Silent Hunter V Dev Team Interview: Deeper, Kapitän, deeper. (1/19/10)

[elanaiba]

Yeah, and then somebody on UBI boards will say "they are answering questions on subsim!". If I go there somebody here will gringe. And then marketing will have my head.

And I do have to build a game in the meantime.

The thing that bugs me is that we haven't released any scripted campaign so far, yet people fear it. They take apart what we say looking for hints at something evil

Re: Tarjak:

To get access to ANY historic port flotilla that you choose, you have to mod it. You will have several starting points that we have chosen, but those are easily modable too.

Damm everything seems to be excelent except one thing


WHY ONLY VII U-BOATS WHY????????? **** I HATE THAT OLD IRON TRASH CAN


I MISS MY FATBOY IXD2 AND SUPER COOL XXI

****! MODDERS YOU HAVE GOT A JOB TO DO !!!!

[Gotmilk]

Originally Posted by spiksy

Damm everything seems to be excelent except one thing


WHY ONLY VII U-BOATS WHY????????? **** I HATE THAT OLD IRON TRASH CAN


I MISS MY FATBOY IXD2 AND SUPER COOL XXI

****! MODDERS YOU HAVE GOT A JOB TO DO !!!!

You have one boat because this time you will have a crew who must run around and know their way around the boat. Just imagine if you had dozens of boats. You had to recreate all AI paths and other crew related stuff to accomodate different subs.

I am all ok for one boat. I just hope that the life on the boat will be like we saw in the first trailer.

[Adriatico]

Originally Posted by elanaiba

Yeah, and then somebody on UBI boards will say "they are answering questions on subsim!". If I go there somebody here will gringe. And then marketing will have my head.

I hope they won't take your head... if you answer to this community:
Dynamic shadows on VIIc deck (coning t. and deck gun) - Yes / No ?
/

[kapitan_zur_see]

Originally Posted by elanaiba

Yeah, and then somebody on UBI boards will say "they are answering questions on subsim!". If I go there somebody here will gringe. And then marketing will have my head.

Then throw grenades at them! or settle down some landmines and defensive turrets to prevent that UBI guy to reach your head and answer as many dangerous questions as possible in the meantime!

By the way, it's the focus of the next Ubisoft big release!

Unreal Bucharest Tournament!

Play as a SH5 dev where you lock yourself down into your studio and have to prevent some suit wearing Ubi guys to break in and invade your base!
Or play as Ubi guy and wear that special black business suit armor, try to break inside their base and once their defenses have been put down, prevent their main character class, the Dan Dimitrescu unit, to reach the server or internet location in the map so he won't reveal info on the game!
Everytime the Dan reach it, wait 15 seconds and the health&flooding bar is complete , it sends one answer to the subsim.com forum and the Dev team earns one point. If Dan is forced to cancel in the middle of the process to defend himself, it sends a vague answers and makes a subsim member spawn inside the base that will try and find Dan everywhere and annoys him to no end unless a new complete answer is sent through, thus adding to Dan stress!

Release date not known at present...
Lead designer: GKane.


BTW, Dan your irritation that shows through your last messages is quite possibly what has reassured me the most so far! It now clearly shows your
enthusiasm to reveal things you clearly stated you couldn't, hence showing you're confident the game would please us and that it annoys you deeply not to be able to share that.

[flag4]

as i read through all the views here i get an impression that No.5 will be Brighter Tighter and Shorter - with a door left open here and there and maybe one at the end?

[mookiemookie]

After giving it some thought, I can definitely understand the decision to only include the Type VII. Having to model an entire interior and associated crew would, I imagine, be a pretty time consuming process. Having to do all that work for multiple sub types would, I assume, not fit into their timeline.

On some level I can understand the 1943 decision as well. Think about when the "rules of the game" changed, so to speak - right around 1943. Allied radar became a concern, hedgehogs, schnorkels, BOLD decoys, FaT and LuT torpedoes, etc. A lot of new technology was introduced in the latter part of the war. To accurately model all of that and its interaction and effect on the sub and your mission would be complex. I am assuming again, it would not fit into their timeline.

The sub and technology you start out with in 1939, for the most part, is basically not much different than what you've got in 1943. The major upgrades over that time span that I can think of off the top of my head would be improved AA armament, maybe one or two turm upgrades, very early versions of the FuMO and Metox, and not much else. Those things are probably not that hard to model in, leaving the developers time to focus on the boat and the first years of the war.

So I keep seeing it mentioned, but I guess it really is a question of quality over quantity. I'd rather have the first 2/3rds of the war done well, instead of the entire war done so-so.

As an aside, and since I mentioned it, I always was kind of irked at the reliability of the Metox in SH3. From what I've read, it was nowhere near as reliable as it is modelled...especially when the Allies introduced the Mk III radar which the Metox could not detect.

[Rip]

Originally Posted by mookiemookie

After giving it some thought, I can definitely understand the decision to only include the Type VII. Having to model an entire interior and associated crew would, I imagine, be a pretty time consuming process. Having to do all that work for multiple sub types would, I assume, not fit into their timeline.

On some level I can understand the 1943 decision as well. Think about when the "rules of the game" changed, so to speak - right around 1943. Allied radar became a concern, hedgehogs, schnorkels, BOLD decoys, FaT and LuT torpedoes, etc. A lot of new technology was introduced in the latter part of the war. To accurately model all of that and its interaction and effect on the sub and your mission would be complex. I am assuming again, it would not fit into their timeline.

The sub and technology you start out with in 1939, for the most part, is basically not much different than what you've got in 1943. The major upgrades over that time span that I can think of off the top of my head would be improved AA armament, maybe one or two turm upgrades, very early versions of the FuMO and Metox, and not much else. Those things are probably not that hard to model in, leaving the developers time to focus on the boat and the first years of the war.

So I keep seeing it mentioned, but I guess it really is a question of quality over quantity. I'd rather have the first 2/3rds of the war done well, instead of the entire war done so-so.

As an aside, and since I mentioned it, I always was kind of irked at the reliability of the Metox in SH3. From what I've read, it was nowhere near as reliable as it is modelled...especially when the Allies introduced the Mk III radar which the Metox could not detect.

Yes, I love how in Iron Coffins one day they are picking up aircraft on it and diving to avoid routinely. Then all the sudden not getting detection on it. But the planes are showing up out of nowhere. It must have been a WTF time for them.

[Hartmann]

One of the forgotten motives of the big losses past 1943 was the enigma code, allies can pinpoint positions in the sea and send planes, hunterkiller groups , and modify the convoy routes with the decoded info.

with a code change and the early use of snorquel and XXI boats it could be very different

Having more activity and action in the spaces could really spice up the game. More interation with shipmates (and I assume all rates will be selectable for particular action) would be quite interesting. More reality like Das Boot from stem to stearn. Should prove highly interesting and add a lot to the game.

Just my thoughts.
Jib01

[CNA0]

Thanks for the interview. It provides us a good idea about the game limits.
For me, if the game is just for the WWII UBoot campaign, is a nonsense to try to go farther than 1943 (unless you think that a U-Kaleun could prevent Allied Forces achievements as total atlantic air cover, sonar and radar improvements, and so on).
Also, if the devs understand that their main effort has to be centered in the inside compartments and crew performance developments, I also respect their decision of starting only with VII-type.
For me is a pretty good idea to perform the training phase as XO.
I keep wondering a lot of other things, (e.g):
-How devs perform interaction bwn Kaleun and crew? Could Kn take a rest, or as in previous games (scorning any realistic situation) is he the only one allowed to order GQ or dive?
-Crew AI; are skills improvement linked with the time spent in the posts, or simply with the time underway? Has any influence on this improvement the fact that Kn (acting as a lookout, a radar or sonarman, a gunner, etc) takes the handle in these posts?
-Navigation: will it be possible to forget GPS position? Its pretty hard for me to believe that any Navy (Rumanian perhaps?), adopting the knot as speed unit, uses the Km to measure navigation distances. So that, if spherical mapping is impossible for SH5, I’d like to find al least that one minute is equal to one mile (and not to two km).
-Torpedo attack: will be the crew able to perform some useful work (ships identification, bearing and range tracing on maps, fire solution, etc), or the options are automatic solution or Kn’s sole activity?
-Gun attack: when shoting, can any officer (from UZO, scope, or nude eyesight) give an estimated range to the gunnner, or keep they behaving as this fight is not their bussines?
-Land details: could land show some milestones (as ligthhouses or towers), and could this milestones be marked and kept on the navigation maps?
As you can imagine after all this comments, and respecting any wish (included a virtual jamboree the eve before getting underway), my wishes are related with my submarine two main objectives: to reach on time the assigned point in the operations theatre, and to sink ennemy ships.

I hope that SH6 will return to the Pacific Theatre, in a spherical Earth, and with a sextant to shot stars and get a fix.

PS. I’m not a game developper, but I can remember that there was a straigthforward procedure to convert a cylindrical coordinates system to a polar coordinates system.

[bigboywooly]

Thanx for the interview Neal
Very interesting read

Was really looking forward to release of SH5
Less so now
Will still buy it and give it a spin

I can see the reasoning behind only one uboat type with all the new compartments and interaction but will miss the type 2 and 9
Type 9 moreso as that my preferred choice of sub and generally start in a IX and end in a D2

Can possibly understand the 43 finish as thats when the Battle of the Atlantic was more or less over
Didnt end then with boats sent out up to the last days of the war and still having success although reduced

I guess focusing on the type 7 - aside from less work on the sub side - also reduces campaign work as no Black Sea or Indian Ocean to worry about and not a great deal in the way of South Atlantic or US coast
Type 7s were there of course but in a much smaller role than the 9s

Modding comments were interesting too
Will have to wait to see how that pans out I guess

My only hope is as the game will focus on a small cross section of the war that the campaign will be complete for the period it covers
And the ships included will be various and many

Lets see what March brings eh

[TarJak]

Originally Posted by elanaiba

Yeah, and then somebody on UBI boards will say "they are answering questions on subsim!". If I go there somebody here will gringe. And then marketing will have my head.

And I do have to build a game in the meantime.

The thing that bugs me is that we haven't released any scripted campaign so far, yet people fear it. They take apart what we say looking for hints at something evil

Re: Tarjak:

To get access to ANY historic port flotilla that you choose, you have to mod it. You will have several starting points that we have chosen, but those are easily modable too.

Dan, please don't misunderstand my questioning as griping. All I'm trying to do is better understand what will be released in March and part of that is speculating on what I've read so far and voicing some of the conclusions I've come to.

Thanks for the direct answer it clears a lot up for me and give me an insight into how the game will play out for me.

As I've already stated having been used to it from SH3/4, I'm interested in still being able to choose my starting point and dates. It sounds from your answer that these choices out of the box will be limited but easily moddable to allow greater control over where I start.

The big question from there will be how the game plays outside the confines of the out of the box campaign.

[edjcox]

Seems every version is a matter of throwing something away and adding something new.

Why can't these game developers simply build on what the comunity points out as the pathway....

Make it easy to command and make the crew work. If I command a range on a target an officer should use the UZO and state that range... If I command "dive" the crew should initiate the dive given certain sequenced events including the closing of the hatchway.

I'll buy it but probably will gripe.