Finally a Shipping Game! I have a few questions though.

[Foley48]

I'll be honest, I'm hesitate in commiting to this game and I will explain why;

I am worried this game will have major bugs. Primerally based on the fact I notice those buggy as hell container craines that were in "Port Simulator 2013 Hamburg" in one of the screenshots. The cranes in Port Simulator were an utter disaster (to the point they broke the game). Was this developer involved in that game too? If not why does this game use the same cranes as port simualtor did?

I am also worried about bugs because I did some research (I always do with developers/publishers Ive not heard of before). I found that Astragon have been related to some disasterous games in the past. Including both "Ship Simulator 2008" and "Street Cleaning Simulator". The former of which was noted for its bugs and the latter recieved comments from gamespot; "nicely detailed sweeper vehicles" but they also noted "Street Cleaning Simulator could only be considered a simulator in a world where the rules of gravity don't apply" and gave it a score of 1.5 out of 10.

The only glimmer of hope I have for this game is Deck13 had "Ski resort tycoon: Deep Powder" under Deck13's old label "Artex" which seemed to recieve pretty good reviews. And under Deck13 the game "Jack Keane" which also recieved good reviews.

I love the concept of this game, I want it to be what I hope it will be but I have fallen victim too many times to rubbish games. Port Simulator being the biggest letdown as it had so much promise!

[PsychoCow]

Hello Foley,

Port Simulator 2013 Hamburg has been made by a completely different publisher and a completely different development team. I never played this game, so I can't say anything about it for good or worse. If there are cranes looking like the ones in our game this may be because the cranes in the harbor are looking this way. Be assured: we have made the cranes for our game by ourself. Please don't forget that the pictures shown here are "work in progress" - the game isn't finished right now and we will do a lot of polishing until its release.

Regarding your publisher and developer question: Yes, Deck13 is known for great games like Jack Keane, Venetica or the series of Ankh adventures for example. astragon is one of the bigger publishers in Germany and has published a lot of games in the last years. The games you are talking about are a) already several years old (Ship Simulator 2008 was published seven years ago - that's a huge time gap in game development and publishing) and b) (especially in the case of Street Cleaning Simulator) serve a very special, limited fan base. To get an actual up-to-date overview of our portfolio it might be better to take a look at newer titles like the current versions of the Landwirtschafts-Simulator series (internationally known as Farming Simulator), Construction Simulator 2014 (mobile) or upcoming titles like Construction Simulator 2015 and Train Fever, which all are really good games if you are a friend of the simulation genre.

Just to stay sure: TransOcean won't be a vehicle simulation game - it is an economic and logistics simulation and the heart of the game is the complex management of your fleet. You will be able to steer your ships while entering or leaving the harbor if you like, but things like controlling the cranes and loading the freight by hand isn't part of the game.

Regarding your fear of bugs: We are trying to make TransOcean as good and bugfree as possible. If there should be any problems in the final version of the game, be asured we will give our best to fix them as fast as posssible.

[Foley48]

First off I'd like to say thanks for getting in touch (and so quickly aswel!). Always more reassuring when a customer actually hears from a developer.

The cranes obviously must be a coincidence then. Thnkas for clearing that up.

Your correct, I missed the more recent titles that you mentioned (I wasnt aware you were involved with the ones you mentioned!). I have Farming Simulator 2013 and 2014 and I have put in a couple hundred hours in both so I'm delighted to hear Deck13 was involved in both of those! I've also followed the development of train fever for the last year and have it pre-ordered here on steam.

I'm aware TransOcean wont be a vehicle simulation game (I dont have much interest in driving ships around anyway. haha) which is why it is so unique. Complex management is what I like to hear. I can imagine controlling cranes and loading freight by hand would be horribly tedious!

Speaking of loading freight, will there be animations for each individual container placement on the ships or will there just be a general animation of containers being placed on ships and then all the containers just suddenly appear and are loaded on the deck?

I look forward to TransOcean's release and your promise that any problems that may be present in the final release will be fixed.

Thank you so much for your time. Massively appreciate the reply and clarification.

[Bola Satânica]

Първоначално публикувано от Foley:

Speaking of loading freight, will there be animations for each individual container placement on the ships or will there just be a general animation of containers being placed on ships and then all the containers just suddenly appear and are loaded on the deck?.

Yes, i would also want to know that. Can you guys post animations videos?

[PsychoCow]

The containers will be loaded by the cranes automatically - but for sure not in realtime because this would slow down the gameplay process und wouldn't make any deeper sense. So we decided to speed up this task a little bit. To get some first impressions of the gameplay it might be a good idea to take a look at this developer interview recorded at this year's gamescom 2014 in Cologne. The interview is only available in German, but should give an idea how it works: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQ6e9SdSHqA

[PsychoCow]

And here is the next video showing nearly 25min of gameplay from this year's gamescom 2014 in Cologne: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XMPKxbvraw

[Foley48]

looks good, thanks! :)