Any love for Sub Hunt?

[BiffMan]

5 hours ago, Zendocon said:

The suspense was horrifying, if I failed to sink the Destroyer before it reached my position, and then I had to shut off the sonar and engines and then dive, waiting while a few depth charges exploded nearby, hoping one of them wouldn't connect.

That sound and screenshake as the depth charges go off... VERY vivid memory. 

[Zendocon]

10 hours ago, wolfy62 said:

You guys have me all psyched up for this game,I gotta make time to play it and figure it out!?

I was a kid when I first played this game, and one thing I didn't know at first was that in the combat phase, your sub moves in the direction your periscope is facing.  That probably should have been a no-brainer.

[Intelligentleman]

43 minutes ago, Zendocon said:

I was a kid when I first played this game, and one thing I didn't know at first was that in the combat phase, your sub moves in the direction your periscope is facing.  That probably should have been a no-brainer.

Ha ha... how on earth did you manage to navigate without this bit of knowledge?

[Zendocon]

That was only my first time playing.  I couldn't understand why the sub was going off in some random direction when I kept pushing Left to make it go left.  Maybe I had a bad Auto Racing flashback.  After that one time, I tried pointing the periscope where I wanted to go and it worked.

 

While trying to figure it out, I watched to see what would happen when the sub reached the edge of the playfield.  It just stopped as if it had hit a glass wall in the middle of the sea.  That itself was creepy in a way.  I imagined being in a vessel of some kind out in the water, and suddenly hitting a force field like in the movie Tron.  Even scarier if the water isn't turbulent and your guard is down.

[Intelligentleman]

18 minutes ago, Zendocon said:

That was only my first time playing.  I couldn't understand why the sub was going off in some random direction when I kept pushing Left to make it go left.  Maybe I had a bad Auto Racing flashback.  After that one time, I tried pointing the periscope where I wanted to go and it worked.

 

While trying to figure it out, I watched to see what would happen when the sub reached the edge of the playfield.  It just stopped as if it had hit a glass wall in the middle of the sea.  That itself was creepy in a way.  I imagined being in a vessel of some kind out in the water, and suddenly hitting a force field like in the movie Tron.  Even scarier if the water isn't turbulent and your guard is down.

Wow an invisible barrier back in 1981. 3D games for the N64 and nearly every system after it use artificial barriers to constrain the playing field. It still blows me away how fundamental some Intellivision games were and are to this day. I suppose that applies to any 2nd gen system.

[Zendocon]

Return Fire for the 3DO had a more ingenious plan.  If you're flying in a helicopter and you go out of bounds, your first warning is a sonar ping.  Then a submarine appears, and you hear a klaxon as it fires a homing missile that seeks you out and destroys you.

 

Pilotwings for SNES set the boundaries far away for the helicopter rescue missions.  You can fly away from the destination for so long, when suddenly all the action stops and you hear the failure tune and see the out-of-bounds message.

 

I also recall playing 1943 for NES and reaching the part in the first stage where the music suddenly stops and your plane goes down as if it had run out of fuel, while a message gradually appears on the screen.  If I had played the arcade game first, I would have immediately known that the pilot is reducing altitude to confront the fleet of warships down below.  Imagine a similar thing happening in B-17 Bomber: you're flying out into the middle of nowhere to bomb an enemy warship when suddenly the background seems to jump up at you, and the warship starts fighting back.

 

Speaking of B-17 Bomber, I found it creepy how the plane would seem to hover on the Map screen once you reached your chosen destination.  "Checkpoint, in sight!"

[Intelligentleman]

1 minute ago, Zendocon said:

Return Fire for the 3DO had a more ingenious plan.  If you're flying in a helicopter and you go out of bounds, your first warning is a sonar ping.  Then a submarine appears, and you hear a klaxon as it fires a homing missile that seeks you out and destroys you.

 

Pilotwings for SNES set the boundaries far away for the helicopter rescue missions.  You can fly away from the destination for so long, when suddenly all the action stops and you hear the failure tune and see the out-of-bounds message.

 

I also recall playing 1943 for NES and reaching the part in the first stage where the music suddenly stops and your plane goes down as if it had run out of fuel, while a message gradually appears on the screen.  If I had played the arcade game first, I would have immediately known that the pilot is reducing altitude to confront the fleet of warships down below.  Imagine a similar thing happening in B-17 Bomber: you're flying out into the middle of nowhere to bomb an enemy warship when suddenly the background seems to jump up at you, and the warship starts fighting back.

 

Speaking of B-17 Bomber, I found it creepy how the plane would seem to hover on the Map screen once you reached your chosen destination.  "Checkpoint, in sight!"

Love B-17 Bomber. That game still amazes me when I think about it in context with other games available at the time. The way-finding system in that game is still basically in use today.

[BiffMan]

2 hours ago, Zendocon said:

Speaking of B-17 Bomber, I found it creepy how the plane would seem to hover on the Map screen once you reached your chosen destination.  "Checkpoint, in sight!"

I always envisioned the plane was orbiting/circling over the target and announcing to the world to shoot me down. It encouraged me to jump in there quickly and drop the bombs. ?

[Zendocon]

2 minutes ago, BiffMan said:

I always envisioned the plane was orbiting/circling over the target and announcing to the world to shoot me down. It encouraged me to jump in there quickly and drop the bombs. ?

It would have to be, given you still saw yourself moving in Bomb Bay view.  If you had bombed the target before that point, you were just circling/hovering over nothing really.  That's why I would scramble to select the nearest target I could, then change it to something more valuable.

[Intelligentleman]

Speaking of that game... did you guys ever notice how sometimes it seems like the target isn't appearing when it should be. Like sometimes I'll be in the bomb bay view waiting to see the target, but then it doesn't appear until I switch to a different view and then back to the bomb-bay. Or maybe I'm just misjudging when it *should* be appearing?

[Zendocon]

I always wait on the Map screen until I get close and then switch to Bomb Bay view.  I've always had that same problem.

[Intelligentleman]

3 minutes ago, Zendocon said:

I always wait on the Map screen until I get close and then switch to Bomb Bay view.  I've always had that same problem.

The only problem with the circling theory is that you never see the target come back into view in the bomb-bay again. In my experience you have to select a new destination, then go back and re-select the original target you wanted to hit.

[mr_me]

If you miss your target all you have to do is fly off of that tile by one pixel to make another run at it. And that's the centre of your airplane marker so you don't  have to fly very far for that second chance, especially if you targeted the edge of the tile.  The target will appear as long as you're over any tile pixel but only once.

 

It's true if you are looking through the bomb bay too early you'll  never see the target until you switch to another screen and back.  I do like the detail of seeing the shoreline and islands as you fly over them.  As a kid I was a little disappointed that no matter your altitude or velocity the bombay view always looked the same.

[Intelligentleman]

24 minutes ago, mr_me said:

If you miss your target all you have to do is fly off of that tile by one pixel to make another run at it. And that's the centre of your airplane marker so you don't  have to fly very far for that second chance, especially if you targeted the edge of the tile.  The target will appear as long as you're over any tile pixel but only once.

 

It's true if you are looking through the bomb bay too early you'll  never see the target until you switch to another screen and back.  I do like the detail of seeing the shoreline and islands as you fly over them.  As a kid I was a little disappointed that no matter your altitude or velocity the bombay view always looked the same.

What about this... Will you miss the target if you don't switch to bomb bay view in time?

[BSRSteve]

There is a title screen easter egg in Sub Hunt. On the right controller: Press and hold: [Clear], [0] (zero), [Enter] and disk location WNW (position 7) and press reset.

[mr_me]

39 minutes ago, Intelligentleman said:

What about this... Will you miss the target if you don't switch to bomb bay view in time?

You can circle over the target tile until you run out of fuel, the target will be there once you look at the bomb bay.

[Intelligentleman]

6 minutes ago, mr_me said:

You can circle over the target tile until you run out of fuel, the target will be there once you look at the bomb bay.

Ahh... Thanks. Makes me want to play this again now that I know this.

[Zendocon]

13 hours ago, BSRSteve said:

There is a title screen easter egg in Sub Hunt. On the right controller: Press and hold: [Clear], [0] (zero), [Enter] and disk location WNW (position 7) and press reset.

Yes, I forgot about that one.

 

Position WNW on the right controller lowers bits 3 and 4 at address $1ff, so wouldn't the equivalent of holding "Clear 0 Enter" be to hold the two lower side action keys?

 

I just looked in the ROM disassembly.  The check at the title screen is for address $1ff to have the value $07.  You can disable the check with a couple of NOP instructions by appending this to the .cfg file:

 

[macro]

p 5030 34

p 5031 34

[Zendocon]

I loved the endgame music so much I poked around to see if there was a way to hear it right away.  I discovered a patch to go straight to the endgame.  Try pressing '5' on the title screen as well for the highest difficulty - and an extra message.  (Comment out the Easter Egg if you have it)

 

p 6215 20c ; Instant winner!

[+cmadruga]

I like that Sub Hunt is a simulator with built in time compression that is just right: not too fast, not too slow. 

I remember enjoying it so much, that I started looking for similar games. Eventually I graduated from it to play Ocean Conqueror on the MSX a few years later, and then 688 Attack Sub on the PC. 

 

Too bad sub simulators just got too complicated after that. The only one I’ve been truly able to enjoy recently was Ironwolf VR.