Silent Hunter

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Silent Hunter
developer SSI
Ultimation
Ubisoft Romania
Publisher Mindscape
Ubisoft
First title Silent Hunter (1995)
Last title Silent Hunter 5 (2010)
Platform (s) DOS , Windows
Genre (s) Marine simulation

Silent Hunter (English: "Silent Hunter") is a computer game series . These are submarine - simulations which at the time of World War II play. The first part of the series was developed by Strategic Simulations (SSI) in 1995 and published by Mindscape in early 1996 .

In 2001 the developer studio Ultimation finished the successor with Silent Hunter II after six and a half years, which was published by Ubisoft . Silent Hunter III was released in 2005, Silent Hunter 4 in 2007 and Silent Hunter 5 in 2010 .

Game description

In Silent Hunter , the player assumes the position of a submarine commander at the time of World War II. Its main task is to assert oneself in sea battles against computer-controlled enemy warships and aircraft. Medals and promotions are awarded for particularly successful missions in the context of a campaign.

Various types of torpedoes are available for fighting enemy objects, as well as one or two deck guns for some types of boats. In addition, there are light anti-aircraft guns to ward off air attacks. In the original Silent Hunter the anti-aircraft gun was still operated automatically, but from Silent Hunter II the player was also allowed to operate the light guns himself.

The game offers both a career mode, in which the player completes a series of enemy drives in a row, and a mission mode, in which different missions can be selected.

The first two parts of Silent Hunter did not yet offer a multiplayer mode. Silent Hunter II was expanded to include this after a patch . In Silent Hunter III is a multiplayer mode with up to eight players included.

The games

Silent Hunter (1996)

The first part dealt with the American submarine war in the Pacific . The player found himself at the beginning of a patrol on the edge of the operational area assigned to him. He was notified of enemy ship movements by radio. Every now and then the player was assigned special tasks: he had to take reconnaissance photos of an enemy port or rescue pilots who had been shot down.

Silent Hunter was playfully based on Aces of the Deep from 1994. Game management and control were largely identical. Technically, the games differed greatly. Silent Hunter offered SVGA graphics, but the graphics of the ships were bitmaps and the sea surface remained flat, while Aces of the Deep offered VGA , represented ships in three dimensions and presented realistic seas.

Silent Hunter was delivered on a CD-ROM and also offered an extensive documentary section. Captain William H. Gruner, Commander of the USS Skate (SS-305) , told the story of his boat and its missions in video sequences with historical footage. This multimedia part also presented a cinematic tour of a Gato-class submarine .

For Silent Hunter , two add-ons with the simple title " Patrol Disk I & II " were released at the end of 1996 . These were published from 1997 together with the main program as the " Commanders Edition ".

Silent Hunter II (2001)

After numerous in-house problems at SSI, Ultimation continued the development of Silent Hunter II from 1999 onwards. The game was released in late 2001 and was published by Ubisoft.

In contrast to the first part, Silent Hunter II puts the player in the submarine war in the Atlantic on the German side. The free campaign from the first part has been replaced by a campaign consisting of a series of missions. From a technical point of view, Silent Hunter II was out of date when it was released, but it was meaningfully expanded. Now there was a relatively modern 3D engine that could display fog, rain and a reflective and moving water surface, among other things. The screen resolution was limited to 640 × 480 or 800 × 600 pixels, but could be increased to 1024 × 768 pixels with a patch.

The multimedia part from Part One was also continued. The contact person for the developers this time was the submarine commander Erich Topp . There was also a “Commanders Edition” of Silent Hunter II with some extensions. Since no more support was provided after Ubisoft took over SSI, this was replaced by fan patches, e.g. B. to resolve the multiplayer instabilities ensured.

Destroyer Command (2002)

Destroyer Command was published at the end of 2002 and is an offshoot of the Silent Hunter series. In this game, the player commands an allied destroyer of the Second World War, with the Pacific now also being one of his areas of operation.

Although the Silent Hunter II - Engine was virtually unchanged, up plays Destroyer Command substantially different. In contrast to the solo submarines of the main program, the player in Destroyer Command has to coordinate the movements and actions of up to seven other destroyers in addition to his own ship. If your own destroyer is sunk, the player can continue the battle from another ship in the squadron. With this approach, the game is much more tactical than simulation oriented. A special feature of Destroyer Command is the option to compete against players from Silent Hunter II in multiplayer mode . For Silent Hunter II an update to version 1.1 was necessary. In addition to this option, the game also offered cooperative missions by destroyer commanders.

Silent Hunter III (2005)

Silent Hunter III was released in Germany on March 17th, 2005. In addition to a modern graphics and enhanced artificial intelligence (AI) of computer opponents mainly to Havok - physics engine give the game a higher level of realism. For the first time, the player can see his team at work. The team must be divided up and after each patrol there are commendations in the form of medals and promotions, which are also awarded to the team. Qualified professionals are very important for this game, as these people e.g. B. reload the torpedoes faster.

Criticisms of the game are the sparse radio traffic , the missing ships in the ports up to patch 1.4, the high hardware requirements and the many bugs . The graphics engine of Silent Hunter III is based on the technology of the Pixel Shader 1.1 and requires a DirectX -8.0 capable graphics card, whereby only NVIDIA GeForce 3 or ATI Radeon 8500 or their successor models are supported. GeForce 4 MX, GeForce 4 Go generation graphics chipsets are not supported.

Silent Hunter 4 (2007)

Silent Hunter 4 was announced for spring 2007 at a press conference as part of the Games Convention 2006 in Leipzig . Since March 22, 2007 Silent Hunter 4 with the subtitle Wolves of the Pacific is available.

In contrast to the predecessor Silent Hunter III , in Silent Hunter 4 you now take command of submarines of the US armed forces. Instead of fighting the Allies in the Atlantic, they are now engaged in sea ​​battles with the Japanese Navy in the Pacific . The main playful and technical innovations are an improved damage model , lively ship crews, better graphics and ships in the ports. In addition, the special missions used in the original game from 1995, such as photo reconnaissance and rescue missions, found their way back into the game, expanded to include missions in which the player has to drop agents.

Lots of test reports suggest that the retail version, the tradition of the series following, many bugs have (bugs). A first patch was published in March 2007, and a fourth update (1.4) is now available.

Another shortcoming of Silent Hunter 4 is that only one core is used in dual-core systems. The manufacturer specifies a processor clock frequency of 2 GHz as a minimum requirement, but recommends 3 GHz for smooth gaming.

On February 28, 2008, an add-on for Silent Hunter 4 called U-Boat Missions was released. Initially, it could only be obtained from Ubisoft's online trade or as a digital game distribution from the Deutsche Telekom offer, Gamesload. Later, a gold or exclusive version of Silent Hunter 4 was released, which contains the base game with the expansion and is also sold in electronics stores. It brings the game to version 1.5. With the add-on you can now also patrol the Indian Ocean with German submarines of the Type IX and XVIII . You can also give orders to allied ships and aircraft, with the strength of the allied units depending on the player's rank in the game.

Silent Hunter 5 (2010)

Silent Hunter 5 was released in Germany on March 4, 2010. For the first time, the player guides his boat from the first person's perspective , can communicate with team members and walk the whole boat. After each patrol there are reputation and promotion points to purchase equipment and to improve the skills of the crew. Qualified specialists are very important, as in the previous versions.

This time the scene is again the Atlantic, only German type VII submarines can be played. The campaign begins in 1939 and ends in 1943. The AI ​​is supposed to adapt to the player and decisions made by the player have a direct influence on the outcome of a campaign. In addition, according to the manufacturer, 10,500 different ships are implemented in the game. A first patch was published on the day of the release.

Ubisoft uses a digital rights management system as copy protection . Playing is only possible with a permanent internet connection and a link to the Ubi.com account.

Silent Hunter Online (2012)

In 2012 the beta version of Silent Hunter Online was launched. The game was created in collaboration between Sproing Interactive Media and Blue Byte . The game has since been discontinued.

Others

  • For part III there are extensive mods such as Gray Wolves Expansion Mod , Living Silent Hunter III and War Ace Campaign . Direct changes to the program code (.exe) for extended functionality (including limitation of the oxygen supply or visibility, torpedo loading times, computer-generated pack attacks) have also been made (i.e. the patch). Here, higher screen resolutions than in the original, as well as participation in historical events are possible. However, the hardware requirements also increase after installation.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ William Trotter: Project Messerwetzer in the Press . In: PC Gamer . subsim.com. May 1, 2003. Retrieved on November 3, 2011: “ Skilled volunteers and playtesters rallied to the call [...] a free 5MB to 6MB patch that will be finally polished and playtested. The original crippling flaw, multiplayer instability, has been dramatically minimized [...] "
  2. Project Messerwetzer . subsim.com. 2004. Retrieved November 3, 2011: "Silent Hunter II / Destroyer Command DirectPlay Conversion and Multiplayer Upgrade"
  3. Update on the Ubisoft website
  4. Ubi_AnnickV: Forum contribution from the community manager. (No longer available online.) Ubisoft, formerly in the original ; accessed on January 26, 2010 : "Silent Hunter 5 includes our new online services: You can install your game on any number of computers, your SaveGames are saved online and you can call them up from anywhere and there is no longer a DVD / CD in the drive to play needed. To ensure this, the game must be linked to Ubi.com and the PC must be connected to the Internet for the entire duration of the game. "
  5. Silent Hunter Online - Strategy Games - n-tvgames.de. Retrieved December 4, 2019 .