I think that even if subsims die out, they will come back.

Take the BBC TV show Doctor Who, for example. It ran from 1963-1989. It was canned because not many people were interested in it anymore. Then, in 2005, it was bought back by a man who had loved it as a child, and was in a position to bring it back. Someday, I'm sure that the same thing will happen with subsims.

Don't give up hope. In most cases it's all we have.

And that will be the key for the future. A Kickstarter project is the most likely prospect for a future submarine simulation. For those of us that don't code, like myself, it will be our job to be ready to support those type of projects with money.

EDIT: Some notable examples of Kickstarter success:


Wasteland 2 --

http://wasteland.inxile-entertainment.com/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9hQWqtxXPU

Xenonauts --

http://www.xenonauts.com/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZILKabhJouI

Skullgirls --

http://skullgirls.com/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4oW5He_6x0

There's three refined, high quality, and in the case of Skullgirls, tangible products that were crowd funded on Kickstarter. If they can do it, well you know the rest.....

Xenonauts is probably the most reasonable meter of graphic/feature fidelity that can be expected from a kickstarter subsim. Anything approaching SH let alone surpassing it will not be done on a kickstarter budget alone. inXile for instance who ran the very successful Wasteland 2 and Torment kickstarters is still an established studio with other investors. Chris Roberts also has other investors involved outside of kickstarter.

So far we haven't seen any sims on kickstarter and I think in part this is because the sim community is known for having some very high (too high?) expectations on what they want from a sim. Personally I think the current hardcore sim model that focuses on systems fidelity only is flawed and I would not support such a kickstarter.

You miss Star Citizen from those. Its a space sim. They have raised 9.000.000 USD so far!

http://www.robertsspaceindustries.com/

I would like to see a modern Sub Command with lots of time to play on normal time or quick time if you could slew like on FSX, but the future
is surely not for your normal to higher intelligent players.

The future is lunch or on a commuter train going home to unwind or a doctor's visit or a passenger terminal or runway delay.

The future is mobil and touch screen and ugh consoles :oops:

Windows 8 touch screen is begging for a good sub sim game to just touch and the target becomes id'd with CIC being notified of your
intentions to fire upon a known or unknown target.
Scoring system would be like bowling with misses counting against you.

Employees love to surf and shop and even post in forums lol

So why not a quick way to relax? :)

Ubisoft's SHO? No thanks UBI! :/\\!!
Successor of Dangerous Waters? I have no hope!

And this is why: I Build my own simulator;)

Title of the Project: Submarine Simulator - The challenge.

Here is my first video about the project: http://youtu.be/6Y-NSQ2tunk

http://www.ubootsimulator.de
Website is in German. Translation follows ...

Sorry for my bad english...


Lars

hello there Heinrich Liebe ,

i am very impressed with your project and i am looking forward see it growing up :up:

good programmers are exactly the guys that are needed for a real simulator at first place so as i saw your post only possitive hopes comes in my mind that we may see a real good sim some day :yep:

congratulations Heinrich Liebe , you are doing amazing things there :salute:

ps: if you need any help that i can be usefull ,drop me a pm

Let me go off-topic for a moment and describe a weird dream I had last night.

So I load up Silent Hunter 6 for the first time. The big selling-point of this sim is that the player can control any crew member from a first-person perspective. So, the first thing I do is walk down to the engine room (which is the size of a cathedral and has a stone texture in the overhead, but never mind) and click on one of my mechanics. For some reason the screen starts flashing red, my guy starts groaning in pain, and my hit points are rapidly declining. He drops dead right there, so I select the other mechanic, and the exact same thing happens.

Right after the second mechanic dies, my boat loses all of it's diesel fuel in about 10 seconds, and a screen pops up saying that my submarine is stranded at sea and everyone onboard has died. What happened is that part of my mechanic's character models were colliding with the diesel engines, which only affected them when I was in their first-person view. The diesels ground up their hands when I selected them, causing enormous amounts of damage to the engines themselves. When the second mechanic was killed, my diesel hit points dropped to zero, and both exploded, making all the fuel leak out of the boat.

I think my dream was telling me that in the future, game developers need to be cautious during play-testing. Or that somebody besides Ubisoft should make subsims. Something like that.

I dare not say what I suspect but do a pregnancy check in the morning :O:

I-M-P-R-E-S-S-I-V-E

I agree, very interesting! Perhaps you should consider using Kickstarter? I know I would back such a fascinating project!

me too!
:up:

incredible. the DREAM begins - keep on dreaming! I understood very little yet was captivated by it!
I whish you every success:up::salute:

This is going to take one or a handful of highly motivated individuals to make a new subsim game.

I don't see how buying the Silent Hunter IP or source code or hiring an existing studio makes any sense. What are you going to do? Say donate to my kickstarter and once I get all this money I will negotiate on your behalf?

I disagree that the sim market is dead. Look at the success of Minecraft, X-Plane, and Kerbal Space Program. Yes, Call of Duty fans outnumber us, but part of being an older group is that we also have more money. X-Plane 10 is $70 plus shipping which I gladly paid. It's a great sim.

It's just going to take a talented programmer with a great vision for a new subsim game to run a successful kickstarter campaign. I'm not a programmer so I'm not going to do it, but I hope someone else does.