but mental endurance is another!
Ive worked in I.T support, behind a Bar, on a shop floor, all of them had their testing moments where I just wanted to walk out, but nothing came as close to breaking my will, as games development. :haha: