Much more like Das Boot this time....

[TDK1044]

Looking at the Trailer, I get the sense that they have gone for more of the 'Das Boot' feel with Silent Hunter 5. That bodes well for immersion within the game. One thing that was totally absent in SH3 and SH4 was any visual relationship or interaction between the Captain and the crew.

With Silent Hunter 5 allowing the player to play in the 'first person' mode, and if the Devs have learned valuable lessons from SH3 and SH4, then this incarnation could really work really well.

I will be fascinated to see the tech specs nearer the time of release, as I'm sure there is still much optimizing to do to the sim.

[AVGWarhawk]

Problem is, does the darn cook keep asking me to test his nasty soup all the time? "Hi Fritz." "Captain!" "Test my soup?" "Hell no, you done asked me that 8 times in the past 5 minutes."

[TDK1044]

Originally Posted by AVGWarhawk

Problem is, does the darn cook keep asking me to test his nasty soup all the time? "Hi Fritz." "Captain!" "Test my soup?" "Hell no, you done asked me that 8 times in the past 5 minutes."

Exactly, AVG. But it's so obvious that I hope that kind of thing is one of the first things that the Devs addressed. Needless repetition would kill the immersion dead.

I do hope though that we occasionally hear a distant toilet flush followed by a voice saying:

"God what a terrible smell. Who let Stevens in there again...and who gave him sauerkraut?"

[Schroeder]

To be honest I don't see a way how the devs could create a crew that will not repeat time and again what it is doing. The are only a number of spoken sentences available and that is all the AI guys can say. It's impossible to have any longer conversations without repeating them time and again on a long patrol.
I guess it will be approached like it was in Elder's scrolls IV Oblivion with one AI guy adressing a topic and the other will pick randomly one answer out of a set of possible answers.

But maybe we will all get surprised with something really new.

[AVGWarhawk]

I certainly do not think we will see it in game like the trailer. However, crew in the bunks and a cook making some nasty muffins I can see. Not much in the form of canned answers will work. It is limited. Sound loops are only going so long before the loop and sounds repeat. These sounds are the ones that the player remembers. The ambient interior needs to be very long very long. I do not think the cook will be asking me about the darn soup every 5 minutes. If he does, he becomes part of the next pot of soup.

[tater]

Yeah, the interactive crew is actually dangerous ground from an immersion POV. In SH4 we see the same few merchant ships over and over, but at least the context of seeing them changes.

Few of us have worked in real subs (not me). NONE of us have FOUGHT in a sub (not the way ww2 subs were fought from a danger POV).

It's easier to suspend disbelief on the technical stuff than the personal. We all make jokes and interact with people. Players will instantly remember that the cook said X last patrol. Boom, it's a loop, and no longer immersive.

Best idea for pulling voice stuff for the crew, IMO?

Have the ability for the game to grab such stuff ONLINE.

Have a process whereby players/modders can submit appropriate voice files (associated with a specific crew member number) and they get placed online and DLed on the fly as you start a patrol. Unless the voice stuff is many gigs, it will certainly get repetitive fast.

Note that adding the tech to have an offline game go ONLINE for content adds interesting other possibilities—officially sanctioned new ships might be automatically added, for example, when you tart a patrol, auto checking for updates, etc.

[Blood_splat]

Hello captain Hello captain Hello captain Hello captain ello captain Hello captain Hello captain Hello captain ello captain Hello captain Hello captain Hello captain ello captain Hello captain Hello captain Hello captain Hello captain Hello captain Hello captain Hello captain ello captain Hello captain Hello captain Hello captain ello captain Hello captain Hello captain Hello captain ello captain Hello captain Hello captain Hello captain Hello captain Hello captain Hello captain Hello captain ello captain Hello captain Hello captain Hello captain ello captain Hello captain Hello captain Hello captain ello captain Hello captain Hello captain Hello captain Hello captain Hello captain Hello captain Hello captain ello captain Hello captain Hello captain Hello captain ello captain Hello captain Hello captain Hello captain ello captain Hello captain Hello captain Hello captain... As you walk around

[AVGWarhawk]

Originally Posted by Blood_splat

Hello captain Hello captain Hello captain Hello captain ello captain Hello captain Hello captain Hello captain ello captain Hello captain Hello captain Hello captain ello captain Hello captain Hello captain Hello captain Hello captain Hello captain Hello captain Hello captain ello captain Hello captain Hello captain Hello captain ello captain Hello captain Hello captain Hello captain ello captain Hello captain Hello captain Hello captain Hello captain Hello captain Hello captain Hello captain ello captain Hello captain Hello captain Hello captain ello captain Hello captain Hello captain Hello captain ello captain Hello captain Hello captain Hello captain Hello captain Hello captain Hello captain Hello captain ello captain Hello captain Hello captain Hello captain ello captain Hello captain Hello captain Hello captain ello captain Hello captain Hello captain Hello captain... As you walk around

My crew is a bunch of parrots.

[Rockin Robbins]

Going for a movie feel and going for a U-Boat feel are two different things of vastly different character.

[karamazovnew]

I'm not sure how much hope I should put on crew interaction, after seeing just one trailer. If I remember correctly, the starting movie for SH3 gave the false impression of the game having a real crew. Having 3d chars walking around is one thing, badly needed for immersion ofc, but I don't think that crews will be much more than simple nodes with animated states, just as they are in SH3 and SH4. In those games, presented on paper, the crew management system must've sounded like bliss for any would-be captain, but as we all know, it was far from it.

Since SH4's graphics were pretty much perfect, and the game only needed a SDK to let us turn it ourselves intro SH5 (or the GWX team ), the only reasonable improvement that Ubi could bring in SH5 would be a complete shift in gameplay from a standard (however weird that sounds) 3d torpedo shooter to a full blown simulator of crew mechanics that would require as much realism in every action (navigation, depth control, TDC) as it would require a complex and highly customisable automatic crew order/performance system. For example, going to the captain's bed could allow you to skip until the next important situation (such as next nav-point, or X hour, X miles traveled, or X type of encounter, or X-type of radio message, or even Hans's birthday), while the crew has orders to dive periodicaly to X meters to listen for ships, send reports at X hour, throw garbage at Y hour, check celestial position at Z hour, while changing shifts at 4 hours and having eggs for breakfast, and tuna for supper. If that sounds boring to you, remember that 4/5 of Das Boot was shots of food getting more and more green and beards growing slowly. The more they manage to make us care about the crew, the better. The trailer shows that contrast between routine and adrenaline preety well. I just hope we'll see that in the game too .

And there's one thing I've learned when moding games. One change draws another. It's like a train that you can't stop anymore, until you feel the salty water on your face. Once they let us walk around inside the sub, they need to give us a real bloody sub made of metal, and a real crew made of flesh . Metaphorically speaking ofc.

[u-168]

In the sh5 trailer i spotted one of the crew fall over wile going to diveing stations that is in das boot one of the crew falls over

U-168

i think that ubi is smart enough to limit the interaction repeating by make the crew only interact with you when moused or clicked on.

[AVGWarhawk]

Certainly it is a tough call on the method of handling this. I would prefer they look at and just say, "Captain?"

[Xxzard]

Please tell me that you can "WASD" walk around the ship-- that would be a dream.

That way you aren't just in a room, but you went from one room to another and you remeber the transition between them. Plus it could make for an exciting time running back to the radio room after a sound contact is picked up.

[Subnuts]

While Das Boot is probably my favorite war movie of all time it's best to remember that, despite being the most "accurate" submarine movie, a lot of is either dramatized, "enhanced," what have you, for cinematic effect. Also, real U-boats were painted white inside and weren't lit like caves. I imagine Petersen and co. were trying to recreate the look of Buchheim's photographs, which were dark and high-contrast by nature, but that's not how it was in real life.