From now on I will be going for weekly updates! Either here or on the FB page.
07/15/2023:
-SMS Lutzow and Derfflinger were damage-tested ingame, using a player U-Boat as the attacking vessel. Compartments/hit zones were corrected from the USS North Carolina "parent unit"; now these German battlecruisers catch fire properly, list, and sink like they should.
-I had UK destroyers depth charge U-31; based on the results I will be increasing the DC lethal radius and/or hit points. In my opinion the standard DC's are not dangerous enough; several exploded quite close to us and inflicted minor damage which IMO is not enough of a challenge.
-Two major refit jobs are very close to completion in time for our big Summer battlecruiser update! SMS Seydlitz's hull received corrections and will be ready for in-game testing probably Sunday or Monday after I return from work. HMS Lion/Princess Royal Class and HMS Queen Mary received fine details that improve the model dramatically over the old variant.
-On Wednesday, the German battleships SMS Konig and SMS Helgoland and cruiser SMS Emden were added ingame and tested successfully! They were generously provided by jhapprich, who unfortunately has not been around recently....he modeled these ships so well. This, of course, saves me a lot of time.
-TonnageKing has kindly volunteered to model ships for the Austro-Hungarian Navy! Thanks to him we will have at least one navy modeled in the initial release other than the Royal Navy and Kaiserliche Marine. His first vessel will be the Viribus Unitis Class battleship. You may have seen the infamous movie of the Szent Istvan rolling over in 1918, that was a sister ship - it was one of the first disasters at sea ever to be filmed!
-I am making a big advance in ship part construction that will save time - to make a long story short, I'm working hard on high detailed parts that can be manipulated in wings3d more easily. A lot of time spend modeling was wasted, in the past, manipulating tiny parts to create quality looking ships - this will be a thing of the past! which means a much faster release date.
-One very exciting change is coming - improvements to interiors. I am collecting photos of WWI U-Boat interior compartments wherever I can; unfortunately these are rare but I did come across some excellent material. To save time a lot of material will be reused - for example there will be no more than two torpedo rooms for all classes, one will represent subs with twin bow tubes, the other will be for four torpedo tube boats like U-87 Class and U-139 Class.
-Intelligence radio messages are being generated!
As stated before, the Wireless news message project was finished recently, and added over ONE THOUSAND unique World War I news messages between June 1914 and December 1918 for Silent Hunter IV - these intelligence messages are a supplement. They will notify you of certain ship movements in the campaign layers, naval hazards, Q-Ship sightings, and news about Allied or German officers - who has been promoted, decorated, KIA, captured, etc. They will be monthly or bimonthly messages - less frequent than the news reports.
Please note this is NOT mission creep; these messages are text-based modifications that can be done while I am on the train, flying on vacation, on lunch break at work, or visiting relatives. Basically situations where I cannot access my main modding computer. So this is a great use of time that does not detract from the modeling/interface work. Hang in there and thanks for your patience, this long ride is a marathon not a sprint but we are getting ever closer. I hope the new weekly update commitment keeps everyone more informed. Much more news soon, and there will probably be more posts between now and next week!!