Okay is SH1 still alive? Do you play?

[Canonicus]

Other than "eye candy" and fancier graphics all subsequent Silent Hunter versions are inferior to the original.

Seems they got it right...the first time!

[TorpX]

Yes. I find myself tempted to try to install SHCE on my Vista machine. I am not crazy about sorting through 30 mods to fix all the weak points of SH4. Considering how long ago it was released, SH1 was very good indeed.

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by Canonicus

Other than "eye candy" and fancier graphics all subsequent Silent Hunter versions are inferior to the original.

Seems they got it right...the first time!

Yes, but the first time wasn't Ubi.

[Major Johnson]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

Yes, but the first time wasn't Ubi.

That's right!! It was SSI! And they did SH2 as well. As I recall, they had a bunch of good games. Steel Panthers was another game I played for years.

[FIREWALL]

Could someone please post some screen shots of SH1 ?

My copy imho is too valuable to break the seal and open it.

Thank you in advance.

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by Major Johnson

And they did SH2 as well.

Not exactly. UBI was planning Destroyer Command and worked with SSI to make SH2 compatible. When SSI was too slow for them (I assume they wanted to make a good sim and that was too much for UBI) they bought them out, fired the whole team and made SH2 themselves. The result, SH2, was the worst of all of them, except for the multiplayer part, and even that had to be fixed by an expert who was paid by Subsim.com.

[aanker]

Right here should be an old review with screenshots Firewall:
http://www.subsim.com/silenthunt.html

I remember another one with photos of SH1 on a CRT monitor around here someplace too.

Edit - there is that link at the bottom of the above page:
http://www.subsim.com/ssr/sh_gallery/sh1_pics.html

I'm happy these are preserved here.

Happy Hunting!

Art

[Major Johnson]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

Not exactly. UBI was planning Destroyer Command and worked with SSI to make SH2 compatible. When SSI was too slow for them (I assume they wanted to make a good sim and that was too much for UBI) they bought them out, fired the whole team and made SH2 themselves. The result, SH2, was the worst of all of them, except for the multiplayer part, and even that had to be fixed by an expert who was paid by Subsim.com.

You know, now that I look at my SH2 cd case, it does have both game companies logos on the cover! I never noticed it before. Interesting indeed.

[TorpX]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

The result, SH2, was the worst of all of them, except for the multiplayer part, and even that had to be fixed by an expert who was paid by Subsim.com.

Subsim paid someone to fix a Ubi-game???

Could we take up a collection to fix SH4?
Or would this cost 20 million dollers?

[aanker]

Originally Posted by TorpX

Could we take up a collection to fix SH4?
Or would this cost 20 million dollers?

In this economy I wouldn't think it would take much.

S3D has allowed talented people to do some fantastic things and fix almost everything.

The biggest obstacle remaining is working with the EX .... err .... exe, and getting permission/access for that is probably next to impossible.

I doubt they would sell it.

Happy Hunting!

Art

[dannygjk]

Originally Posted by TorpX

Yes, I used Hawk's Utilities, at least most of them.

I didn't try any plotter tool.
What I was refering to is the Lat/Lon being far off in the PZ's. By that I mean a degree being only 25 or 30 nm instead of the correct 60 or whatever. I made a table with the in-game values so I could calculate interceptions when needed. For some reason every PZ was different (but all were wrong); I could never figure out why. IIRC, the island of Borneo was only about half it's real-life size in the game! I always wanted to change that. Stuff like that just bugs me.

Too bad.

Actually it is ONLY latitude degrees which are equal to 60 Nm. The size of a degree of longitude varies according the latitude at which it is located.

[dannygjk]

I would gladly mod silent hunter 1. All I need is the tools which are used to write/edit the assembly language/machine code. I have a legal copy of SHCE.

I learned assembly language programming back in the early 80's and my bro and I used to mod games all the time. I had bought an app to write and mod assembly/machine code and after 2-3 months of study we started to work on games.

It's a time in my life that I greatly miss altho I did spend too much time in front of a computer. Over the years we wrote some small games for our and our friends amusement. It takes a helluva lot of time tho to write software and sometimes a lot of time even to make small mods. I haven't done much coding for several years but always craved to get back into it. One problem tho is it's so addictive, lol.

The initial stage of studying the piece of software is very time-consuming-can take weeks just to get familiar with it.

Then of course there is the legal issue as to whether it is legal to distribute modded copies, (even for free).

[TorpX]

Actually it is ONLY latitude degrees which are equal to 60 Nm. The size of a degree of longitude varies according the latitude at which it is located.

Yes, I realize that. What I meant is that neither the longitude or latitude are correct. If you still play the game check out the island of Borneo, it's much smaller. All the zones are too small. I guess someone just made a mistake with the numbers.

The initial stage of studying the piece of software is very time-consuming-can take weeks just to get familiar with it.

Oh, I believe you. I tried to mod it years ago. After much effort, I had to throw in the towel. The only thing I was able to do was insert a girl's picture and a map into the Captain's cabin. Very minor eye-candy. I wanted to fix the patrol zones, change the periscope/ TBT marks, reduce the shipping and ultra traffic and a few things like that. As you said, someone with the proper tools and know-how could do this, but my computer skills fall far short. I suspect the people who wrote the code, could have done it in a couple hours, if they had but understood the value of it.

Then of course there is the legal issue as to whether it is legal to distribute modded copies, (even for free).

This is something I will never understand. I mean how software companies can sell something that is in need of, for lack of a better word, "maintainance", wash their hands of it, but prevent anyone else from fixing it. I have to think the legalities of this will change one day.

[Onkel Neal]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

Not exactly. UBI was planning Destroyer Command and worked with SSI to make SH2 compatible. When SSI was too slow for them (I assume they wanted to make a good sim and that was too much for UBI) they bought them out, fired the whole team and made SH2 themselves. The result, SH2, was the worst of all of them, except for the multiplayer part, and even that had to be fixed by an expert who was paid by Subsim.com.

What? Not sure where you got that info, Steve.

SSI was bought out several times during the SH2 dev cycle, Mindscape, Broderbund: The Learning Company, & Mattel Interactive had the helm, before selling the interest to Gores Technology. Ubisoft aquired many of the SSI titles from them. But SH2 and DC were developed and close to release before Ubi was in the picture. Destroyer Command was being developed by Ultimation (another company with a "U"name), and SH2 started out under Aeon, the SH1 dev team. Aeon were not hitting the benchmarks, so they were dismissed and Troy Heere and Ultimation rewrote much of SH2 with their Janus engine. By the time Ubi came into the picture, they did some testing, that's about it. (Page 170 of the 2008 SUBSIM Almanac )

After SH2 and DC came out, you are right, it was determined the original MP software (rTime) was pretty crappy, or badly integrated, so I was able to talk Ultimation and Ubi into turning the source code over to me, and lined up a programmer to convert it to some Microsoft MP code.

Neal