Supplement to SH Survey: What should Ubi do to make SH5 the best?

[danlisa]

A note about a possible SDK.

I'm not sure why but the release of an SDK has always been shunned by UBI or Devs (don't know which one) for the SH series but I would ask that it be considered and perhaps the coding of the product be tailored to facilitate an SDK in the future. Contemplating a SDK as the outset allows a modicum of dev control about what can be accessed by the SDK especially if you/they are not keen for the 'entire' product to be open to all.

If you need proof of the success of SDK releases, look no further than applications like Silent3ditor here at SS or games like Fallout 3 and the GECK, the user improvements to that game alone have probably doubled sales.

In todays society people want choices and control over their purchased content.

If that's not enough incentive, think of Neal's health! Having a SDK which opens the platform to everyone means that there's less likelyhood of splintered factions within mod teams. A level playing field and all that.

That's enough of that.

I echo the previous statements in this thread. Above all, a simulation is about real-life accuracy, historical accuracy & immersion. While the learning curve is high the best 'simulation' I have ever owned is Falcon. Take a leaf from that platform and all that it uses/brings.

[Leveche]

Update the happy times SHII / DC. Be possible? Hopefully yes. Thanks.

Greeting.

[Mittelwaechter]

I don't have to have more compartments, maybe the petty officers bunk room with table and kitchen. I could sit there and listen to the music and write a patrol log.

But I'd definitively like to see more crew!

Additional animations of crew passing the control room, conning tower, radio/sonar cabin, tower deck... reporting, commenting, joking, smoking ...

External torpedo reloading sequence in 3D, animated crew on deck in harbours.

And I'd like to have better, vivid onboard audio, Crew- Voices, -Comments, -Reports and constant U-Boot Sound in the background.

=> I'd like to see 'CBC' - Community based Crew!

A tool for generating characters: personal file, heads, hair, faces, body, clothing, rank, voices and speech! - for different weather, daytime and battle conditions.
ComCrew characters are downloadable and can be hired in harbour for replacing dead or promoted ex-crew and officers.
Imagine some hundred 'men' available during the war with individual voices (standard answers, reports and comments have to be recorded by the player, plus a variety of individual comments, jokes and stories to be triggered randomly during patrol)
Short dialogues could be scripted and recorded (via Teamspeak?).

+ Editable Alter Ego!
Player on board, incl. 3D representation, increasing efficiency of taken station.

_________________________________

3D heads/faces from photos? TrueSpace?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TrueSpace

http://cdn.caligari.com/tS76.exe
http://cdn.caligari.com/tS76PDF.exe
http://cdn.caligari.com/tS76Video.exe

Have fun!

[danurve]

Control over the frackin Dive Planes

In early war it would be cool to take a prize ship, or even raid it for fuel/supplies maybe.

[mookiemookie]

It's kind of hard to add anything to RoaldLarsen's list, but I can certainly echo some of the same ideas

1. Wolfpacks are a must. No game about U-boats in the Atlantic should overlook what the U-boats were known for. The ability to radio in a convoy contact and receive instructions to shadow the convoy and deploy a homing beacon for other u-boats to follow. Instructions to attack. AI sub behavior and torpedoes. Instructions from BdU to form a patrol line. Being routed to convoy contacts that other U-boats have reported. Possibility of having your transmissions intercepted by ULTRA and convoys routed around your patrol line.

2. More control over U-boat systems. Being able to run engines independantly, being able to run electrics on the surface for increased stealthiness. Control over my trim tanks so that I could run decks awashed.

3. Airplanes with better physics. No dives and turns that would rip the wings off of a real life plane.

4. Less predictable escorts. The "30 minutes with no contact and run away" thing takes away from the experience. D/C's that actually blind the ASDIC system.

5. Milk cows. And accurate ones at that. They were used for food and fuel, not torpedo reloads. A Type XIV milk cow carried only 4 torpedoes for resupply. Vulnerability if caught while resupplying by air or surface attack. Increased dive time.

6. U-boat system breakdowns. Have engines wear down if pushed too hard. Have more breakdowns later in the war due to sabotage and/or lack of supplies as the war turns against Germany.

7. Less accurate gunnery on the part of merchants and escorts. An escort ship pushing full speed ahead through 30 foot waves and heavy rain should not be able to accurately put shells into my u-boat at 8000 meters. I should be able to instruct my flak gunner to put suppressing fire onto the guns of merchant ships.

8. External torpedo reloads that model reality. No reloads in hurricane force weather. Not being able to dive if in the midst of an external reload. The possibility of injuring or losing crewment to accident.

9. Model crew transfers. By 1941, BdU's standard procedure was to take 15% of an established crew after two patrols and transfer them to new construction. Model the technical track of crewmen. I should have x number of technikers (torpedomen), x number of mechanikers (enginemen) and x number of funkers (radiomen). No more generic seamen. Go back to the SH3 system of having limits on the number of sailors and petty officers instead of SH4 where I could fill a boat with petty officers. Better implement the morale system. Have extended periods of submergence, depth charge attack, snorkeling or bad weather take a toll on my crew. Model injuries and illness. Model the effects of weather on crew uniforms. Shorts and no shirt in tropical climates, jackets and gloves in colder ones. No more generic blue jumpsuits. Give me sweaters and casual clothes, as was in real life.

10. Varied orders from BdU. Put me on weather station. Put me on minelaying duty. Have them tell me a new grid to go to if my current one is unproductive. Heck, even have them deny my request to change patrol areas and implement consequences for disobeying BdU orders.

11. Scale-ability. Allow the player to turn off certain aspects of realism so that the game can appeal to the casual player. Like say there'd be an option to allow the computer to control trim tanks, turn off crew injuries or fatigue, etc.

12. Mod-ability. The modders have given this game the shelf life that it's had. Make it easy to tweak and add things to the game that may not necessarily fit into the development timeline.

[danlisa]

More:

The ability to type content onto the maps, be it Nav or Attack.

Also, in game logged/saved Captains patrol reports, also manually entered by the player from the GUI. Giving the player the option to view a 'game diary' after patrol or the choice to export it after exiting the game.

[Beltza]

Originally Posted by martes86

Ohhhhh juicy thread, let's get started with MY ideas...

-Dynamic campaign
-A TDC station for the TDC alone, like in SH2. (TVR - Torpedovorhaltrechner in German )
-Extended interiors and more interior interactiveness (cool if doors could close at will)
-Resurrect the SH2 possibility to call the lights red/white, or just turn them off to sleep, and keep the battlestations possibility
-No sailors "popping up" out of nowhere, have them walk
-Separate engine management (please make it so that the engine lights blink when changing the setting)
-Manual dive planes management/ordering
-Improved multiplayer:
· Multistation games (several players in one sub/ship)
· Direct IP connectivity possibilities
· LAN games
· Improved game chat
· Improved spectating
· Surface ships! (but true individual per player ships, not just a guy managing the whole escort group). Part of the slow death of MP is because we're always playing against the AI, unlike SH2/DC
-Surface ships! (again, lol). It'd be great if they got the same level of detail as the subs in all regards (interiors, gameplay...)
-Mantain SH4's watch crew mechanics, but reinstate SH3's management screen, and have them leave positions and go elsewhere when not really needed (i.e., electro-machinists not needed on the surface), or at least, that they don't get fatigued too much when not working
-Ability to relieve of duty anyone, and leave his station empty
-Possibility to walk as in a FPS around the sub (make an option to switch it off, for faster gaming)
-Keep SH4's hull-holing ability
-Keep SH3/4's ability to get asked if ship should submerge, engage, or stay put when spotting a contact, and give a fourth option to have the watch do as they see fit considering each situation
-Implement a replay or a cinematic mode (for making videos without having to steer the ship)
-Retake SH3's ability to have each officer do his thing, and not just have the Engineer get all the options like in SH4, and make each officer look at you again and properly confirm your command
-Make a good logbook. I expect to see date and time of departure, and what ships I've sunk so far. When I return to port, I expect to see all that, plus date arrived in port, and number of days at sea during that patrol. Also make it possible that we can write our own entries like in SH2, and that each log gets outputed to a txt file (like in SH2 too)
-Make planes do realistic length flights, not just appear out of the blue at a certain influence distance from the sub
-Make it so that, depending on the speed, it actually variates how fast you submerge, and also make it realistic on deep dives, where it is hard to mantain the sub trimmed, and so constant corrections are needed
-Ability to call a "Clear the bridge" command, so that we can choose to stay alone on watch the whole time, or even call the dive at a later stage, making the dive a much faster process opposite to having to wait for everyone to come down
-Realistic simulation of all items secured for dive (like say, close the hatches, close the diesel exhausts...), and disallow dive if for whatever reason, those items can't be secured (like no one in the diesels closing the exhausts or a damaged hatch)
-Mantain the abilities to send progress and status reports (and that the enemy can intercept them, or your allies -in MP-), and (for MP too, or SP ships) make it possible to communicate ship to ship with light signaling or flag signaling
-UBERMODDABILITY!!!! My dream would be Source-engine-like modding capabilities, that include reprogramming functionalities or putting in new ones (I'm a professional programmer, so...), but if that's out of the question, then allow for modding of already existing units and models (and sub interiors), sounds, textures, campaigns and missions, and the possibility of adding new units, models (and sub interiors), sounds, textures, campaigns and missions, and provide a top-notch SDK. And please, make a good mission editor, so that we can make good scripted missions (good for SP tournaments) within the dynamic campaign layer, make it user friendly, and add some serious trigger system (event-based, time-based, activation-based, objective-based... you name it) support
-And a very cool concept I've thought of... that the career mode makes you able to start from a planesman to a watch officer, and even make it to commander of a sub (or surface ship, please don't forget about that!).



Ok... midnight in Spain, gotta go to bed, I've got a daily job to wake up for. But I'll be posting more ideas if I think of more, or if someone in the 24th needs some help with translations. For the moment, whoever reads this at Ubi won't need any brainstorming sessions for some time. :rotfl:

Cheers

I agree.

[LGN1]

It would be great to get information more easily on the map. For instance, I like to play 100% and measure distances,... myself, however, plotting all the data on the map is a pain.

In real life no single person did everything alone. I would like to have the option to enter, e.g., the bearing and distance and then had a mark on the map at this spot. This method has still all the inaccuracies, but saves the annoying, boring, and time-consuming plotting. In real life the captain would just call the data and someone would plot it.

In general, it would be great to have more options than knowing everything perfectly accurate (map updates, WO data,...) and knowing nothing at all/ no support at all (manual targeting, no map updates,...)

Originally Posted by LukeFF

Crew voices: simply put, they do not match the tactical situation that well right now, especially in SH4. Crewmen should not be in their "tense" crew animations and speaking in hushed tones just because they spotted a merchant ship some 10,000 yards off. Crewmen should be speaking in a lowered tone only when at silent running.

Your comment reminded me of one of my other pet peeves with SH3: the repetition of all of the crews responses. The first hundred times you hear "Jawohl, Herr Kaleun" it's cool. After that it just gets annoying. The same goes for the sound effects when you score a torpedo hit, when you dive, when you surface, etc. Mix things up a bit and add some variety. Yes, my chief needs to respond to me with a "yes, sir", but he can change his inflection and tone a bit, depending upon how long it's been since we performed a certain action, what his morale is like, etc. Yes, I'm always going to hear the hatch close and bubbles when we dive, but maybe I'll hear a couple guys come down the ladder or maybe I'll hear a bunch, depending on how many are on deck. Maybe I'll hear water wash down the hatch if it's stormy, or maybe I won't if it's clear. A little variation can go a long way, especially with a sim like this where you're issuing orders, surfacing, and diving virtually all the time. The audio can get VERY repetitive.

[Task Force]

have the flak gunners on ships aim at multiple aircraft. not just 1. More accurate deckgun AIs.

Get rid of that bug that makes the deck gun crosshairs off center.

Better weather system, no more storms that last a whole patrol.

Maby have the crew have the crew panic in certian situations. Give them character.

Edit. better noises. like creeks that change when you go deeper and stuff lie that...

[Sailor Steve]

After reading the comments on voices, I'd like to add: Realistic Terminology. SH1 actually had it pretty much right. Destroyer Command wasn't too bad either. In SH3 it was in German, so I put up with it - except I didn't really, I used the Das Boot Sound Mod instead.

SH4? You hit a button which represents you, as the captain, giving a command. Your OOD says "Yes, Sir!", then repeats the command - "Hard to Port!", and the helmsman responds "Yes, Sir!"

Real life? You give the command. If you're within earshot of the man you're giving it to, your OOD stays the hell out of it. The helmsman would then respond "Right Full Rudder Aye!", not "Yes sir! Hard to port!"

Every time I hear the voices I cringe.

You could even add the captain's voice, giving a full set of commands and responses.

I also agree with the comment on voice levels: the only time they should be whispering is when you order silent running.

Also get some more natural sounding voices. With the money, even I could put together a better speech set. Listen to some of the movies - at least they try to make it sound like it really does. Add some more sound effects. It doesn't take a lot to make it feel better.

[timmyab]

I'd really like it to be far more difficult to achieve success than it is at the moment.Even with GWX it's so easy to pile up enormous tonnages and then go home without a scratch that it bears no relationship to reality.There's been plenty of decent suggestions already which would help so I wont go over them again.
One thing I haven't seen mentioned that bugs me is that the watch officer appears to be a complete moron who will quite happily ram a quayside at full ahead if you let him.Also I'd like to be able to give him more detailed instructions.Shadow that ship on the horizon.Inform me if the weather changes etc.

In this current climate
Drastic changes need to be made,
Like other Big game sellers,
The Dev Team must now concentrate
on the Multiplay of Silent Hunter,
unlike before,
As this is the Future for the game
Like other games,now in stores
The market points to the Multiplay side of a game,
Like Far Cry,plus many many others,
Can the Dev Team Make SH5,
Like SH2 & Destroyer Command?
for Multiplay?
Its possible,
Also the AI needs to
be looked at in game play,
Bringing with the Dev Team
Silent Hunter Players,
with experience as Testers for SH5,
is a must factor,
Not someone who never played any
of the SH Games.

[coreykill]

there needs to be better rendered animations for damage not just flickering lights and poppiong dials. needs to be water spraying in from many places behind equipment and such along the walls. and if its heavy flooding would love to see water pooling on the floor and over time getting deeper up the the ankles lower knees of the crew. and no more instant death screen too many times have i been destroyed and not even known why. not even able to look around and figure out what just happened.

I'd be happy to have access to some source code
as was done for Quake.

You could not alter the basic Engine code and important files
that made Quake what it was.
But you could do some fantastic Mods!!

Many problems could be fixed by Modders if given just a small ability
to change some of the base code.

Many additions could be added that are not possible with
the way things stand now.

This approach would open the SH Series to so much more.
Bringing in more people who would buy it just for the Mods
that would be sure to follow.