sonarman Posted October 6, 2009 Share Posted October 6, 2009 I have been following this game for a long time and posting about it over on subsim.com and on he sadly defunct Akella forum for the game. My suggestions to Battlefront/Akella on the game would be... Try to bring back as many of the simulation elements as possible to the game especially the boat's physical response to the water. Re-introduce real world geography and ports instead of the generic approach. Have the "South Gambit" addon for sale within a few weeks of the game's release/include it with the game Introduce a dynamic campaign engine (long the staple of the Silent Hunter series) or alternatively create a scenario builder for the game asap. Drop Starforce in favour of any other protection system, it has become a pariah in the naval sim community since it's inclusion in Silent Hunter III including it in this release would be a very bad thing for sales of the game. Make the game as moddable as possible, open the formats of the 3d models. Modding teams such as those at Subsim.com have added many excellent things to the "Silent Hunter" series and doubtless extended the shelf life and interest in those games which have now as a series sold over 1.5 million copies. Announce and develop a Pacific theatre add-on ASAP In the future re-use the engine for a game along the lines of the classic Microprose "Task Force 1942" This is even today sighted by many as the best naval fleet simulation title and they are crying out for a remake with today's graphics. I think that PT-boats went a little "off mission" in it's long development but has great potential especially now Akella's naval simulation expertise is partnered with Battlefront's great customer service and publishing ethos. Be sure to check out the PT-Boats forum at Subsim.com where there are many comments/previews/reviews of this long awaited title Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
daisy Posted October 6, 2009 Share Posted October 6, 2009 Having played Silent Hunter III for a long time and therefore having been exposed to the dynamic campaign i must agree that this title should have something similar. If there are only canned missions then the game which has been eagerly awaited by so many people will not achieve the sales that the developers were hoping for. Unless of course if extra content is released within a short period afterwards as add-ons. Which might not be too well received either imo. I believe there has to be some scope for the community to contribute (mods etc) and grow the game so to speak. Lets hope that at least some our wishes are realised. If not, will i buy it ? - I dont know. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Some-Guy Posted October 6, 2009 Share Posted October 6, 2009 I have the Akella/1C Russian Demo (with menus in English) and I agree with Sonarman 100%. A dynamic campaign engine, ala SH III/IV, and a mission builder is what the game really needs (among a few other things) IMHO. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sonarman Posted October 10, 2009 Author Share Posted October 10, 2009 A further and important suggestion would be to fix/explain the goals better in mission 4. Both the German players at Marinesims.de and the guys over at at Subsim.com who have been playing the imported Australian version have been having problems with this particular mission. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sonarman Posted October 11, 2009 Author Share Posted October 11, 2009 Note these obsevations are made on the recently released Australian edition of teh game and in no way reflect the quality of the forthcoming Battlefront release which hopefully will have all of these issues attended to. Localisation & naval terminology On playing the Australian release for a few days I'd suggest Battlefront be more careful in their localisation than the Australian publishers were, frequently the mission descriptions are badly translated and confusing. The in game text still says things like the "destroyer is sinked" rather than "sunk", depth charges are listed in the game tooltips as "deep bombs", the narrator refers to putting your ships into "line formation" while the buttons tooltips are labelled "frontal" , "wake" and "all-round". On the key command screen ships are referred to as "actors". Audio crew speech files It would also be nice to have the "static" audio files translated into English this was done only for the main audio narration and key mission messages in the Australian release and its a bit weird to be on a British boat whilst your fellow crew members babbling away in Russian. Test more thoroughly on DX9 systems It would seem a few users over at Subsim.com (including me) with older DX9 cards have been having some problems running the game specifically if they raise or change the graphics settings from the popup menu just after launch. The option for dynamic shadows in the popup seems to be reversed ie setting them "off" in the popup menu turns them on in the game and vice versa. Bug in tactical map There seems to be a bug in the tactical map which occasionaly prevents the user from moving the red waypoints they have assigned. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Butch_N Posted October 13, 2009 Share Posted October 13, 2009 Hi all I have been interested in this game for a long time now. As it nears US release, I have been watching it closer. I haven't seen any meantion of support for TH2Go, SoftTH or Eyefinity. I would like to request support for Triple screen gaming. Preper aspect and resolutions, if possible. If the game already supports the correct resolutions for this, please disregard this post. Thank you Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joe Shaw Posted October 13, 2009 Share Posted October 13, 2009 And TrackIR support too ... that would be nice. Joe Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nokturnal Posted October 13, 2009 Share Posted October 13, 2009 Hi all I have been interested in this game for a long time now. As it nears US release, I have been watching it closer. I haven't seen any meantion of support for TH2Go, SoftTH or Eyefinity. I would like to request support for Triple screen gaming. Preper aspect and resolutions, if possible. If the game already supports the correct resolutions for this, please disregard this post. Thank you I'd have to disagree with implementing this pre-release. (Unless of course it's a relatively simple project, in which case, go for it ). But if it'd be time consuming then please leave this feature for a patch later on down the track. I would say there aren't very many people with a set-up as intense as yours Butch - Of that (already small) percentage, i would wager an even smaller % would be interested in this game. So i don't think it would benefit them to put too much time into adding things such as Triple screen gaming when the majority of their users wouldn't have any use for such a feature. Considering they have many bugs to fix and more pressing issues to deal with i would rather they ignore pointless features such as this until the game is atleast playable. Perhaps it'd be a nice addition to the expansion, but currently it's not even been released by BF So let them fix the game before they make it look "pretty". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moon Posted October 13, 2009 Share Posted October 13, 2009 Hi all I have been interested in this game for a long time now. As it nears US release, I have been watching it closer. I haven't seen any meantion of support for TH2Go, SoftTH or Eyefinity. I would like to request support for Triple screen gaming. Preper aspect and resolutions, if possible. If the game already supports the correct resolutions for this, please disregard this post. Thank you We are a partner with TripleHead2Go (CMSF is TH2Go compatible) so chances are that we may be able to add TH2Go compatibility. If not on release, then in a patch. Martin Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Butch_N Posted October 13, 2009 Share Posted October 13, 2009 Hi I must disagree, Nokturnal. To you it is a pointless feature, to me (and others that have tri screens) it is a must or I (we) can't play. As to how hard it is, I don't know. Probably not that hard as most any newer games do support it. Even many older games support it too, such as Test Drive Unlimited, a game that came out like 3 years ago, or so. LOL, there are even silly games such as Aquadelic GT and Serious Sam II that have support for it. I do agree most people don't use three screens, but the popularity is certainly growing, just check out WSGF to see all the buzz. And now with ATI offering multi screen gaming directly from the gfx card, well I feel certain many more will be joining the club. This was not a request for something "pretty" to be added. It is a request to add a feature that will allow us that have tri screen setups to play the game. Otherwise, we are pretty much left on the dock. Most of us with it that want to buy the game will not buy it if we can't use it. To us this is not a 'want' it is a 'need'. It should be done correctly too, no Vert Negative and should support Bezel Management. And I want TrackIR support too. That I assume is certainly already in it though, I would think. This request is a 'want', as I could play the game without it (not idealy, but could play all the same). TH2Go support is a 'need' as I can't play without it. Big difference. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Butch_N Posted October 13, 2009 Share Posted October 13, 2009 Thanks Moon. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Narses Posted October 13, 2009 Share Posted October 13, 2009 Ah yes, "Task Force 42." Absolutely the best. It took on those great naval battles around Guadalcanal where both sides had a certain equality. Wonderful !!!! I also very much like the Type IX U-boat addon tp SH4. Very nice indeed. I even still play the old SSG "Carriers at War" and the old " Fighting Steel." FS leaves lots to be desired as it is so old but it included the Ger Navy as well and the editor was very nice. CW let you play all those great carrier battles in the Pacific and is quite realistic. Where else can you find a Pacific WW2 carrier game (not a flight sim)? I would certainly like to see: cartrier battles and surface battles during 42 done to 2009 graphics standards. I'll get PT since it will have the S-boote as well but it better have an editor that permits the plyr to quickly develop his/her own scenarios !! A quick battle generator would be OK also. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Narses Posted October 13, 2009 Share Posted October 13, 2009 Tried the video and screenshots. Nice. Glad to see the Med and the Black Sea. Interesting. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Broadsword Posted October 13, 2009 Share Posted October 13, 2009 Will the game have the North Sea theatre? There were lots of wild night actions off the Dutch coast between British and German small boats. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sonarman Posted October 14, 2009 Author Share Posted October 14, 2009 @Broadsword - re geographical locations The game as release in Australia consists of 6 episodes 1 Naval Academy: 3 missions playable as Royal Navy 2 Exercises at Weser: 5 missions playable as German or Royal Navy 3 The English Channel:5 missions playable as German vs Royal Navy 4 Cold Waters (Baltic Sea) 5 missions playable as USSR 5 Land In sight 5 missions playable as Germany or USSR 6.Bonus Episode consisting of 4 missions Note that although the some of the episodes have geographical titles there is little or no actual coastline in the game (as far as I have seen so far and I'm on mission 3 of Episode 3) most missions consist only of open sea or open sea with a couple of nameless small islands. The "South Gambit" screens and video suggest we will we will see some actual coastline incorporated in the addon when it appears, hopefully Battlefront will be publishing that too? @Narses - re mission editor As it stands the game has no editor at present, hopefully Akella will put one out at some point but the mission scripts are in a very open and easy to edit format so the talented modders over at the likes of Subsim.com or marinesims.de will no doubt put together a nice editor at some point. You can put together multiplayer matches against bots but there is no access to the higher tactical functions in this mode it is more of a "deathmatch" style approach. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MeatEtr Posted October 15, 2009 Share Posted October 15, 2009 Based on some the gameplay videos I've seen, it does look kinda arcadey. Am certainly looking forward to the demo for final judgment. With the success and popularity of the Silent Hunter series, there's definitely potential with PT boats. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sonarman Posted October 16, 2009 Author Share Posted October 16, 2009 It's not really comparable to SH in terms of simulation due to the shortness of the scenarios and the fact you re controlling multiple units including larger ships like destroyers and cruisers etc in third person. If I were to describe it based on previous games I would say it feels like a cross between the point and click tactical level play of Janes Fleet Command and the more sim-lite experience in Enigma Rising Tide. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sonarman Posted October 23, 2009 Author Share Posted October 23, 2009 Another request would be to make the rather arcadey looking on screen radar/ message panel optional, preferably in the options screen with an ingame shifted keystroke to toggle its visibility. It's not actually needed as the the user can still get most of its functionality on the tac-map screen and it does rather take away from the realistic atmosphere. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Destraex Posted October 24, 2009 Share Posted October 24, 2009 hmmmm no coastline = unfinished when it comes to PT boat missions. I probably assumed this game was on the same level as sh3-4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sonarman Posted October 24, 2009 Author Share Posted October 24, 2009 I have seem some very nice coastline now in a couple of episode 4 missions in the Barents Sea. I assumed that the devs had perhaps stripped out the coastline to improve framerates on lower end PCs as many of the pre-release screenshots did feature coastline, however those missions actually run quite quickly even on my old rig. Perhaps due to the scale of the scenario/engagements they simply did not consider it that important to include a lot of coastline. The game is not really like the SH series, it feels more like a fusion between Fleet Command, Enigma Rising Tide & Fighting Steel. Not a bad thing though. The screenshots of the South Gambit addon seem to feature more coastline so it could be that the devs have realised that we would like more land. It does not look like Ubisoft will be giving us a surface sim anytime soon they have just recently stated that "Our focus is to create the perfect German submarine experience, with the highest detail current technology allows in real time. Silent Hunter is not about surface ships, is not about strategic decisions" so this is probably our best bet in terms of a surface game at the moment and with good sales and its open modding structure this sim has plenty of potential for expansion and future development. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Beastttt Posted October 24, 2009 Share Posted October 24, 2009 NWS has done wonders with Fighting Steel go here for their updates http://forums.navalwarfare.org/ the old " Fighting Steel." FS leaves lots to be desired as it is so old but it included the Ger Navy as well and the editor was very nice. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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