Is this it?

[scrapser]

Originally Posted by dean_acheson

Oh, gees. Spend four years living in the Falkland Chase Apartment complex at East-West and Silver Spring... while going to law school at American.

Wow. Don't miss that place much.

I used to know some people who lived there. A true hell hole if there ever was one. Fortunately I live very close to Wheaton in an apartment that is up in the trees, has no traffic noise (the road was removed years ago) and is an 8 minute walk to the local mall, bank, supermarket, metro, and every other thing you could need. I only put 5000 miles a year on my car and buy gas about every other month. Who could ask for more!

[scrapser]

Originally Posted by John Channing

(No quote included as the tree is getting out of control)

Well, of course the problem is people. Things are always fine in the abstract, but once you get the old human factor involved things go to hell in a handbasket.

The problem, of course, with simulations is that they are so friggin' complex. You have to model a world with total accuracy, model systems, sub systems, people and historical events. Then you have to make all of that work together, you have to make the graphics outstanding, develop an AI that meets with everyone's approval, get about a million things more to work together and they scales it so you don't need a cray to run it.

And I am not kidding about this. People were complaining that the belt buckles on the crew's pants were Marine Corps issue.

THE BELT BUCKLES! WHO EVEN LOOKS AT THE BELT BUCKLES?

Never mind the million and one things that they got spot on... the belt buckles were a deal breaker for some people.

JCC

Interesting. The one thing that came to mind was, "Don't the companies realize what they are stepping into going in?" You would think they had thought it through. It's also yet another good argument for getting people involved from the consumer side. I think our enthusiasm should be a huge signal to them that not only do we care but also are a resource (and not a hostile one at that if given some latitude). As another post here points out, we are already doing quite a bit of work for them...why not take it to the next level or at least try. It may take a few go arounds but I bet a working formula could be developed in the process.

[John Channing]

Oh... the community was very much involved in SH4... from long long before the initial launch. Yesterday someone (I forget who) was putting forth the proposition that, if the community was involved, and SH4 was what it was on launch, then community involvement is useless.

Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc.

Put it this way... if anyone is enjoying Sh4 now, then most of the congratulations and regards go to Dan and his team. But save a small candle for this community, because a lot of good people put in a lot of time and effort to help get here.


JCC

[scrapser]

Sorry Dan but I'm a bit slow recognizing who people are in the threads at times. Most of what I've written here has been to stir some attention around the idea of doing some creative thinking on how to address the recurring problem of software being pushed out before it's ready. I know this has been discussed or mentioned before (and not always in very civil dialog) but it seems to me it's a genuine issue.

Think of it as growing pains. Everything is continually getting more complex which forces simulations, which are inherently complex by their very nature to become even more so. The more powerful software and hardware becomes, the more difficult it is to work with (and the more expensive). Niche markets like sims are stuck between these forces like jaws in a vise. There must be some solution out there that hasn't been tried or tried enough. That's my main point.

Thanks for all your efforts!

[Garion]

Creative Labs X-Fi Elite Pro

have you used this with Vista yet?

I have an audiology 2 ZS and since installing Vista it only will give me 2.1. With headphones I only get sound out of the left ear.

I've used about sixteen different drivers from Creative, both for XP and the new, wonderful vista drivers that took Creative about ten months to make.

Still no *^%*@#^ surround sound. No EAX. The only options are 'mono' and 'stereo.'

So, I was wondering, does YOUR creative sound card work with 5.1 or 6.1 or even 4.1?

This months PC Gamer in the UK has an article on P116 about soundcards and Vista. In it they say that relativly last minute changes in Vista took out Win Xp's Directsound API and in doing so removed surroundsound and environment effects.

The replacement UAA Universal Audio Architecture improves system stability, but Vista can only output mono or stereo.

Silly really

Cheers

Garion

[maerean_m]

Silent Hunter is a very lucky game. It's a game created by grown-ups for other grown-ups to play it. All of them which are fanatic about simulations and submarine simulation. So because of this grown-up thing, there can be an unofficial dialog (here on subsim) about the good and the bad of the game. And as players can see, the dev team has listened to the problems and fixed them as knew best using the available resources (time, money, people). The satisfaction rate about SH4 has increased steadily with each patch. I think that is very obvious.

It is only the satisfaction of the players that motivate the devs (and the money they spent on the game that motivates the Ubi bosses). And everyone can see that we already have a 3rd patch that makes the SH4 experience even better.

Time is now to enjoy the game. Otherwise, you've wasted your money (I think is silly to buy a game, wait until patch no 3, and not play it at all. It's like not enjoying life until you're 30, just because you're not all the way smart and experienced).


As for the idea that Ubi should make the source code public, I completely disagree. The devs are the owners of the source code and this ownership is the only thing that gives them the right to come back to make a new patch or start a new game (SH5). Plus, you can imagine the complexity of the code of a game like SH4, which took in a total of almost 4 years to develop (including SH3, SH4 being based on it). It's almost as complex as the software that runs the Boeing planes. It takes a game professional to be able to handle that amount of code, of that complexity. Although the players understand all the inner workings of the simulation of the sub, I think they don't understand what it takes to make that simulation happen on their screen. "A genius is someone who makes it look easy".
Everybody should do what they do best: the devs create the game, the players play it. Being able to mod a game doesn't imply the ability to create a game. There is a subtle but important difference. Plus, the devs use completely different tools than moders do.

A great deal of effort has been put into SH to make it modable. SH is not modable by chance. So have fun with the game, mod it the way you want, but it's not fair to ask for the code. The ownership of the code is the only thing that pays for the salaries of the devs. Working on SH4 is what pays for their kids going to school.

[scrapser]

Originally Posted by maerean_m

Silent Hunter is a very lucky game. It's a game created by grown-ups for other grown-ups to play it. All of them which are fanatic about simulations and submarine simulation. So because of this grown-up thing, there can be an unofficial dialog (here on subsim) about the good and the bad of the game. And as players can see, the dev team has listened to the problems and fixed them as knew best using the available resources (time, money, people). The satisfaction rate about SH4 has increased steadily with each patch. I think that is very obvious.

It is only the satisfaction of the players that motivate the devs (and the money they spent on the game that motivates the Ubi bosses). And everyone can see that we already have a 3rd patch that makes the SH4 experience even better.

Time is now to enjoy the game. Otherwise, you've wasted your money (I think is silly to buy a game, wait until patch no 3, and not play it at all. It's like not enjoying life until you're 30, just because you're not all the way smart and experienced).


As for the idea that Ubi should make the source code public, I completely disagree. The devs are the owners of the source code and this ownership is the only thing that gives them the right to come back to make a new patch or start a new game (SH5). Plus, you can imagine the complexity of the code of a game like SH4, which took in a total of almost 4 years to develop (including SH3, SH4 being based on it). It's almost as complex as the software that runs the Boeing planes. It takes a game professional to be able to handle that amount of code, of that complexity. Although the players understand all the inner workings of the simulation of the sub, I think they don't understand what it takes to make that simulation happen on their screen. "A genius is someone who makes it look easy".
Everybody should do what they do best: the devs create the game, the players play it. Being able to mod a game doesn't imply the ability to create a game. There is a subtle but important difference. Plus, the devs use completely different tools than moders do.

A great deal of effort has been put into SH to make it modable. SH is not modable by chance. So have fun with the game, mod it the way you want, but it's not fair to ask for the code. The ownership of the code is the only thing that pays for the salaries of the devs. Working on SH4 is what pays for their kids going to school.

I hear what you're saying. I also see you're located in Romania...are you part of the dev team? Just curious.

As to what you wrote, I wasn't lobbying for the source code to go public but rather for a new approach to address the development cycle problems that appears with just about every new title. If a game sells like hotcakes, further work on it is much more likely and patches more prolific. But for the niche market of simulations, the profit margin of development and subsequent support is very narrow...yet the sims and the hardware they run on continue to grow in complexity.

A lot of companies have abandoned simulations altogether because of this. There has to be a solution that breaks out the bottleneck and restores the equilibrium. Making the game highly modable is one. Identifying programmers who are customers, willing and capable of addressing bugs in the source code is another. If the company cannot afford to pay the original developers to continue and somebody is out here who is perfectly willing to do it for the love of the game, why not try that?

This is new territory and until both sides get some experience under their belt, of course there will be some stumbling and groping until the quirks are worked out. Maybe the source code could be written in modules so only parts of it were released to the chosen few. If there's something a module being worked on references in a module they don't have, perhaps there could be a company developer acting as a liason to supply them with the answer they need to do whatever needs to be done to the module they have. This would retain security and help prevent source code leaks I would think. At least over time, credibility could be established between the company and those who are willing to do the work, post-release.

The alternative to not trying to find a better way is to eventually reach the point where the company feels they cannot do sims anymore...then the whole thing just stops. I don't think anyone wants that to happen. The landscape is changing and we must change with it or become obsolete.

[PepsiCan]

I patched 1.3 last night but today have started reading about the issues that still remain (mag torpedoes always on, transparent crew on deck, non-functioning periscope animation, to name a few). Incredible!

My mag-torps have been functioning properly since version 1.2. Download my cheats (from my signature) and use the 200m meg-det cheat. Fire a torp with mags on, and fire one with mags off. They are working properly, dude.


The torpedos are working. But the switch is not working. See this thread:

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=118393

Seems that whether magnetic exploders are used or not is hardcoded into the software and cannot be influenced through the switch to set whether to use Contact Influence or Contact only.

[StandingCow]

Originally Posted by TDK1044

Here's another approach.

http://dangerdeep.sourceforge.net/

Thanks for the reminder, they have really come a long way... how well does it play?

[John Channing]

Originally Posted by scrapser

I hear what you're saying. I also see you're located in Romania...are you part of the dev team? Just curious.

Check out his homepage. There is some very interesting reading there!

JCC

[BarjackU977]

Like the author of this post, I have SH4 since day one, but went on playing SH3 with GW 1.03 because of the reported bugs in SH4 (and I had other games to enjoy, in the meantime). With the new patch arrival, I decided to give a try.

I tried to experience the Flak clipping bug, but I got nothing of the like using the few the subs I tried (Porpoise, Salmon, and Tambor).
Is it specific to one sub? Or to a FLAK improvement?

And what is the broken periscope animation? Everything seems OK, when I try in my own game. I see both persicopes raise and lower on the external view. What exactly is broken?

My install is a brand new 1.0 install, on which I directmy installed the 1.3 patch.

[TDK1044]

Originally Posted by scrapser

I hear what you're saying. I also see you're located in Romania...are you part of the dev team? Just curious.

Yes he is. As I've stated many times...these Devs are dedicated, and they listen to intelligent comments and observations posted here.

[scrapser]

Originally Posted by TDK1044

Yes he is. As I've stated many times...these Devs are dedicated, and they listen to intelligent comments and observations posted here.

I visited his site and now that I know the Devs are here with us, it's taken my appreciation to a whole new level. I can only talk about things from my vantagepoint which is admittedly limited and reading the notes on his homepage really brings that home (no pun intended).

I guess I'm trying to look at the big picture and brainstorm on my own with what I can glean from experience. I think everyone would agree things are reaching some sort of critical mass where a new direction needs to be taken if we want to move out from under the "needs a patch" conundrum. But I realize the companies must have the same interest and desire as well. I don't doubt the developers are probably just as frustrated as we are in their own way.

I guess the only thing we can do at this point is throw ideas around until something viable comes through.

[jdkbph]

Originally Posted by marc420

I work in the software industry for a 'business to business' product. By comparision to what we do, game software is simply just awful.

For an example, we very rarely ever do a 'patch' to one of our releases. It is almost never required. That's a testament to the quality of the programming and the extensive testing we do. When we do have to do a patch, its almost always to fix just one defect that slipped through.

Also, the manual for SH4 would be a sick joke to us. In general, our goal is to design UI's that are so intuitive that a user never needs to use a manual or go to help in the first place. But then, we'd expect our manuals and online help to be informative and correctly answer the customer's questions fully and completely. (Try even to run SH4 without reading the manual ... We'd run that test in house on the design, and that UI would be given an "F" in our shop and completely redesigned)

The game industry is a bad joke to me. It produces crappy software and basically relies on its customers to test the product. Then they slowly fix it until its just barely to the acceptable level, then they say no more work on that project and work on the next project to sucker money from buyers.

The game industry also relies on free work from its customers to basically produce usable documentation online in forums. And it relies on free work from its customers to produce the final product in the form of 'mods.'

Basically, the whole industry is almost totally a complete con these days. You buy unfinished, untested software where version 1.00 rarely even works, then you are expected to do a lot of free work for the company to finish their product for them.

I'm happy of course that there are these people willing to do this free work, as that's the only thing that makes most games playable these days. But I really wonder if they wouldn't be better off doing their own open-source software projects instead of supporting the game companies.

I almost never buy game software on release these days. I try to wait until the 'final' product is done with the patches and the mods and the online docs. And hopefully by then I can buy the software somewhere at a big discount. That seems to be the only rational response as a customer to an industry that basically seems out to rip me off.

If there are companies that aren't running this business model these days, they tend to be very small independent companies that still rate the satisfaction of their customers as something of importance. There are a few of them still out there. Look for companies that rarely do anything beyond a 1.1 patch, but have lots of happy and satisfied customers.

I hear you... and I agree with you for the most part. But let me ask you this.... Does your software sell for more or less than $39.99 (plus tax) per copy or per seat? Do your customers buy separate maintenance contracts/agreements to cover the cost of support and upgrade? It's a totally different economic model these guys are working with here.

That said, I don't think expecting more and better than what we've been getting for the last 10 years or so is completely out of line.

IMHO, the problem is not so much a lack of morals or ethics, or even greed or laziness on the part of developers and publishers, but a lack of discipline. It's been a while since I took a close look at what's going on in the computer game biz, but it doesn't seem much has changed. I suspect most game dev houses are still deficient in the areas of software engineering (not the same as programming), project management, change and configuration management, and quality management (not the same as testing). All of which should be familiar, if not ingrained, to anyone working on big time biz software projects.

I'm thinking that if some of the disciplines and methodologies listed above were introduced into the game software business, we would get more and better for our $39.99 (plus tax).

JD

[Seeadler]

Originally Posted by jdkbph

I suspect most game dev houses are still deficient in the areas of software engineering (not the same as programming), project management, change and configuration management, and quality management (not the same as testing). All of which should be familiar, if not ingrained, to anyone working on big time biz software projects.

I'm thinking that if some of the disciplines and methodologies listed above were introduced into the game software business, we would get more and better for our $39.99 (plus tax).

Agreed!

I work for the past few years in development of integrated AI software of welding robots for the automobile industry. Our software products are not released without 100% tested and proved bug free, however because of the functionality of this software human lives can depend on it during the production process of cars.

A game is however only a game and other software development and engeneering processes are put on it, ...unfortunately!