If Ubi drops the ball... who takes up the baton? or SCS ve SES vs...

[Sonarman]

Silent Hunter 1-4: 1.5 million units ....SH5 sales probably not good!
HAWX 1 : 1 million units

Yes, it's easy to see the way the wind is blowing. Even Neal is depressed...

Originally Posted by Neal Stevens

Silent Hunter 6... not going to happen.

The question is if Ubi drops the ball... who takes up the baton?

here are some possiblities...

Ilan Papini:
Developer of the Virtual Sailor series which has evolved for many years, Ilan has now branched into professional simulators for the maritime & naval industry. As Ilan probably has little experience in game AI we could approach him to use the VS engine for a purely multiplayer game with surface vessels & subs, the focus would then be primarily on adding the technology, sonar, aa guns, guns directors, hedgehogs etc rather than the complex AI involved in formations/hunting etc.

VStep:
Developer of the Ship Sim series & professional maritime software. A much improved ocean system is promised for the new Ship Sim Extremes game coming soon could VSTep be enticed to use their maritime engine for a Subsim?

ESim games
Devs of Steel Beasts, this would be a dream come true, but highly unlikely as SBPro PE is largely military funded and the modern military don't have much use for a U-Boat simulator!

Sonalysts Combat Simulations... hardcore- please more
It would be very interesting to see Sonalysts take on a WWII game, not really their forte and perhaps a bit lacking graphically but their in depth simulation of real world hardware would be welcomed. But like SBPro 688/SC/DW were largely military funded and the modern military don't have much use for a U-Boat simulator!

Storm Eagle Studios ...beautiful AI/ugly UI
SES are the Devs of the excellent Jutland & Distant Guns, unlikely though as they view SH as an arcade game and their engine is not really geared up for it. I would love to see what they could do for a modern take on a Solomons style TF1942 though.

Artech Digital...."Mega Das Boot Assault II"
Artech are the guys who are bringing the first subsim to the consoles "Naval Assault" could they be persuaded to use their maritime engine for a full on PC subsim, who knows, they are no stranger to PC sim games having developed the fairly hardcore and very good "Megafortress" game in the early days of the PC and even the arcade/subsim "Das Boot".

The irrepressible Mr EAST
Our old friends EAST & Pioneer they certainly have the tenacity and determination to come up with something for us.

Danger from the Deep
DFTD is a great piece of work so far but still along way from being SH could our talented modders get on board to offer help to accellerate the development of this fledgling subsim?

Thriller Publishing
This company put together by ex Microprose CEO "Wild Bill" and staffers is a definite possibility now that they are looking to resurrect their back catalog tank sims. Could they do the same for Silent Service & Task Force 1942 & Red Storm Rising?

1C Maddox
Not as far fetched as you would think. Oleg has stated on several occasions that ground & naval units will be playable in multiplayer and highly moddable in Storm of war although flight sim fans are to busy frothing at the mouth at the aerial action to notice.

The Russians
Graviteam, Akella, IDDK the simulation market is large in Russia and we are seeing more and more PC games coming from there. Most of the games have been good in design but fallen a bit short on scenario & campaign length (Steel Fury/ T-34 vs Tiger etc ) and some suffer the curse of lets make it more casual/RTS like (PT-Boats). But more recent products like the stunning "Achtung Panzer 1943" have shown that truly deep and great games are possible and can be made available at a reasonable price.

Indie devs (the lone wolves)
Most likely perhaps is Thait an indie dev will take up the baton. we can already see this happening over on the iphone with the very promising Wolves of the Atlantic by Mark Hessberg, perhaps Mark could "do the decent thing" and release a PC port instead of pandering to the "worm infested fruit machines" (I'm with you Adobe! ).

Old Friends (Take it home to daddy)
Maybe another contender would be companies that have branched off into serious games such as Ballyhoo studios who have a very interesting back catalog! quote... "Silent Hunter, acclaimed by many as one of the best submarine combat simulations ever developed, was created by Ballyhoo partners Bill Becker and Kim Biscoe. The game recorded sales of over 400,000 units worldwide, and the Silent Hunter series continues to be popular."

Subsim.com (Yes... that means you!)
Could we go it alone and develop a game ourselves using an engine like Torque 3D etc? Or alternatively could we pledge funds and approach a developer to deliver us something that we design?

Approach Ubi for the source
Yet another alternative could be to approach Ubi to buy out the source code for SH 3 4 or 5 from to work on ourselves and release on a non-commercial basis.

The main problems I would for-see in licensing SH as open source (apart from the probably huge expense) from Ubi are...

1. They may wish to keep their options open for the future

2. The source code may have trade secrets they do not want exposed

3. Silent Hunter has always sold well as a series in budget Ubi licenses the title out to companies such as sold Out, Steam, D2D etc how are they going to feel if we suddenly come up with a better project based on the SH3/4/5 engine that is freely available?

While this idea may seem "far fetched" there is a precedent here in the case of SH2 when Neal employed an independent contractor who with Ubi's approval altered the original source to change the multiplayer engine in DC & SH2 from RTime to Direct Play.

Indie Competition
We produce a game requirements speification and offer a prize of say $5000 (from community donations) and post on every 3D indie game forum out there on the understanding that the winning project whilst credited to it creators would be copyright free open source at the end of the competition that could be used as a springboard for anyone who wished to take it further.


Out of the Blue... rinse & please repeat ?
Perhaps another never heard of developer like H2f who formerly designed hairdressing software and suddenly released the quite well thought of WWI subsim "Shells of Fury" will emerge to surprise us all.

Ubisoft... Splinter Cell
Would it be possible for some of our friends in Romania to jump ship and start their own series?... possibly but they may be under contractual obligations not to and it's probably big risk for the guys to do so.

[Méo]

Very interesting thread.

I have absolutely no idea who would ''take up the baton'' but I bet it's gonna take many and many years before we see another U-boat sim.

I would like to see Neal's comment on it (or other very experienced and old time members).

[Feuer Frei!]

Originally Posted by Méo

I would like to see Neal's comment on it (or other very experienced and old time members).

Neal's comment:

"Silent Hunter 6... not going to happen."

link here

[Brag]

Nature abhors vacums. With its giant stumble, Ubi is creating the conditions for someone else to enter the the field.

[Méo]

Originally Posted by Feuer Frei!

Neal's comment:

"Silent Hunter 6... not going to happen."

link here

I was not talking about Silent Hunter 6, I was thinking about some comments on those Developers and their potential.

[IanC]

Originally Posted by Sonarman

The question is if Ubi drops the ball... who takes up the baton?

here are some possiblities...

Danger from the Deep
DFTD is a great piece of work so far but still along way from being SH could our talented modders get on board to offer help to accellerate the development of this fledgling subsim?

Our next/best U-boat sim will probably be from these guys. Looking good so far.
Is it all doom and gloom for the future of subsims? Naww... the best is yet to come!

[Placoderm]

Originally Posted by IanC

Our next/best U-boat sim will probably be from these guys. Looking good so far.
Is it all doom and gloom for the future of subsims? Naww... the best is yet to come!

Ian is right. The future holds great promise, and frankly the Silent Hunter series has more than run it's course. There WILL be future subsims, and history has shown that in years to come we will look back on SH5 and even SH3 and 4 as simplistic and boring with outdated grahpics and game design. Nature DOES abhor a vacuum, and Ubisoft is leaving a huge gaping one for someone who truly cares to fill with thier own vision of the perfect submarine simulation.

Lots of people forget the crash of the consoles that took place in the mid-90's. The current console developers (some of them the same developers who created the last crash) are currently heading down the same path as they did then. The market is currently becomming saturated with PS3's and Wii's and Xbox's...and unless they can pull another rabbit out of their proverbial hat and create something to attract a fresh consumer base, they will again crash and crash hard. Companies like Ubisoft that put all their eggs in the console basket will suffer the most.

Blueray saved playstation from disaster. Tactile motion controls gave Nintendo a new lease on life by setting the Wii apart from the competition. Xbox pretended to be a PC, attracting more "sophisticated" buyers. Unless any of the above companies can come up with some new gimmick to attract buyers to the next generation of consoles, whatever they may be, their demise is essentially assured. This is not wishful thinking on my behalf, but rather careful market observation over several decades from someone who has been inside the business.

It may take many years to come up with a new star in the world of submarine simulations for the PC...but I guarantee you, it WILL happen someday...and when it does, Silent Huner 5 and Ubisoft will likely just be a bitter and tragic memory of what could have been.

[Méo]

Originally Posted by Placoderm

and history has shown that in years to come we will look back

Could you elaborate on this ?

[Placoderm]

Originally Posted by Méo

Could you elaborate on this ?

Unfortunately my time is limited at the moment, as I need to help someone move...but I will do my best with what time I have.

I do not know how long you have been using the PC, and unfortunately many posters on here appear to be quite young so do not have much of a historical perspective, so forgive me if I mention some things that are obvious or seem redundant to you.

When I refer to what history has shown, I refer to many past PC games that at one time or another people thought were the "last and the best ever there would be".

There are numerous examples of companies that folded or stopped producing games that fans loved. Those fans screamed over and over that the world was coming to an end, and that there would never be another game to compete.

I have listed some in previous threads, but a short list of examples would include:

M1 Tank Platoon II (done much better with Steel Beasts Pro)
Gunship (DCS Black Shark and even EECH)
Silent Service II (Aces of the Deep)
Aces of the Deep (Silent Hunter)
Grand Prix Legends (R-factor and GTR and especially GTL)
Grand Prix Legends (also the source code was released and extensively modded when Sierra dropped it)
Close Combat (Combat Mission series and perhaps even Company of Heroes)
Combat mission series (Theatre of War series)
Panzer Elite (T34 vs Tiger) or (Steel Fury)
Soda Off-Road Racing (Dirt)
Ultima Underground (Oblivion)
Red Baron 3d (Rise of Flight)
Microsoft CFS3 and Janes Fighters (some upstart called Oleg Mattox made an off-the-wall game called IL-2 Sturmnovik)
Great Naval Battles series (Jutland and Distant Guns are legitimate successors)




Hardware?
AdLib sound cards (at the time, Sound Blaster was a disfunctional upstart with poor game support)
Phase Write ReWritable Optical disks (Iomega Zip drives)
Iomega Zip disks (CD Rom disks)
Syquest Drives (DVD Roms)
Tandy or IBM Computers (replaced by dozens of "upstarts", like Compac, Gateway, Dell,...or hundreds of independent builders)
Voodoo Graphics Cards by 3DFX (replaced by S3 and GeForce, amongst others)


For now, that is all I can write as I am late...but I will try to follow up later. The point is that although none of the above legacy games were "recreated" by the competing succesor, they were all improved in some way or the genre was expanded at the very least. In all cases there were improvements made somewhere. In all cases when the predecessor went under or was phased out, there was screaming from the loyal customers that the world was coming to an end and all was lost.

I doubt nowadays that anyone would bother with a zip drive or a PhaseWrite Disk, and I highly doubt anyone is using their 3DFX cards much anymore. Would you prefer Gato over Silent Service 1? Aces of the Deep over Silent Hunter III?

Some glaring holes are still left open, that I concede. I have wished for years for a successor to Task Force 1942...but to no avail. I wish I could find something to equal Falcon 4 for its truly dynamic campaign (although EECH was a good try). Overall, though, the progression has been a good one...and the naysayers have been proven wrong the vast majority of the time...thus I said "...and history has shown that in years to come we will look back..." at what we "thought" was the pinnacle....only to find out we had barely even begun to see what was possible.

I hope that helps clear up what I meant!

[Bilge_Rat]

It's not going to happen. We will not see a new subsim for a long time, if ever.

Sub Sims were very popular in the early days of computer gaming because it could all be done in 2d. One by one every makers of subsims have dropped out or moved on to other genres. Ubisoft was the last one.

Any new player who comes in now will go into land combat or flight sims where there is more of a market. No one is interested in producing new subsims.

[Bilge_Rat]

Originally Posted by IanC

Our next/best U-boat sim will probably be from these guys. Looking good so far.
Is it all doom and gloom for the future of subsims? Naww... the best is yet to come!

that makes no sense to me. DFTD is barely off the drawing board. It makes more sense for modders to put their energy into SH5 which is already 95% there.

[theluckyone17]

Originally Posted by Bilge_Rat

that makes no sense to me. DFTD is barely off the drawing board. It makes more sense for modders to put their energy into SH5 which is already 95% there.

Not really. DFTD allows access to the code... SH3/4/5 does not. If something in the SH series cannot fixed by modding, it cannot be fixed. DFTD's code can be changed, however... it's not limited, in that respect.

DFTD isn't quite "off the drawing board"... a lot of the basics are already built. That being said, there's a lot more that has to be built before it's comparable to the SH series.

I'd be much happier to see DFTD built than SH5 modded... having access to the code allows a lot more flexibility and quality in the end product.

[Méo]

Originally Posted by Placoderm

I hope that helps clear up what I meant!

Yep, thanks.

I see what you mean, the only thing I would add is that we still have no idea how much time it will take before we see another one and that we have no idea if it will be better or worse. (I've already played worse sims than the Silent Hunter series).

[Placoderm]

Originally Posted by Méo

Yep, thanks.

I see what you mean, the only thing I would add is that we still have no idea how much time it will take before we see another one and that we have no idea if it will be better or worse. (I've already played worse sims than the Silent Hunter series).

Oh, I definately agree that it may take some time and quite a few lemons before we see another top-notch product. For every one of those games I listed, there were several dung piles that never made the grade. But even the dung piles unconciously helped to pave the way for the winners, by establishing what NOT to do and what ideas would guarantee a flop. It could very well be 5-10 years or more before we see something like what we want...but it will happen sooner or later. That is bad news for the "I want it now" generation, but that is their problem and theirs alone. In the meantime, I am sure that modders will continue to work on SHV and SHIV and even SHIII for many years to come. Some of those modders may eventually be the ones who create the next big sub-sim independently.

Time will only tell...

[gimpy117]

It really unfortunate that it came to this. I think UBI corporate really Put the SH5 development team in this position. I don't blame them...I only wish UBI would have given them more time to make the game what we all know it can be.

But I do agree that The Silent Hunter series, No matter how great it was/is has run its course in it's current version. Frankly, If you look in the game files, Even the code is old and stale! Bugs that were in Sh3 in 2005 are still here in 2010. I think if UBI wants to make another Sub Sim it needs to do a ground up game with a truly astounding Engine that can take into account many of the variables that happen out there in the true ocean while on a submarine

Furthermore...Although a game like DFTD looks promising...as a gamer in the ever so important 18-25 demographic it just looks old. I know its early in the development..but its just not quite there yet to be anything but a forerunner to a professional game. (no offense to the dev team I understand that you have nowhere near the resources of a professional company)