Dug out my old copy of the original Silent Hunter, having the urge for some Pacific sub patrols.
Struggled to figure out why the damn in-game sound wasn't working in DOSbox. Even though I recall having it work fine back around '07 or so, after some wrangling.
Evidently my fancy Silent Hunter CD-ROM, complete with Win95 installer, was still version 1.0, even though it was a copy from a year after the game's release. :-\ The sounds only work after some old-school patching via DOSbox and some light INI text modification. Hadn't realized I needed patches for this antique.
Posted the details on how to do it, for those with this version of the Silent Hunter v1.0 CD-ROM over at Subsim, in case some of you feel the urge to revisit this oldie: Subsim SH1 thread link (http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?p=2382524&posted=1#post2382524) Some already have v1.3 with the "Commander's Edition" it seems.
Now to taste the fruits of fictory!
interesting sub forum. I don't have SH1, but was good looking at someone elses sync problems :)
Sweet baby peas, Nefaro. SH3 and 4 are like $5 on Steam. Upgrade man!
SH1's graphics are actually pretty good for it's time.
Quote from: Toonces on February 19, 2016, 07:30:45 AM
Sweet baby peas, Nefaro. SH3 and 4 are like $5 on Steam. Upgrade man!
Nef already owns them, he's our Site Mod Expert on the SH series! O0
Quote from: Toonces on February 19, 2016, 07:30:45 AM
Sweet baby peas, Nefaro. SH3 and 4 are like $5 on Steam. Upgrade man!
I have all the
Silent Hunter series.
But there is something romantic about the first one. Aside from being one of the best-looking (and last) DOS games ever created, it still has that perfect mix of campaign and sim parts. Gives me the same kind of nostalgia I had playing the old Silent Service as a kid, but without burning my retinas through with the hyper-pixelated graphics looking like indistinct blobs.
When I play SH 3, 4, and 5, I always do manual torpedo solution. Spend all huge amounts of transit time on the map screen, with time compression jammed to "OMFGEXPLODING", and generally spending extra time wandering around. I've played the newer ones quite a bit.
Also.. bugs. Bugs everywhere. SH3 & SH5 especially. I stopped playing SH3 years ago due to a couple recurring bugs which finally made me rage quit. Even when you modded up the game, they were still there and I always seemed to trigger them on every patrol. The "unending superstorm" patrol problem, for example, wasn't fixed until one of the later patches... in SH4. :buck2:
That brings us to SH3-5 requiring some
serious Mod Soup. Not only to fix some bugs (never all) but to make the game more realistic and/or challenging. SH4 is obviously the most complete & well-done of the series (unless you're one of the Axis Fanboys who absolutely refuse to play anything but a U-boat ::) ) but even that one still needs lots of minor modification to improve it's gameplay and make the enemy DDs more challenging in general.
SH5, aside from it's problematic Ubisoft login bullshit, was left with some serious bugs that require obscure little mods to fix. It looks beautiful but was never finished. I blame that completely on Ubi's buggy and extremely annoying DRM system it was released with. I wasn't the only one who refused to purchase it until they removed the Always Online requirement, and even then that crap still annoys me. Fans of the series voted by not purchasing due to that, and support was quickly dropped. I think most of us have been hoping that someone other than Ubi would pick up where Ubi deliberately failed.
Fortunately the Trigger Maru mod for SH4 combined most of the essential smaller ones for SH4 into one mega-mod. But I still have to go in and make my own changes on a few things, to my own taste. I regularly become burned out on the later SH series, just from having to mod & test the damn things so much, before even starting to play in earnest. :knuppel2:
It's nice to just load up an old-school style sub sim, with old school campaign, and jam. It's challenging & works properly right out of the box.. no work required to fix it up manually. :) I don't feel the need to do manual solutions since the proper in-game tools aren't available.
Interesting perspective. I'm actually pretty n00b at Silent Hunter-type sims so this is one case where ignorance really is bliss. I find SH3 and 4 fine right out of the box. :P
It's funny you post this thread now, though. I've been thinking of rebooting SH4 and giving it a go again. I really didn't spend enough time with it.
Quote from: Toonces on February 19, 2016, 12:56:52 PM
It's funny you post this thread now, though. I've been thinking of rebooting SH4 and giving it a go again. I really didn't spend enough time with it.
I'll load SH4 again sometime, at this rate. When I get an urge to play a specific genre, it sticks for a bit.
Just wasn't ready to spend a lot of time with the Mod Soup yet. Even though I recall saving my own modified version of the TM mod on an external drive. Hopefully it was the final version or I'll have to go through and tweak the stuff again, for the 12th time.
Plus after picking up ye olde Silent Service 2 on the Steam sale, for some Nostalgia Lite, it just made me want to play what was essentially the penultimate of it's type. The original SH. 8)
SH 1 was a wonderful game and a breath of fresh air compared to the other subsims that were out there at the time.
I still remember the time that I was at periscope depth and raised and look out of my periscope at the exact instant a plane dropped a bomb on me. I actually saw the bomb in the split second before it hit. I was laughing so hard I didn't mind losing.
My own personal bugbear has always been that I want to be able to control each engine and set of screws separately.
I don't want turning to be severly degraded when the rudder is knocked out. I want it to be impossible, and I want to have to turn by running the two engines in opposite directions.
Well, this isn't about Silent Hunter 1, but it is about SH3/4 and I didn't want to start a new thread.
So I'm firing up SH3 for the first time in forever. With both 3 and 4 at about the 2 hour mark of game time I run into the same problem: transiting out from base to the patrol area is a damn pain in the ass and not fun at all. For example, in my current just started campaign, I'm playing 1942 out of Bergen, Norway and I'm transiting to a spot in the mid-North Atlantic. I was hoping to slip around Scapa Flow, through the GIUK gap and into the Atlantic, but there are patrol planes just clobbering me. So I guess I'm going to have to go around Iceland and into the Denmark Strait. The thing is, I guess it's summer and the sun isn't fully setting so I can't transit on the surface at night. And I don't have a snorkel so I can't transit submerged.
I'm in this vicious loop where I can only surface and make way for a few minutes at a time before I have to crash dive, wait an hour time-compressed, surface and repeat. It's infuriating. I want to get on with a patrol, but I'm spending all of my time dodging ASW air patrols just getting to the good stuff. This happens in SH4 too, and it's why I always quit at about 2 hours into the game.
Am I missing something? Is there some way around this, am I just not playing right, or is this all part of the realism and fun? 'Cause bruddah, it ain't fun.
Also, is there anywhere to get Silent Hunter 1 Commander's Edition? I see a few abandonware sites with SH1, but I was looking to get a legit copy if possible.
Are you playing SH3/4 with mods?
Quote from: Toonces on April 23, 2020, 12:13:05 AM
Also, is there anywhere to get Silent Hunter 1 Commander's Edition? I see a few abandonware sites with SH1, but I was looking to get a legit copy if possible.
You can find some on Amazon but a new one is selling for $89 or more.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B0002SKC4O/ref=dp_olp_afts?ie=UTF8&condition=all&qid=1587656865&sr=8-7
https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B00005YX8H/ref=dp_olp_afts?ie=UTF8&condition=all&qid=1587656887&sr=8-8
https://www.amazon.com/Silent-Hunter-PC/dp/B00005M077
https://www.amazon.de/Silent-Hunter-Commanders-Edition-Superpreiswert/dp/3896271385
Both are currently unmodded.
Quote from: Toonces on April 23, 2020, 11:11:10 AM
Both are currently unmodded.
Have you tried editing the Airstrike.cfg file? I think you can alter the chance of airstrikes with this.
Nefaro - I see that you've some experience with the Trigger Maru mod for SH4 and I wondered if you've tried "Fall of the Rising Sun - UE" (https://www.subsim.com/radioroom/downloads.php?do=file&id=5572). It's another mega mod in the same vein as Trigger Maru. If you have had the opportunity to play it, I wonder which you prefer?
^ I'd like to hear about that, too.
Jarhead, thanks for the heads up. I haven't tried that but I'll take a look. I was mostly wondering if I'm doing something wrong. Honestly I just wish there was a button to start the patrol on station. The transit just plain sucks and isn't fun.
Ok, so JH, that was a useful suggestion.
I did find the parameters in the .cfg file and I see what can be edited. Perhaps of more value was seeing what parameters influence the air strikes, eg. base experience, range, times detected, etc.
So...I suppose that I'm playing the game too complacently for a 1942 campaign and need to alter my navigation appropriately. I was experimenting with just course changes during air attacks with some success, but then eventually (after 4 hours of "real" time :pullhair: ) I got caught by a well-placed, insta-kill depth charge from a PBY. Sigh. I restarted a 1940 campaign out of France and it was totally different. Of course my sub had not nearly enough torps, but at least I completed a patrol in about 2 hours.
I'm not going to mod it out just yet. I need to change my approach to the game first. Maybe Bergen isn't the best base from which to start a mid-Atlantic patrol, you know?
I should have taken the time to search out an appropriate SH3/4 thread but it just didn't pop. Regardless:
1. I find it weird that GOG only has SH2 but not SH1.
2. Am I crazy, or is playing these WW2 sub sims more fun as the Germans than the Americans? I dunno, maybe it's just me. But I find in both Wings Over Flanders Fields (WW1 flight sim) and in pre-1945 sub sims, I prefer playing the Germans, even if, I guess, they're the "bad guys." I just find their crafts, and something about the utilitarian nature of their vehicles just appealing. I absolutely LOVE WW1 German biplanes compared to anyone else's. And while I don't know much about the WW2 subs, I enjoy the hunting and killing aspect of the U-boats compared to the Pacific U.S. campaign.
I've tried repeatedly to get into SH4, but I keep coming back to the German side as where this conflict thrives as a game.
You can find copies of SH1 CE on eBay. They vary in price and completeness (box, inserts, etc) but I imagine most of the documentation is available online somewhere. If you've purchased a used but original disk then there is no shame in downloading a pdf of the manual.
Quote from: Toonces on April 23, 2020, 09:15:35 PM
I should have taken the time to search out an appropriate SH3/4 thread but it just didn't pop. Regardless:
1. I find it weird that GOG only has SH2 but not SH1.
2. Am I crazy, or is playing these WW2 sub sims more fun as the Germans than the Americans? I dunno, maybe it's just me. But I find in both Wings Over Flanders Fields (WW1 flight sim) and in pre-1945 sub sims, I prefer playing the Germans, even if, I guess, they're the "bad guys." I just find their crafts, and something about the utilitarian nature of their vehicles just appealing. I absolutely LOVE WW1 German biplanes compared to anyone else's. And while I don't know much about the WW2 subs, I enjoy the hunting and killing aspect of the U-boats compared to the Pacific U.S. campaign.
I've tried repeatedly to get into SH4, but I keep coming back to the German side as where this conflict thrives as a game.
IMHO, SH3 is more interesting than SH4 because the Allies are a tougher opponent. The IJN wasn't that good at ASW. Plus, the frustration with the USN torpedoes until 1943 is almost unbearable. Also, The Atlantic war has almost epic fictional-book quality to the overall narrative: a relatively quiet early phase (until May 1940), followed by the "Happy Times" (until Feb 1941), Followed by a period of rough parity until December 1941. A second "Happy Time" commenced in December 1941, lasting until June 1942, succeeded by another period of rough parity until February 1943, with a climax in the Spring of 1943, followed by a descent into complete defeat. The epic quality of the history makes the SH3 game more interesting as a campaign game.
Quote from: Millipede on April 23, 2020, 12:33:15 PM
Nefaro - I see that you've some experience with the Trigger Maru mod for SH4 and I wondered if you've tried "Fall of the Rising Sun - UE" (https://www.subsim.com/radioroom/downloads.php?do=file&id=5572). It's another mega mod in the same vein as Trigger Maru. If you have had the opportunity to play it, I wonder which you prefer?
Thanks for the recommendation. Will try it when I next load up SH4.
Recently loaded up SH5 with the The Wolves Of Steel megamod after picking up Uboat on Steam. Been a few years since I did some sub simming. It's good to see people are still making them, even if they're in long Early Access states.
Quote from: Nefaro on April 25, 2020, 02:38:55 PM
Recently loaded up SH5 with the The Wolves Of Steel megamod after picking up Uboat on Steam.
I think it is hilarious when that happens. Buy a new game and what do we do? Ignore it, install an old game and play that instead. lol
Quote from: Toonces on April 23, 2020, 09:15:35 PM
I should have taken the time to search out an appropriate SH3/4 thread but it just didn't pop. Regardless:
1. I find it weird that GOG only has SH2 but not SH1.
The only complaint I'd really have about SH1:CE right now is the low resolution. I tend to play it on my smaller-res laptop screen so it doesn't have to be in a tiny window or too stretched & looking worse for it.
2. Am I crazy, or is playing these WW2 sub sims more fun as the Germans than the Americans? I dunno, maybe it's just me. But I find in both Wings Over Flanders Fields (WW1 flight sim) and in pre-1945 sub sims, I prefer playing the Germans, even if, I guess, they're the "bad guys." I just find their crafts, and something about the utilitarian nature of their vehicles just appealing. I absolutely LOVE WW1 German biplanes compared to anyone else's. And while I don't know much about the WW2 subs, I enjoy the hunting and killing aspect of the U-boats compared to the Pacific U.S. campaign.
I've tried repeatedly to get into SH4, but I keep coming back to the German side as where this conflict thrives as a game.
SH2 was the worst of the series. What a mess! The campaigns also sucked.
As for Uboats vs Fleet Boats, I enjoy both. Although SH4 (US fleet boats) had some issues that needed to be modded regarding Japanese destroyer ability. They were greatly varied, and often pretty crappy, so I always modded that stuff if whatever megamod I was using didn't do so enough. On the other hand, the stock (and even mod) chances of encountering air patrols was jacked up so much I would be constantly running into enemy air patrols, mulitple times a day, even early on in the war.
There are obviously differences in the flavors. Running German U-boats, notably the Type VIIs which is the majority, had a much larger focus on deep open water and big convoy attacks. Whereas the US boats in the Pacific meant you were often dodging islands and fighting for your life in shallow water on long patrols. I enjoy them both. Variety and all that.
Quote from: Jarhead0331 on April 25, 2020, 02:45:04 PM
Quote from: Nefaro on April 25, 2020, 02:38:55 PM
Recently loaded up SH5 with the The Wolves Of Steel megamod after picking up Uboat on Steam.
I think it is hilarious when that happens. Buy a new game and what do we do? Ignore it, install an old game and play that instead. lol
I always use the 'Early Access' excuse. ;D Uboat does look interesting, and a different take on it, so I'm looking forward to more stuff in the future.
Uboat development has trawled along pretty well; slow but steady. Still a fair way to go for a proper campaign, but it's very playable.