[nsomnia]

Update: January 2016

June 13 - Updated the link below to the development thread, this one is old and dead.
Development is offically restarted click here for details

Looking at the end of January to take this out of mothball and back into active development. I'll be cooking and posting .exe's regularilly.


Trello Board, Vote for Features and see progress: https://trello.com/b/W4yrCFe2/coldwarsubsim-wip
The Trello board above is the quickest way to give input to what you want in a subsim game or dont want, or make a post for more influential ideas and suggestions.

We are looking at the first week of April for a tech demo release goal, and a last week of April deadline.



We are still looking for artists, modellers, and C++ programmers. Even if you don't know c++ as long as you know how programming languages work (statements, functions, types, etc) you would be a useful team member and we can discuss profit splits


Email: info@blendertek.com (Feel free to email about anything)
Skype: blendertek (Im in the MST time zone (UTC -7:00 hrs) pacfic +1 central -1 eastern -2, but feel free to IM me for any reason at anytime)
Steam: Ssa_nsomnia (Feel free to add me to chat if you dont have skype)
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/Blender_Tek
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/Blendertekpage
Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/Nsomnia
Homepage (for now): http://www.blendertek.com/blog/
Github: https://www.github.com/nsomnia/ColdWarSubSim






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The project is mothballed until I find a team member or get my coding skills up a bit.

I came across this. https://forums.unrealengine.com/show...ownloads/page1

By the time I'm ready to start work on this project again: I think that will be an AMAZING place to start. Underwater fx, Beaufort scale for easy scaling of waves, full weather system, buoyancy system, boat wake waves and prop wash, the list go on and on.

Check out page 3 for some more details on us making the switch, the GitHub is only up to date for models and may be up to a day behind.







Old info for now:

Been around these parts for a few years, but obviously not an active poster. So for about the past year I was working on a new U-Boat sim using the Unity game engine (same as WoTA is using) but when I realized he has been working on it since 2010 or so I decided no sense "competing" if you will, and I was having issues with water physics. So over the past month or two I've changed my game design ideas completely to be a cold war sub sim as everyone says that's the one game missing from the genre.

Heres the github where all details will be centralized https://github.com/Nsomnia/ColdWarSubSim from me and any future team members, as well as all reference info and research as I come across it for anyone who wants to help/become a team-member on an unpaid/paid/partnership basis.

I'm a hardcore sim fan, started with plane sims and then heli and space sims, then I learnt javascript, then I learnt proper 3D modelling (I've been using sketchup and autocad for years and years and years now) and consider myself a very proficient modeller and animator, then I learnt C# and now starting on c++ for contingency. The only other members of my team is a very well versed C++ programmer and 2 graphics designers, were all local friends. I'm hoping eventually when I get this idea to take off somewhat to get some more people on the team over the internet.

Being that Unity doesn't really support c++ unless you use wrapper librarys, and also Unity is a lot harder to allow modding (Theres LUA and IronPython interpretor plugins but its much easier in c++ and UE4 to allow game modding I've read) I've started learning it (I work from home so I have unlimited time for my projects more or less). So that If we decide to go to Unreal Engine 4 I'll be able to do some coding when needed and convert my current scripts from C# to c++. For the time being though I'll continue on the design and ideas aspect and modelling, since that stuff doesnt matter what engine or programming language you use.

For now I'm just (re)laying out game details. When I first started my U-Boat sim game I first got all the historical data,drawings, videos, etc I could find and engrossed myself in it and then wrote/drew out the game logic and then started building and coding, and then started making it look pretty. (Well never got to the last step really, hit a road block with the water physics like I said)

So this morning I started all over and started designing some dateline charts (I'm very visual) which I will then serialize to text files to be used within the game. The same way that SH5's .upc files use date codes to determine when technology/upgrades is available (IE

[UpgradePack 24]
ID=UpackCoatingAlbereichVIIC41
NameDisplayable=Alberich
FunctionalType=UpFTypeCoating
Type=NULL
ImageIndex=36
UpgradePackSlotType=Type7C41Coating
UnitUpgradePackIntervalOptionCurrent=19000101,19991231,0
UnitUpgradePackIntervalOptions1=19410801,19411224,2000
UnitUpgradePackIntervalOptions2=19411224,19420801,1500
UnitUpgradePackIntervalOptions3=19420801,19430801,1000
UnitUpgradePackIntervalOptions4=19430801,19440201,500
UnitUpgradePackIntervalOptions5=19440201,19991231,300
IDLinkUpgradePackElements=EqpAlberich
Info=Material: Sound absorbent rubber|Thickness: 4 mm|Echo reflection reduction: 15%
Notes=Alberich consists of a layer of synthetic rubber sheets glued to the body of the U-boat using special adhesives, much like an outer skin. In addition to its sound absorbing properties, the coating also acts as a sound dampener, containing the U-boat’s own engine noise.
TrackingID=1102

).

The basic idea in my head though is both US and Russian campaigns (obviously start with the US campaign and the Russian one can be way in the future cause there is much less info (and desire) for Russian cold war subs. Similar to SH5 in that you can walk around the ship, passive/active abilities and all but with the heavier simulator aspects of SH3/4 (choosing/promoting your crew). I also plan to have the ability to have full control over each sub IE. diveplane control, ballast and trim control, rudder control, independent engine control etc). You start out with a post war diesel-electric and when nuclears become available you can choose that campaign path or continue with the ship you've "built" through upgrades, experienced crew etc. Once cruise missles and ship to ship and ship to air missles become available they will be useable and once longe range cruise missles and say ICBMS become available by date you'll be able to use them when the campaign permits (ie message from Atlantic Sub Command: Korea is getting hot we need a missle fired to these co-ordinates on this date at this time, please get within firing range and fire 2 missles at the targeted area).

Lots of fun ideas planned (towed sonar arrays, fast attacks, boomers, missles etc) who knows how far a few people can go with 1 working full time and a few more part time. Look how far WoTA has come. Any game ideas are welcome, as well as C&C of course.

As with WotA I will probly be releasing just a simple version with one playable sub (probly a post war GUPPY conversion) to toy around with and then go from there. I dont intent on any mobile game and even OSx and Linux are probably gonna be a no go. I'd rather spend the time instead working on the win version. I like to release alphas and test stuff alot so expect updates as this takes form. No idea on a name yet as im still in the core design stages. Also I'm definitly going to incorporate optional voice control ala skwas/miltons voice control for SH5 since Microsoft has a beautiful API that works well with Vista onwards, so that would totally throw that version to Win only.

So this morning I started. After an hours work once I got bored of learning more c++ I got my first visual graph I can refer to which I'll be filling in more and more and more and more. Heres where I got (getting the date line even was the major chore I like nice visual stuff im a visual designer/learner).

Heres a link to the PSD, its extremely well organized. If you feel like filling in more dates on major sub commissionings/decommissions/other sub based major events you'll earn a spot in the credits menu

I'm going to be creating graphs for each class of boat, each type of equpment (sonar, radar, sound coating, electrolysis machine, compressor, reactor, diesels, battery types, weapons) etc. and then go from there. When I get bored of going through data I'll be working on my models, however good game design is 1. hash out a basic idea 2. build the game logic (since its all going to change anyways) 3. refine refine refine 4. replace placeholder items with real models, textures, shaders etc. 5. refine refine refine.

Any links to detailed drawings of major sub classes (or even minor) and equipment would be greatly appreciated. I have hundreds of drawings of a type vII uboat down to the windlass gearing and every single steam and water pipe but theres not many books with such info to cold war era subs. I'll be modelling everything imaginable because that's what I do best. I dont know what I'm going to model first, but when I do I'll post some progress, however like I said, making pretty models is pretty much the last step of proper game design, its more for "wow this looks like its going somewhere".