In the Engine Room (build 144)

Chromatix · 06-08-16, 10:29 AM

I'm not sure I made any comment about the game format in the above. But since it's been brought up:

There is indeed a definite and fundamental distinction between a "mission based" game such as Dangerous Waters and an "open world" one such as Silent Hunter. It's generally a lot easier to tell a story with the mission-based format, since the player is ensured to be in the right place at the right time every time. However, I consider the open-world format to be more immersive and to offer more replay value.

In the spaceflight genre, a similar distinction can be seen between the likes of Freespace and Wing Commander, which are mission-based, versus Elite and X-Universe which are open-world. The X-Universe games make a heroic effort to impose a storyline on the gameplay, which is not entirely successful and often merely interferes with the player's own goals; Elite prefers to provide a universe and let the player do whatever he wants with it.

One factor which makes the mission-based format the obvious choice for HMS Marulken is that it's much harder to use time compression in a multiplayer game, since either all players must experience the same time compression, or they will get out of step (which may offer unfair advantages). This is doubly so when not all the players are in the same ship or even the same squadron/fleet.

With that said, I don't think it's impossible to make a multi-crew subsim in open-world format. Time compression could be handled by simply handing over the conn to the (AI) Officers of the Watches while at cruising stations, whose standing orders would be to alert the senior officers (that is, the players) when something interesting happened, while pre-emptively taking any immediately necessary evasive action. Contacts would then be tracked in from the edge of detectability, and a significant part of the gameplay would be conducting approaches.

HMS Marulken is obviously intended to be a very storyline-driven game. However, perhaps the technology (or at least the experience gained) could be adapted to a future open-world game along these lines.

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06-08-16, 10:29 AM	#7
Chromatix Watch Join Date: May 2011 Posts: 26 Downloads: 11 Uploads: 0	I'm not sure I made any comment about the game format in the above. But since it's been brought up: There is indeed a definite and fundamental distinction between a "mission based" game such as Dangerous Waters and an "open world" one such as Silent Hunter. It's generally a lot easier to tell a story with the mission-based format, since the player is ensured to be in the right place at the right time every time. However, I consider the open-world format to be more immersive and to offer more replay value. In the spaceflight genre, a similar distinction can be seen between the likes of Freespace and Wing Commander, which are mission-based, versus Elite and X-Universe which are open-world. The X-Universe games make a heroic effort to impose a storyline on the gameplay, which is not entirely successful and often merely interferes with the player's own goals; Elite prefers to provide a universe and let the player do whatever he wants with it. One factor which makes the mission-based format the obvious choice for HMS Marulken is that it's much harder to use time compression in a multiplayer game, since either all players must experience the same time compression, or they will get out of step (which may offer unfair advantages). This is doubly so when not all the players are in the same ship or even the same squadron/fleet. With that said, I don't think it's impossible to make a multi-crew subsim in open-world format. Time compression could be handled by simply handing over the conn to the (AI) Officers of the Watches while at cruising stations, whose standing orders would be to alert the senior officers (that is, the players) when something interesting happened, while pre-emptively taking any immediately necessary evasive action. Contacts would then be tracked in from the edge of detectability, and a significant part of the gameplay would be conducting approaches. HMS Marulken is obviously intended to be a very storyline-driven game. However, perhaps the technology (or at least the experience gained) could be adapted to a future open-world game along these lines.