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Saved everyone yay! Incredible. Even down to all the LCDs turning on at initialization. 

Thank you all for the good wishes :)

Thank you. It’s true that the Pacific theater could get more love. After Atlantic ‘41, I‘m considering making a sequel putting the player in command of a B-29 bomber in the Pacific.

Thank you! Very kind of you to say.

Thank you! Well I never went to art school or had any formal design or videogame training.  As a kid I tried to figure things on my own on the C64 back in France. Then more serious with the Atari ST, for which I made two games in the early 90’s.
Then dropped from college before moving to Montreal where I got my first real job as an environment modeler. I began to train myself in concept art and it was still a time when they would just give a shot to anyone showing interest.  Then weaseled my way into art direction, which I’ve done since then for various studios in Canada and the U.S.

But the good thing about working in a studio is that I could learn along the way from plenty of smarter and more skilled people. I don’t feel like having any real expertise in any specific domain. My experience is just the kind of empiric knowledge you get from mimicking others and tinkering with anything that falls in your lap. But I’d rather craft small projects to try stuff and fail at my own pace.  “Serious” production environment is formatted and frankly quite boring nowadays, and no one expects you to make any breakthrough, just to do that same thing that you do, in time and under budget.  In my experience working in a videogame studio has very little to do with making videogames. I guess maybe that’s why most videogames don’t feel like videogames? Anyway that’s beside the point. 

I don’t know if that answers your question. I feel like it was a very underwhelming and meandering answer. :)

Thanks to you for taking the time follow the progress.

Thank you. That’s an excellent idea. The big shakes might be too much for the eye to register the motion of the pointer, but this could be something worth trying for light camera shakes. Thank you for the suggestion. I’m eager to move on but I’ll take a few hours to look into it.

Yes you’re not the first one to raise that point. I did it for myself as a development experiment. Honestly it doesn’t matter much whether you know what the ranks mean. But there’s only five to remember, so that could be taught in tutorial form or as part of an in game encyclopedia, for curious players. Wachoffizier means watch officer.  The life aboard the boat was divided in 4 hour watches, and each watch was led by an officer, who kind of ran the daily routine for his watch. I. Wachoffizier can be translated as 1st Officer. The closest in the U.S navy would be the XO, or Executive Officer, second in command after the Captain. You’ll start a campaign by picking a Captain. Then the dBU (the body of the German navy running  U-boats) will assign you a boat and 4 officers: a 1st Officer, an Engineer, or Chief (LI in German), a radio operator (Funkmaat), and a Navigator (Bootsmann).

Thank you. Interestingly I began making games on the Atari ST a long time ago. I can’t imagine how you would have it fit in memory and run at a decent frame rate though, but maybe a ST genius could.

I know it seems so obvious now :) But thank you, and please don’t hesitate to share your suggestions in the future. I would hate knowing that you could have spared me going down the wrong path. 

Thank you. New devlog coming up this week.

Thank you. Different sub but similar idea :)

Thanks for offering your help. I’ll have a post here so you’ll be able to apply for beta testing. Don’t expect it to be anytime soon though :)

You’re very kind. I agree that the Playdate seems to attract developers who like to tread outside the beaten path. In fact, from the get go I wanted to make something that you couldn’t find on any other platform, in particular portable; a serious simulation that anyone could play in short bursts and that wouldn’t require investing in a powerful computer. 
I love simulations and strategy games in a historical setting, but it’s a domain almost exclusively reserved to PC, and I really miss playing this kind of game on the go. So hopefully Atlantic ‘41 will fill a void for people with similar interests and maybe get people like yourself to discover something new.

I’m so glad that someone got the reference! I read a few books in the series,  but I’m taking my time because I don’t want it to be over :)

Thank you for the kind feedback. Because I love working, it’s  easy for me to indulge into every detail, and to forget how long the game has been in development. So I’m very thankful that everybody is so patient and supportive.  Hopefully it will be worth it in the end. 

Thank you!

This is so kind of you to say. Every encouragement I get makes the project so much more meaningful to me, and helps me going through the bits of doubt. In particular when it comes from people like you who aren’t into this kind of game.

When I’m ready to go into beta, I’ll leave a post here and you will have the opportunity to “apply”. I don’t know how many people I’ll get/need yet but I hope to have people covering the whole gamut of players, from simulation veterans to casual players.

Thank you very much.  Initially I didn’t plan to have any tutorials but this was a bit different, as I got requests for it. But it’s tricky because I don’t want  people to assume that I pretend to know what I’m doing ;) 

Thank you! Glad this was of use :)

Thank you :) you can absolutely count on seeing more areas of the boat. I have plans for at least the Hydrophone, and in the same place the radio/enigma. And then other things that I’d rather keep under wraps for now.

You’re right though: it will be a challenge to show larger rooms, as the amount of detail crammed into these may make the art difficult to read.

Thank you. Yes I agree that the icon works better now.

Yes, context is the right word. I just want to make sure that I don’t stray too far from reflecting the U-boat experience in broad strokes, and despite my personal research, I’m sure that you guys can provide tremendous help.

I’m not a Facebook user but I would love to check your discord group. My id there is Stephanrewind.

Thank you very much. It’s a great confirmation for me that experts see value in the project. UBOAT is amazing. Obviously Atlantic ‘41 doesn’t have nearly comparable ambitions in terms of technical accuracy. It’s not intended for simulation purists (even though I hope they can still enjoy it somehow), but rather for people with an interest for old school submarine games.
I’m afraid that you guys may find the game quite simplistic. For instance my TDC is nowhere near accurate, but rather a crude shortcut to its concepts. There’s a chance I may not be able to implement many of the ideas you have, considering the limitations of the platform, my resources, and the objective of the game. But obviously I’ll sure take all the help I can in making the game as faithful as possible within its parameters. 
The best at this point may be for you guys to read through the logs, and see if you feel like the project doesn’t stray too far from what you find acceptable, and if you want to DM me a link to your discord on Twitter, I would love to be able to ask for questions there about translations in other matters. 

Thank you. There’s multiple reasons for this choice.  I wanted the WW2 setting because I like the hands on feel of vintage technology, which gives more room to the human component in decisions and tactics. Of course the conflict itself is unmatched in terms of scope, stakes, and historical significance. 
Now regarding Germany, it  can be broken down into two main aspects: technology and history.  

First, through the influence of the admiral Donitz,  it was the only nation that saw the potential of submarines in a combat capacity. Even the British regarded submarines as no more than mere coastal reconnaissance vessels. And so early on the Germans put a lot of effort in improving the technology, which turned their U-boats into the most effective combat submarines. I also think they look the coolest, which matters for the game’s visuals.

Now from a historical standpoint, they played  an immense role in the battle of the Atlantic, which many WW2 experts consider one of the pivotal moments of the conflict. Had the unrestricted U-boat campaign been a success, Germany could have blocked all supply routes from the United States. In that scenario, war would have taken a very different turn, possibly giving the victory to the Germans. But Hitler didn’t fully commit to Donitz strategy, and didn’t allow to build nearly enough boats to destroy ships faster than the Americans could build them.

It’s a great opportunity from a gameplay standpoint, because U-boats started with the upper hand, being a real threat to the allies. It offers a gentle introduction to the novice player. But around 1942 U-boats began to lose ground, and by the end of the war they had become the hunted, and their crews ended up with the highest casualty rate of all armed forces, losing 75% of their men.

So I guess you can see how that choice makes sense.  I’m not sure what you mean by narrative, but if I understand “story”, then one thing I’m not a big fan of is dialogue and pre scripted events. They tend to give a predictable, rigid structure to the campaigns. My ideal is a game that has enough interlocking mechanics and gameplay depth to create a loose organically generated backbone that lets the player fill in the blanks and live their own story, if you can call it that.

I go over these concepts in various devlogs if you’re interested in going deeper. But this one is a good introduction to the game:

Atlantic ‘41 in a Nutshell
 

I just wanted to thank everyone for the kind words of support regarding my upcoming operation. I'm still actively working on the game until the last minute, with a suspenseful diving gameplay sequence that I hope you guys will enjoy. And I'll try to keep my normal log update schedule if I can.

Very good! Thank you for the translation. I'll leave it as is and please anyone share any idea you might have.

Thanks!

Thank you for the kind thoughts.

Thank you very much!

Isn't it cute? Here’s the Amazon link:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C2YTDDDM/ref=twister_B08F2BCXJ5?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1

Thank you. I’m with you on the gun note. I did several variants and liked none of them. For now, let’s consider it a placeholder. Maybe inspiration will come. In fact I already replaced it with another one below, which I like better, without being crazy about. The problem is that obviously there was never a written order for something like this. The captain would just order the attack and the 2nd watch officer would take care of it.  

It comes down to making something that kinda fits with the theme, and you’re right that what I did so far didn’t. This new one looks like some kind of official military letter, so I think it does a better job. I could also have some kind of fake panel with a lever or something, this wouldn’t have any historical reality either, but maybe it’s something to consider.

I “think” that Marinegeschütz means naval gun, but I’ll have to ask confirmation to my German teacher/translator. 

In fact, I already plan to have a printed map for a physical version of the game. However it will be the global navigation map, divided into sectors. What the German navy called Marinequadratkarte.
The tactical chart doesn’t really make sense on its own, since it’s only relevant in the context of each specific encounter. 

The map I’m thinking of printing will be similar to this, hopefully just a little bit more fancy.

Thank you both for the feedback. In truth, no ammo makes more sense, because you never actually “reload”. It’s not like torpedoes that need to be micro managed by the captain.  The gun crew fetches shells to feed the gun as long as they’re available. This will make more sense when I’ll show the gun attack sequence.

The only way to get ammo when you’re out is to meet with a Type XIV re supply U-boat. 
I already changed the icon.

Thank you both. It means a lot :)

Yes it wasn’t really that difficult. A bit hard to explain but I’ll try.

 The thing is, since rendering text is awfully slow, every time you see a dialogue box in the game, it’s pre rendered in an image, and then the image is drawn on screen every frame.
So in order to animate the box reveal with the text at the same time, I need to display the image in two passes. First I draw a  new mask in the dialogue box  image (that mask reveals more and more as the box grows), and then the box is drawn on screen. Initially I was just an imaging a white square polygon and then replaced it with the image with the text once it was fully open. It’s not a big hit on performance but since there’s no gpu on the Playdate you have to be mindful of everything you draw if you want to maintain 50 fps.

Thank you :)

Thank you! So far Panic has been very supportive of the project, so I’m hopeful to be able to bring it to the catalog, but I must keep pushing for making the best game possible. The hard part is to keep the distance.

Thank you!

A silhouette of the gun would be very hard to make readable at that resolution. And then it poses the question of what do you do for the torpedoes? There has to be some consistency within the icon. 

True! I need to be careful with what I write :) In the meantime always feel free to offer any feedback and suggestion here. I’ll take anything that can improve the game.