Modern sub simulators

[Nexus7]

Silent Hunther V has just laucnhed the anchor...

I am visiting the SH forums with some frequency now... Before the first official announcement of the release, some wished the series to move over to cold war era or modern submarines times...

SH V will be a WW2 simulator again.

I am pretty sad I do not see any movements in the area

- 688(i) H/K
- Sub Command (a true hit with the name)
- Dangerous Waters (ironic name afterwards)

I know Dr. Sid is working on a modern era simulator, honestly I am too lazy to follow the inprovements (ouch)

While Dr. Sid is the only hope for a new modern sub simulator, there is an hole in that market niche at the moment :!:

Did anyone establish a link with Sonalyst Inc. ?

What are they working at now ?

Why did they have to abandon us ?

I sort of suffer in seeing such a masterwork like DW being abandoned by his father. What's the real reason ?

As an incompetent player, my wild guess is bad advertizing first of all.
The stock game version 1.00 was a good challenge.
Jamie did always look like being between the anvil and the hammer to me.

To me, the feeling is they received some important contract right after releasing the simulator and moved the forces over to something not visible.

Finally, I am quite confident that in a matter of 5 years something new will arise...

A modern sub simulator, in a world where information gathering technologies are exploding (google street view), will not remain that much behind.

On my wild guess, it's just a matter of time and we get attention

[Kaye T. Bai]

I agree with your post 100%.

I was hoping that Silent Hunter V would be a modern or a even Cold War-era subsim, similar in the direction that Infinity Ward took with the Call of Duty series with Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.

So, as you probably would've guessed, when I heard that Silent Hunter V was going to be a World War Two sub sim, my reaction was bittersweet. I was disappointed and maybe even a little upset because there are already so many World War Two naval-sim games on the market, more than I can count on both hands. While on the other hand, there are a very few modern subsims- if any.

Yet, I was excited because of all the new features that SHV was going to have, one being the ability to walk around inside a submarine and see the crew. This was a feature I had always wanted to see in any naval sim, modern or historical. Not only that, the graphical improvements look very nice.

In the 1990s, modern naval simulation games were plentiful, and they were revolutionary for their time, graphics-wise and gameplay-wise. Imagine playing Jane's 688(I) Hunter/Killer on a Windows 95 in 1997.

Dangerous Waters on the other hand, (again, one of few modern sims on the market today), while very fun and intriguing was outdated even for the mid-2000s. Almost half of the content in Dangerous Waters was ported from Sub Command and even Jane's Fleet Command. On a lighter note, I play Dangerous Waters occasionally, it is still a great game. The voice command feature in Dangerous Waters is one of my favourite features of the game, though it could use a little work, even with patches installed.

Hopefully there will be another modern subsim, revolutionary like Jane's 688(I) Hunter/Killer was for subsims, or how Grand Theft Auto 3 was for the sandbox games.

I hope it will only be a matter of time.

[Shearwater]

I agree with most of what you say, but I'm actually more surprised that DW got pusblished in the first place. I thought back then that even SC wouldn't sell that well. Sonalysts really should be given credit for their decision to make either game.
That said, I am a bit bored as well of yet another WW2 subsim. It surely won't be bad, but it's just more of the same. Doesn't lose that "been there - done that" feeling to me. Again a company chooses to play it safe by releasing yet another sequel. The SH5 forum is full of people who even now promise to buy it at its day of release or pre-order it Though it's good for the devs, it just rewards Ubi's unimaginative product policy.
What I'd really love to see would be something like 'Red Storm Rising' (I know that there's currently a project underway to make it work on modern PCs). I mean a Cold War subsim (and I really mean: Cold War, not some 'fight terrorists / pirates' on a submarine, and no other slightly weird political scenarios we had in DW or SC). It doesn't nearly have to be as detailed like DW, but I'd rather like something like a Command-style subsim in said era, and it really should appeal to new players. Apart from that, I'd guess that Dr. Sid's Comsubsim is still years away from being really playable. Regarding the development costs of games these days, I wouldn't expect a company to release anything like that in the near future.

[Kaye T. Bai]

I'm still holding out hope that Silent Hunter 7 will be a modern subsim.

Look at Call of Duty. Their games were all World War Two until 2007, when the first modern Call of Duty game was released. Call of Duty was a success as a World War Two game, and it was a success as a modern one. Hopefully this will be the case for Silent Hunter 7 as well.

[Shearwater]

I hope you're right. I just think that the differences between infantry warfare in WW2 and in the Cold War were much smaller than between WW2 Diesel-electric subs and modern attack submarines. Some developer would have to take that into account.

[Blacklight]

I don't think that most people in the "target videogame market" nowadays have the attention span to be able to handle the complexity and slow pace of a modern day sub sim. Out of all the people I know (aside from the people here), NONE of them would ever even DREAM of wanting to play these games (And I've tried to get them to).

[Nexus7]

Sonalyst's products have been revolutionary and brilliant to me.

But... I am quite condfident there is still a lot of room for genius and brilliant projects in the area of cold war / modern era naval simulators (DW takes SC to the naval level).

I can imagine that movies like Crimson Tide have some good potential to work as trigger for new naval simmers! The only hurde I see is the lot of classified info/ technology that those simulators *can't* inplement, but that applies only if the wish is to have more realism in a game like DW.

I would figure that normal people would rather be attracted by the idea of controlling a boomer and effectively have an enormous power in theyr hands than to man an attack sub or a frigate...

[Dread Knot]

I think the market for modern naval subsims will always be hampered by the fact that there have only been a tiny handful of naval engagements since the Second World War, whereas there has no lack of ground and aerial combat situations ever since to build a game upon. The end of the Cold War extinguished a lot of the budding interest in a potential US-USSR struggle over the sealanes that led to classic games like Harpoon. Even the biggest naval conflict since 1945, the 1982 Falklands War was mostly an air-sea struggle of rather limited duration that is almost 30 years behind us now. Hypothetical and fiction based scenarios (unless they're in a popular fantasy setting) are never going to attract a mass audience the way that actual historical conflict does, and they have a habit of becoming dated rather quickly.

[Nexus7]

Originally Posted by Dread Knot

I think the market for modern naval subsims will always be hampered by the fact that there have only been a tiny handful of naval engagements since the Second World War, whereas there has no lack of ground and aerial combat situations ever since to build a game upon. The end of the Cold War extinguished a lot of the budding interest in a potential US-USSR struggle over the sealanes that led to classic games like Harpoon. Even the biggest naval conflict since 1945, the 1982 Falklands War was mostly an air-sea struggle of rather limited duration that is almost 30 years behind us now. Hypothetical and fiction based scenarios (unless they're in a popular fantasy setting) are never going to attract a mass audience the way that actual historical conflict does, and they have a habit of becoming dated rather quickly.

The first example that comes to mind is DEFCON... imaginary WW3 but still successfull...

[Kaye T. Bai]

Originally Posted by Nexus7

The first example that comes to mind is DEFCON... imaginary WW3 but still successfull...

Ahh, yes... DEFCON.

Simple game but very fun.

[Dr.Sid]

I know guy who knows a guy who knows Sonalyst's guys. Will try to get something.

However I'm quite sceptical. DW did not sell well. And they exhausted their engine. They would need to start from scratch.

Only chance I see is that US Navy pays for brand new sim package, and some toned-down version of it will get to game-market.

As for me being last hope .. I'm afraid it is true at the moment. So please accept my humble apology for not being able to dedicate more to it lately.

[Ori_b]

I'm more than "quite sceptical" regarding another modern subsim being produced in the near future (if ever is more like it), and I'm quite sure sonalysts will never get involved in such a project intended for gamers.

In the end, what made sonalysts games great (in the eyes of too few players at least) was their complexity regarding sonar moddeling, and handling of other stations in a modern sub.

The gaming market (thus potential sells) is governed by teenage "Autobots 2" lovers, and you know how they will react to complex games.

And i dont think we will be saved by a future "Silent-hunter 9" either.
The SH series (hence the developers experience) is nothing like the sonalysts titels in terms of station/sonar modeling and the nature of the missions/campaigns. Would a fan of the SC/DW/688I games settle for a shiny graphics/simple station modeling?
And no, i dont think the SH is arcady or something its just very different.

The only chance is a gaming company hiring a company like sonalysts for doing some parts of a subsim, but not to creat it from scratch, and even than we can not predict the finished quality of such a product

[Sea Demon]

It would be nice to get some insight from Sonalysts. I'd love to know how they view their game sales, the genre as a whole, the customer base, and potential future projects if any. I don't want to see modern naval sims fizzle out like this. To me, DW was a great way to advance the sims Sonalysts built. Sonalysts always made advances on their games as compared with their previous releases. I saw great potential in continuing their sims with more additions and other improvements. Unfortunately, it didn't happen this way.

[Nexus7]

Originally Posted by Kaye T. Bai

I agree with your post 100%.

I was hoping that Silent Hunter V would be a modern or a even Cold War-era subsim, similar in the direction that Infinity Ward took with the Call of Duty series with Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.

So, as you probably would've guessed, when I heard that Silent Hunter V was going to be a World War Two sub sim, my reaction was bittersweet. I was disappointed and maybe even a little upset because there are already so many World War Two naval-sim games on the market, more than I can count on both hands. While on the other hand, there are a very few modern subsims- if any.

Yet, I was excited because of all the new features that SHV was going to have, one being the ability to walk around inside a submarine and see the crew. This was a feature I had always wanted to see in any naval sim, modern or historical. Not only that, the graphical improvements look very nice.

In the 1990s, modern naval simulation games were plentiful, and they were revolutionary for their time, graphics-wise and gameplay-wise. Imagine playing Jane's 688(I) Hunter/Killer on a Windows 95 in 1997.

Dangerous Waters on the other hand, (again, one of few modern sims on the market today), while very fun and intriguing was outdated even for the mid-2000s. Almost half of the content in Dangerous Waters was ported from Sub Command and even Jane's Fleet Command. On a lighter note, I play Dangerous Waters occasionally, it is still a great game. The voice command feature in Dangerous Waters is one of my favourite features of the game, though it could use a little work, even with patches installed.

Hopefully there will be another modern subsim, revolutionary like Jane's 688(I) Hunter/Killer was for subsims, or how Grand Theft Auto 3 was for the sandbox games.

I hope it will only be a matter of time.

Some games, I like to play them VS human opponent only, I am not sure why... maybe because some games allow to go farther and allow for some freedom of thought and action. Games I like to play VS the AI do have some kind of communication thingies in it that trigger me along, else, are mentally demanding (chess or similar).

The SH series never got my addiction, because lacking one of those factors maybe.

SC did... maybe because of the complexity that represents a challenge to my mind. The core of the complexity, to me, relied in the human vs human engagement only: knowledge and reactyness decided if I win or if i die. The way to achieve can be difficult or easy, but you know exatcly what you are doing, why, and how to do it good, and how to do it better...

I like to think that Sonalyst did a masterwork with DW, even if it was a commercial failure, meaning that Sonalyst raised the pot with DW, a bet on a market where the company was maybe ready to try & risk.

I see DW as premature for the times. I like to think at it as a try to bring flight simulator players to our niche sector of sub-sims.
My opinion was always that graphics count a crap in a sub simulator (the external graphics), but if i wanted to seduce flight-sim players, this factor is very relevant (they "see"... and how...).

Now what would attract those "flight-simmers" ? A challenge as it is a war simulator...

[Nexus7]

Originally Posted by Sea Demon

It would be nice to get some insight from Sonalysts. I'd love to know how they view their game sales, the genre as a whole, the customer base, and potential future projects if any. I don't want to see modern naval sims fizzle out like this. To me, DW was a great way to advance the sims Sonalysts built. Sonalysts always made advances on their games as compared with their previous releases. I saw great potential in continuing their sims with more additions and other improvements. Unfortunately, it didn't happen this way.

I checked theyr official site(s) and,with all the other products, they mention all four simulators.

You could email them, but what could you ask :?: