It's called Distant Guns, so that one is already taken.

Yes, you could update the classic dos game Action Stations based on the US Naval war college fire effect system. The game was written by Commander Alan D Zimm and still has many admirers today.

The guys at Navalwarfare.net I believe tried at one stage I beleive to contact Cdr Zimm but apparently he could not release the source as it was thought to contain "sensitive" material in the same way as DW perhaps with Sonalysts naval connections and budget Commander Zimm would be more willing to see his baby grow up!

Besides Distant Guns, Fighting Steel fits this description...especially in the graphics department.:rotfl::rotfl:

Apparently Fighting Steel no longer works with the latest nVidia drivers and they do not plan on fixing it, so much so that navalwarfare.net who have supported the game with the FS project for years have decided to give up on it. If you want to make sure you can still play FS grab some of the old nvidia drivers for your system.

In the meantime is the J3D exporter for 3DSMax 6/7/8 available or only the one for 3.x?

Perhaps the source of the exporter can also help to port it to newer versions of 3DSMax.

I think that Dw is a great sim and the graphics could be nice for hardcore users but today, a nice graphics are needed for a simulation if it wants be a mass market product, a sector where the eye candy and mod possibility, together are very important.

For example silent hunter 3 has the three things combined for a perfect simulator: dinamic campaign, mod possibility, and a great graphics engine.

The difficult not is a important factor, i use "orbiter" too and it has a great comunity,bigger than the DW, with free addons, forums, and regular updates from the creator of the sim. The spacecraft MFD computers are far forward in difficult compared with Dw stations. the game engine is hardcoded but there are hundreds of rockets or free spacecrafts for download. also the graphics are impressive.

Well, one of the guys who brought you some of those Orbiter graphics works for SCS these days, so you never know what might happen! (grin)

You've got to be kidding me. These three things are what makes a perfect simulator? They certainly make for a great game. And those things certainly add to a simulation. But if a simulation had these things but did not have accurate physics, sensors, and weapons models, it would not be even close to a perfect simulator, it would be pure crap.

Incidentally, unless super-realistic AI is available, a perfect simulator would also require the capacity for human-controlled adversaries, which as far as I'm aware, SH3 is inexplicably missing.

OK, mistake here, there was one in the previous version, but apparently it was fixed in 1.03, just checked the readme for that patch:
"Fixed a problem where the Kilo Demon was not showing data when the initial tracker/contact was assigned in Narrowband instead of Broadband (which the Demon data is derived from)."

I guess I missed the fix because I just don't play the Kilo much. In fact, I'm mostly playing other games while waiting for 1.04.

I'm not so sure about that. Harpoon has graphics that could have run on my old 8088 and there's no campaign at all. Personally, I think it's one of the greatest simulations ever made. Graphics, to me, are optional. If you have them, I want them to be great, but if you don't and it's just tactical displays, I'm happy with that too. The whole thing about being in a submarine is that you can't see anything. :-)

For surface ships I can see graphics being a little more useful. It's nice on the bridge, and for working the 0.50 cal. Really, though, in the CIC, it's just tactical displays too, and when battles are fought over the horizon with cruise missiles, aircraft and radar, how graphics intensive does it really need to be? It'd be better to focus on having a good radar model, in my mind.

Dynamic campaigns are one of those things I'm sort of on the fence about. They're interesting if you have them, but not at all a necessity. I'm happy with a well designed scripted campaign. I think the biggest problem with campaigns in naval simulations is that people outside of the naval community don't have a good idea in their head of what a campaign at sea looks like. So they're left with submarine novels, which often, in my experience, make for poor sources simulating material. I can't tell you how many times I've read a sub novel, created a scenario based on a particularly good part of it, and found that it was actually pretty boring to simulate.

That's what somehow surprised me right after installing DW and playing it. 60$ for such a sim, as I said more than 1 year ago, is a low price.

Still, Jamie sort of said that the error layed on a too high expected number of buyers, apparently they based the calculations on the sells of SC.

Another errror: don't use channels like EA to see it appear on many more stores.

Someone is proposing to rewrite the game for WWII or sooner. Personally I think that'd be fool. You'd try to enter a well settled sector (SH), and you'd throw away a lot of (exclusive) features we got in SC and especially DW.

My question: in my opinion DW can still be considered as "just gone gold" or similar. No other naval simulation can compare, if I'm wrong tell me the names :). It hasn't sold much... how about giving it a new look, add some minor thing to make it look totally new and sell it trough the proper channels this time?

Dw needs a massive graphical overwrite + some bug fixing (dipping sonar and other lesser important bugs).
Make it mod friendly and call it DW 2.
Call EA and make a deal of some sort, call MS and make a deal of some sort for making available this game on xbox live.
Sit back and enjoy the result.:D

Xbox Live?!?

Goldorak, how 'bout you write the Interface Design document that gets DW working on the dual analog sticks! (I'd certainly love to read that document when you're done ;))

Well I was kind of joking when I said that the game could go on xbox live.
But if you stop to think about it for a moment, its not so far fetched as it seems at least from a technological point of view.
The main input hardware for the game is the keyboard and mouse, the mouse mostly used for scanning the sonar/ew mast and marking contacts.
But you can do away with the keyboard since we already have a voice recognition program for DW.
It is not inconceivable to enhance the already quite good vocal command module for the xbox live architecture.
All the game, station switching, weapons control, navigation options etc... could be voice controlled.
You would only need a dedicated mouse or trackball to mark contacts and do the tma.
And it would be possibile to emulate the mouse/trackball with an analog stick.
:D

You dream BIG... I like that! :)

I was rather thinking at stuff like adding a boomer... able to perform nuclear strikes :lol:

:hmm: global thermonuclear war ?
there is alrready a game out there designed just for this puropose. :cool:

The Trident inclusion has been discussed multiple times. The ability to create a mission with the sole purpose of destroying the world isn't within' the scope of this game.:nope:

When did keyboards stop being fun?

In some ways I wish they would just add a keyboard to consoles and be done with it. It would be in many ways like going back to the days of the Amiga where everyone was on a level playing field and devteams did not have to worry about all of the non compliant hardware and software that makes up a PC, throwing up all kinds of configuration nightmares.

Adding a keyboard as standard would mean that strategy and sims could be played and a lot more PC gamers would take the plunge and buy a console.

Why are they so afraid of adding a keyboard when there is such a huge market untapped?... Is it really that uncool?

A nuclear war... DEFCON

the scores are usually about 50/ 100 millions of deaths for country, it´s not a war , it`s a aniquilation and the return to the stone age.:dead:

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/ima...screenshot.jpg