Videos (development)

[iPadCary]

I, for one, hope for the option to do both.
That way, I can navigate freely about the North Atlantic.
There're some landmarks that I know the coördinates of that I wanna check out
just to see if they're there in order to gauge just how "accurate" this sim is.

[v-i-c-]

Originally Posted by Sung

Good work VIC.
Can you say something about the gameplay it self?

I understand that many players wish that level of detail. But i didn't understand how it is important for playing? Did the contacts not plotted in the map?
Must the player do the navigation by himself and is it than possible to loose the orientation to get lost on sea?

Because this is the real precision of the compass and of the course you could manually set in real life. Why should I limit that to 1 degree? To repeat the mistakes of other sims?

Originally Posted by Sung

I really miss something like a game concept. How does the game work?

That's really funny. Because this game play was already invented more than 70 years ago.

OK lol, basically you are in command of a German U-Boat and your task is to do what a German U-Boat did in WWII. Dying while trying to sink as much enemy ships as possible. The game world is a huge ocean called atlantic where you are on patrol. You will receive orders from your high command called BdU, the BdU will try to lead you and other AI submarines to your prey. The enemy command will try to hack your communications and you never know if they currently can do that. Technology advances over time and sometimes your overall chances are better sometimes dramatically worse. As said your job is the skipper, you will have to do what the skipper did, you will have the tools and possibilities of the skipper. For extra realism you can take over tasks that were not the skippers task, but this is not important at all as it does not change the basic game play.

There is not much you could basically change in this kind of "game play" except adding more realism to the AI, the enemies and your own AI high command and to the ships, aircraft and weapons. As usual with this kind of simulation you need some sort of time compression. Everything else is cosmetics.

The sim will have some dynamics based on the impact of the players action, currently I favor a pool of ships based on historical production rate of the different ship types for each side - sink one and it's gone, shot down an aircraft and it's gone till it's reproduced. Anyway the AI of the high commands uses a pool of ships, the usage (and offscreen battles) of it is calculated in the background at a fixed interval and this is the very basic stage of the simulation's AI and it's one of the parts that will ensure that no career is like the other.

Originally Posted by iPadCary

There're some landmarks that I know the coördinates of that I wanna check out
just to see if they're there in order to gauge just how "accurate" this sim is.

I fear you won't see your grand mums house. But accuracy is given (world wide for coastline areas) by a combination of slightly reduced SRTM data and other data sets. My computer was kind of blocked the whole April 2011 while processing the areas and combining this data into my own format to suite the game's necessary requirements while keeping memory usage of the data blocks low for mobile devices. But I would not recommend to load the game via carrier

Enough, I'll have to continue working…

[Sung]

Funny VIC.
But you said that is the Midget Sub first?
So what?

A little tiny submarine. Slow and equiped with only two torpedoes.
As far can it be operate? 100 SM?
As i know the Seehund was only in the Channel.
Most get lost. Only a few was sinking a ship. So what is there about the gameplay?

I didn't understand why you taunt me?

[Sung]

Ich schreibe mal auf Deutsch Mark, weil ich mich vielleicht im Englischen nicht so ausdrücken kann das Du es verstehst.

Ich beziehe mich doch nur auf dein Seehund Game, weil ich denke das das andere Spiel noch sehr viel länger auf sich warten läßt.

Du gibst Dir unheimlich Mühe und steckst wahnsinnig viel Energie in Details. Das ist toll. Doch ist mir der Zweck im Moment noch unklar, weil Du ja im April das Seehund Game releasen möchtest. Hier frage ich mich was das für ein Spiel werden soll.

Den Seehund zu simulieren und zu spielen stelle ich mir jetzt nicht unbedingt super aufregend vor. Kleiner Fahrbereich, sehr langsam, geringe Einsatz tiefe, zwei mal Torpedos abfeuern die für ein größeres Schiff kaum ausreichen.

Also musst du doch irgendwie das Konzept so ausgearbeitet haben das der Spieler nicht vor Frust aufgibt?

Sorry wenn ich da vielleicht ein wenig Dumm in deinen Augen frage, aber Du möchtest doch mit dem Seehund Simulator die Entwicklung von WOTA finanzieren. Und der Seehund ist doch schon von sich aus sehr speziell wie willst Du da eine große Usergruppe ansprechen?

Gruß
Chris

Moderator (yeah! my first one): Please write in English only

[v-i-c-]

<Sorry for the weird language>

Der Seehund, hatte auch enorme Vorteile, WOBOs konnten ihm kaum was ausmachen, der wurde einfach nur zur Seite gedrückt. Die Reichweite des Seehund war insbesondere in der Version mit Satteltanks deutlich größer. Die Erfolgsrate wurde auch höher mit der Zeit. Die Mission vom 1.1.1945 ist eben sehr bekannt, da gingen die meisten ohne Feindeinwirkung durchs Wetter verloren und die wurden dummerweise massiv rausgeschickt an dem Tag. Das Teil war deutlich besser als sein Ruf.

Das Spiel ist eben nur eine kleine Simulation. Ein Anfang um schon mal etwas in die Hand zu geben, und das wird auch seit mehr als einem Jahr kommuniziert. Entwickelt wird aber doch an beiden Varianten von WOTA gleichzeitig, die Seehund-Fassung benötigt nur weniger als die volle Fassung und kann deswegen deutlich schneller fertiggestellt werden.

</Sorry for the weird language>

Quick translation:

The Seehund had some advantages, it was pretty resistant to depth charges, they often just moved the boat away. The boats with saddle tanks had a notable higher range. The rate of success raised over time. The sortie of 1/1/45 is well known, in this mission most of the Seehunds were lost due to bad weather without any enemy contact, unfortunately this was a massive raid. The Seehund was much better than its reputation.

The Seehund simulation is a smaller game just made to bring something into the hands of the players more quickly. But both version are under development at the same time but the Seehund sim needs less than the main title hence it can be finished much faster.

[Sung]

Danke für die Antwort.
Du hälst Dich trotzdem bedeckt um über das Spiel selbst was zu sagen.
Ich akzeptier das.

Gutes gelingen.

[iPadCary]

1] WAR SYSTEMS
What, precisely, are the defensive/offensive systems of a Seehund Type XXVIIb u-boot, hmm?

2] GRAPHICS
Will they use quasi-realtime radiosity with enlightened geometrics to approximate subsurface scattering
on seperable deferred shading while generating ambient occlusion, or not?

Vielen dank!

[v-i-c-]

Originally Posted by iPadCary

1] WAR SYSTEMS
What, precisely, are the defensive/offensive systems of a Seehund Type XXVIIb u-boot, hmm?

Two torpedoes G7e (no TDC)
A fixed (but 360° turnable) SRC/15 Periscope (1.3x) or later SRC/16 Periscope (1.25x, tiltable -15°, +20°)
Hydrophone (4 crystal receivers in front direction, one on each side)
Max dive depth 30m (70m)
Time to dive (at no speed) 10 seconds
Vary late boats had a radio

Originally Posted by iPadCary

2] GRAPHICS
Will they use quasi-realtime radiosity with enlightened geometrics to approximate subsurface scattering
on seperable deferred shading while generating ambient occlusion, or not?

Vielen dank!

I won't publicly discuss any technical details of what's going on under the hood of WOTA because that's irrelevant to the end user. I consider this as company confidential.

[v-i-c-]

something different: work on the soundtrack for WOTA has started

[Sung]

Wow VIC cool!
I know thats your profession! Very nice.

For me it is to modern, but everyone had another taste.

[Julhelm]

I like it. Electronic soundtracks are much more interesting than the standard hyper-serious Hollywood soundtrack.

[v-i-c-]

This was my profession. I switched to the movie business 11 years ago, and since some years I work almost full-time on WOTA, except when jobs come in that I just can't refuse. The movie business is rotten to the core.

Actually I'm not doing it on my own, the score is produced with a friend who was #1 in the german charts this year (can't list his name in credits due to the usual stupid performance rights organization problems (GEMA), I've canceled my contracts with GEMA so I am free now).

[v-i-c-]

WOTA: Wolves of the Atlantic - Arcade Missions (Main Menu) <-- NAME CHANGED TO "WOTA: U96"




"WOTA: Wolves of the Atlantic - Arcade Missions" …Winter 2014 for iOS <-- NAME CHANGED TO "WOTA: U96"

This video just shows the start menu of the first title of the WOTA submarine simulation series: "WOTA: Wolves of the Atlantic - Arcade Missions". (Graphics quality of iPod touch 5 gen., iPhone 4S, iPad2)… Well, actually I think it also shows some nice mobile 3D Graphics and I really didn't thought I could even add this PostFX… but it works :-)

Does "Arcade Missions" mean "arcade mode"? No! <-- but people don't like the word arcade ;-) so I had to change it

It's a realistic U-Boat simulation for iPad, iPhone and iPod touch. But instead of freely navigating during the missions of a campaign the games offers a fast arcade style campaign mode to go from battle to battle without the need to use a map and with no land at all in V1.0 - hence the name "Arcade Missions". Also it does not offer "super extra realism" like the later titles will do.
Some more details after Christmas…

Release date: this winter

Please note: The Seehund sub sim will be delayed because of this title - I've changed target of development to "Arcade Missions" already in october.

[v-i-c-]

The name of "WOTA: Arcade Missions" was changed to "WOTA: U 96".
I urgently had to create some screenshots for someone today. So I thought I could share them. Nothing special, a lot of work in progress and a lot of tiny errors in these pictures. You can also see the unfinished U 96 which has missing parts, simple textures and still the wrong seats on the wintergarten.

Slideshow:

[Aktungbby]

^^^