Originally Posted by iambecomelife
Just a little update.....While experimenting with Silent Hunter 3, I solved one of the major bugs keeping me from using it for WOTK:
I have finally managed to get destructible land buildings into SH3. I am sort of at a crossroads now, trying to decide if I should still proceed with WOTK as a SH4 focused simulator, or if I should focus on getting a SH3 version out first.
Silent Hunter 4, as good as it is, has a variety of weaknesses as a platform:
-Extremely wonky rendering of the environment, which takes a lot of time to tinker with - hence, longer release date
-No full submarine interior (longer release date)
-No ObjectRemains controller (seems minor, but a good modder can do HUGE things with this controller)
-Broken awards system (awards the same medals over and over again without workarounds)
-No volumetric fog
-Almost no geographic features in the European area of the map (again, longer release date)
-Incorrect damage rendering on most player created units
Silent Hunter 3, on the other hand, has all of the above. The main weaknesses of SH3 are crew graphics, simplified water with no transparency, and the awkward crew management system. However, consider the following:
-SH5 effects (smoke, fire, explosions, etc) can be imported into SH3
-SH4 crew bodies can be imported into SH3 (with some animation limits)
-SH3, unlike SH4, easily allows you to portray damaged objects, Q-Ships, wrecked weapons, human reaction to attack, injured people, etc (because of the objectremains controller)
-SH3 now has AI torpedoes
-SH3 now has a functional widescreen interface, for modern monitors
-SH3 has a more or less properly working awards system
-SH3 has a huge user-created base of content useful for a WWI simulator
-SH3 still looks nice for its age, and does not have weird process-filtering etc that needs to be managed to get the right environment - plus, it has working volumetric fog, unlike SH4
-SH3 is less taxing on computer systems
-Water transparency doesn't matter much in the Atlantic theatre (in SH4, you can see way too much underwater looking from overhead - in real life, the Atlantic Ocean has less overhead transparency due to plankton & other factors)
-SH3 can allow me to model the WWI submarines' interiors, including working engine rooms, provided I get permission from Flakmonkey
-SH3 means less time modeling weapons and flotilla assignments (many WWI flotillas used the same bases as WWII - hence less meddling with the cfg files!)
-As mentioned earlier, I can now have shore/troop bombardment missions in SH3
-I will continue work on the SH4 version of WOTK, but be advised that the SH3 version I had planned is hereby taken off hiatus, and will be worked on too. I would like to hear input, positive, or negative, as long as you keep it polite. Thanks!
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