The future of Submarine simulations

[Herr-Berbunch]

Originally Posted by Cybermat47

Bilge_Rat, I am very dissapoint

We should just make our own!

You're young enough, go learn.

Personally, I'm waiting for DCS to realise they need a sub sim in their repertoire.

[Blacklight]

I seriously don't want ANOTHER Uboat sim. I'm so tired of World War II. Give me a nice Cold War subsim. I enjoy Dangerous Waters a LOT more than the Silent Hunter games and play it a LOT more. Cold War subsims are a totally untapped market! EVERYONE does World War II sims. I'm sick of them. I want my modern or Cold War era weapons systems and platforms!

My holy grails right now are 1. A new "Dangerous Waters", and 2. A new "Harpoon" (that actually works and isn't a buggy mess).

That said, I think that the game industry is only focused on "Mass Market" console games or apps for iPhones now. The tendancy now is to leave the PC's behind. PC game releases are getting rarer and rarer compared to console and smartphone games.

The other problem is, sadly, that I don't see us getting much in the way of "new blood" into the hardcore sim community. The younger people who we need to flow into the community are, for the most part, not attracted to games that are slow moving, and especially not ones where they have to read a manual to learn to play. Do you know how many people my Dangerous Waters manual has scared off from even giving the game a try? I'd love to give society the benefit of the doubt, but I just don't see the younger generation, that we need to bolster the community, having anywhere NEAR the attention span that's needed to play these games. I just don't see it.

This period that we're in now kind of feels like the way that the role playing game community dried up in the 90's. After a while, when I would go to a role playing game convention, it was just a bunch of us old guys there. There was a period where the younger people just weren't flowing in to keep it alive. Sadly, I see this happening with the hardcore sim community too. Most members are old and way outnumbers the new young blood.

In order to even get a company's interest in this, we're going to have to somehow attract new blood so that we can DEMONSTRATE our numbers and our interest.

So the question we should be asking is, "How can we attract younger gamers, and keep them engaged and interested?" and "How can we grow this community?"

The next best option would be some kind of "Kickstarter" campaign. But we're not going to get interest unless we show them that our community is large enough to maintain sales and is growing.

Maybe Subsim could become the next "Sonolysts"? I mean, we have plenty of REALLY smart people who know a LOT about modern naval stuff here. I'm sure that we have people who know how to make great game graphics here. Maybe Subsim should become a forum, AND a subsim creation collective?

[Kaleun_Endrass]

Originally Posted by Blacklight

The next best option would be some kind of "Kickstarter" campaign. But we're not going to get interest unless we show them that our community is large enough to maintain sales and is growing.

Maybe Subsim could become the next "Sonolysts"? I mean, we have plenty of REALLY smart people who know a LOT about modern naval stuff here. I'm sure that we have people who know how to make great game graphics here. Maybe Subsim should become a forum, AND a subsim creation collective?

I have a very similar thought of this in my mind for a long time now. I think that we won't get another sub sim game from a game studio (independent or publisher-bound) because we (submarine playing PC gamers) are a too small niche for them to start a financially risky project. After experienced SH3 to SH5, SHO isn't a sub sim gameplay-wise for me and I think for most of the other members too.
So the only solution is and will be: "develop our own sub sim".
There are just 3 options to do that:
1) just start the project (open-source or behind closed doors, doesn't matter)
3) start a crowd-funding project to hire a game studio
2) start a crowd-funding project to buy SH5 (what wouldn't work because of Ubi and SHO, so there are actually 2 options only)

Each option has pro and cons and I strongly believe that none option will work all alone. But i think that a good mix of 1) and 2) with the constant influence of our community and under the patronage of SUBSIM, which would for instance allow new members fill gaps where dev-team members quit, will work. Such a project should be SUBSIM-based because here all the flotillas and the submarine communities around the web are participating and can bring in man-power. SUBSIM-based would definitely bring in more support. Using a public part of the forum for reports of the development process, binding the community to the project and attract "new blood" and a closed area for the devs only would be working great (I experienced such a method back in my 9th-flotilla times, a german subsim forum, when we were doing SH3 mods and it worked very good).

Unfortunately I have to disappoint you Blacklight. A Uboat subsim should be the first goal to approach because with this theme we know the most technically. We have countless more resources for uboats, PTO submarines and the whole WW2 era than for modern warfare and modern naval weapon systems.
I have to admit that a cold war era and modern subs tempt me and one important feature of our self-made subsim game has to be a modular architecture where you can do campaign-based content and systems (DLL, scripts, assets, etc.) So it would be possible to create a cold-war campaign later on or parallel by enthusiasts.

As I mentioned above I have that thought of building an own submarine simulation for a long time now (to be honest since half year after SH3 was released). Over time there were similar threads like this one but the necessarity to stick more to this topic was never greater than now, because few years back SH4 and SH5 were in sight. But now there is nothing comparable anywhere, no projects like Danger from the Deep, no total conversation mods whatsoever. It's good to see that more people are interested in keeping our genre alive and start such forum threads.

I've backed and am following the development of Star Citizen by legendary Chris Roberts right now and over there I've got some pretty good ideas for how to do a SUBSIM sub sim.
And right here the very important question is raised: Will SUBSIM (Neal Stevens) support such a project?

[tonibamestre]

Well,suggest you to have a look to Vehicle Simulator from Illan Pappini. Have quite lot of potential concerning Aeronaval stuff,and even AJ Weber has put a close eye into it in order to build new naval platforms ( surface+submarine ) for it.
Imagine we could improve the game with more effects,full combat capability and life detection/weapon systems for each platform.

Can be an interesting future

[MAXLD]

We need the submarine equivalent to this:

Project C.A.R.S. :
- http://www.wmdportal.com/projects/cars/

Community created, PC focused, best graphics possible, best physics possible, all the realism we can put into it, continuous community based feedback and testing.
And it would certainly be cheaper, without having to pay for official licenses (cars brands, tracks, in that case) and other things.

We have a tremendous mod community that always fixed SH games along the years with impressive results... completely transforming them and adding the features we always wanted with great detail and accuracy.

All this time we have been demanding those tons of things that Ubisoft doesn't want to deliver because is not profitable in their eyes. SHO is the ultimate chance for them to make money out of the franchise... they tried dumbing it down in "SHV" to make a few more bucks and they are now desperate to make it even more reachable to casual gamers and cash some real money. We all know how big companies work.

If we want something done the way we want, we might have to do it ourselves. Subsim community is still very large and I think it can be done.

[stormrider_sp]

Should the future of Subsims only be limited to WW2 era?
How about modern subsim?

[JustinReg]

Originally Posted by Hinrich Schwab

I say that if SHO does poorly enough, have Subsim start a Kickstarter campaign to buy the rights from Ubisoft and make SH6 ourselves.

Yes a kickstarter project is probably our best hope, but no to buying the name Silent Hunter. Why blow a shed load of money on a name that means nothing.

New game, new name.

There are a lot of talented coders here that make great mods. Can't the Grey Wolves or some other similar group start a studio and head to kickstarter. I'd back a project that was properly managed.

I'd also buy into the Minecraft model, I'll pay very early on, when there is only 1 sub and 1 ocean and hardly any features, but the games development continues to a 1.0 version with everything in.

I'd like a full on WWII sim with multiple nationalities subs (US, Brit, Dutch, Italian, Japanese, German), with the whole war and world modeled. I prefer looking and shooting at things with my Mk1 eyeball than watching waterfall displays.

[Rokko]

The idea is not to get the name "Silent Hunter' but the franchise with all rights associated with it. That would probably good since SH5 has a solid foundation, it's just messed up when you go into detail.

[Kaleun_Endrass]

Originally Posted by JustinReg

Yes a kickstarter project is probably our best hope, but no to buying the name Silent Hunter.

And then what? A kickstarter project to reach what goals? I'm sorry, but all those messages I read about crowd-funding are without concepts. What will you do with the money?
If you think of hiring a game studio, the first thing would be to have an offer or to know the costs for development to set up your kickstarter goals. And if you take a look at kickstarter projects without some stuff to show and attract backers there are no backers. What do we have other than our wishes right now?

I like the suggestion of MAXLD and his link to wmdportal.com
Unfortunately, there is just that one project, but the concept is interesting. A subsim project similar to the CARS project might be a good way to get our game done. But again it should be under the patronage of SUBSIM.com to essemble a strong developer team and raise interest in the whole community.

I strongly believe that the subsim we dream of can only be done by the community. We have a bunch of really good 3d artists and programmers here. With high professional tools available (for free) like CryENGINE3 and ScaleForm it's possible to achieve the quality of an AAA game. There might be crunchpoints and stumbling blocks along the development process and right there could a game studio assist that get payed by crowd-funded money.

[Blacklight]

I still want my modern subsim. I'm VERY tired of being stuck in World War II all the time. What about developing an open source subsim that's modular, kind of like the "Orbiter" of subsims where you could just have a repository of platforms and scenery to download and put in. That way, you could probably organize a campaign in any era you would want. Even possible futures.

I think that using Dangerous Waters as a model for this, with all it's panels of controls and interface would be an excellent control interface to emulate. It's simple and works efficiently.

We would also want a mission editor (of course) that's similar to Dangerous Waters where you can set up missions anywhere in the world with a topographical map of the earth in it as well as the ability to scrip campaigns that could last years similar to Silent Hunter III and IV.

I don't think Fancy Fancy graphics would even be needed. I'm perfectly fine with Dangerous Waters-like graphics, maybe with an upgrade to bring them in line to where SHIII is.
There's a reason I'm saying this. We would want this subsim to be playable by as many people as possible because, frankly, our fan base is so small, that we need every person we can get. Not everyone is going to have the latest and greatest video cards. So this sim should be made to run on older systems as well as new ones. This will maximize the number of people who can play it.

[Karl Heinrich]

Some very good suggestions here, and given the diversity of interests (WW2 v cold war... and what about WWI :P), an approach akin to X-Plane or similar which is more modular would be the way forward - however this runs the risk of becoming generic I suppose.

Either way I wholly support a community project whatever its form, and would be happy to contribute in whatever way that I can. As long as there is support for multiple monitors showing multiple interfaces I will be a very happy chap

[Blacklight]

Orbiter would seriously be a good model to follow for an effor like this.

[DedEye]

I strongly agree, any new subsim should do its best to distance itself from the Silent Hunter series.

After SH 5 I vowed I would not buy (or F2P) another Ubisoft product unless it was met with universal critical acclaim from both the press and the community.

I think it says a lot about the mindset of a company when its executive makes a statement that 95% of their customers steal from them. You seriously believe that? Incredible...... and insulting.

They release bug riddled software with broken or missing features, kick out a token patch or 2 that fixes issues that often have already been solved by modders, leave the hard coded bugs in, and walk away. Not just once, 4 times in the SH franchise alone. Cliffs of Dover worked out really well too didn't it? Glad I passed on that one.

Why would I keep supporting a company that behaves in such a way?

Btw, I feel bad for the guys on the ground who worked so hard on them.

The great thing about sims though is the fans tend to be very passionate about their hobby. I have little doubt that there is a group of people out there with big ideas for the next great subsim! Well there is here already!

I think there is still a market for a good (both quality & substance) subsim. I think if one were to appear, it would be very successful, and have large and dedicated folllowing.

I'm willing to wait, have many times

Wrt to aircraft, Rise of Flight is very good; I wait for sales to buy aircraft. I hear there's a deal in the works for a "real" sequel to Il2 as well

[MAXLD]

Personally I don't see the point in a modern subsim... current subs are for intimidation regarding missiles launch and not much else, and with so much tech, would it even be challenging or exciting to hunt, position and fire torpedos like the good old days with low tech and duds? I think I doubt it... :hmmm

I would be happy with:
- a full WWII historically accurate campaign (in several theatres of the war and possible playable factions (Germany, US, British, Japan)(would demand a lot of work, though), providing plenty of scenarios and zones to patrol.

- or maybe a German one until the end of the war, with a follow up & made up story of our character being secretly recruited by US or USSR to fight an hypothetical conflict between the two powers of the Cold War for some time... wouldn't be so "Cold" then, nor historically accurate, but would provide a feasible scenario to those of you that are fed up with WWII and would want something else. Not so interesting, though.

Anything different than that (meaning: modern subs), it's a clear no go for me. But that's just my personal opinion.

Good graphics are an important factor and any engine out there gives the ability to lower the settings to those who don't have the full power on their PC's. Not only the game should look good to us, but would attract more people to buy the game later. Not saying it should be Crysis 1 like, but I wouldn't accept nothing less or equal than SHIII on highest settings... I would want some nice details when the ship is hit and goes to the bottom and take some nice screenshots/videos that would help promote the game a lot.

After the basic stable version and beta completed, it would be added on Steam (by Greenlight, probably), a lot of people would buy it full price and on Steam sales. (EuroTruck Simulator was Greenlit, for example, and is doing nicely and selling a lot more than it would if it wasn't there).

[Der_Meister]

Kickstarter is the best option our Subsim community has, and frankly, the only option I believe. Building a sim from the ground up is not like modding. Kickstart will provide the funds, motivation and (more importantly) cohesion to create a finished product.