Videos (development)

[v-i-c-]

Within some days I'll post a new movie here - this will finally show the current look of the game. (last movie and screenshots are almost 5 months old). Stay tuned.

[v-i-c-]

Still no new movie (takes some more days)

But I've just finished the Anschuetz Compass with correct 0.1 degree precision.

[iPadCary]

Why are there three rings of numbers?
In the heat of battle, who's gonna be able to sort all of that out, hmm?

[v-i-c-]

Originally Posted by iPadCary

Why are there three rings of numbers?
In the heat of battle, who's gonna be able to sort all of that out, hmm?

I see four rings of numbers. Because during WWII the U-Boats actually went into battles with a compasses containing four rings of numbers… exactly like on this virtual replica of the compass.
3 rings, 1 fixed, 2 rotatable - 4 rings of numbers:

- outer ring, relative bearing, ring is fixed (to the boats heading)

- middle ring,. true bearing, ring rotates and shows true north, it also has a second ring of mirrored numbers on it (flipped by 180°)

- inner ring, true bearing, rotates, 1/36 scale for 0.1 degree precision

I guess any navigator would prefer a precision of 0.1 degree over just 1 degree.

[Julhelm]

So how hardcore should we expect this game to be? More than SH3?

[v-i-c-]

Originally Posted by Julhelm

So how hardcore should we expect this game to be? More than SH3?

The main title "WOTA: Wolves of the Atlantic" will try to be as realistically as possible. Not everything will find its way into V1.0 but at least with updates.

Which means:

Where it makes any sense for the game play and always with options to reduce realism.

I will listen to players who find inaccuracies and can provide better data and will try to fix that with updates.

You won't be able to use any existing vent on the boat, this makes no sense. But it makes sense to add things like different realistic battery charging modes, diesel-electric drive, different engine settings on port and starboard. to manually flood the different tanks or at least add a simplification for that etc.

For example one thing which is totally unrealistically is that the same person (the player) who looks through the periscope is also using the Torpedovorhalterechner. But a lot of players love to do that.
In WOTA 100% realism would be similar to the tasks of the commander of the boat. Any extra manually stuff would be counted as >100% realism in the settings. Stuff that's nice to have but not absolutely important. Some people even want to navigate using the stars. Well it's possible to add this, so why not, I just have to learn how that works ;-)

The main goal of the sim will be to simulate being the the skipper. This and the realism of the boat and of the enemy technology and environment (like ASDIC function, different layers of water etc.) is most important to me. Also important is the enemy crew, they will "work in shifts" like in real life, you will never know if the ASDIC operator, watch out etc. on the enemy vessel is a tired n00b or an expert at its best moment…

But as said before, this is about the main title. Don't expect total hard core realism in the Seehund version for example. Any released version before the main title will be used to fund the work on the main title.

Regarding SH3… I would say the realism of it is the standard that a sub sim needs to reach at least. Naturally I will try to make it better and hope that will finally work out.

[iPadCary]

Originally Posted by v-i-c-

I see four rings of numbers.
Because during WWII the U-Boats actually went into battles
with a compasses containing four rings of numbers…
exactly like on this virtual replica of the compass.
3 rings, 1 fixed, 2 rotatable - 4 rings of numbers:
- outer ring, relative bearing, ring is fixed (to the boats heading)
- middle ring,. true bearing, ring rotates and shows true north, it also has a second ring of mirrored numbers on it (flipped by 180°)
- inner ring, true bearing, rotates, 1/36 scale for 0.1 degree precision
I guess any navigator would prefer a precision of 0.1 degree over just 1 degree.

Alrighty.

Originally Posted by Cybermat47

So you really are an Apple-obsessed troll!

Cybermat47, I'd like you to meet my friend IGNORE.
IGNORE? Cybermat47.
I have the feeling you two are gonna get along famously!

[Sung]

Good work VIC.
Can you say something about the gameplay it self?

I understand that many players wish that level of detail. But i didn't understand how it is important for playing? Did the contacts not plotted in the map?
Must the player do the navigation by himself and is it than possible to loose the orientation to get lost on sea?

I really miss something like a game concept. How does the game work?

[iPadCary]

I, for one, hope for the option to do both.
That way, I can navigate freely about the North Atlantic.
There're some landmarks that I know the coördinates of that I wanna check out
just to see if they're there in order to gauge just how "accurate" this sim is.

[v-i-c-]

Originally Posted by Sung

Good work VIC.
Can you say something about the gameplay it self?

I understand that many players wish that level of detail. But i didn't understand how it is important for playing? Did the contacts not plotted in the map?
Must the player do the navigation by himself and is it than possible to loose the orientation to get lost on sea?

Because this is the real precision of the compass and of the course you could manually set in real life. Why should I limit that to 1 degree? To repeat the mistakes of other sims?

Originally Posted by Sung

I really miss something like a game concept. How does the game work?

That's really funny. Because this game play was already invented more than 70 years ago.

OK lol, basically you are in command of a German U-Boat and your task is to do what a German U-Boat did in WWII. Dying while trying to sink as much enemy ships as possible. The game world is a huge ocean called atlantic where you are on patrol. You will receive orders from your high command called BdU, the BdU will try to lead you and other AI submarines to your prey. The enemy command will try to hack your communications and you never know if they currently can do that. Technology advances over time and sometimes your overall chances are better sometimes dramatically worse. As said your job is the skipper, you will have to do what the skipper did, you will have the tools and possibilities of the skipper. For extra realism you can take over tasks that were not the skippers task, but this is not important at all as it does not change the basic game play.

There is not much you could basically change in this kind of "game play" except adding more realism to the AI, the enemies and your own AI high command and to the ships, aircraft and weapons. As usual with this kind of simulation you need some sort of time compression. Everything else is cosmetics.

The sim will have some dynamics based on the impact of the players action, currently I favor a pool of ships based on historical production rate of the different ship types for each side - sink one and it's gone, shot down an aircraft and it's gone till it's reproduced. Anyway the AI of the high commands uses a pool of ships, the usage (and offscreen battles) of it is calculated in the background at a fixed interval and this is the very basic stage of the simulation's AI and it's one of the parts that will ensure that no career is like the other.

Originally Posted by iPadCary

There're some landmarks that I know the coördinates of that I wanna check out
just to see if they're there in order to gauge just how "accurate" this sim is.

I fear you won't see your grand mums house. But accuracy is given (world wide for coastline areas) by a combination of slightly reduced SRTM data and other data sets. My computer was kind of blocked the whole April 2011 while processing the areas and combining this data into my own format to suite the game's necessary requirements while keeping memory usage of the data blocks low for mobile devices. But I would not recommend to load the game via carrier

Enough, I'll have to continue working…

[Cybermat47]

Originally Posted by iPadCary

Why are there three rings of numbers?
In the heat of battle, who's gonna be able to sort all of that out, hmm?

So you really are an Apple-obsessed troll!

[Julhelm]

I think you should make it more like AoD than SH3 tbh.

[v-i-c-]

Originally Posted by Julhelm

I think you should make it more like AoD than SH3 tbh.

I think the best is to make it more like WOTA than like anything else ;-)