yes

Yes! :salute:

Yes, sir!!:salute:

See, that's what I think would be a good way to go.

I don't know how much further Ubi is going to go with the SH franchise. Let's face it: We're a niche. A very devoted and loyal niche, to be sure, but as far as market share goes, we're not the ones to sink or float a company like Ubi.

Doing development the traditional way involved hiring a dev team full time hoping that the final sales volume will make up for the costs. We're talking business, after all, and companies don't stay alive by losing money. Projected sales volumes on something appealing to a relatively small niche like ours isn't going to get close to franchises like, say, "Assassin's Creed" which will sell millions of copies even before it's finished.

So hiring on a team of hourly paid devs for something might not be the way to go. On the other hand, handing it out to a bunch of volunteer modders who've been doing this in their spare time just because they love the subject matter so much and doing it for absolutely nothing other than the recognition and satisfaction of doing a great job while still holding on to their copyrights and sweetening the deal with a royalty on final sales might just be the way to go. God knows I wish some of the brilliant minds who've worked for years on making SH3 through SH5 as enjoyable as they are now could have gotten something for their labors and, keeping that in mind, how would offering a crew of those guys a royalty on sales for something they would have done for free anyway NOT work?

It might just end up being the cheapest dev phase any software company ever went through AND create a monster of a success in the process.

I mean, if Ubi keeps their property rights (and that's not exactly hard for lawyers to draw up) AND the great, talented people involved in it for once get paid for their efforts, who DOESN'T win?

Sure, a motley crew of modding geniuses not on the clock might, and I do say might because I've seen how fast they can churn out fixes when they have a mind to do so, not lend itself easily to release deadlines, but who cares? At this point, I don't think very many of us ever expect to see an SH6 and, again, what does Ubi stand to lose?

I see it as a win-win for all parties concerned. The modders get paid for their genius, us subsim fanatics get the best subsim ever made and Ubi gets to make money with very little up front investment. And if it flops, they've lost nothing as their payout was based solely on final sales.

Just thinking out loud here.

SDK
 

Yes, please!

Yes.
 

Overdue, I'd say.

Somewhere (possibly on this forum/can't remember) I read SH6 is not happening, therefore rest of this post may not be relevant. However, I would like to say misha has a good approach above. The modder community here is invaluable, if only a company could utilize this! UBI seems to be the only company that has the option of running such a project (SH6) with relatively small investment because they already have a massive SH code base 3/4/(5?) AND mod base here on this forum.

Alternatively, misha, me or anyone else could do the same. I guess one will need to invest serious amount of money [I have no idea about recent game development budgets, if anyone has any ideas let us know - how is USD100.000 -- is it too optimistic?] and time.

The engine [core game] is already out there; likewise artwork, concept are all out there also. Due to legal requirements those bits cannot be 'copy&paste'd but re-creating similar product from scratch (only using it as inspiration) should be easier (again, _relatively_ - compared to doing it the first time round) and as far as I know it is legally doable.

Rather than using version system (v.1.00 > v1.10 etc.) it should be online repo based (CVS, SVN, git etc.) so that anyone can contribute; and test, any time, the latest version and pitch in. I don't know a thing about modding [apart from changing values in text files] but if there were such a project even I would contribute some hours whatever I can, text editing etc. I know many talented people would be happy to contribute much more only if they were given due credit and treated respectfully.

You know what, if I win the lottery I promise I will do the above so that all human beings can enjoy a great subsim without the usual silly bugs and limitations of 'uneditable exe's. :D

EDIT - In an ideal world, such a software would be "free software" (as in GPLv3) since we are living in the real world let me add a bit about the price. Should anyone else create such a near-perfect subsim that is actively being developed and supported; for that I would be willing to pay much more than "usual game price". I am talking about something like USD100-200 range and I know of one tank simulation that is sold at a crazy price - can't remember exactly now but should be about $200 range. It is like military simulator. The idea is that I will be putting thousands of hours of my real time and I think that joy would worth it. (though I am aware without huge volume of sales, this price range would not matter...)

Nice idea, but doomed from the start. Sorry.

Remember Projekt Messerwetzer and all the trouble the Subsim community had trying to fund that? Everyone wanted it but few would contribute to the development costs. The programmer ultimately delivered what he had (which was a big help, especially to multi-players) and walked away disgusted.

I wasn't around then but searched for messerwetzer, from 10 second quick look it looks like it has been a 'working' patch to some extent. Not great if developer feels disgusted in the end of course.

Few hours after posting above, while browsing "SH4 voice commands" stuff I randomly found about this project http://dangerdeep.sourceforge.net/

[just another unfinished project unfortunately - but hey at least they tried]

Yes

yes it will be usefull

Yes

Yes please.

A long time has passed already... Why shouldnt they?

Because they don't care one way or the other.

WAY TO GO, THAT IS A BIG YES, YES,:up::up::up: