A few new ideas

Fidd · 08-28-23, 06:24 AM

35. Effects from depth-charging:

"Camera shake" from depth charges, the nearer the greater. Sounds of loose-objects crashing about afterwards, eg tins falling our of cupboards, glass breaking, involuntary cries from crew. Camera shakes direction being related to where the charge explodes, ie if above and right, the shake is perpendicular, so a diagonal shake if looking forward or aft. If above or below, a vertical one.

Toybasher · 08-28-23, 12:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fidd

35. Effects from depth-charging:

"Camera shake" from depth charges, the nearer the greater. Sounds of loose-objects crashing about afterwards, eg tins falling our of cupboards, glass breaking, involuntary cries from crew. Camera shakes direction being related to where the charge explodes, ie if above and right, the shake is perpendicular, so a diagonal shake if looking forward or aft. If above or below, a vertical one.

I fully agree on this. There IS some camera shake already when depth charged but I feel it should be much more violent. As you said, have some loose physics objects that get knocked around, paintings flying off the wall, etc.

Maybe temporary "stunning" of the player character (can't move, camera sways heavily for a few seconds) to represent them getting knocked nearly off their feet but that could get frustrating to take control away from the player like that + I don't know how realistic it would be.

I imagine at the very least the rocking the sub has when surfaced could be repurposed to have depth charges feel like they're knocking the sub around.

Fidd · 08-29-23, 02:28 AM

36. Variable individual items of uniform

Currently, unless you get to know the same player playing the same role, it's hard to tell players apart visually without mouse-hovering their avatar to get their name.

It would be a cool feature if some alternate apparel existed such as a neckerchief, civilian shirts of different colours, a heavy jumper or differently shaded uniform trousers, glasses, beard-length etc. The ideal would be that each player can set their persistent appearance every game onwards.

An alternative to this would be to increase the variety of appearance via use of some more distinctive clothing, but to tie these set changes automatically by role, rather than by player preference. The latter being easier to code than the former in the paragraph above.

A further development of the clothing alternatives, is the use of wet-weather gear when on the bridge or casing if the wind-speed is above a given level. I suggest that lack of said gear could cause a shiver effect, so that a short period would be okay, but a longer one could make manipulating controls harder over time? To put on, or take-off wet-weather gear might be achieved by opening a locker in one of the two "messes"?

Fidd · 09-01-23, 12:08 PM

37. The need to reform the Radio compartment.

There are several issues/bugs affecting the radio compartment. The first of these is the effect of latency on morse-mutililation. The latter occurs when dots become dashes, or vice versa, or when pauses between letters are shortened or gaps between dots and dashes are lenghthened. This can make reading morse extremely difficult, even for those who know morse well, and should not be occurring over the short distances we transmit over. There is no actual need for morse signals to be sent and received at exactly the same time, a short pause between it being keyed, and it arriving at other boats could be staggered to allow for error-checking, to mean that the same code is sent and recieved.

The second set of problems in the radio-room concerns the note-book. When an encrypted signal is received, it should be automatically written into the "cypher-text" side of the note-book. Entering those code-groups into the Enigma should then result in the clear-text being written into the clear-text side of the note-book, alongside of the cypher-text on the other side. It should be possible then for the radio-operator to edit the clear-text, for example by context inserting numbers instead of letters, and to add spaces to render the cypher-text as clear language, rather than retaining the 4 letter groups. He should then have the ability to "publish clear-text" which would enter the text into the radio log. When sending a signal using "simple-radio", and the encrypted checkbox is ticked, then the signal received by other radio operators should be a cypher-text. They may have had VHF or HF radios for voice communications, but these should confer a greater risk of being DF'd by surface-craft. (DFing of long-wave transmissions, such as those between BDU and U-boats we easy to DF, but hard to DF with any accuracy). If no-encryption is used, then these massages should be available to the escorts when they are eventually playable. IMPLEMENTED - more or less.

The third problem currently, is the inability for players using real morse to communicate (as occurs on Duyfken games) to enter plain-text of morse transmissions into the radio-log. Again, I suggest there be an edit/publish mechanism so that corrections and clarifications can be made, the text adjusted before being sent to the radio-log. IMPLEMENTED or nearly so.

Fidd · 09-03-23, 09:23 AM

38. Ships slowed by damage

If a ship his hit by a torpedo and suffers adequate damage, it should gradually fall behind the convoy, whilst an escort is detached to search the area around for a time, before it heads back into the convoy. After which it'd be vulnerable to fire from a deck-gun. Thus enabling the deck-gun to serve a purpose in game.

Fidd · 09-09-23, 08:49 AM

39. 3rd party"water-spouts from DC attacks". It would be useful - and cool - to be able to observe the spouts of water as escorts prosecute attacks on other boats, such spouts being visible for a fair distance? There should be a marked difference in timing between seeing the water-spout, and hearing the detonation?

Fidd · 09-10-23, 11:42 AM

40. Concealable settings

It would be brilliant, I think, if a lobby host could conceal some settings from players, especially in multi-boat/multi-player games, so that there was more of a recce' phase to the game, especially with a distant convoy. Settings that could be with-held might be:

Asdic permanent on/off
Torpedo failure settings various
Size and composition of convoy
Whether or not convoy "zigs"
friendly-fire
Duration of escort search

Ones that affect personel distributed amongst the boats, such as those able to use complex radio, or use the Enigma, would NOT be concealed, nor would the year, the time of day or weather.

The advantage in this concealment is that Enigma signals could be used to direct uboats to the convoy, or to an intercept point, giving some further information previously concealed from crews, thus conferring some point to decrypting signals. It would also be good if there was a third convoy distance setting possible when making missions, that allowed spawning outside of hydrophone or visual range under any weather conditions, to help give content to navigators, who would take the Enigma clear-text, and then plot an intercept to bring the boat within hydrophone range.... This idea would therefore help give content to two rather under-used positions, namely radioman and navigator.

08-29-23, 02:28 AM	#3
Fidd Captain Join Date: Apr 2005 Location: Blighty! Posts: 542 Downloads: 10 Uploads: 0	36. Variable individual items of uniform Currently, unless you get to know the same player playing the same role, it's hard to tell players apart visually without mouse-hovering their avatar to get their name. It would be a cool feature if some alternate apparel existed such as a neckerchief, civilian shirts of different colours, a heavy jumper or differently shaded uniform trousers, glasses, beard-length etc. The ideal would be that each player can set their persistent appearance every game onwards. An alternative to this would be to increase the variety of appearance via use of some more distinctive clothing, but to tie these set changes automatically by role, rather than by player preference. The latter being easier to code than the former in the paragraph above. A further development of the clothing alternatives, is the use of wet-weather gear when on the bridge or casing if the wind-speed is above a given level. I suggest that lack of said gear could cause a shiver effect, so that a short period would be okay, but a longer one could make manipulating controls harder over time? To put on, or take-off wet-weather gear might be achieved by opening a locker in one of the two "messes"? Last edited by Fidd; 08-29-23 at 11:57 AM. Reason: addition of final para

09-01-23, 12:08 PM	#4
Fidd Captain Join Date: Apr 2005 Location: Blighty! Posts: 542 Downloads: 10 Uploads: 0	37. The need to reform the Radio compartment. There are several issues/bugs affecting the radio compartment. The first of these is the effect of latency on morse-mutililation. The latter occurs when dots become dashes, or vice versa, or when pauses between letters are shortened or gaps between dots and dashes are lenghthened. This can make reading morse extremely difficult, even for those who know morse well, and should not be occurring over the short distances we transmit over. There is no actual need for morse signals to be sent and received at exactly the same time, a short pause between it being keyed, and it arriving at other boats could be staggered to allow for error-checking, to mean that the same code is sent and recieved. The second set of problems in the radio-room concerns the note-book. When an encrypted signal is received, it should be automatically written into the "cypher-text" side of the note-book. Entering those code-groups into the Enigma should then result in the clear-text being written into the clear-text side of the note-book, alongside of the cypher-text on the other side. It should be possible then for the radio-operator to edit the clear-text, for example by context inserting numbers instead of letters, and to add spaces to render the cypher-text as clear language, rather than retaining the 4 letter groups. He should then have the ability to "publish clear-text" which would enter the text into the radio log. When sending a signal using "simple-radio", and the encrypted checkbox is ticked, then the signal received by other radio operators should be a cypher-text. They may have had VHF or HF radios for voice communications, but these should confer a greater risk of being DF'd by surface-craft. (DFing of long-wave transmissions, such as those between BDU and U-boats we easy to DF, but hard to DF with any accuracy). If no-encryption is used, then these massages should be available to the escorts when they are eventually playable. IMPLEMENTED - more or less. The third problem currently, is the inability for players using real morse to communicate (as occurs on Duyfken games) to enter plain-text of morse transmissions into the radio-log. Again, I suggest there be an edit/publish mechanism so that corrections and clarifications can be made, the text adjusted before being sent to the radio-log. IMPLEMENTED or nearly so. Last edited by Fidd; 12-02-23 at 05:08 PM.

09-09-23, 08:49 AM	#6
Fidd Captain Join Date: Apr 2005 Location: Blighty! Posts: 542 Downloads: 10 Uploads: 0	39. 3rd party"water-spouts from DC attacks". It would be useful - and cool - to be able to observe the spouts of water as escorts prosecute attacks on other boats, such spouts being visible for a fair distance? There should be a marked difference in timing between seeing the water-spout, and hearing the detonation? Last edited by Fidd; 09-13-23 at 10:02 PM.

09-10-23, 11:42 AM	#7
Fidd Captain Join Date: Apr 2005 Location: Blighty! Posts: 542 Downloads: 10 Uploads: 0	40. Concealable settings It would be brilliant, I think, if a lobby host could conceal some settings from players, especially in multi-boat/multi-player games, so that there was more of a recce' phase to the game, especially with a distant convoy. Settings that could be with-held might be: Asdic permanent on/off Torpedo failure settings various Size and composition of convoy Whether or not convoy "zigs" friendly-fire Duration of escort search Ones that affect personel distributed amongst the boats, such as those able to use complex radio, or use the Enigma, would NOT be concealed, nor would the year, the time of day or weather. The advantage in this concealment is that Enigma signals could be used to direct uboats to the convoy, or to an intercept point, giving some further information previously concealed from crews, thus conferring some point to decrypting signals. It would also be good if there was a third convoy distance setting possible when making missions, that allowed spawning outside of hydrophone or visual range under any weather conditions, to help give content to navigators, who would take the Enigma clear-text, and then plot an intercept to bring the boat within hydrophone range.... This idea would therefore help give content to two rather under-used positions, namely radioman and navigator. Last edited by Fidd; 09-10-23 at 08:14 PM.

08-28-23, 06:24 AM	#1
Fidd Captain Join Date: Apr 2005 Location: Blighty! Posts: 542 Downloads: 10 Uploads: 0	35. Effects from depth-charging: "Camera shake" from depth charges, the nearer the greater. Sounds of loose-objects crashing about afterwards, eg tins falling our of cupboards, glass breaking, involuntary cries from crew. Camera shakes direction being related to where the charge explodes, ie if above and right, the shake is perpendicular, so a diagonal shake if looking forward or aft. If above or below, a vertical one.

09-03-23, 09:23 AM	#5
Fidd Captain Join Date: Apr 2005 Location: Blighty! Posts: 542 Downloads: 10 Uploads: 0	38. Ships slowed by damage If a ship his hit by a torpedo and suffers adequate damage, it should gradually fall behind the convoy, whilst an escort is detached to search the area around for a time, before it heads back into the convoy. After which it'd be vulnerable to fire from a deck-gun. Thus enabling the deck-gun to serve a purpose in game.