The realities of game developing and publishing | Forums

[ParaB]

I've just obtained a top-secret transcript from UBI-headquarters showing the often difficult relationship between developers and the publisher.

GameDeveloper:"Don't you think we should add a dynamic campaing?"

Publisher:"A what? Shouldn't you be working on the bump-mapping effects of the seagulls? And have you thought about my idea about health-packs and a rocket launcher? Our polls tell us that's what the kids really want."

GameDeveloper:"Errr....still thinking about that one. But you know, the simmers really want a dynamic campaign. And since AOD already did it 10 years ago there really isn't any reason no to."

Publisher:"Ah, screw them! Once they see the bump-mapped seagulls and BIG explosions they will completely forget about those stoopid campaigns. And you WILL include the Peal Harbour attack, won't you? We could boost our sales in the US drastically with such a feature."

GameDeveloper:"A Pearl Harbour attack in a sim featuring GERMAN U-Boats? But what about historical accuracy and the simulation aspect?"

GameDeveloper:"Yeah, what about them? Does Half-Life 2 have a dynamic campaign? Does Doom3 have a dynamic campaign? It's GFX what they want! Those gits spend hundreds of $$ to have the latest, greatest machines, they want them to make pretty pictures! And if they can feel like a hero for half an hour then so be it! Historical accuracy...Pfffft!
And I have a idea how to implement the Pearl Harbour Mission."

GameDev:"But Sir, I really don't think..."

Publisher:"Listen: There's this NAZI U-boat commander, but he isn't really a NAZI U-boat commander, in fact he is a brave US special agent, who decides to rescue his love, a nurse who, not knowing that he's still alive fell in love with the special agent's best friend who is now commanding a destroyer in Pearl Harbour and just as the Japanese...Hey, are you listening to me?"



This is just a humorous attempt to give the devs and UBI a tiny little hint what we simmers really want. I'm very optimistic that the devs will indeed create a great Sim and UBI will do their best to support them.

PS: No, I do NOT have any contacts to either UBI or the dev team.

PPS: No, I don't know if seagulls are included, bump-mapped or not.

[ParaB]

I've just obtained a top-secret transcript from UBI-headquarters showing the often difficult relationship between developers and the publisher.

GameDeveloper:"Don't you think we should add a dynamic campaing?"

Publisher:"A what? Shouldn't you be working on the bump-mapping effects of the seagulls? And have you thought about my idea about health-packs and a rocket launcher? Our polls tell us that's what the kids really want."

GameDeveloper:"Errr....still thinking about that one. But you know, the simmers really want a dynamic campaign. And since AOD already did it 10 years ago there really isn't any reason no to."

Publisher:"Ah, screw them! Once they see the bump-mapped seagulls and BIG explosions they will completely forget about those stoopid campaigns. And you WILL include the Peal Harbour attack, won't you? We could boost our sales in the US drastically with such a feature."

GameDeveloper:"A Pearl Harbour attack in a sim featuring GERMAN U-Boats? But what about historical accuracy and the simulation aspect?"

GameDeveloper:"Yeah, what about them? Does Half-Life 2 have a dynamic campaign? Does Doom3 have a dynamic campaign? It's GFX what they want! Those gits spend hundreds of $$ to have the latest, greatest machines, they want them to make pretty pictures! And if they can feel like a hero for half an hour then so be it! Historical accuracy...Pfffft!
And I have a idea how to implement the Pearl Harbour Mission."

GameDev:"But Sir, I really don't think..."

Publisher:"Listen: There's this NAZI U-boat commander, but he isn't really a NAZI U-boat commander, in fact he is a brave US special agent, who decides to rescue his love, a nurse who, not knowing that he's still alive fell in love with the special agent's best friend who is now commanding a destroyer in Pearl Harbour and just as the Japanese...Hey, are you listening to me?"



This is just a humorous attempt to give the devs and UBI a tiny little hint what we simmers really want. I'm very optimistic that the devs will indeed create a great Sim and UBI will do their best to support them.

PS: No, I do NOT have any contacts to either UBI or the dev team.

PPS: No, I don't know if seagulls are included, bump-mapped or not.

[CB..]

there is nothing worse than a badly bump mapped seagull except perhaps no seagull at all...ahh the tactical uses of knowing when yu are near the shore ..the slow appearance of airbone scavangers squaking melancholic calls across the morning sky...lovely...allso an effect many years old..not requiring the latest nasa gfx technology nor indeed a great deal of thought..dynamic campaign yes please but this is allready done a dusted i believe....lets just see what the mixed scripted and dynamic engine is like...with the mission editor and moddability the dynamic elements may well be flexible enough to be expanded to an extent in excess of AOD..yu never know...the thing doesnt have to be that dynamic..regular shipping routes and so limit the range of the need for a full on dynamic campaign a little..but in the end AOD in SH3 would be a massive hit (at least long term) still im sure it will be interesting what ever it is..

save the seagull thats what i say!!
it aint blowing stuff up but it's sure atmospheric..

[SailorSteve]

Don't give them any ideas!

I gotta go now, gonna play some Tomb Raider.

______________________________
Always keep you clothes and your weapons where you can find them in the dark.

[Redwine]

Hi.........

I think so, that "imaginary" publisher needs to start up to search a new job.........

Customers are so tired of to be defrauded by publishers (not Dev. Teams)in many games, so tired.......

Many ofus are incomming from another great sub sims, ww2 and nukes, and use them from many many years ago.........

We are tired to loss features in subsims, flight sims..........

We are looking for an improve in our hobby, not for a step back.......

Will be a big error for publishers to consider this game will be buyed by arcade or funny gamers, will be used by simmers with years on subsims........ who are looking for a good mission editor, historical accuracy, hardcore use, manual shooting and new features...... with the run of time and years....we want the sims better not baddest.......

It is incredible to have new releases, wich doesnt works fine, do not work in multiplayer, do not have mission editor, have a unfinished list of bugs....... and need so many patches to finally after one or two years works ....bad.

SH2 was released with no Mission Editor, no manual shooting posible without a big patch because the sim takes a nautical mile as 2000m !!

Sub Command works in 2D instead in 3D as released from the box........ yes, without patch it wokrs as an arcade game, in 2D, you launch a torp, it pass 400 meters over a deep sub and destroy it, working in 2D......

Flanker 2.0 has lot of bugs in multiplayer, in single too, ships do not move....are static !

I remember falcon 4.0, after 8 patches it do not works fine..........

Customers are a little bit tired of that.........

I remember lot of "today considered" crazy features....... from very old DOS games.....

SH1 has Mission Editor, AVI videos for ship arriving and sinking.......

Fast Attack, it doesnt work any more in my system, I remember has AVI videos for torpedo reloads and other situations........

In JF, you was able to walk inside the carrier, select you weapons.

In Jet Fighter Full Burn yo was able to walk into your airbase, go to the hanger, select yor loadaout with maintenance personal, go to the bar, and your room, the mission briefing was done with AVI videos with real actors, you watch a pilot team into a room, your comander come in, very inmersive.......

Red Baron has may be the best campaing ever done....... real time war success, in your briefing yo have AVI videos with the news of the war, who was shot down, who was condecored, and videos with your destiny, if you go to the hospital, or to jail to shot dawn a friend, if you was condecored or sepulted........incredible historical accuracy.......

Why this was posible in very old and cheep (20-30 dollars)games in DOS, and is not posible today in a new milleniun in more expensive games ?

Well.......

I have feith in this game......... in few time we can see........

______________________________
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The Ancient History of the Submarine
"Subgenesis"

Manual TDC
"HTDC Tutorial"
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[This message was edited by Redwine on Sat May 01 2004 at 03:11 PM.]

[HeibgesU999]

publisher: maybe the uboat crew could go ashore and play a football game against the Dallas Cowboys?

developer: errrr....

[Egan2.0]

Some days I have faith in it. Some days I don't.

EG: did any one else find it a little bit, erm, odd that they recently had a poll asking what features we would like to see when the game is supposed to have been in development for a good while and is actually supposed to be out this year?

That did not fill me with too much hope.

Other things did though. The crew management side of things sounds cool. the Graphics are obviously nice.

But none of these things matter in the slightest if stuff like the AI and the physics model don't work. And until i see these things for myself, no amount of pretty screen shots of the Bismark are going to convinve me.

[vonbimmell]

I feel the same way you do Egan. Some things sound very good, and other things are very dodgy. The polls did seem to come a bit late in the development process. Most of what they intended to include would have already been in progress. I think the polls were a **** shoot by UBI to see how close they would be to the general consenses of what people wanted, but with no real intention to change anything. Some people really got carried away with what they wanted though. The number one item consistantly asked for was a completely dynamic campaign mode, and I see that we are not getting that. This mixed scripted/dynamic career mode, unless it is something very new and revolutionary has been around for quite some time in various forms in Flight Sims. The bottom line is that it is still scripted with some randon elements. This just does not cut the mustard with me, or a lot of other sub simmers. I also wonder what we are going to see out of the scope when we look at a shoreline, or sneek into a port. Nothing has been said about this, and there have been no screenshots. I really hope the world is not going to be empty like in SHII. This would really kill the imersion. If Microsoft can model the whole world in MSFS2004, hopefully UBI can at least model the ports and coastlines. Will I be able to sneek up a Fjord with 30 meters under my keel reading on my depth soundings and not run aground like in SHII? To UBI's credit, they have pretty well stated that the physics models were going to be realistic, so that will be a plus. The graphics are going to be good, and that is also a plus. Crew management is included, but In my opinion, it is not really needed. The Captain never usally got involved with most of those matters. The Captain just said make it happen, and that was what Petty Officers, and Divisional officers were for. But a lot of people wanted this, so if they want to micromanage, then that is up to them. I hope it can be automated. I hope that UBI will listen to the majority and change the career mode to a fully dynamic mode, otherwise the shelf life of this sim may be very limited, or it may not even be purchased by some.

[CB..]

yes it could well be easily said that SH2 has a scripted campiagn with dynamic elements..(if by dynamic they mean random in this case) as using the mutex facility huge randomisation can be incorporated into the missions...mind yu they didnt really make much use of it....so if they simply mean scripted with random elements then we can safely say SH3 has exactly the same campaign engine as SH2 ....but lets not go there just now..there's allways hope that they have something interesting up their sleeves,,and boy are they determined to keep it up their sleeves ...but i still reckon that if well balanced via the realism options this wont be the downer it threatens to be,,(a disapointment tho) if sh2 had shipped without the targeting red triangle and the over egged map functions then just finding a convoy would have been a huge challenge in itself and even the basic randomisation available in the SH2 campaign engine would have been more than enough to make every mission an unique challenge.... i think in a lot of ways the real killer for the sh2 campaign engine was the fact that finding the shipping was made just too easy...hit time excell and wait for a contact report ...slog on over to the area and wait for the red triangle to appear..yu dont even get the genuine satisfaction of scanning the horizon biting your lip waiting for some slight hint of smoke..they must have been mad to deprive the player of one of the most immersive gameplay elements in the entire game....meaning minimum effort required, minimum satisfaction gained, minimum immersion achieved...maximum focus is placed on the short-comings of the engine..game over..i dont know why they didnt go the whole dang hog and just remove the player form the game altogether and let him just watch a movie instead...theyr's virtually no point in the player being on board the boat at all lol!!!
i reckon the crew management if it's done sensitively and with an eye for making the player feel like he's in a confined space with 70 or so other crew members will be a major enhancment no matter what the state of the campiagn engine..as i reckon for me at least that this is the main reason for having the crew managment features....to allow the player to build a sense of involvment and investment in the idea that he is in a metal tube some where in the atlantic rather than sat at a desk pressing buttons and clicking dails..i can't imagine for second that the entire crew of a u-boat was reduced to the level of robotic automatons by the incessant ego batterings of some demonic commander..which is basically whats simulated right now ..man talk about playing god..it's far too dismissively handled as un realistic to not have to deal with the presense of a large number of individually skilled and idiosyncratic crew members..yu don't get to be a captain of anything unless yu can do this..which is probably why i aint the captain of anything lol perhaps i need reasuring that as player i'm allowed to explore other aspects of the sim ..after all i have a couple of hours to kill cant spend all of it pretending to be uber heroic, it gets monotonous!! micromanagment is okay but i reckon that is only a by-product of the crew managment NOT it's main gameplay function..i dare say it can be turned of or handled automatically..but it's still important that it is there..in this case the total effect of management is greater than the sum of it's parts
and has an effect (perhaps) that subtely but positively changes the way the player tackles the game... just as in AOTD the dynamic campiagn actually imbues the player with the belief in the campaigns integrity and changes the way he approaches the game...its possible to achieve other positive changes in the way a player reacts to the game by really quite subtle and seemingly unrelated elements..for example inclucding elements that carry over from one mission to another in a scripted campaign would succesfully balance out some of the less desirable drawbacks of scripted gameplay..

[This message was edited by CB.. on Sun May 02 2004 at 05:31 PM.]

[Egan2.0]

I was just reading a couple of threads on another forum from Mark K who was one of the developers of SH2.

The subject was about using Hydrophones on the surface and, aside from the fact he was pretty convinced they would work, some of what he had to say was very interesting.

Basically, the descision to allow the player to use the Hydrophones on the syrface came down to the idea that we would all find playing the game in a realistic way to be very boring. Apparently having Surface sonar that, ( in my experience of SH2) could hear shipping up to 70 miles away was just dandy and that none of us would have wanted to play it other wise.

My thoughts on this are simple. Either They want to build a fanbase who will buy each SH game they produce or they want to capture the twitch crowd who will dump the genre at the first sign on a brand new shiny shooter.

Personally i think that there IS a decent crowd of people that would buy it without any handicapped features. They don't have to dumb it down. IL2 Proved that.

If they want a long term, viable investment they have to give us a SIM. if they want short term increased sales, we will get a neutered arcade monstrosity.

Look at what Sonalysts are doing with 'Dangerous Waters.' They are on record as saying that they will first and foremost cater for serious simmers with everything as realistic as they can make it. Now, people here may not care for a Nuclear sub sim but I know even before I buy their new game it will be as good as they can make it and will not cater for those who are not willing to learn how it works outside of a couple of Autocrew features.

I want it done right, other wise i'm going hunting.