If Ubi asked you to be a beta tester, wouldnt you accept, just to get the game a bit early, even though you wouldnt be paid?

If find lots of joy in the 1.2 version. The constant laaaaaaaag of the clipboard with the radio and orders, were driving me nuts earlier. The current version runs a lot faster!

If UBI askes me to be a beta tester, I would play and test the game as such, albeit for a small fee for my time invested. Now I have paid for an unfinished product of which is claimed it is a finished product. I can fully understand a patch like 1.2 in which coding is optimized for better (faster) rendering. I do, however, not understand bringing out a game which in essence is unplayble unless the players jump through hoops in certain order and stance, just so they can get a feel of accomplishment.
To me that's not enjoying a game, to me that's aggravating and insulting to me as customer/gamer.

Now I have the feeling that SH4 was released just to set the books straight and earn some money with it already, delivering a finished product or not.
In this regard I have a love/hate relationship with UBI. They generally bring out the best games (I think), but they come out with so much technical and functional bugs...

Funny...beta testers for online games dont get paid. If they opened it for beta to the pubic, no one should expect paid compensation.

I regard personal contact to be betatester and opening beta to the public a very large difference.

No matter how you look at it, releasing a game as complete to the customer that is not complete nor functioning as stated is plain bad. I also know that I can't win this discussion, since it is ME that makes the decision to buy the game ANYWAY, regardless of what bad stories I already read on the net.

As said, I have/had that with almost every UBI-game I own:
Far Cry, SH3, Splinter Cell DA and now SH4. All coming out flawed, but each having become great games after numerous patches (except SC: DA and SH4 till now) and modding by the loving community.

In fairness, it does cast an ugly light on these forums when loads of people moan about SHIV, but I can also fully understand why they are moaning.

I think everyone would agree that it was released too early and still has an unacceptable number of bugs a month later.

In UBI's defence, they have released two patches in that time and will most probably release one, maybe two, more to address some of the remaining issues.

I would ask then that posters refrain from venting their frustration with SHIV but please do post the problems and issues you are having with as much detail as possible such that others can try to reproduce the problem.

I would also ask the forum moderators to be a little more understanding, I accept most of you have heard all this "noise" before but a lot of new people are finding their way to these forums and they will naturally need time to adapt to this forum's maturity. Lets not scare them away too soon...because the bigger the subsim community becomes the greater the chance of sub sim games being developed for us.

And finally, I would ask UBI to refine their game production processes as no one should have to suffer a product with as many flaws as SHIV had when it was released. Its was actually quite scandalous.

Right, i'm off to pub, anyone for a pint ?

Actualy it s not that easy...

First, marketing release date are not the same as dev release date. Some time everything is ready to release except the soft. Well... you have to release it anyway, hoping to patch (or "service pack" it as some cie call it ;) ) it as fast as possible.
Next, it s really easy to test software for crash behavior but it s a lot more difficult to test software for the "should do that in a different way". That s why we have beta tester. Game engineering has become something really hard actually. 10 years ago you had choice between open format with generic mission (boring as hell after 2 days) and close format with a path you followed from first minute to the last (boring to replay the game once finished). In both mode it was much easyer to test because generic situations were always the same and you just had to do the game from start to end to successfuly test close format. Today we have an intelligent open format, each game are different from the other ones on some aspect, it would require so many tester that it doesn t give us any alternative : open beta testing.
For any online game it s a good idea. For any "play alone on your computer" game it s a commercial succide as to do the proccess to the end you will have your fan base with a free beta version with all the function of the commercial version (as they must test them). Result? commercial failure...

Actualy I hate the way UBI is doing this. But I understand them and I can give same another way to do what must be done...

oh... I didn t bought SHIV... still playing with SHIII, waiting for the game to be "mature" and to see if the fan base is still willing to mod it.

I can understand that some may get frustrated ... but as mentioned earlier it is the only 'pacific' sub sim out and for me at least that makes a big difference. Ya UBI like many over the last 6 years have blatantly released unfinished work. This seems to be something that is here to stay I'm afraid.

On the other hand as with SH3, Far Cry and IL2 and even more so with SH4 there have been an incredibly fast release of mods and patches which makes up for much of UBI's lack of forethought.

So for me, bugs and all, I find I'm really enjoying SH4 now ... that or maybe I'm just hanging out with the crew too much?!?!!! :|\\


Thanks Dimitrius ... #3 broke the monotony of my workday! :rotfl:

LMAO...:rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl:
http://photos4.flickr.com/4903217_8a7b46daaa_m.jpg

You know, reading your post made me remember SH2. I thought it was a nice game. Always crashed on my second mission. I never really got into SH2. It was swell but I was no computer whiz to figure out CTD and forums were just some other planet thing to me. Once SH3 came out, I grabbed the game and loaded it up. WOW....the graphics for the time were outstanding. I loaded up SH2 again for want of the Pacific and the graphics were just:down: comparied to SH3. SH2 found the shelf and has not moved since. I played SH3 with the bugs and it was enjoyable but did not seem to get anywhere. 3 months and it is on the same shelf with SH2. 2 years later I decide to load up SH3 to play, found GWX and :o, the whole SH3 game had come to life with a soul. Currently SH4 is a bit buggy compaired to SH3 but the graphics are better in 4. We are ahead of the game with missions(all be it some repeat), no more patrolling a square for 24 hours. SH4 is a baby in the woods at the moment. This game will soon have a life and soul just like SH3.

I'm just astonished at all the CTD. I'm also feeling we are not getting the full story on the CTD. On resent post the poster finally admitted using a crack instead of the disc to start the game:roll:. They wonder why no buttons work and crew are flat with alien eyes. We all know bucking the system usually does not work. I'm like most people, the game should load and run like a champ. When it does not...it is the developers that did this to my computer. Oh well, I'm just rambling for not good reason. Thanks for listening;)

All good points AVG, well said. There have been a couple of times I wanted to post:yep: when I thought I had a bug, but I was the bug:nope: by not taking the time to understand and learn the game first. Yes there are bugs, but my glass is still half full with this game, I am just having to much fun with it.

Plus at the end of the day it is just a game, at the end of the day I have bigger things to worry about in the so called real-world :up:

By the way I played last night without the fog, got close to 20fps extra:up:, didn't think it would be that much.

RDP

My glass is definitly half full concerning the game. My other glass is getting over full with CTD complaints with little or no discussion on how they loaded the patch, what is running in the background, what they were doing at a particular time it CTD. What really miffs me is the one with a CTD only to find after a page and a half of folks attempting to help, a crack was being used.:shifty:
So many are playing without CTD issues, buttons working, radar working but these folks with CTD quickly point the finger at the programers. Some have to realize a lot of issues with game play and CTD is sitting right in front of them with a glowing screen showing "an error has occurred, windows is shutting down".

My only CTD happened after the last patch was installed. I cleaned up the computer/defrag/internet junk and no CTD. I played 4 hours straight and no save inbetween in case of CTD. This is how confident I was that what simple house cleaning I did was the cure for CTD. Oh well, I ramble some more. Thanks for listening again;)

John Channing we will never see eye to eye on this. You want to simulate being the navigator on a sub. I want to be it's capt.

In SH1 you used the stadimeter to input range, then you inputed your position from the the enemy ships bow.After giving those two readings you would start the the stop watch which gave your navigator his first mark. When you stopped the timepiece it sent the navigator his second mark. He would calculate your targets speed. If you gave a bad reading you received a incorrect speed.

Right now SHIV is incapable of preforming this simple function.The manual says it should, but it can't. Seems to me the boys from SH1 got it right, while SHIV is still struggling with this.

I concur. I had a CTD ONCE. One single time. It happened yesterday when I put a second man into the damage control party. Dunno if this crash was just bad luck or reproducable, since I got damaged for the first time then. Note however that I'm still on version 1.0 of SHIV. Yeah, the "totally unplayable" one. ;) Never had the Stadimeter CTD or any corrupt save game files btw.

I was fine with 1.1 myself. I just wanted the EE fog removed so I could run the game with the clear water. That is all. I got it so I'm just that much better off. I got one stadi crash a long time ago, before the first patch. None since. These I feel are just a bad luck crash. The only repeatable CTD I could muster was hitting the "A" key. Now this is gone in 1.2 so I win again. My glass is getting fuller....I'm might need to add my scotch to it now!

Glad to listen:up:. I think I have had 2 :roll: so far (CTD), one being the infamous " a " key, the other I am not sure. Yes the folks using a crack, then coming here for help:nope:

RDP

Ehm, I see your point on Capt vs. Fire Control party with regards to obtaining speed, but it definitely didn't work like that in SHI. What you describe sounds like SHIII though. There was not even a stadimeter or a stopwatch in SHI (when I say the TDC in SHI was somewhat more detailed/realistic than in SHIV, I really *do* mean the functioning and readouts of theTDC itself, not the data gathering process, especially as far as range is concerned).

You had two choices there for the TDC: Auto or Manual. Auto was just point and shoot, much like in AOD. When on manual, you had to figure out and enter all the data by yourself or could move the mouse cursor over the ship in question on the "God's Eye" map, which would then show you data guesstimates, whether on Auto or Manual. Collecting all the data yourself w/o checking the map was even harder than in SHIV. However, range estimates were still possible w/o stadimeter by reading the angle increments on the crosshair against the masthead height. (D = mastheadheight / sine alpha). Bad thing was masthead height was not provided in game, but someone from the community back then produced a data sheet for all ships. Also another one made a combined ruler tool for print out where you could readout the range for a given masthead height coupled with the increments on the crosshair. There were some *really* dedicated chaps around back then. ;)

Your points are good ones, but I also think it's not that useful when the moderators' first response is "Well, I'm not getting any CTDs and my radar works."

I have NO mods installed. I installed 1.2 over 1.1, as the devs' notes indicated I should. I have a vanilla Dell with a supported video card, 2 gigs of RAM. I've defragged. I have no other software running. I have March 2007 video drivers.

Yet my SD radar will not operate. I get framerate crashes in the middle of patrols and floating mouse cursors. I get fog inside Control if fog is on. Etc.

Some of the problems people are reporting ARE due to mods, and to misunderstanding game operation, and to poorly maintained PCs. But there ARE also problems with the game. It seems more sensitive to individual rigs than any game I've seen in the XP-era.

Telling someone who is frustrated and looking for help that you personally don't have the problem isn't helpful.

That said, I too have zero patience with somebody coming here looking for help who is playing a cracked game.

Heartc,

Agreed... of all the myriad bugs we're all aware of, the one thing I've never encountered, is a CTD. Not one, in almost 2 months of play.

How many people under 30-YO get this joke?

My version of the game had where you used the mouse to mark the highest point of the ship just like the stadimeter. My version diffinetly had a stop watch cause the manual says that the longer you let the time go the better the reading. The manual suggested 55 seconds.

In Silent service there were none of these things but SH1 had them.