The Beginning
I started working on the Schnellboot mod in January 2008, after seeing the first new playable unit made for SH3 by a Russian modder. It was my very first attempt at modding, but after some weeks of hair-pulling, I finally managed to actually make it work!
The first public release was a very crude mod containing the bare minimum to transform a U-Boot into a S-Boot, packed in a less than 5MB archive. Over the following 6 months, with the help of the community the mod expanded steadily in size and scope, and the idea to make a total conversion was thrown in.
However the whole thing was built on a very shaky foundation due to my lack of knowledge and experience at the beginning, which resulted in a somewhat unstable mod. The amount of work needed to make it right was too much for my taste and I had just acquired Silent Hunter IV, so I pulled the plug on Schnellboot 1.0.
You can read about the development on the original thread over there.
Lost at Sea
My next project of a Schnellboot mod for SH4 died very quickly due to lack of motivation and overwhelming task, but some positive came out of it: I learned a lot more about 3D modeling and created an all new S-38 Class Schnellboot model, which was quickly imported as an overlay for the old SH3 mod. After that I took a break from modding with no plans to go back.
Back on Track
In June 2009, it started itching again, and with the help and support of the community I decided to resume work on the SH3 mod.
Well, "restart" is more appropriate. The only way to get rid of the bugs was to rebuild the whole thing from near 0. This approach made it difficult at first, but has the advantage of leaving me much more freedom. Appart from a summer break, work has progressed steadily up until now and the mod is about ~75% finished (exact status will be posted soon).
Mod DB
So far all my work and news were posted on Subsim, which is the natural place for all Silent Hunter related work.
But with the soon to come release of SBM2 I wanted to have a space dedicated to the mod, where users would find everything in one place: general information, news, screenshots and files when ready.
So from now on Mod DB will be the place to check for updates, stay tuned!
