Just posted this on Ubi...now im here

[Rudolf_Pflanz]

Hi All,

just posted on the ubi forums..

Welcome to SH5 a world of mire and woes...

Good Day to you all,

I rarely complain about a game/simulation and usually tend to just work through the issues as best as I can.

However, not in this case. You have probably heard this all before, but I feel posing may perhaps locate a solution via a member, or perhaps save any potential purchaser from purchasing.

SH5 was released what 2010? 2011? Well its September 2011 now and following the £7 purchase of the game and the 1.5 hours installing and self patching, I assumed that all the “poor reviews” had perhaps been cleaned up by the subsequent patches that have been released....... I thought wrong.

There are a few main issues that I have noticed in my 10-12 hours playing this sim and are listed below as follows:-

1. The manual. What a pile of tosh this is!!! With SH3 (the last owned sub sim) the manual was quite good and clearly explained the TDC and “realistic” firing of torpedoes. In SH5 I am yet to find a chapter that fully details how to launch your torpedoes. I have found 2 such tutorials on the internet, via youtube, however there appears to be ONE major flaw. The flaw is this, whilst I can spot a ship, and whether the blasted thing is moving or in a dock, the information is ALWAYS the same, the ship is moving a 0 kts, and is unknown. ??what?? are you sure? Its bleedin moving to me! But alas, its showing as 0kts, and when I go to the new and improved mini map.. low and behold NO ICONS!! So I have no way to tell where the damn ships are, or an accurate range and direction from the XO so I can draw it myself on the map. “dear XO, you are clearly crap at your job because you are always telling me the range of the enemy ship is 500m.... you dosy tw@t”.

2. The crashes... OH THE CRASHES!!! Where do I start...? perhaps the ark royal... yup, I spent a week shadowing her, she has begun to dock in Portsmouth (no idea how I crept in past the mines and anti sub nets, but I did, and I have lauched 4 torpedoes and sunk her, much to my delight...... what a challenge, ... oh... no... whats this.... THE FREAKING DESKTOP!!! Ok, I thought... save before and after the sinking of the ark royal.... but alas, im still seeing the desktop and realising the final straw, and hence now why I am writing to you. So, what other crashes/bugs have I found.... well I worked past the “cant get onto my boat from the dock bug”, that was solved by a brief google search, and so was the ever increasing CO2 issue, despite the conning lid open and the pumps running.... my crew died from oxygen starvation.... sigh... now I know to save and reload the game. I guess it gives me time to make a coffee. Next bug.... I found Atlantis... yes the legendary city, its off the coast of Cornwall about 10-15 Nm, and has a compete city there!! As of yet uncharted. (im being sarcastic) Somehow I ran aground in the middle of the Atlantic, there was even a dock there too! Sigh.... another bug...I cant be bothered to detail the rest of the odd bugs.. you probably know them all by now.

3. Stupid quotes whilst loading..... “XYZ says something particularly meaningless which I don’t give a monkeys left testicle about and want to wring their bloody neck!!!” GIVE ME BETTER QUOTES, or failing that something useful, such as tips for launching a successful torpedo run... stupid quotes... what did we do to deserve this drivel.

4. Crash dive... oh... what is everyone doing in their bunks? Having a *******ing nap??? ITS A FREAKING CRASH DIVE!!! GET OUT OF YOUR BUNKS AND RUN TO THE BOW OF THE BOAT??? But again.. everyone sits there and does nothing. Dear Mr developer... or Ms, sorry have to be politically correct these days... I digress... my question to you is this... have you never even been to Liverpool... perhaps you could go there to see one of four only U-Boats in the world... perhaps ask questions to the curators there... or failing that go to Ebay and get yourself a copy of the book DAS BOOT... and READ IT... don’t use it as a monitor, or laptop rest. Read it. During a crash dive everything, including the cutlery china ware, food cooking or whatever isn’t tied down moves forward with the boat. OH.... and secondly... I have just slid down the hatch for the crash dive, shut the conning tower hatch, dived, and surfaced, but everyone is still on the bloody conning tower!!!! WHY DID THEY NOT FOLLOW ME DOWN??

There is so much more, but I have given up the will to detail them!

Why is this game so under developed. I work in London in a professional career, if I produce my work to this standard, I wouldn’t have a job. My customers wouldn’t come back to me ever..... as they would consider me a waste of money. There is no excuse for such a lousy product. There are a significant volume of games produced in 2010/2011 that are miles better than this effort.

You should hang your head in shame for this disappointingly preposterous product. You should even wear a badge, daily for the rest of your lives that states that you are a SH5 developer and were instrumental during the development of this programme.

Now, I may have overlooked certain aspects, or perhaps not know how to do certain things..... but alas, again, I wouldn’t be able to find out what to do... without a BLOODY MANUAL!!!! (one that is of some help)...........

Perhaps this is the future of Ubisoft, partially completed games.... such as SH5 and Cliffs of Dover? Perhaps when I buy a copy I can partially complete my payment?

You know who you are.... and I am sorry that I had to write this... but you have to know the truth of the matter that this IS NOT A GOOD PRODUCT... and if you had any remorse you would refund me my £7...

To all other users... If you have any advice as to ways that I may “fix” the aforementioned issues, I invite you to comment and/or recommend ways that remedial action may be performed.

Kind Regards

Hpt. Rudolf Pflanz

........... Well,now I am here as advised by a ubi member.

My main question now is, what do i need to install to make it crash proof, and less buggy, or bugproof.

Through trial and error im getting the hang of torpedos... but I really wantmore control.... whilst im hittingmy targets... I dont understand HOW I am hitting them. The arrow goes green after some random TDC on/off clicking and i fire.. it hits.... but i dont understand how its doing it... the game is on realistic, but its not realistic to have someone else do the calcs.

in addition, i have read some of this forum and it suggests clicking on the underlined speeds, directions, etc but again... alas the gameinstantly crashes.

any ideas?

Kind regards to you all.

S!

[S.Jaszczak]

First look at the fantastic amounts of mods we got, I dont have any problems with crashes at all, but the mods can make this game more or less perfect, all depending on how you wanna play it, there is mods for almost everything

Look around, and there is plenty people in here that have posted video's guides on both the forums, utube etc.

Welcome Aboard and I hope you will enjoy your stay

[TheDarkWraith]

it sounds like you don't have patch 1.2 installed for the game. Run the game updater in \Silent Hunter 5\Support\GameUpdater\gu.exe

When the game starts and you're in the main menu what does it say in the top right corner? v1.2.0?

[Takeda Shingen]

I can only emphasize that you try the mods. As for the rest, welcome to last year; it is old news. We at SubSim are just striving to make this game into the simulation that we desired. Rather most of us, myself included, are cheering on modders like TheDarkWraith as he takes on this Herculean effort.

[JU_88]

Originally Posted by Rudolf_Pflanz

Why is this game so under developed. I work in London in a professional career, if I produce my work to this standard, I wouldn***8217;t have a job. My customers wouldn***8217;t come back to me ever..... as they would consider me a waste of money. There is no excuse for such a lousy product.

To be fair, that doesnt mean your job is in anyway comparable to games development.
Sh5 underdeveloped mainly because it was not well managed I guess.
but also it was a bit experimental and over-ambitious, that is what happens when you take risks, sometimes it pays off, sometimes it doesnt.
Remember too that it was a niche product and would have had a lower budget and development time compared to projects on the more popular genres.

Originally Posted by Rudolf_Pflanz

There are a significant volume of games produced in 2010/2011 that are miles better than this effort.

Yes but how many of them were subsim's? None.

Originally Posted by Rudolf_Pflanz

You should hang your head in shame for this disappointingly preposterous product. You should even wear a badge, daily for the rest of your lives that states that you are a SH5 developer and were instrumental during the development of this programme.

The actual develpers of SH5, where mostly a good bunch of guys who were genuinely passionate about the SH franchise, unfotunatly people make mistakes, they tried to take it in a new direction and it fell short (for the above reasons)
When this happens, managment have the choice to either salvage a project or pull the plug, in SH5's case due to poor sales (mostly self inflicted by Ubi's own DRM system) they went for the latter option.
Sometimes when a game or franchise gets a bad reputation, it is not possible to save it with patches and expansions.
Customers/fans will often shun any bandade offerings from the developers and simply argue that they wont pay extra to fix issues that should have been addressed before the original game went gold.

As for your badge comment, calm down - I know you're frustrated, but take it easy with comments like that, those you are insulting maybe 'faceless' to you, but they are freinds to some of us here. Be cool.

Originally Posted by Rudolf_Pflanz

Perhaps this is the future of Ubisoft, partially completed games.... such as SH5 and Cliffs of Dover? Perhaps when I buy a copy I can partially complete my payment?....

It is true that Ubisoft (as a company overall) do not have a very good rep these days. of all the major games publishers they seem to be one of the most stubborn and least willing to listen to their customers.
@ £7 I'd argue that you did only partially pay them, I payed £29.99 .

Originally Posted by Rudolf_Pflanz

You know who you are.... and I am sorry that I had to write this... but you have to know the truth of the matter that this IS NOT A GOOD PRODUCT... and if you had any remorse you would refund me my £7...

Everyone here knows the score with SH5, while some have shelved it, others have perseveered with modding it and have improved the experience. Maybe you should take a look as the SH5 modding section if you havent already.

While I do sympathise with some of your points, please remember that nobody forced you to buy the game - and there was no shortage of reveiws and infomation on SH5 for you to research before you parted with your cash.
You may well be able to squeeze a refund out of Ubi, but it will be more time and trouble than £7 is worth I expect.
If you do get your £7 back however, may I recomend you invest it in a nice bottle of wine to help you put this saga behind you.

[Herr-Berbunch]

Welcome aboard

Patch and mod is the way forward with Ubi games, like most other companies nowadays - "knock it out to the public without the polish, we'll patch it later, or even quit proper support for it - then it's in the hands of the modders, but we won't make it easy for them to make our game good."

As previously mentioned make sure you're patched to 1.2 and head to the SHV mods section to see what grabs your eye.

[Rudolf_Pflanz]

I will certainly confirm what version I am running. Then patch as necessary, although the game appeard to do this when I installed it.

Can you confirm whether there is a mod manager I need to download 1st, and whether there is a set of mods that most people advise for new comers to modding.

Alternativley can you reccomend a thread that has already been posted to this extent.

I look forward to your comments.

[BigBANGtheory]

Ubisoft is well known in PC gaming for taking the complete piss, buyer beware. What I find interesting is how the gaming press/media let them get away with it, I think that says something about the industry.

Anyhow....

Most people into PC games use Windows 7 these days, in which case (also applicable if you still use Vista) I would strongly advise you to install SH5 to its own folder off the root of the hard disk and not the default location in C:\Program Files\

Also when you start the launcher right click and Run As Administrator.

The game should automatically patch up to v1.2 and it should be reasonably stable regardless of Mods, gameplay faults, etc etc. If it isn't stable then really the most likely cause is one of two things:

1. There is something going on with your PC that needs to be addressed e.g. driver updates, hardware fault.

2. Something is going on in game that isn't right either some corruption on the install or you are doing something like using Time Compression too high.

[naval_noob]

At least you waited until it was 7 pounds. I purchased the game brand new from a retailer for about $50, tried to get it to work, failed. Found Subsim, purchased SHIII and SHIV for about $12, installed GWX and have been happy as a clam. Now that the modders are putting out some quality mods I have turned my attention back to SH5 because the graphics are worth it.

There are quite a few smart people out here who have created some amazing mods that make this game fantastic! Keep the faith.

[Faamecanic]

Originally Posted by JU_88

To be fair, that doesnt mean your job is in anyway comparable to games development.
Sh5 underdeveloped mainly because it was not well managed I guess.
but also it was a bit experimental and over-ambitious, that is what happens when you take risks, sometimes it pays off, sometimes it doesnt.
Remember too that it was a niche product and would have had a lower budget and development time compared to projects on the more popular genres.

What I find amusing, and sad for us, is the same things you said above were said about SH3 and SH4. That instead of fixing what was broke with previously releases, Ubi chose to (under) develop entirely NEW engines.

With that said...the devs are not as much to blame as UBI, except for constantly raising the bar too high for themselves given the budget and time constraints that made thier goals unachievable. I would have LOVED to have seen what they could do if given the time to implement thier dream. But the Devs constantly fell into the trap of not realizing that LESS is MORE.

THe best way Ubi could fix this is to release the SDK. I mean come on....who really is going to use the SH3 engine for anything now. But with what The Grey Wolves did without an SDK, I couldnt imagine what they could do if they had one! SH4... probably safe to release the sDK here too. SH5... I could understand somewhat if Ubi didnt release this SDK yet.

Bottom line.. as bugged as all SH releases are..they are still the BEST WWII subsim out there. Our modders here are AWESOME and work miracles!

Oh and S! JU .... any news on a new B17 sim

[0rpheus]

Originally Posted by Rudolf_Pflanz

I will certainly confirm what version I am running. Then patch as necessary, although the game appeard to do this when I installed it.

Can you confirm whether there is a mod manager I need to download 1st, and whether there is a set of mods that most people advise for new comers to modding.

Alternativley can you reccomend a thread that has already been posted to this extent.

I look forward to your comments.

You will need 1.2.0 to run the vast majority of mods. Version number appears in the top right of the main game menu.

To install mods, you need Jonesoft Generic Mod Enabler (JSGME):

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=171237

In terms of 'must have' mods there are a lot, and it's worth spending some time in the SH5 Mod Forum to see what's available. There are a few essentials however. For general game improvement:

Intelligent Random AI (IRAI)
FX Update (current version 0.0.19)
TDW's New UIs with TDC (latest version 6.7.0)

-install the above three mods in that order-

For the campaign, your one-stop shop is 'Open Horizons II'. I'd recommend Base + Environment packs to start with as there are still a few issues with the Full version (should be fixed soon I believe).

For graphics/sound:

Dynamic Environment (has several variations: better waves, better sea-floor, better sounds etc)

Stormy's DBSM (requires the German Voice pack mod or a German Voice install, selectable when you install the game) for the best sounds. Other sound mods include CaptHelm's Audio Mod if you don't fancy German voices.

...and loads of others. There's a full list in my signature for the mods I use, Mia & Sober also have good lists. All mods are available in the mod forum with a little searching. Make sure you read up on how to use JSGME and proper file structure for mod installations.

DO NOT INSTALL ANY MODS before completing the stock tutorial.

Ask for help if you get stuck, plenty of good people around here willing to offer advice. Welcome to the site!

[JU_88]

Originally Posted by Faamecanic

What I find amusing, and sad for us, is the same things you said above were said about SH3 and SH4. That instead of fixing what was broke with previously releases, Ubi chose to (under) develop entirely NEW engines.


Oh and S! JU .... any news on a new B17 sim

eh ?? not that I know of.

[0rpheus]

Originally Posted by Sartoris

I've modified a file that lets me skip the tutorial every time I start a new campaign. I hope that's good enough? It was suggested by one of the modders, perhaps the author of OHII...

Yes that's fine - setting 'tutorial complete = 'true' (or whatever it is) in the appropriate file works too. I didn't mention it initially so as not to confuse the issue as some don't fancy modifying those files manually

[Sartoris]

Thanks! I accidentally deleted my post, I must have been that excited