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[Svampapa]

Yeah, HQ does have a nack for jerking you around the world. East coast USA is usually followed by west coast USA. Starting in the black sea? Congrats, you target is in the baltic.

[Aseaheru]

No, start in black sea first target is in the arctic circle.

[stabbymcstabstab]

I can beat you I was told to go to from China all the way to the Med.

[Aseaheru]

I was told to go from japan to NYC once, I think.
Or was it to Murmansk?

[LoSboccacc]

What are the conditions for a target lock and firing torpedoes?

Is there any other way than surfacing to periscope/radar depth?

[Svampapa]

Edit: Strike that. Apparantly I was wrong. Could have sworn I've spotted ships with sonar though. Weird.

You can spot, ID and target ships with the sonar. The range is quite limited though, less than one square of the weapon systems view display. It's supposed to get improved in the next version though.

You also need to be slow and silent (turbines off, electric motor on) and on the same side of the thermic layering thingy (the blue line on your depth-gauge in the maneuver panel). Diving below this layer is also a great way to escape if an enemy destroyer has caught you unaware.

There is also apparently a new Java based editor to be grabbed hereabouts.

[TheGeoff]

Version 0.23 has been released!
Full changelog and download link in the Subsim thread:
http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=202304

Highlights:
- Active pause mode (default key: L-Alt)
- Ability to rescue unconscious crew - they will be dragged to safety and given first aid (default key: H)
- Clickable control panels
- More complex, detailed and useful sonar
- Added Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Chile, Taiwan and the Netherlands (all playable)
- Added 11 new cities and hundreds more ship and crew names
- Heaps of other improvements, and a huge amount of bug fixes

Enjoy!

[Robsoie]

Just plain amazing, thank you for this release.

I have been reading the full changelog
http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showpost.php?p=2207912&postcount=179

The mouse control for all the actual panels to move gauges, levers and all ... that nearly brought a little tear of joy on my old face

And the sonar ! !! wow !!!
So much greatness, the best coldwar subsim since Red Storm Rising

[Robsoie]

During a patrol, at some point i move the weapon systems so i can navigate in a narrow channel near Jakarta easier than with the map that max zoom in is not precise enough.

Then with some F to fast forward a bit and changing direction , i suddenly lose the mouse control for the upper screen (the sub in which i could move the cursor to select a station/system/crew member)  , i can from there only use the arrow keys.

When in a system/panel i can still use the mouse for the gauge/levers, but not anymore in the upper sub screen.

I don't know if it's a bug or if i somehow hit a key shortcut that disabled mouse control for the sub upper screen

EDIT : i somehow missed that part :

Mouse control improved: Almost every control panel is now clickable. Clicking on gauges will set your target speed/depth/secondary coolant pump pressure/whatever. Also, if using mouse control, you can choose to instead control the cursor with the keyboard by pressing \ (you will still be able to use the clickable control panels).

That's probably what happened, as with a non-qwerty keyboard the  \  key is not used by pressing the same key as in qwerty and so i pressed it without knowing
Fortunately, nothing bad as it's easy to change the keybinding

[hemmingjay]

I have been waiting for some free time to try this game for weeks and today is the day! One quick question, is crew psychology/personality planned?

[TheGeoff]

It will be eventually, but it's tricky to find a way to implement - for example if you give the crewmen on the sub the ability to refuse orders it could make the game really frustrating. I'm thinking of adding a bunch of stats for morale, loyalty, bravery, etc which would open up a bunch of possibilities - maybe crewmen with a high morale would work more quickly and brave crewmen would be more likely to volunteer for a dangerous task. It will definitely take some experimenting.

One of the things I love about Dwarf Fortress is the personalities of the dwarves and the crazy tantrum spirals. I would definitely like to add some of that personality to the crew in Sub Commander but obviously I don't plan to take things quite that far, mostly because it would make the game insanely hard.

Ensign Ivanov is having a tantrum -> Ensign Ivanov pulls the control rods out of the reactor -> Game over.

Edit: Robsoie (or anyone else) do you have a recommendation for what key I should use for mouse control toggle? I don't want half the world to have to rebind their keys. Something which is convenient but out of the way on all the main keyboard types would be idea.

[Robsoie]

Personnally i rebound it to numpad 5 so i can't possibly hit it by accident, i know numpad keys are the same regardless of special keyboard layout, but the problem that comes with this is that some keyboard to do not have a numpad (some notebooks and etc..) so it wouldn't probably be the best "generic" choice.

Maybe a CTRL+\  instead of a simple \ would prevent any possible accidental use, without forcing the user to rebind the key ?
But then, on some OS CTRL+\ could lead into something unexpected, i'm not sure

Maybe a F-something key like F12 as for now they do not seem used (out of F1 i mean), but maybe you have some plans for later with them

edit :
completed a relatively calm 2 missions patrol that took a a bit more than a month at sea

Code: [Select]

Mission log of Soviet submarine Kola.
Day 1, 05:50: Patrol started in Leningrad, USSR.
Day 1, 19:35: Turbine generator malfunction.
Day 6, 06:23: Malfunction occured in Primary Coolant Pipes of No. 1 Reactor.
Day 10, 14:45: Malfunction in No. 2 Turbine.
Day 10, 21:21: Control Rods failure in No. 2 Reactor.
Day 12, 19:41: Fire suppression system malfunction in command centre.
Day 16, 08:45: Kola performed reconnaissance of Barcelona port facilities.
Day 19, 17:19: Ship sunk: MV Ehrensköld (Swedish Oil Tanker).
Day 22, 03:10: Ship sunk: HMS Severn (British County Class Destroyer).
Day 25, 17:01: Ship sunk: SS Mecklenburg (West German Oil Tanker).
Day 26, 00:18: Turbine generator malfunction.
Day 26, 00:34: Ship sunk: SS Erfurt (West German Large Cargo Ship).
Day 26, 00:34: Kola successfully engaged enemy shipping near 65 N 9 E.
Day 26, 00:40: Malfunction in No. 2 Turbine.
Day 26, 03:00: Ship sunk: SS Ashigara (Japanese Oil Tanker).
Day 26, 12:55: Ship sunk: INS Spear (Israeli Sa'ar 4 Class Missile Boat).
Day 30, 23:37: Kola docked at Murmansk, USSR for refit.
Day 34, 23:37: Kola departed Murmansk.
Day 34, 23:41: Patrol ended at Murmansk, USSR.

The sonar and identification are really good addition.
Didn't met any enemy sub so far.

[Svampapa]

Map screen is much, much smoother now. Thanks TheGeoff!

Out of curiosity, what was the culprit?

[TheGeoff]

Map screen is much, much smoother now. Thanks TheGeoff!

Out of curiosity, what was the culprit?

The map is drawn by examining every square of the world map in range and drawing a small rectangle in the appropriate colour at the corresponding point on the screen. There are a few optimisations to speed this up but that's the basic idea. Ages ago when I first added the map I planned to show elevation on land as well as under the sea, but found that looked too cluttered and it was unnecessary detail anyway. So at the time I changed it to only render sea level depths, and to simply draw a grey rectangles for anywhere above sea level.

The problem is that Blitz draws rectangles quite slowly - manually drawing 14,440 rectangles to the screen can cause problems even though the game runs at 10fps. Since the land rectangles are all the same colour, for this version I improved the performance by simply drawing one large rectangle under the world map area then drawing blue rectangles over the top of it for the seas and oceans. This eliminated the need to draw thousands of identical grey rectangles and significantly improved performance when near land - in the middle of the ocean, the performance is unfortunately unchanged.

The main problem is that Blitz Basic is a really old language which doesn't take advantage of any of the shader or graphical performance improvements of the last 14 years and I really need to get around to upgrading to a newer version!

[mosshadow]

Whats the difference between countries?