Chance of an Expansion?

[Pintea]

Originally Posted by Takeda Shingen

Chances of expansion and further development are zero. The Dev Team has been moved on to other projects.

Even if the dev team hadn't been moved (or left Ubi) and they were still working on it, the game code has reached a level of complexity and depth (and bad writing and hacking) that I don't think any dev can fully grasp.

This leads to the almost impossible task of adding new features (or even fixing bugs !) without generating a few other bugs without knowing !
This is one of the reason the game has so many bugs today.

Without a clean start, no qualitative add-on or sequel would be possible in my opinion. But then again, a clean start would require much more time and resources than Ubi would be willing to allocate for such a niche game.
So even if an add-on will be made, expect a hurried up hacked buggy game.

[dcb]

Originally Posted by Pintea

So even if an add-on will be made, expect a hurried up hacked buggy game.

Coming from you, this really sounds like the epitaph of the series, a confirmation that there's nothing to expect in the future from UBI.
Thanks for everything you devs have done and sorry you weren't able/allowed to do more.

[SkyBaron]

Originally Posted by Pintea

Even if the dev team hadn't been moved (or left Ubi) and they were still working on it, the game code has reached a level of complexity and depth (and bad writing and hacking) that I don't think any dev can fully grasp.

This leads to the almost impossible task of adding new features (or even fixing bugs !) without generating a few other bugs without knowing !
This is one of the reason the game has so many bugs today.

Without a clean start, no qualitative add-on or sequel would be possible in my opinion. But then again, a clean start would require much more time and resources than Ubi would be willing to allocate for such a niche game.
So even if an add-on will be made, expect a hurried up hacked buggy game.

Best post of this thread so far! Agree 100%.

[Marko]

Originally Posted by WarlordATF

The problem with games these days is its all about the profit. Go back 10-20 years and games were made my people with a true passion for it. I'm not saying that the Devs don't have a passion for SHV, but the suits who give the orders don't allow them to actually complete the game.Now these companys that were tiny back then are major corporations and thats never a good thing when it comes to product quality.

Look at the old games, DOOM,SH1,Duke Nukem ect. These were highly polished games before release and patches were the rare exception. Now its all about bottom lines and carved in stone release dates. If a product is not ready they still ship it and promise to fix it in patches and we foolishly allow this by accepting it. If someone offered you a TV that only got 3 channels you would probably buy one somewhere else.

I Think UBI was kind of shocked that alot of us would not accept a half finished product and refused to buy SHV. They took this to mean that the subsim market was dead, when the reality of the situation is players are getting fed up with unfinished games with DRM that only hurts honest players. If any company out there were to release a complete and good subsim it would sell and do pretty well.

From my point of view the problem that bugged Silent Hunter series it is not really about: polished code, dumb AI , the DRM or whatever. Every software has bugs, or an AI that is stupid like a stone or , on the other hand, godlike and so on.


The real problem is : Silent Hunter has been conceived with the idea of auto-targeting and contacts on activated, everything goes around this, and at some point they put the option to remove the magic red triangle and allow you to try to achieve your goal to sink a ship. And with stock game it is nearly impossible. And everything support this and never changed in all titles.


What is the purpose of a radar that doesn’t work, that gives you the range in kilometer limited to 4 digit? What the purpose to have a graphical mode of the range in a logarithmic scale when u don’t have any tools to be able to measure it, just guess it roughly? What is the purpose of report like this : Captain, radar contact bearing 306, long range. Cool, is it closing ? I have no idea captain, press F5 and check yourself! The attack map, this mysterious tool, what is this about? You can’t overlay it with the other map to check your solution. Plotting is delirious work, the first version of SH3 not even had the bearing tools around the cursors. The first attempt to get an idea to where put a contact on the map was a very home made using the compass rose at the bottom right of the geographical map. Length and height of ships are wrong and so on. There are many other things which make you think that more or less everything is about to press F5 and the button “fire” to shoot.


A real sub simulator start with the opposite idea. Plotting, getting information from your instruments and crew to achieve the best solution in order to sink a ship. Because that is the job of the captain to reach the ability to process data and confirm it with his experience. And you start as a noob captain in the sim and you will get better with time. IFYou don’t have that time or you are in hurry to sink something, well press the auto-targeting and contacts on and go and sink.


At this stage SH series is an hybrid between a shooter and a simulator and misses both of them. It is not fast enough as a shooter and has not enough accuracy as a simulator . For this, I don’t even wanna see an expansion not even a new simulator that follow the modern idea of HASTE as a backbone. Let things be what they are, not try to bridge two worlds that have nothing in common.

All that is about the stock games, you guys of SubSim have helped this games to be what it should be.

THANKS to you all

Marko

[janh]

Originally Posted by Pintea

Even if the dev team hadn't been moved (or left Ubi) and they were still working on it, the game code has reached a level of complexity and depth (and bad writing and hacking) that I don't think any dev can fully grasp.

This leads to the almost impossible task of adding new features (or even fixing bugs !) without generating a few other bugs without knowing !
This is one of the reason the game has so many bugs today.

Without a clean start, no qualitative add-on or sequel would be possible in my opinion. But then again, a clean start would require much more time and resources than Ubi would be willing to allocate for such a niche game.
So even if an add-on will be made, expect a hurried up hacked buggy game.

I would suggest to leave such kind of assessments to the people who really know the game engine and the source code... It is pointless to discuss something you don't know, or did you ever see it?

[THE_MASK]

Originally Posted by janh

I would suggest to leave such kind of assessments to the people who really know the game engine and the source code... It is pointless to discuss something you don't know, or did you ever see it?

This person is a dev .

[Ducimus]

Originally Posted by janh

I would suggest to leave such kind of assessments to the people who really know the game engine and the source code... It is pointless to discuss something you don't know, or did you ever see it?

Aside from sober's statement, most anyone in IT that is involved with a product that is continually being developed and refined over the period of years, could tell you nearly the same thing.

Development is done by many people, and people leave for one reason or another. With their departure, someone has to come in behind them at some point and figure out what was done. When it was a year or two after that programmer has left, it becomes a bit harder to figure out, and not every programmer thinks, codes, or comments the same way. The older it is, the more people have worked on it, the more muddled it becomes.

Whats really interesting is when something works, and nobody can figure out why, but they do know is if they change something, it breaks.

Originally Posted by sober

This person is a dev .

Didn't read what was posted did He?

[Capt.Warner]

What a bummer... an expansion would be nice

[Krauter]

This person is a dev .

Love when people come in without reading anything and bash devs or anyone else making informed, constructive or respectful posts.

[janh]

Originally Posted by Krauter

Love when people come in without reading anything and bash devs or anyone else making informed, constructive or respectful posts.

And I surely love you dude... Just not today!

[janh]

Originally Posted by privateer

Didn't read what was posted did He?

Hmmh, can't find the statement where he identifies himself as an Ubi Dev... Weird. Must be a previous post I keep overlooking. Anyway, if he is a SHV dev, then is statement of course is valid as he would know the actual source.

Somehow I was expecting just another "SHV can only be crap"... yeller behind that statement. Sorry guy.

[elanaiba]

Pintea is a dev indeed. He worked on SH5. He's also a doer, more preocuppied with solving things rather than waving his name and dev status around

I think you can find lots of useful information posted by him in the modders section.

[Stiebler]

According to Pintea (acknowledged by Elanaiba as one of the devs for SH5):

Even if the dev team hadn't been moved (or left Ubi) and they were still working on it, the game code has reached a level of complexity and depth (and bad writing and hacking) that I don't think any dev can fully grasp. [...] Without a clean start, no qualitative add-on or sequel would be possible in my opinion.

The only conclusion one can draw from these statements is that there was *never* any serious intention to extend SH5 beyond one type of U-boat and a war ending in 1943. According to Pintea, it would not have been possible.

Stiebler.

[Takeda Shingen]

That's what a lot of us on SubSim have been trying to tell people for a long time; the Devs are good guys. Silent Hunter 5 has problems, but they are still here helping the modders and supplying answers to the community at large despite the fact that they are in no way required to do so. These people are here because they want to be, not because they have to be. We ask that you please consider that before going after them in the future.