Jamie & Bill what´s about future plans
 

To Jamie:
Any future plans about DW add ons or totally new game decide yet?
To Bill:
Will there be another fantastic Chrismas present like last year?
Regards from Germany
Wayne69

A similar question was asked last month and here is where it stands that we've/ last heard.

Read Jamie's post 1/3 of the way down: Here

Sonalysts has stated that Dangerous Waters did not meet their sale expectations and wasn’t considered a financial success, so I doubt we will see further add-ons. They are still working on another patch, but they have to focus on more profitable areas with their non-commercial and government contracts. This is why it’s been 9 months since the latest patch was released. As far as another game? I doubt it, or at least not very long time.

Now is the point where i can say i told you so :D

What did you say? You told us what?.......:-?

He's just happy that DW didn't sell well enough to warrant an expansion pack. :roll:

Perhaps if SCS are slowly losing interest in providing any add-ons a tactful approach from some of the mod-squad may let us have the game we all want.

I haven't seen any indications that SCS is losing interest in it's products. :hmm: They just did a re-release of their older games with improvements, and they are still looking at releasing a 1.04 patch for DW. In addition, I haven't seen anyone from SCS say they definitely will not be making any add-ons for DW or a new game entirely. I think that's why wayne69 asked the question. Just wondering about the future. I'm curious myself.

I plus many others want a DWX.The Lwami mod has been excellent for improving the doctrine but more drivable platforms are the icing on the cake.
Expansion packs such as extra campaigns can be done easily by the community.If I was SCS and had the money I would at least make a SCu changer for the submarines as a start.One already exists and I am sure it would not take a lot to get it to work in DW.This then opens up a whole host of platforms and scenarios. The p-3 could be modded into an Atlantique or an Il-38 but there would probably not be that much interest.
A range of different skimmers to drive would be nice but as they are almost all very different that would be an unrealistic project.
A major improvement would be a western diesel submarine such as a Collins or one of the German ones.An old Oberon would be welcome.
So Jamie,DWx please or a diesel boat ,preferably both for Christmas.:up:

In a post long time ago i did say that if sonalasyst didnt bring the game out earlier and patch it and also bring out addons it wouldnt sell well and thats exactly what has happend.

IT hasn't sold well because it is a niche market. Most people who buy games are the 16 - 25 category I guess and most of them are FPS or RPG types.

All simulation is niche .. but SH3 sells well and it is not much more simple. Even DW is simple with Show Truth on. And SH3 with all with manual computing of firing solution is harder than anything in DW.

DW could sell better, if SCS would invest more into it. It is so 'cheap' .. graphics are more or less same as the Sub command or Fleet command, same goes for scripting and everything else. In fact, DW is more or less add-on for Sub Command.
Now it looks like one man is fixing DW and not even full time. Even much better sound model in 1.03 looks like it was intended for 1.0 (because 1.0 model was just way too simplistic).
Silent Hunter which was released later has many patches, add-ons and SH4 is almost complete. You can really see progress there.

To me it seems SCS just don't want to make games any more. It is sad for us, players, but fully legitimate. Naval pack is more like a dot after nice game-industry carrier.

I don't believe in any future add-ons for DW. I hope 1.04 will be released, to fix mostly bugs introduces in 1.03. And that will be all for DW.
Only hope could be that SCS will release no-new-playables policy, or even will give some support in form of some documents how to do it right.

Naval simulations are kind of weird if you ask me, because simulations are a niche market, and naval simulations are doubly so. Unlike flight simulators, where you can fly several missions in a day with a high degree of realism, naval simulations are much more slow moving. Take the television review Jamie posted, they were making fun of how a lot of DW consisted of sailing around, looking at nothing, doing calculations, etc. In a good scenario, because stealth is a submarine's armor, it's completely possible to sail around for HOURS and not see a thing, once at least one side detects the other, the whole thing is over in a few minutes.

Personality wise, it takes a certain kind of person to play a game like that. Naval sims are like a nice afternoon of fishing compared to X-treme downhill BMX stunt racing for adenaline junkies.

I think another problem is that there's not a well developed literature on submarine tactics. Anyone can go to the bookstore and get a copy of Fighter Tactics and have a pretty good idea about what a real dogfight looks like, and the kinds of things fighter pilots think about.

There exists no such literature in the public domain, so people don't understand the logic behind the various weapons systems and how to employ them. They're left on their own, so when you put an area in front of people and say, "go find the submarine," I think a lot of people don't know how to think about the problem. You can kind of make extrapolations from some of the stuff in things like, Wayne Hughes Fleet Tactics, or other works of analysis in the public domain. Mostly, though, issues like how to search for a submarine, once you find him, when to shoot, what to shoot, how many to shoot, how to get into a position to shoot, etc. are mysteries. That can be very liberating for some who would like to experiment, but on the other hand, it makes a lot of scenarios people come up with kind of unsatisfying.

I'll put my .02 € in this discussion.
I agree with Dr. Sid in regards to the "cheap" feel factor of DW.
This in my opinion has been a very grave error on the part of SCS.
They marketed from the beginning he game only to the hard core audience and this backfired on them.
Just look at SH III, its as difficult as DW (albeit in a different manner) but it found its audience way outside the hardcore simulation crowd.
Take for instance Orbiter, a freeware space simulator.
That game is in a certain sense way way more complex than DW will every be, and nontheless the number of persons, adults and young children (12-14 years old) that download and play it are if you look at the numbers way more than what DW presumably sold.
And why was that ? Because of the WOW factor, graphics.
Yes the graphics aspect that so many here consider here irrelevant is not.
Casual gamers are attracted to new genres because of graphics.
Some limitations in the game were absolutely unjustified in 2005, for instance the lack of 32 bit graphics.
It doesn't make sense, and it feels "cheap".
We can forgive the lack of AA and AF filters but playing in 16 bit color with all the dithering and banding, is like playing a game of 10 years ago.
It just doesn't work anymore.
So yes the game is great, but it was not as polished as it should have been.

Just a quick question:

Is it a simple matter to replace the models and textures in the game for a person with mod experiance?

I know that serveral mods already exist, but what is the extent to which the game is modifiable?

Perhaps if Sonalysts don't want to invest the time and money to support the game anymore (an unfourtunate but neccessary reality it sounds) they could make it as easy as possible for modders to take over where they left off.

I agree with one thing Sid says and that is teh graphics. It isn't just a case of updating models. That was started with SCX and even with a higher poly count certain things like lighting has to be considered.

I think the scripts and doctrine are very felxible and powerful if used correctly.

Thing is SCS don't have the budget that Ubi had for SHIII, also the primary customer for DW is teh US Navy as a training aid, they don't give a danm whether the graphics are pretty as long as a ship looks like a ship and a sub a sub.

I would rather SCS make take it up a level and charge more, I'd pay $120 for a SB Pro type version of DW.

Hi. A friend told me you have this discussion here - again.

Tell you a story.

1. I bought DW second hand, half a year after release. The original customer, a friend's brother, did not like it, too many bugs that made subs far more buggy than in SC, he said.

2. While I owned it next, 1.03 was released, so I tried that one as well. Subs turned from bad to worse - I consider them to be unplayable. Subs are what is the major attraction of such a sim. Not the frigate, not the Orion, not the Helo - it's about the subs, and the subs for the most. Mess up the subs, and you lose customers. That simple.

3. I sold DW too, angered, and disappointed that they even topped the negative record in support I remembered from SC. I only kept the manual, which is top class. I think of keeping it as a strange way of compensation. :)

4. The customer complained to me some time later that I sold him a buggy product with unplayable sub, even with the latest patch. :hmm:

5. When DW was released, I wrote with constructive intention in a thread that Sonalysts should be aware that they have raised a well-known reputation of being bad supporters when it comes to patches, and that many people are interested in the matter of DW, but are cautious because of the bad and extremely slow support. SC took them over a year. FC and 688i was not much faster. I recommended that if there are things to patch, they would be well-advised to get these things, especially serious things, fixed within reasonable time-frame of let's say two patches, 2-3 months for each, before the initial spike in interest that follows a new release has faded out again.

THEY AGAIN FAILED IN THAT.

6. So, back then I talked to friends and colleagues and advertised the sim and described what it is. INTEREST WAS THERE, and not too little. The manual did not drive people away, but attracted them. THE BROKEN STATUS OF THE SIM IS WHAT KEPT THE MAJORITY OF PEOPLE AWAY. Even some long-year-board members here, that had displayed great enthusiasm during the times of SC, and were actively engaged in supporting it, ran out of patience and turned their backs on DW, and the board. Such a reputation is lethal if the sim in question already is a niche product. A niche product must pass the tests with flying colours in order to leave the niche, or even just survive in it's niche. If it does not pass the tests, it's fate is sealed. It gets stuck in it's hole and never will leave it again after the first attempt. That's how the market functions today. There is too much other tasty fish out in the sea.

7. A sub sim is not a flight sim. You cannot compare it's popularity to let's say F4. F4 was in a terrible status when it was released - but it also was a genre that simply outclasses the attraction of subsims, and it did not take them years to come up with patches and displays of efforts and willingness to improve it. That basic attraction was enough to get the patching and modding show running - for years. This level of customer's tolerance should not be expected with regard to subsims. You are a fine and hardcore community here. but that does not change the fact that you are few, and that your interest is not representative for the interest of the vast majority of players and simmers. Do not conclude on othery by your own example.

What I personally also found a bit too rich was a posting by a representative of Sonalysts, long time ago, over a year, complaining that there was too little support and enthusiasm on the board, and concluding that that poor support by the community maybe hampers sales numbers. Why should anyone buy the sim, when he comes to this place and sees the lacking community effort here?, it was indirectly complained. the status of the product and the reputation of Sonalysts of needing millenias to get things repaired of course had nothing to do with it. Support is not patching, but forum presence - this seemed to have been the implicit conclusion. Well, they were present in the forum, and very much so, I admit that. But with comments in a forum you can't reapir broken things. It's the patching that counts - not sweet words. - The man starting the thread later tried to rudder back a bit. But the damage already was done. In the following weeks several names that I knew since the times of SC said farewell to DW.

My conclusion: Sonalyst torpedoed themselves with this. They sunk their own boat, by bad seamanship. The idea was good, the execution (bugs, graphics) was mediocre, the support was lousy. In a short while it will be two years since release - and manoeuvring the subs still is a bad joke, if 1.03 is still the status. Truth is - after two years, not many people outside your hardcore community have any interest left in 1.04 that might be released, or might be released in a year, or never - who knows.

Two years for patching showstopping bugs? And complaining about people not buying it enough, then?

To them the low sales-numbers may be a phenomenon they do not understand. To me it is a logical consequence.

Got burned twice now. Will never get burned by Sonalyst again.

Just a short hop-in of mine, so don't try to debate with me. ;)

Bye,
Skybird

Excellent post Skybird and nice to see you back, if only briefly.SCS have built themselves a football that is a cube not a sphere.It is still playable but not as we all hoped.There are people on this board that could make this ungainly object a million times better but unfortunately the ball owner's attitude is that they know their product is not right but they don't really want it corrected for them.
I was looking at the Sonalysts website today and the gaming for entertainment side is only a very small part.The shareholders are not going to throw money at making an object look like a photograph especially for a niche product,which is why I feel that the wraps need to come off and SCS should allow the community to develop DW into a really good game for the benefit of the membership.
Nobody has asked what SCS are planning next.After the poor sales of DW I would imagine very little for the entertainment market.They will concentrate on stuff that makes them real money.

A friend...huh? Yeah right. :roll: Some departure there Skybird.:shifty:


At any rate, Sonalysts has achieved something that no other gamemaker has. They have rolled 7 different naval platforms into one sim. What other sim out there has allowed you to play as a nuclear submarine (3 different types), diesel submarine, naval surface ship, helicopter, maritime patrol aircraft....all in one sim? With a high level of fidelity (weapons and sensors) in each platform? Name one. Can't do it? That's what I thought. You can't. Only Sonalysts has made such a game. And done it to a very high fidelity. Especially in terms of sensor modelling, and platform specific weapons modelling. Gameplay in DW is incredible. I have been disgusted by a few attitudes displayed in regards to DW. It is a cut above the rest. The problem is that some people loaded it up not to play it, but to only specifically find what doesn't work, so they can come into this forum to complain about it. Whatever happened to playing a game for the "fun of it". I swear, some of you people would really enjoy DW if you weren't looking for reasons to hate it. How about loading it up to immerse yourself into an actual scenario, and having fun while challenging yourself to get results?

And I don't see a big problem with the graphics. I do think the 3-D ship models need updating, but Sonalysts have upgraded their graphics engine every single time they've made a new game. SH3 has excellent graphics and scenario immersion, yet there are issues with it. And guys over there have some criticism over it, yet they seem to be able to enjoy it. I enjoyed it (especially with the GW mod), but it is off my harddrive now. DW still remains.

And in regards to DW's sales, it is a niche market. Nevertheless, have you seen some of the reviews DW has gotten from multiple sources? DW has achieved very high marks from many reviewers. Go to the Dangerous Waters website and look for yourself. And one more thing, those that want added playables have known all along that this was dependant on sales. Have you personally (anybody here) tried to constructively work to help make DW better? Have you raised constructive points for improvement to the maker? Or are you just here to tell us how DW is a failure when many of us are still enjoying the game? :stare: Not a failure in any sense of the word to me.

I agree, the game is a rough diamond.
Thats why notwithstanding its rough edges its still on my hard drive and I still play it from time to time.

Nobody criticises just for the fun of it.
There are genuine problems with the game, some people consider them showstoppers, others like me consider them annoyances.
I was not looking for SH III graphics, I never said that DW should have the ultimate graphics engine or high end looking 3d models.
I was criticising the absence of something as fundamental in this day and age as 32 bit graphics.
Its since the late 1990's that ATI for instance doesn't even make graphics cards that support native 16 bit color.
Everything is done in 24-32 bit, so excuse me but when a game is published in freekin 2005 not having support for 24-32 bit graphics is a big let down.
Even freeware games, or fan made games have native support for 24-32 bit graphics.
I have an lcd, and although I don't use the 3d screen, let me tell you that the graphics to put it mildy is crap.
There is banding everywhere, and it makes the game a bit less enjoyable than it shoud be.

The problem is SCS used an outdated graphics engine with all its limitations.
Limitations that could have been acceptable 5-6 years ago but not anymore.
And to be precise I'm not talking about a far cry-doom 3- half life graphics engine.

Again, the game was marketed from the beginning to the niche market.
That was a mistake.
Selling only online was a mistake, poor visibility and advertising.
The fact the game made 3 steps forward (new platforms, new sonar model, multistation) and 2 steps backwards in respect to previous games (sub command for instance) was considered by the niche market a let down.

I mean in the end, part of DW failure to enter the general market is due to SCS fault.
There is no way around this.
And to be honest I have been promoting DW on an italian website since the game was published by battlefront.
Way before steam, and way before the retail release, and way before the game was even published in europe.
I introduced a lot of players to DW, the different platforms, the tactics, faq,etc...
I've kept the thread alive for over 2 years, and if this is not a labour of love I don't know what to say.
I like the game, its not perfect, and its not a crime to wish that things were done differently by SCS.

Well, I have never considered DW to be that buggy or unplayable. So the patches haven't been coming out as quick as otehr developers, hang on though most other developers are full time games makers.

SCS does this as a side line, primarily as a training aid for the US navy, I wonder if they have cancelled the order. Sub handling might have been a bit odd and I will admit in the last patch it was downright weird, but not unplayable.

Anyway I'm privy to stuff I can't really reveal but I have high hopes.

As for Lintons asseriont that SCS have no intention of fixing the things that need to be fixed even though they know what's wrong is way off the mark. Having had conversations with Jamie I am still 100% confident that he does want to fix the things and the rest of teh team too, but they have other stuff to do which is their core business. If they didn't want to bother they would have left it at patch 1.03, patch 1.04 is on its way. As for support and enthusiasm, there was plenty of it when the sim was released and still is. In fact I see it returning.

BTW Sky I thought you were leaving the forum ;)