Take a look at our progress since March summed up below.
U-boat Interior
With the arrival of conning tower, bow torpedo room and stern torpedo room models, interior of the u-boat is now officially finished! It's probably the most precise reproduction of VIIC interior to date yay!
Bow Torpedo Room
Stern Torpedo Room
Stern Torpedo Room
Stern Torpedo Room
Conning Tower
Conning Tower
Upgrades
We've finally been able to put work into upgrades for the boat and we've made quite a few of them! Fully working upgrades that recently made it into the game:
- Additional Compressor
- Anti-Sonar Coating „Alberich”
- Net Cutter
- Reinforced Pistons
- Compressors (Diesel)
- Snorkel
- Anti-Radar Coated Snorkel
- Elastic Elements (Diesel / Electric)
- GHG
- KDB
- SU-Gerät „Nibelung”
- GHG-Balkon
- Netzabweiser Antenne
- Stabantenne
- FuMB 1 „Metox”
- FuMB 7 „Naxos I”
- FuMB 26 „Tunis”
- KZG 44/2 „Kurier”
- Accumulators I / II / III
- 8.8 cm Cannon
- Trim Pump Upgrade
- Toilets Upgrade
- Conning Tower Reflector
These upgrades are also distributed for other u-boats. There are also quite a few modules for Allies that include radars, direction finders etc. All of these technologies must be researched first to be available for the player or enemies.
FuMB 26 „Tunis”
KZG 44/2 „Kurier”
Snorkel
Major Terrain Improvements
This part was really time consuming. It's a very hard task to render terrains at arbitrary zoom levels with a satisfying performance like Google Earth using only offline data. We had a hard time with places like Gibraltar, Peninsula Spit, Helgoland and Scapa Flow as even the most precise global elevation data kindly shared by NOAA couldn't model them correctly. Finally we have improved our approach. We now use data shared by NOAA to model elevations and vectorized cartographic data to model shores.
Aside from that, we've improved terrain quality dramatically, but we will probably keep improving it further.
Contamination
Submariner life wasn't the easiest in World War II. Accumulators on u-boats were in a constant danger of being flooded, releasing chlorine gas in such event. Even the oxygen could be deadly. Thing with oxygen is that it's extremely dangerous when its under a high pressure. Apollo 1 is a tragic example of that oxygen property.
It's something to keep an eye on for a wise player in UBOOT from now on. Be sure to isolate flooded compartments or things may get very bad quickly!
Submarine Pens
Player can now dock at all historical submarine pens and ports in Germany, France, Poland, Romania, Greece and so on. It's a safe place to resupply, upgrade your boat and manage your crew.
Ship and torpedo effects
We've improved bow and stern waves for the ships and added foam trails for torpedoes. Water flows out of the holes in a hull after submarines emerge from the water.
Ships
Our ships list has been massively expanded since the last update. Ships that are currently in the game are:
- Admiral Hipper Cruisers, Kriegsmarine
- Black Swan Sloops, Royal Navy
- Bogue Escort Carriers, U.S. Navy
- Allen M. Sumner Destroyers, U.S. Navy
- Casablanca Escort Carriers, U.S. Navy
- Deutschland Heavy Cruisers, Kriegsmarine
- Fishing Boats
- Flower Corvettes, Royal Navy
- Gnevny Destroyers, Soviet Navy
- Liberty Freighters, U.S. Navy
- Motor Torpedo Boats, Royal Navy, Royal Canadian Navy
- Type 1934 Destroyers, Kriegsmarine
- Porpoise Submarines, U.S. Navy
- Rio de Janeiro Freighter, Kriegsmarine
- T2 Tankers, U.S. Navy
- Tribal Destroyers, Royal Navy, Royal Canadian Navy
- U-Class Submarines, Royal Navy
- V-Class Destroyers, Royal Navy
- F-Class Destroyers, Royal Navy
- Type VIIC U-Boats, Kriegsmarine
- Type VIIB U-Boats, Kriegsmarine
- Type IIB U-Boats, Kriegsmarine
- Type XIV U-Boats, Kriegsmarine
You can see some not in-game screenshots of these ships below.
Bogue-class escort carrier
Gnevny-class destroyer
Deutschland-class cruiser
Mods
We've started to introduce modding to the game. We've migrated most of our data to Excel spreadsheets to make it easily readable, moddable and internally it helps us to work on these files simultaneously.
External Operations
We've put some work into external operations that you can run with your crew on the land or on other ships.
Players now can loot evacuated ships or wrecks, run diversions, place weather stations etc. For each operation, you can choose an officer, size of his team and optionally some equipment like a diving suit or weapons, if you find it suitable for that mission.
We have been working on that for some time and it's now finished. We've tried to keep it reasonable and base our ideas strictly on historic references.
Reports
Getting a good intel isn't worse than sinking ships. Convoys and all interesting things can be now reported for a budget reward!
Beware though, enemies are listening for the radio transmissions and you may find yourself with the pants down quickly, if they will detect you.
Campaign Customization
When a new campaign is being launched it may be customized to the player's liking. Aside from things like difficulty and iron man mode, there are settings like campaign duration, realism of player's impact on history and many simulation settings.
Campaign duration affects how many days are skipped in-between. It's mildly similar to what Sid Meier's Civilization series do with years between turns. This way a full campaign from 1940 to 1945 can be played as "fast" as 25 hours or as long as 80 hours.
Simulation realism settings include dud torpedoes, periscope stabilization, perspective enforcing etc. Most of the usual realism settings, present in other simulators like limited oxygen, are forcefully on as the inseparable parts of the game. Don't worry though, we've ensured that these things are enjoyable!
After setting up a campaign, you can choose your first u-boat from those that are currently available and start the initial mission. After that you are free to roam the map or request some missions related to the currently ongoing military operations on the map.
Impact on History
We've carefully analyzed your feedback on this subject and we were working on that part ever since. We've decided to let the player choose how big this impact on history should be. Let's put it aside though and discuss how it works.
Playthrough in UBOOT is divided into quarters. At the end of each quarter there is a quarter summary that outlines historical events that happened (with photos), new technologies that were researched, treaties that were signed and also contains cool charts to visualize your progress.
All that happens in the game will be 100% historical, if you won't do anything, but if you will for example find a convincing evidence for the Normandy invasion or will be very effective at sinking enemy convoys with your wolfpacks, you may noticeably deviate from the history in that playthrough.
There is no way to win the war though as United States eventually develop an A-bomb. At that point it's going to be an honourable surrender of the army in a face of the devastating weapon instead of being defeated and forcefully surrendered.
There is also a possibility that player actions will be so bad... that war will end sooner :) Such player may, for example, loose a few hundreds of u-boats. In the ending summary he will find out that Kriegsmarine has destroyed itself and Allies didn't really had to worry about it.
Release Date
Now is the hard part. We still have to ask you for some patience and can't responsibly declare a release date yet.
Thanks to the kindness and continued support of PlayWay we now have a fully secured budget to finish this game, no matter what happens. We are going to use that opportunity and finish our game right to the end without compromises on quality.
We have already finished many areas of the game, but we still need important assets like animations, models, interfaces and well.. lots of icons. There are still some bugs and campaign missions still need work to be in a playable shape.
We will declare our final release date in upcoming months as soon as possible. It may happen any day really, but sadly not today.
Thank you for your continued support.
Yours,
Deep Water Studio