I think there are 4 subs!

Yup ;)

I guess it suffered quite some feature cut. At the beginning they adverticed even a dynamic campaign. Realy better not expect to much from it. If you want a WWI sim at all costs, then that's they way to go curently. For moders it might be interesting.

Deamon

Nope.

Well, kinda. They used their echo sounders to detect subs but they would have to be below the ship for that. I think by the end of the war there were some top secret trials with echosounders that were directed forward. IIRC a small number of DD's were equipen with them at the very end of the war.

Deamon

Haha. Well, i'm not concerned anymore. It has no similarities with what i'm working on. But at the beginning as i just heared of it the first time it scared the **** out of me :lol:

Hey Mike howdy ? Are you releasing soon ?

Deamon

Has anyone actually played this yet? Any Impressions?

Yes, a few hours with a borrowed version, not worth the money if you ask me:hmm:
A short review here: First Look: '1914 - Shells Of Fury'

Any idea why it won't run on my system, pls?
 

I just bought the game, installed it, installed the directx update, but it won't load. It starts, plays the intro movie, starts filling the bottom bat, when tyhe bar reaches 3/4 it crashes to desktop.

My specs:
ASUS nforce4 mobo, Athlon64 3200+, ASUS Radeon X1600XT w. 256 mb RAM (PCI-e), Creative Live SB Pro 512 (PCI), 2x512 mb RAM dual channel, Win XP 32 bit.

Any idea why it refuses to run on my system? I must mention that I did keep the original DVD in the DVD-ROM unit during the loading and that the DVD is brand new, just out of the original box, no scratch.

I have read the reviews, but still want very much to see the game, and I am most frustrated that it won't load.

Should i be honestly ?

Well i tried it and what can i say ?

Well, lets start with the technical side of it. The sky sucks, there seem to be only one good and one bad weather sky and both sucks, the water is humping nervously around like on drugs and there seem to be always only one seastate.

The view distance is 12 km iirc, can't even remember if there was fog and rain or something.

The boats look not that much authentic, contains errors, and doesn't simulate much beyoned the most essencial things. No TDC, only autotracking mode or you can try it completaly manual. No recognition manual for targets. No bearing scale on the peris. I find the grafics odd, I always have the impression that the ships are far away, even if they are pretty close. Diving times mostly to quick for that old boats. No engine breakdowns, you can run flank all the time. Although there are petrol and diesel boats there are no differences propulsion wise. The petrol boats have no white smoke trail or something, you can't raise the exhoust and ventilation mast or the radio masts. So there is almost no functionality of the boats you can crank the gun and MG but nothing else as fare as i can see. There seem to be no ports in the sim!

I first started to play the training missions but had to cancel after the third one cose else i would had puked(i'm used to much to my hires models) and gone straight to the campaign. First the featured 3 campaigns are actualy only one!

Only one that is divided in to three parts by time frames and you can either choose one or play through all of them in one campaign.

Ok, the missions begin already on the sea somewhere near your home "port" and end also there. Missions are structured always in the same way: "Move to here stay for 24 hours and then return". Your patrol area is always right in the middle of the action. You don't have to lurk up and down the british coast, looking for targets. You are always led right to your prey, you just sit there and they always come pretty much right towards you asking to be torpedoed. It's the same over and over again. Nothing that can be compared with SHIII.

HOWEVER, knowing the war i can say the missions are absolutely authentical! And here's the real (and only) strong point of Shells of sorry ehh.. pardon fury. I even got addicted somewhat becose i was always curious what the next mission will be like. I even felt somethig like excitement during the missions while trying to shadowing my targets. I was even surprized to see that after sinking two of the cresseys the third one came along the one that was still burning on the surface stopping and mimicing the rescue of the crew(what is historical correct), i had't expected so much historical accuracy and had unfortunately no torpedos left.

Btw the ships are always burning when you hit them and they all sink unrealisticaly slow. The ships don't break up in two halfs like in SHIII or something. The enemy ships can spot your periscope kilometers away, when you stick it out for to long. I got spotted almost 3 km away on one occasion.

You can also shoot torps manualy, you can set course, speed and depth of the torpedo. There are also lots of duds, however from all my researches i had the impression that the fuzes were pretty reliably and cannot agree with the game in this regard.

Well after all i must say the game is kinda felicitous but came 9 years to late. That's what you feel when you play it, at least i do. 9 years ago it would have been a pretty fine game.

There are some issues apparently. When i turn the view and get some ditails into the view the turning speed becomes dead slow and often freez, i have to center the view via key and try again, often several times before it works. They also apparently confused 1/3 with 2/3 speed setting when you run on batteries. Neat is that you can run on batteries on the surface if you like. When you surface the batteries get loaded automaticaly and the speed doesn't decrease during loading iirc.

You can also set up radio messages like report position; report contact, report sinking and that's it. I don't see any purpuose for radio communication however, i also never received any replys or radio messages after playing trough 5 missions.

There is one crew member on the bridge when you are on the surface who is completaly static however always looking in to one direction. The gunners move a little bit.

So becose of the very authentical missions i can't say that the game is total ****. The campaign gives a good edjucational value to the game and is the only reason that makes the game worth playing imo(once you got used to the obsolet look and UI of it). Overall it's much below SHII.

Cheers,
Deamon

A german Review by Bob from Marinesims
http://www.marinesims.de/site/1914--...rns/sof-5.html

A german Review by Bob from Marinesims
http://www.marinesims.de/site/1914--...rns/sof-5.html


Can't read German and no translation button. So did they like it/hate it/ or don't real have an opionon?:-?

You can use Google or Babelfish to translate German into (Bad) English. In Google you will can see the "language tools link" to the lower right of the text box. Babelfish translates more languages including Russian if you want to see how PT Boats or Lockon Black Shark are coming along on their Russian forums.

Overall Marinesims think the game was ambitious for such a small devteam but does not really offer much to the SH3 player. They have a nice list of pros and cons on the page.

I'd say I think Deamon pretty much summed it up on the previous page very well. It's no SH3 and perhaps not even a SH2 but it's quite nice to have if you are " a completist" like me and want to support the work of smaller teams and encourage further development of naval sims.

The game file formats are quite open and I have already translated some menus and missions in my imported copy. One thing I do like about the game is minelaying I don't think that's been done before. It's quite a different experience than waiting for a torpedo hit watching a ship thread her way through the mines you have laid a real will she or won't she experience.
Another nice idea is the gunnery chart at the deck gun station which show you where you shell splashes are landing.

Ok...It took a minute to figure out but I did it through Google. The english was better then I figured.

Thanks a ton.:)

Thanks

Be sure to check out the PT Boats interview at
http://www.flottenbasis.de/marine_ku.../zentrale.html
as well, it's quite a good read.

Stephen

Thanks very much for the review, Deamon!

I trust your judgement, so have just bought Shells of Fury.

Always wanted a WW1 U-boat sim. The more I learn about WW1, the more amazing it is - the sheer pace technological innovation in that era is incredible!

Much as I love SH3, I'm now a little bit uncomfortable about 'fighting for Hitler' even in a game.

But I genuinely believe the world would have been a better place if Germany had won the Great War (and my home country, Britain, should have stayed neutral!)

I've got no qualms whatsover about sinking Russian ships (I read that many of SOF's missions are in the Baltic against the Imperial Russian Navy.