Things you like or don't like about SH4

[dean_acheson]

The bloody enter button fires a torpedo......

This is a real problem, when you are playing in the bloody dark.

[IRONxMortlock]

Originally Posted by Dantenoc

Trying to keep a positive mind bout SHIV.

However, graphics look a little weird to me on the screen shots that I've seen so far. They look... more like paintings than fotographs, if you know what I mean. Don't get me wrong, they look great, very well done and all that... they just don't look real to me... more like I'm seeing an animated feature instead of a regular movie.

Any thoughts on this?

You know mate, that's exactly my feeling on the new "look" too. It's kind of cartoonish isn't it?
________
Latifa_Sexy cam

[Ark]

Graphics things I don't like:

No FSAA
V-Sync doesn't work for me (prob. a driver issue, though I didn't notice it in other games)
Post-Processig Filters make dark objects "black".
Environmental Effects are wrong (sunlight doesn't hit objects correctly).
Shadows appear and disappear depending on how close you are zoomed in.
Cables look like a jagged whitish color when you are at periscope depth looking down.
Character models have scary eyes.


I've only been playing for a short time though, so I'll need more time to find other issues.

[Ark]

Originally Posted by IRONxMortlock

You know mate, that's exactly my feeling on the new "look" too. It's kind of cartoonish isn't it?

With the Post-Processing filters on, the dark objects look black. The filter just doesn't look right. But, turning the filter off makes everything look wierd too. Darned if you do, darned if you don't. lol

[Tigrone]

I asked over at the official SH4 site about the Lanc and some of the other errors I'd noticed. This the moderators reply:

RedTerex
Ubi Moderator.
Tue March 20 2007 22:07 Tue March 20 2007 22:07

Or it may be a case of young game developers who have a poor knowledge of WWII!

[Fat Bhoy Tim]

Originally Posted by dean_acheson

The bloody enter button fires a torpedo......

This is a real problem, when you are playing in the bloody dark.

They still have that annoying hangover from SHIII, christ that was one of the things people bitched about the most.

I hate to say it, but with everyone creaming themselves over the graphics and going on about how much it will rule - I get some perverse pleasure in the fact it looks to be a worse game than SH3.

Unless they manage to put out some MAJOR patches in the next few months, I very much doubt I'll be buying another title because these are not just lapses in judgement and missing features, but downright amateurish mistakes.

[robbo180265]

Originally Posted by Fat Bhoy Tim

They still have that annoying hangover from SHIII, christ that was one of the things people bitched about the most.

I hate to say it, but with everyone creaming themselves over the graphics and going on about how much it will rule - I get some perverse pleasure in the fact it looks to be a worse game than SH3.

Unless they manage to put out some MAJOR patches in the next few months, I very much doubt I'll be buying another title because these are not just lapses in judgement and missing features, but downright amateurish mistakes.

I have to agree. From what I'm reading here it looks like another half finished game and I wont be rushing out to buy it. SHIII rocks, but not because of Ubisoft - because of all the hard work done by the modders.

No doubt Ubisoft are waiting for the modders to bail them out of this one too

[Fat Bhoy Tim]

Originally Posted by robbo180265

I have to agree. From what I'm reading here it looks like another half finished game and I wont be rushing out to buy it. SHIII rocks, but not because of Ubisoft - because of all the hard work done by the modders.

No doubt Ubisoft are waiting for the modders to bail them out of this one too

Spot on. Till I downloaded the first GWX build I was distinctly underwhelmed with the game, and rarely played it.

In all honesty, Ubi is returning from whence it came. For years Ubi was known as a publisher that churned out utter garbage, regardless of genre or developer. Then about 7 years ago it started to turn, bought up a lot of good licenses (not to mention Red Storm) and was putting out decent software there for a while. Then the last 2/3 years it's fallen back down again, and those licences are all starting to turn rubbish, just like all their previous stuff.

[Shigawire]

I'm playing on "Realistic" - highest difficulty.

+ I love the much more alive campaign map and missions! very important.
+ I love the shift-based crew management, about time! Much better, less micromanagement.
+ Graphics. More colorful terrain, better water.
+ More special abilities for crewmembers.

- Speed-dial in TDC doesn't work! I run the stopwatch and nothing happens, I have to manually guess the speed of the craft! I think the best is to have a combination of assisted and manual TDC. After all, it's not a one-man submarine, you have people working under you to do much of the analysis.
- Due to the abovementioned TDC problem, as well as a "Verdammte Sturm", I was forced to use my deck-gun to destroy a convoy (this was on my first patrol). To my delight... and dismay... I could actually man the deck-gun in this storm! And I was even more shocked to see that the deck-gun was so efficient. Without using a single torpedo, I sank 29`000 tons of shipping in this one convoy. The escorts eventually came, but were quite useless even as I was on the surface. They were firing starshells like mad, but couldn't see me due to the enormous waves. When I returned to Pearl Harbor, I saw I am now #1 on the Sub Ace list with 29`000 tons...
- Sounds. I have a SB Xi-Fi Fatal1ty, so it's not my HW - but I get sometimes chirping in the sound. And when a seagull passes over, the sound loops a lot at the first milisec, sounding like a siren. Also, the voices were too low at default volume compared to the music, so I had to lower the music and sound-effects to even be able to hear the voices.
- Event Viewer doesn't seem to work even at easy.
- I miss the ability to see how far I can travel at current speed, at current fuel reserves. This was in SH3, but has been removed from SH4.
- I miss the ability to manually rotate the hydrophone.
- I miss more interactivity with watchmen crew.
- I miss "Repair" ability for my crewmembers.
- The radar interface is useless, was much better in SH1 - as has been demonstrated here. It can very well be 3D, but it must be functional! Look to flightsims like "LOMAC 1.2 Black Shark" to see how this can be done.
- As has been mentioned by others, some aspect of crewmanagement could be made less micro-managed - as you have sub-officers who would do that job for you usually. Putting people in positions they excel at should be the "default" behaviour, not a directed behaviour.
- I miss the graphical interaction of walking around in the sub, meeting my crewmen face to face. Robot or not, it affects atmosphere greatly. More menus and icons don't make it a simulator, it makes it into a cold technocrat's dream. I'm not a technocrat, I must at least have the illusion of working with humans in the game.
- I don't really care about this one but I will add it: Didn't like the intro. It was artsy fartsy in its own way, thus in a different context could be cool. But totally out of place I felt.


Btw, I did see a lightning-storm in my long patrol. So they exist, both graphically and audiowise.

[joea]

Originally Posted by Shigawire

- I miss the ability to manually rotate the hydrophone.
- I miss more interactivity with watchmen crew.
- The radar interface is useless, was much better in SH1 - as has been demonstrated here. It can very well be 3D, but it must be functional! Look to flightsims like "LOMAC 1.2 Black Shark" to see how this can be done.

You can, using the keyboard

http://www.subsim.com/sh4/sh4_66.htm

[castorp345]

Originally Posted by Shigawire

Didn't like the intro. It was artsy fartsy in its own way, thus in a different context could be cool. But totally out of place I felt.

yeah, that pretentious drivel was one of the first things i removed ('borrowed the empty intro.wmv and logo.wmv from my modded sh3 install)...

[Woody34]

I received my copy of the game yesterday. So i got up really early this morning to have a go at it.

What a bummer so far.
After numerous attempts to start a career I have found the following bugs thatreally annoy me.
- Japanese home islands
Ships seem to want to run on land. They collide head back and do the same thing over again.
I came from PH and used 1/4 of fuel. I run fast in shallow water and I used 3/4 of fuel on 100KM.

- Between Midway and Japan
Numerous radar sightings of ships by my SA radar.
After a while they are reported sunk????

- North of Luzon
I've been patrolling the assigned area for 5 days but still incomplete.
Ran into a taskforce. Reported it. Sank a Kongo Class BS with 3 torps. Is that all it needs?
With the BS sunk and myself down at 70 meter or feet(unclear what it is). Did anybody say manual Well suddunly I'm dead???
No destroyers near me, no depthcharges, nothing just died instantly. No damage either.
Before i met the taskforce i met numerous aircraft. In SH3 I would run deep. In SH4 I shoot them. They fall out of the
sky like the old nintendo duckhunt game.

- Eastern part of Luzon. Mission. Drop 24 tons of rubbish.
So I do except that the game crashes when I order the stuff to be shipped to land.

- Sinking merchants with torpedoes
I shot one torp, it hit and left a hole about 1/5th the size of the ship. I figured this one must sink, yet it didn't.
Second torp hit, no hole at all? The fact that it didn't sink didn't bother me the fact that has such a huge hole and didn't sink does not seem very realistic.

- South of Luzon
I'm doing nothing just watching the map going by, then within a second I go from loaded with fuel to no more fuel??


Other stuff
- Torpedo reloadtime would be nice to know.
- Is relaoding the deck gun in 5 seconds realistic?
- fps goes from 40 to 120 every second on external view.
- diving to 165 feet or meters kills you. Not at 165 but from there there is no way up again, it just falls down to it's crushing depth.
- I would like to see indicators of safe diving depths on the various submarine models.
- Some technical details on the subs would be welcomed too.
- the 2nd. day after PH got bombed I see a load of aircraft carriers, completely intact and spotless harbour and all the BS there still float, like nothing ever happened.
- Using the spread manually did not work properly. I just leave it MOT. By the time the first torp hits the ship changes course and the others just slam home in front or behind MOT.
- Last but not least i expected a bit more of the graphics. I use all the eye candy but somehow i feel like being in a comic book.

Before anybody starts telling me that i shouldn't be negative or seek help from a shrink. I'm not negative. I just really looked forward to this game. Pre-ordered it. And then it turns out to be one huge bug. Bummer.
For the time being I'll stick to SH3 dodging depth charges at 240 meters for 3 hours. Let's hope Ubi clears a lot of the bugs in the coming weeks.

One last thing. A huge thumbs up for the GWX boys on their work in SH3.

[HannesGM]

As I stated somewhere else, I'd love to play on the Japanese side... US is nice and good, but I'd love the challenge of playing the Japanese, especially later in the war.

Maybe, just maybe, there's gonna be a mod that takes this up... though I doubt it :/

[Shigawire]

Ditto all that Woody34 said. What is GWX btw?

Plus, I'd like more technical info on the submarine types, as well as the torpedo types, just like SH3. Having to look in the manual should be unnecessary.

[ref]

Originally Posted by robbo180265

No doubt Ubisoft are waiting for the modders to bail them out of this one too

In my case please find a comfortable seat for waiting...
Unless UBI releases some white papers on the data files format,(I'm not even asking for an SDK) after spending about a year working with GW on sh3 trying to figure out every bit of data (and still trying), I'm a bit reluctant to restart the hole process again.
Just so everyone can see what support we have so far, I've contacted some members of the dev team, after waiting a month or so for a response ("no problem ask what you want") I sent a mail with my doubts... still waiting the response after 5 months (I don't blame the dev team, after all they are just employees taking care of their jobs) so as I told before if the modding comunity has a clear and real support from Ubi I may continue working on SH4, otherwhise I'll keep playing (in fact start playing :p ) SH3+GWX.

Ref