Easter Eggs & Dev-Team Humor

[Calbeck]

Originally Posted by Kongo Otto

We can only hope that the U.S. and the Allies will more publicly acknowledge Mexico's assistance during WW II.

Let us also never forget the day L. Ron Hubbard, then commanding a light subchaser based out of Oregon on its maiden voyage (to San Diego, for rebasing), fired on the Mexican island of Matagordo, causing a minor diplomatic brouhaha. Hubbard had floated several targets off the coast and had his crew fire on them for practice, the rounds crossing over sections of unoccupied beach in the process. Technically, Hubbard had fired on the sovereign soil of an American ally.

Hubbard had gotten lost on the way to San Diego and anchored off Matagordo thinking it was a US possession. This incident, combined with a previous screw-up just days before, cost Hubbard his combat command.

Even more amusing was the aforementioned previous incident.

Hubbard's sonarman detected what turned out to be a magnetic shoal. In classic "1941" war-scare fashion, Lt. Cmdr. Hubbard not only expended his supply of depth charges but reloaded twice from local munitions tenders, while also managing to call in several other coast-defense vessels and even a couple of blimps. During the three-day "battle" a small fleet with air support was thus engaged blasting the bejeezus out of absolutely nothing.

To the day he died, Hubbard maintained that he sank at least two Japanese subs during that battle, although his own immediate claims as noted in his captain's log show no clear evidence of such beyond a claimed "oil slick" that no one else in the mini-fleet saw. -:hmm:

[Beery]

Originally Posted by Kongo Otto

We can only hope that the U.S. and the Allies will more publicly acknowledge Mexico's assistance during WW II. The Mexicans who shed their blood in the skies over the Philippines, as well as those who volunteered to fight for freedom under the Stars and Stripes deserve no less.

Yeah. The game's campaign messages contain some very poor taste comments. The one about Mexico is among the worst. There's a similar one about China (which had been fighting the Japanese for years), another about the Aleutians, another about Elba and one about the RAF.

Then there are some plain weird ones: the Solomon islands are routinely misspelled, apparently a developer thinks Caen is Cannes - I never heard of a film festival in Caen. Then there's the 'liberate Florence' one, the 'Rumanian vampirism' one and the 'Go make a screenshot' one - just odd.

[elanaiba]

Originally Posted by Beery

Yeah. The game's campaign messages contain some very poor taste comments. The one about Mexico is among the worst. There's a similar one about China (which had been fighting the Japanese for years), another about the Aleutians, another about Elba and one about the RAF.

Then there are some plain weird ones: the Solomon islands are routinely misspelled, apparently a developer thinks Caen is Cannes - I never heard of a film festival in Caen. Then there's the 'liberate Florence' one, the 'Rumanian vampirism' one and the 'Go make a screenshot' one - just odd.

Beery,

The game's messages are supposed to be internal stuff sent from US Navy higher authorities or Comsubpac to other US Navy units. They shouldn't care to be politically correct and respectfull to anyone - since that wouldn't be period.

Also, while some of the messages are perhaps a little weird, I don't think they are as bad as you make them be. Of course, its hard to look at them objectively.

[Beery]

Originally Posted by elanaiba

The game's messages are supposed to be internal stuff sent from US Navy higher authorities or Comsubpac to other US Navy units. They shouldn't care to be politically correct and respectfull to anyone - since that wouldn't be period...

It's not a question of political correctness. They just don't sound like the sort of messages I've seen from ComSubPac or official Navy communications to subs. They sound like the kinds of messages European computer game developers think Americans would send.

As for them being 'period' the following sound distinctly non-period:

"KANGAROOS BREATHE COLLECTIVE SIGH OF RELIEF"

"GERMAN BEER NOW NON GRATA DURING MARDI GRAS CELEBRATIONS"

"MYSTERIOUS OUTBREAK OF VAMPIRISM NOTED AMONG RUSSIAN GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS"

And what admiral or Navy staff member would ever admit to not knowing where Elba is? I mean these guys are in the military so they have heard of Napoleon, right?

[PolecatEZ]

Wow, lots to go through, its cool to see I have some fans and critics. I'll start with the easy one about Princess Elizabeth and her wartime service. I was asked to do a little humor and write the news items for the game, as well as a lot of other writing tasks in the last month of development (they were pretty short-handed). I just basically pulled up wiki's WW2 timeline and set to work. I made a pass through to grab either headlines relevant to the Pacific theatre, relevant to the war in general, or relevant for some humor. The rest were canned on the first pass (there was like 500 or so news items, reduced to about 200). So...for Liz...if you check out February 25th on the link below. I apologize for the innacuracy there, but I'm only as good as the source. I did this work in less than 2 days so didn't have time to fact check every statement.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ww2_timeline#1942

Based on a wonking 600-pager that was dropped on my lap to research the subject the weekend before, I found that humor was quite often a part of the radio messages, and most of them were far from politically correct. Sports scores were also bigger news than the real news, and subs would surface (sometimes in less than optimal conditions) just to grab the World Series snippets on the waves.

Originally Posted by Beery

Yeah. The game's campaign messages contain some very poor taste comments. The one about Mexico is among the worst. There's a similar one about China (which had been fighting the Japanese for years), another about the Aleutians, another about Elba and one about the RAF.

With Mexico, I had other jokes that were in pretty poor taste, but I changed it at the last second and left it in the air. In hindsight I should have just left it a "serious" line only. In no way did I intend to demean Mexico's contribution to the war effort, just that like some other countries, they took their merry time in choosing sides.

As for the others, you need to look at the historical context. China didn't officially declare war (after a government reshuffle) until late in the game, even after a long-standing invasion. If you read the text on the China message it basically says as much. The RAF had launched several air raids previous to the message which did little damage to Berlin, but they finally got it right one day, hence the comment. The Aleutians invasion was taken seriously, but the Americans decided to just let them freeze up there until they could get to them...there were more important things to fight over at the time.

With Elba, you made the comment in another post about well-educated naval officers and what they would know. In the military I was in, it wasn't those officers that wrote the news or even edited it, it was a desk jockey somewhere (I was one of them). That is the point of view I was taking on these news items. And, in sharp contrast to today's military, there was a lot more "personality" showing through the cracks as evidenced by reading some of the more personal accounts of the war.

Originally Posted by Beery

Then there are some plain weird ones: the Solomon islands are routinely misspelled, apparently a developer thinks Caen is Cannes - I never heard of a film festival in Caen. Then there's the 'liberate Florence' one, the 'Rumanian vampirism' one and the 'Go make a screenshot' one - just odd.

Solomon Islands...sorry, no spell check because they made me use Excel. Caen/Cannes reference was a clear joke, we have Google Earth here, we know things! Florence is like Elba, if you check the news list I was working with, there was a long string of island and city names that were liberated in that time frame, like 30 or 40, I made jokes with what I could, kept some others with big names, and canned the rest. Romanian vampirism was a snark at my Romanian colleagues, with the image in my head from Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 when he rattles of the "Coalition of the Willing" list and the vampire pops out from the grave when they say "Rooooooo-mania!". The "Go take a screenshot" comment...well, we'll just have to release an "Easter Egg Free" version next time for our "Serious Fan Base".

Part of the humor also came from the fact that I had just finished reading a marathon of Slaughterhouse 5, Catch-22, and Lolita as bathroom reading. All of them written at or near WW2 (early 50's I think). I'm so happy they finally got a good English section at the local mall bookstore here in Bucharest.

As far as priority comments, apparently some formatting didn't survive the merge. They had already written an "orders" type file, then I generated a news file (with the humor stuff) and another file with relevant messages for the campaign. All 3 were supposed to be merged but they had some wierd strings attached to the message to denote the "to and froms" and priority and frequency of broadcast, etc. They told me just hand the stuff in and it would be merged together, but I think some reformatting needed done that wasn't done in the end. I'll get Dan or Tudor to take a look-see about what happened, but no promises, and it was probably my fault somehow anyways.

And nobody has seen the ghost ship in the actual campaign?!?! Ya'll cheated with the editor...

Thanks again, you all made my day really!

Will Taylor,
Snarkmaster General
Ubisoft Romania
(Unofficially posting - Comments to not reflect actual attitudes of Ubisoft Corporation, the SH4 dev team, and most Canadian strippers)

[bruschi sauro]

Hi Will, what is the "EASTERN EGG FREE"?:hmm:
IS THE PATCH 1.03?:p :p :p :p

[MaxT.dk]

Originally Posted by PolecatEZ

And nobody has seen the ghost ship in the actual campaign?!?! Ya'll cheated with the editor...

Thanks again, you all made my day really!

Never Maybe I'm using time compress feature too much :p
Thanks for the explanations tho', it's great to read stuff like that (behind the scenes)

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by PolecatEZ

(Unofficially posting - Comments to not reflect actual attitudes of Ubisoft Corporation, the SH4 dev team, and most Canadian strippers)

:rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl:
But you know those Canadian strippers have the most important attitudes of all!

Or did I mean atributes?


It's good to hear from someone who's actually involved, especially talking about what they actually did. Thanks for replying.

And welcome to our nuthouse.

[LukeFF]

Originally Posted by PolecatEZ

With Elba, you made the comment in another post about well-educated naval officers and what they would know. In the military I was in, it wasn't those officers that wrote the news or even edited it, it was a desk jockey somewhere (I was one of them). That is the point of view I was taking on these news items. And, in sharp contrast to today's military, there was a lot more "personality" showing through the cracks as evidenced by reading some of the more personal accounts of the war.

Shoot, when I was in Iraq with the 1st Infantry back in 2004 I'd hear off-color humor (stuff you'd not want broadcasted on CNN ) all the time on the radio, so it's nothing out of the ordinary nor something that's somehow completely died away. It's just part of serving in a war zone and a way to "let off some excess steam." Thus, as a currently serving solider I find the remarks in the game to fit in quite well.

[stuntcow]

Did anyone else knowest that the background pic in the manual is the main image from SH3? So good, they had to reuse it in SH4.

[elite_hunter_sh3]

yea lol in our 45page manual theres a uboat in the background lol:rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

[AJ!]

Did anyone ever find out why there is a russian boomer on the badge and medal in the collecters edition?

[Tigrone]

Originally Posted by AJ!

Did anyone ever find out why there is a russian boomer on the badge and medal in the collecters edition?

The same reason there are Lancasters on maritime patrol, a Type VII in my manual, and fantasy medals from WarCraft--the Ubi guys ain't saying.

[Seeadler]

Originally Posted by AJ!

Did anyone ever find out why there is a russian boomer on the badge and medal in the collecters edition?

take a look on the badge, it is already advertisement for SH42 the nuclear was sim:rotfl:

[donut]

Originally Posted by Seeadler

take a look on the badge, it is already advertisement for SH42 the nuclear was sim:rotfl:

Guess: they had to get rid of them some place.
Now for your next:rotfl: On Feb.13 1942 @ 06:55 sighted Yamato in convoy with,
Fuso,& Ise Battleships. Cruisers,Mya,Mogami,& Naka. 2 sm Tankers,& 3 DD escorts
Course 180 @ 1 degree 15'N,108 degree 13'E,speed 11Ks range, 4600 yds,(SAVED)
Forgot to send contact report,@ PD,running slow,heading 090
Fired#1,#2 ,fast,10 ft.depth,missed. Got off#3,#4,same,both impact. Headed to bottom to reload,no thermal, it's only 120 ft.,turning 1,000 rpm.Battle sta. heading 135,#1,#2,loaded to PD,2 DDs on our ass.Order 090,took 1 DD out with fwd.tube,the other w/aft tube useing spread angle to compensate for target turning.Both shots-shallow/fast,under 600 yds. Ordered course 135 ,flank, 1 more fish,& Fuso down,put 2 aft fish into Naka,shes down. Ordered course 180 helm not responding? Man we have no RUDDER the SB fell off, ! Now this is Scripted? If so it must be Dev.humor. Which means the Joker,will have to script port,&stb.screw
stearing. The only other option is Abandon ship,or drive/beach,& walk/capture !
Yamato[img]no rudder[img]
no return tocourse[img]attack[img]is this a JOKE?