rest of the boat - noises?
 

It occurred to me that whilst the rest of the boat is not yet modelled, there's really no reason why sounds emanating from the "rest if the boat" should not be audible - both to the U-boat crew and possibly to "interested listeners" elsewhere!

Of course the diesel engines and ballast-tanks can already be heard, but I'm writing about other sounds:

- Use of chain-winches (or whatever was used) to raise torpedoes from storage to the level of the tube in higher tubes during reloads.

- The large electrical levers used when changing rotational direction of e-motor, these electric levers (used on British submarines, and I presume a form of these was used on U-boats?)

- light repairs/low muffled conversation/orders/noises from the galley and messes either side of the control room etc. Rather than one sound at a time, ideally there should be a large pool of sounds, played intermittently, with ransom simultaneous ones being used of origin either fore of aft.

This would help prevent them seeming repetitive in the way individual sounds would rapidly become.

"Silent running" would cause all of the above to cease, so torpedo reloads would not occur during "silent running".

Not a bad idea, I will pass it along. I am a BIG fan of ambient, random sounds in a game, it adds immersion even more than graphics.

It'll have to be played as "chords" ie a choice of 2-5 "notes" (sounds) played more or less at the same time, from a very extensive list of possibles, where the number of sounds, order of sounds starting, and specific sounds used for the "chord" are all random.

That would be the only way of ensuring the listener doesn't recognise any given "note" as distinct, nor any sequence repeating.

So you might need - say:

100 different scraps of muffled German conversation
100 different clinks, clanks and other machinery noises
50 of pots and pans in the galley
50 examples of laughter
50 similar but different torpedo loading sounds

and so on, so that the chances of hearing the same "chord" of notes repeated is vanishingly low. Unfortunately the human brain is very quick to recognise such repeats. Which is probably why I shall murder the Radio Officer if he plays "Tipperary" again! It may be a long way, but it's not nearly far enough!