I finally understand why hate SHV and the devs

[mcarlsonus]

Originally Posted by McBeck

And why do you think that is?
Could it be that they were left the intentionally for us to find, so we would have the option to put them back in, rather then removing them?

Don't get me started on how I feel about the use and abuse of unpaid labor by companies that can well afford to release something other than what amounts to a beta version of a product, at a minimum, while still expecting, "us" to fork over hard-earned dinero for the privilege of doing testing and debugging and, in some cases, the "grunt work" that results in a more evolved, market-ready product. If, "they" are going to do this sort of thing, i.e., "(we) have the option to put them back in" (regarding my previous comment, "...many of the really good features of SH3 and 4 are still there, but DEACTIVATED!") I'd much prefer they give us the opposite option to SHUT IT OFF instead! At least we'd know the capability was actually available!

I had this SAME feeling years ago after installing a, "fraught with peril" version of MS Windows. Ultimately, I called Microsoft and asked for a list of all known bugs. They told me that list was not available to the general public. Immediately, I began rooting for Linux or one of the Apple OS's to take over the world... Unfortunately, I'm STILL waiting (although Windows 7 has proven soothing to some extent! Example: I now bootup in 56 seconds, rather than the eight MINUTES it took Vista - if it booted at all!)

[McBeck]

Originally Posted by mcarlsonus

Don't get me started on how I feel about the use and abuse of unpaid labor by companies that can well afford to release something other than what amounts to a beta version of a product, at a minimum, while still expecting, "us" to fork over hard-earned dinero for the privilege of doing testing and debugging and, in some cases, the "grunt work" that results in a more evolved, market-ready product. If, "they" are going to do this sort of thing, i.e., "(we) have the option to put them back in" (regarding my previous comment, "...many of the really good features of SH3 and 4 are still there, but DEACTIVATED!") I'd much prefer they give us the opposite option to SHUT IT OFF instead! At least we'd know the capability was actually available!

I had this SAME feeling years ago after installing a, "fraught with peril" version of MS Windows. Ultimately, I called Microsoft and asked for a list of all known bugs. They told me that list was not available to the general public. Immediately, I began rooting for Linux or one of the Apple OS's to take over the world... Unfortunately, I'm STILL waiting (although Windows 7 has proven soothing to some extent! Example: I now bootup in 56 seconds, rather than the eight MINUTES it took Vista - if it booted at all!)

You are looking at the from a much to narrow perspective...if these were the options, please let me know which you would rather have?
1) The devs should take out all the SH3/4 stuff left dormant
2) The devs should leave the SH3/4 stuff left dormant

I totally agree thats its bad practise if Ubi decided to depend on modding the fix issues.

[mcarlsonus]

Originally Posted by McBeck

You are looking at the from a much to narrow perspective...if these were the options, please let me know which you would rather have?
1) The devs should take out all the SH3/4 stuff left dormant
2) The devs should leave the SH3/4 stuff left dormant

In my world, neither #'s 1 or 2 are relevant to the question at hand. My question has nothing to do with what should remain or what should be removed. It's more along the line of, "why remove/deactivate stuff that's proven useful, popular, and reliable in the past and has contributed significantly to the gaming experience?" Let's just take one relatively tiny portion of the game as an example: ship inventory. Now we have, basically, four freighter types (and Liberty ships also exist in the German merchant marine!) What happened to those fast, heavily armed medium European hot rods? The Victory ships? What about those tiny coasters, trawlers, armed tugs? They're all still there - just not available to the SH5 enthusiast. Does reducing shipping diversity contribute positively to the game experience? Highly doubtful - and easily, CHEAPLY remedied. SO, what WAS the point?

I believe the best way to describe it is: for some inexplicable reason, "they" threw out the baby with the bathwater.

[McBeck]

Originally Posted by mcarlsonus

In my world, neither #'s 1 or 2 are relevant to the question at hand. My question has nothing to do with what should remain or what should be removed. It's more along the line of, "why remove/deactivate stuff that's proven useful, popular, and reliable in the past and has contributed significantly to the gaming experience?" Let's just take one relatively tiny portion of the game as an example: ship inventory. Now we have, basically, four freighter types (and Liberty ships also exist in the German merchant marine!) What happened to those fast, heavily armed medium European hot rods? The Victory ships? What about those tiny coasters, trawlers, armed tugs? They're all still there - just not available to the SH5 enthusiast. Does reducing shipping diversity contribute positively to the game experience? Highly doubtful - and easily, CHEAPLY remedied. SO, what WAS the point?

I believe the best way to describe it is: for some inexplicable reason, "they" threw out the baby with the bathwater.

I give up and will leave the discussion

[Onkel Neal]

Originally Posted by mcarlsonus

I believe the best way to describe it is: for some inexplicable reason, "they" threw out the baby with the bathwater.

Very unusual application, are you sure that's what you mean?

Anyway, what difference does it make if the developers left files from previous versions in the root directory?

Originally Posted by mcarlsonus

What happened to those fast, heavily armed medium European hot rods? The Victory ships? What about those tiny coasters, trawlers, armed tugs? They're all still there - just not available to the SH5 enthusiast. Does reducing shipping diversity contribute positively to the game experience? Highly doubtful - and easily, CHEAPLY remedied. SO, what WAS the point?

I believe the best way to describe it is: for some inexplicable reason, "they" threw out the baby with the bathwater.

have you ever considered it may have been done to reduce the computer slowdowns by have less for the game engine to deal with?

im not convinced 100% its a new engine (its so slow i see flashbacks of sh3 and IMO its the sh3 game engine with more stuff unlocked is all) but they say it is new so assuming its true and if we are looking at it from the devs side of thinking, you plug in everything from sh3 and sh4 and see what you can make work. well you ran out of time and a whole lot of stuff never got addressed or activated, what do you do? if you quickly just activate everything thats there it can start major bug issues and CTD that would prevent the games release and very likely cost you your job, or you can delete all that stuff but then why? why not leave it all there so IF a modder wanted to do the work to activate it he can because he would have the needed time to debug and test it properly.

[mcarlsonus]

Webster - you have a valid point - and I hadn't thought of that. Further, I agree. It's NOT a new engine!

Neal - Outside of housekeeping concerns, it makes no difference whatsoever that the program contains inactive code - and that's simply NOT troubling! I use the term "threw out the baby with the bathwater" in the context they deactivated code that enhanced immersion, depth of detail, and added richness and diversity to the gaming experience. They wrote, or RE-activated (looks like the former) code that resulted in, "dumbing down" the experience - like developmentally disabled escorts, an oversimplified - and pretty darned ineffective! - torpedo targetting system, and, concurrently, INCREASED the difficulty of handling ("conning") the boat due to such things as lack of instantaneous, "user friendly" rudder control (ala, hit the NumLock "." key to turn the rudder 1 degree). As I enter Campaign 1942, I've noticed that the escort AI has improved, but they're still not dangerous, just more persistent and less prone to sailing along like nothing happened after numerous companions explode dramatically around them. As mentioned, they still don't drop cans anywhere near me, but they frantically rush about pinging madly for much longer periods of time. Guess that qualifies as an, "improvement"...

What still baffles me, though, is WHY are the Historical and many of the MP missions so much MORE challenging and entertaining? The, "guts" are the same, yet the destroyers can kill you, the aircraft DO attack aggressively...

[Jimbuna]

In fact by looking in the right place you'll find jimbuna (and TarJak IIRC) mentioned as was the case in the files of SH4.