Sea Power: Naval Combat in the Missile Age

[The_Admiral]

I watched the video and the game seems like it will be really good. One guy initially developing this while dropping his other project and then hiring a few modders to help? Good on them if they pull it off. But with the Microprose name at stake I kind of thought the team would be professional veterans. I don't think I was really aware that this would simply be a literal cold waters engine adaption.
Command Modern Operations was the competition I think they were trying to think of.

Allow me as usual to be a bad comrade & step in so as to add my own pinch of salt - for this whole situation calls for some extra details that might not have been so apparent in the interview, all for the best reasons.

Said guy - if we're talking about Nils, the main designer & producer - is just being humble. If we're speaking of Martin, the main dev, he certainly finished his previous game, so there's little to criticize here either. You're possibly mis-interpreting & now mis-representing the contents of the interview, certainly not on purpose, but the results are the same either way - that's how rumors get started, and it's not just unfair, it's also not true. :hide:

When it comes to Nils, the man had more than a decade of experience in the sector before starting his very own game, including with AAA titles such as Battlefield 3 & Little Big Planet 2. For six years when he was at KF, he enabled Atlantic Fleet & was the guy who really brought you Cold Waters to begin with when he convinced his partner to go for it - and the main reason why Killerfish did split was precisely because his business partner wouldn't go for another Cold War-centric affair. Both him & the team members he recruited had extensive experience in other games and/or in their own industry, and some of the "modders" are very much real-life *bona fide* professional developers that find here a way to have their hobby meet their professional background, for a change. There's little reason to criticize the way the team came together to begin with - each and every one of them is as much a professional in his field as one could expect from a talented, experienced group, and it is too bad that some might come to other conclusions simply due to their tendency to be very humble when they speak about themselves.  :dreamer:

As for CMO, it clearly isn't the competition - Dangerous Waters isn't either. Sea Power is a modernized, optimized, strong reimagination of the core concepts & values of Fleet Command. It ain't trying to compete with the resurrected Harpoon nor with a niche that is soon to be filled by Modern Naval Warfare. These are very different products whose only common point is to take place at sea in the age of missiles. As for Sea Power being a "literal cold waters engine adaptation", it simply isn't. Sea Power code was written from the ground up, one of the simple reasons for it being that Cold Waters is the work and property of Killerfish. At the end of the day, I'd even say that War on the Sea shares more code in common with Cold Waters than Sea Power will ever do. That it is based on Unity too is true, but so are many games out there - and that it shares some roots with the way Cold Waters looks (which might explain the confusion, perhaps?) is no surprise either, considering Nils & Przemek were its two artists and elected to go for the same mood.   *

(*=no offense intended, looking for a fitting emoticon for artists  ^-^)

As for Microprose, again, seems to me that imagination easily runs wild regarding what it is, what it stands for, and what it should be, independently from what has been explained quite a few times, including here by yours truly. It's a publisher label as far as Sea Power, us, or some others (Regiment, Highfleet...) go. We signed with them. It's not like they bought us, or have now the legitimacy nor the obligation to swap team members that they wouldn't deem fit to deliver. We are solely responsible for the way our game is being developed and the way the team is managed, and remain firmly so. We go to them for extra help when needed,  but there is no hierarchy nor dependency at work here. Note that not all the games from the legacy label were developed in-house either: the Gollop brothers for instance sort of experienced the same business relationship (except, with many more deadlines, production requirements & glory involved in their case, naturally >:D). We all signed on because we believe our respective works to be worthy of the name we'll be piggy backing on, to begin with. If some disagree, even before the result is there, well, so be it, to each his own. But at least let's assess this based on facts rather than stories & wrong reasons, shall we

If I may  ;)

[MengJiao]

I watched the video and the game seems like it will be really good. One guy initially developing this while dropping his other project and then hiring a few modders to help? Good on them if they pull it off. But with the Microprose name at stake I kind of thought the team would be professional veterans. I don't think I was really aware that this would simply be a literal cold waters engine adaption.
Command Modern Operations was the competition I think they were trying to think of.

Allow me as usual to be a bad comrade & step in so as to add my own pinch of salt - for this whole situation calls for some extra details that might not have been so apparent in the interview, all for the best reasons.

Said guy - if we're talking about Nils, the main designer & producer - is just being humble. If we're speaking of Martin, the main dev, he certainly finished his previous game, so there's little to criticize here either. You're possibly mis-interpreting & now mis-representing the contents of the interview, certainly not on purpose, but the results are the same either way - that's how rumors get started, and it's not just unfair, it's also not true. :hide:

When it comes to Nils, the man had more than a decade of experience in the sector before starting his very own game, including with AAA titles such as Battlefield 3 & Little Big Planet 2. For six years when he was at KF, he enabled Atlantic Fleet & was the guy who really brought you Cold Waters to begin with when he convinced his partner to go for it - and the main reason why Killerfish did split was precisely because his business partner wouldn't go for another Cold War-centric affair. Both him & the team members he recruited had extensive experience in other games and/or in their own industry, and some of the "modders" are very much real-life *bona fide* professional developers that find here a way to have their hobby meet their professional background, for a change. There's little reason to criticize the way the team came together to begin with - each and every one of them is as much a professional in his field as one could expect from a talented, experienced group, and it is too bad that some might come to other conclusions simply due to their tendency to be very humble when they speak about themselves.  :dreamer:

As for CMO, it clearly isn't the competition - Dangerous Waters isn't either. Sea Power is a modernized, optimized, strong reimagination of the core concepts & values of Fleet Command. It ain't trying to compete with the resurrected Harpoon nor with a niche that is soon to be filled by Modern Naval Warfare. These are very different products whose only common point is to take place at sea in the age of missiles. As for Sea Power being a "literal cold waters engine adaptation", it simply isn't. Sea Power code was written from the ground up, one of the simple reasons for it being that Cold Waters is the work and property of Killerfish. At the end of the day, I'd even say that War on the Sea shares more code in common with Cold Waters than Sea Power will ever do. That it is based on Unity too is true, but so are many games out there - and that it shares some roots with the way Cold Waters looks (which might explain the confusion, perhaps?) is no surprise either, considering Nils & Przemek were its two artists and elected to go for the same mood.   *

(*=no offense intended, looking for a fitting emoticon for artists  ^-^)

As for Microprose, again, seems to me that imagination easily runs wild regarding what it is, what it stands for, and what it should be, independently from what has been explained quite a few times, including here by yours truly. It's a publisher label as far as Sea Power, us, or some others (Regiment, Highfleet...) go. We signed with them. It's not like they bought us, or have now the legitimacy nor the obligation to swap team members that they wouldn't deem fit to deliver. We are solely responsible for the way our game is being developed and the way the team is managed, and remain firmly so. We go to them for extra help when needed,  but there is no hierarchy nor dependency at work here. Note that not all the games from the legacy label were developed in-house either: the Gollop brothers for instance sort of experienced the same business relationship (except, with many more deadlines, production requirements & glory involved in their case, naturally >:D). We all signed on because we believe our respective works to be worthy of the name we'll be piggy backing on, to begin with. If some disagree, even before the result is there, well, so be it, to each his own. But at least let's assess this based on facts rather than stories & wrong reasons, shall we

If I may  ;)

  Well, perhaps ironically, it looks like the sea water in Sea Power looks better than the sea water in Cold Waters.  maybe there's a new level of temperature dependency?

[Destraex]

I appreciate you taking the time to post Admiral. My post certainly was of course not meant to mislead or offend anybody.

Thanks for clearing up the sentence that had a ? after it. So their are two very experienced devs (actually 3 I think) and some modders who are also experienced professionals in the field. These hires are great finds.

Microprose is hands off you say, which is great news. I am always constantly surprised that such complex games have such small teams and remember the old school microprose games and just how many names were in the credits for those.  It's amazing how technology these days does allow small teams to develop AAA looking complex niche games that do not take 10yrs to develop. Times have changed.

As for Sea Power being an entirely new game with it's own coding from the ground up. That point is especially well taken.

For me Command Modern Operations is the competition, it's the best and that is my opinion, it's just missing the graphics. At that point in the video I think it was just the interviewer trying to claim that seapower was the best naval warfare game period ,as the devs were the best at what they did. The devs were very humble and would not allow him to claim that before the game releases. I respect it when people are humble and I did really like the way the devs did not throw themselves at us with claims of how good they are.

I am going to give my covid brain a rest.   O0

[Skoop]

Command isn't really a game though, it's a simulation....So maybe Sea power will be the best video game for a more casual audience.

[Destraex]

Command isn't really a game though, it's a simulation....So maybe Sea power will be the best video game for a more casual audience.

Everything is subjective I guess. For me they are all "wargames" and the top ones do the best job of simulating warfare while still being fun. Seapower let's you watch in 3D which iirc the military version of Command does as well and is also multiplayer??

[Jarhead0331]

Command isn't really a game though, it's a simulation....So maybe Sea power will be the best video game for a more casual audience.

Everything is subjective I guess. For me they are all "wargames" and the top ones do the best job of simulating warfare while still being fun. Seapower let's you watch in 3D which iirc the military version of Command does as well and is also multiplayer??

Neither version of CMO lets you watch in 3D natively, but both versions integrate with TacView, which is a separate program. This shows the action in 3D, but it's rudimentary and nothing like Sea Power.

[Destraex]

Command isn't really a game though, it's a simulation....So maybe Sea power will be the best video game for a more casual audience.

Everything is subjective I guess. For me they are all "wargames" and the top ones do the best job of simulating warfare while still being fun. Seapower let's you watch in 3D which iirc the military version of Command does as well and is also multiplayer??

Neither version of CMO lets you watch in 3D natively, but both versions integrate with TacView, which is a separate program. This shows the action in 3D, but it's rudimentary and nothing like Sea Power.

That's what I must be thinking of then. THanks.