1. #1

    Alas Babylon

    There is nothing so sad as a once vibrant and healthy community dead and rotting. I even mourn for the swashbuckling days of Krazyfrenchman's blackmail Ubi days.
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  2. #2
    Originally Posted by RockinRobbins Go to original post
    There is nothing so sad as a once vibrant and healthy community dead and rotting. I even mourn for the swashbuckling days of Krazyfrenchman's blackmail Ubi days.
    Greetings, RR. Nice to see you around these parts again.
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  3. #3
    Thank you Tambor. Great to see you too! Anybody still around from the old days?
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  4. #4
    Yooperbacker's Avatar Moderator
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    I am still here. I got in just as the old days were winding down.

    Good to see you R R.
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  5. #5
    I've restarted playing the game. It's amazing how it stands the test of time, even though it's full of inaccuracies the whole is better than the parts. I've loaded up SH4/GFO/RSRD and remade my O'Kane Sonar Only Video (had to remove a 40 year-old Pink Floyd song) and I'm about to make a new video on how to handle planes without breaking a sweat. (Crap! I've forgotten that one of the most famous names in the history of submarining is not allowed at Ubi Forums! Applying cheater fix....) I've been really surprised how much fun GFO is and am really enjoying a new career with it

    I see something changed and broke my signature. I'll get to work on that and see what happened.
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  6. #6
    Want to renew interest?

    Someone came up with an arcade mod for SH4. Would have to dig to find it. Since you can find the game for about $15 if you look, buy a copy. Then give it to some teenager you know and install the arcade mod.

    The majority of adults that play the more hardcore sims usually started at a younger age playing arcade versions.

    Since SH4 is on steam, it would be great if it could be added to the Nexus mod manager and the download files made available there. ( I play Skyrim, and the NMM is a great tool. In some ways better than the JSGME)

    I thinks it's also time for someone to update some of the mods with fixes rolled in. TMO is an example. There's a myriad of small fixes to 2.5 out there that are hard to find.

    Having all the stock game fixes combined into one file would also help.

    RFB 2 also needs patching. I was actually sad about the direction some of the changes took after I handed it over. It seems that the person who I handed it over to got a bit heavy handed and the development team I built broke up. Too bad, as things were heading in a great direction up to that point. Had it continued, RFB would have been on a level with GWX for SH3.

    Anyway, having a list of mods with all patches included that are given in a list ranked by realism would be great.

    Here's another thought. Something which I could do. Create a downloadable iso with an interface with the various mods and tools. Include things like
    Radio Station Manager
    MultiSH4
    Get permission to include the 4GB patch utility
    Tutorials and tutorial videos.

    Would be easy to buy someone a copy of the game, burn a copy of the Mod CD and let them have fun.

    One thing that would help (that we have no control over) is if Hollyweird would do a movie combining some of the most harrowing patrol reports and having them happen under the command of one skipper and one sub over 2-3 different patrols.

    But hollyweird seems to enjoy glorifying U-boats rather than making a movie honoring what our guys did in the Pacific. With today's trends maybe they are too worried about offending Japan.

    It's amazing that there has never been a big budget movie about the sub campaign in the Pacific. Considering that it's the only SUCCESSFUL sub campaign in history, that's an omission I'll never understand.
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  7. #7
    Originally Posted by swdw973 Go to original post
    RFB 2 also needs patching. I was actually sad about the direction some of the changes took after I handed it over. It seems that the person who I handed it over to got a bit heavy handed and the development team I built broke up. Too bad, as things were heading in a great direction up to that point. Had it continued, RFB would have been on a level with GWX for SH3..
    I was sad when you left because I knew what would happen. Modding without vision is a sad process. Most often vision is a one-person process and the teamwork consists of realizing the vision.
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  8. #8
    Looking around this old forum its gives the appearance of the war being over and i am an old veteran attending a reunion and seeing most of the my fellow survivors of the war have all past away.
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  9. #9
    Originally Posted by wedgie2007 Go to original post
    Looking around this old forum its gives the appearance of the war being over and i am an old veteran attending a reunion and seeing most of the my fellow survivors of the war have all past away.
    Well, considering that SH4 is 9 years old, I suppose we're lucky that the SH4 Forums are still around.
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  10. #10
    Originally Posted by tambor198 Go to original post
    Well, considering that SH4 is 9 years old, I suppose we're lucky that the SH4 Forums are still around.
    It is really a shame because SH4 really does stand the test of time as an excellent game, even today. The problem is that Ubi, being a popcorn game company where kids play for a couple of months, get bored and buy another game, don't understand the simulation market. Once the income stream runs out after six months or a year, Ubi is moving on. That won't work for simulations.

    And it might not work for a company that wants to sell to millions instead of thousands of customers. Interest in simulation is longer term but with a much smaller market. Ubi probably just made a decision that simulation wasn't a good fit for their company goals and culture.

    But imagine if a company realized that submarine simulation can't be a popcorn, disposable game. Imagine if they realized that a simulation demands a stable group of developers, who evolve a game, where lessons are not forgotten, where each improvement is not accompanied by losing three features of previous versions. If they wanted to keep the present economic strategy of selling the game, they could release a new version, wholly based on existing framework, every year, or every two years. But, based on a stable group of developers, well documented code and evolutionary releases, none of the great features of Silent Hunter I would be lost when Silent Hunter 2 comes out. The problems would be solved and the new features added.

    But that's not the way popcorn games are produced. At the release date of the game, all the developers are essentially unemployed. They might be assigned to another game which may not be similar in any way to what they worked on last, because in the popcorn model, programmers are commodities with no special qualities. They might work on SH3 this week and some FPS next. They're programmers and their job is merely to do what they are told.

    Between SH3 and SH4 much was lost because of this foolishness. Critical members of the SH3 team were not available for SH4. Modules weren't documented properly, so even though the devs tried to reuse SH3 modules, they didn't understand how they worked internally. they were simply black boxes, unmodifiable, misunderstood and not able to be properly integrated into the SH4 framework. The result was predicatble. Triple that effect to explain the fate of SH5. Software should not DEVOLVE between releases, but the popcorn, disposable game economic model guarantees this will happen, with each version selling fewer copies until what should be a valuable franchise collapses.

    Make no mistake, the SH franchise collapsed because of poor management, not because the public lost its appetite for submarine simulation and moved on to Borderlands 2. But even in popcorn games, Unreal Tournament is a franchise, treated as an evolutionary game, gaining quality with each release and also gaining numbers of users. The way is clear. Ubi just refuses to make the committment. Maybe they don't have to and their product is not great games but dollar bills.

    Doesn't matter. Although it hasn't happened yet, the market fills all gaps in the market. The submarine simulation we crave will be built. It probably won't be build by Ubi.
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