Permanent First Post: Project Announcement

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Norwegian Operations
--an unofficial expansion pack to The Grey Wolves

Current status: Pre-alpha.
Est. time of release: Mid-2007 at the earliest.

Norwegian Operations is an expansion pack for Grey Wolves that will add cities, land installations, vessels, planes, battles, and partisan operations to Silent Hunter III, expanding the Norwegian theatre of the game significantly. You will, among other things, experience the sinking of the Heavy Cruiser Blücher, protect the German landings at Narvik, and patrol the North Sea for Shetland Bus ships trying to sneak partisans in and out of Norway.

Planned Aspects:
These features almost certainly will be in the expansion pack.

A new nation, occupied Norway. This will be the "neutral Norway" nation from Norway's official surrender in 1940. This will allow for the original "Norway" nation to be hostile throughout the war, while neutral fishing boats and merchants sail the Norse coast.

New single-player missions depicting key events. There will be two kinds of single-player missions: U-Boat operations, with historical objectives, and Scenery Missions, which have you be a mere observer without mission objectives and are solely for the purpose of letting you experience select operations without having to travel to them in Career mode.

There will also most likely be at least one "what if"-scenario, depicting, among other things, a late-war Allied invasion of Norway.

Reworked Norwegian cities, towns, and fortresses: The map will have a ton of new cities, towns, villages, and fortresses and military bases (such as Oscarborg Fortress) - maybe one or two of them rendered in 3D! The many guns of the Atlantic Wall will also be represented.

Nearly every single city will be reworked. I've already made Haugesund and Stavanger from scratch, and replaced the harbour of Bergen, with Wilhelmshaven's 3D harbour model taking the place of the original.

New radio messages, including Quisling's infamous radio coup. Historical radio broadcasts from the period may be picked up by your radio man, further increasing immersion.

SH3 Commander additions: An optional mod' will add features to Sh3 Commander, such as new news items during loading and additional gossip in the nightclub.

The Shetland Bus: Partisan boat traffic between Norway and Shetland, transporting refugees, partisan agents, and supplies.

Historical battles and engagements, including Operation Archery - the raid on Måløy which was part of conning Germany into stationing a total of 300 000+ German troops in Norway in expectation of a full-scale Allied invasion.

Several new or reworked vessels, aircraft, and land units. Already, several new u-boats have gotten themselves new winter camouflage skins.

Possible Aspects:
These are features that may be included, and, come the recruitment of some helpers, probably will:

Corrected topography. Fixes some inconsistencies in the Silent Hunter III representation of Norway, such as closed passages, missing islands and so on.

New theme features, such as loading screens, etc. How extensive this is going to be is undecided as of yet.

About the project:

Team Leader and Contributors
Safe-Keeper (midgardeagle@hotmail.com): Lead.
_Seth_ (e-mail not provided): Type IIa and VIIc Submarine Camouflage Skin, Cutter skins.
Danlisa (e-mail not provided): Type IX-C Submarine Camouflage Skin.
bigboywooly: Help with Altmark (Small Tanker Cloned) and Land Layer.

Teasers and In-game Movie Clips
"Look to Norway": First teaser triler and project announcement.

News Updates as posted at SubSim forums
2006
November
December

2007
May

Feature List and E.T.A. of First Release
Pending.

Download Links
Pending.

Reviews
Pending.

I've seen the light!

Pardon the delay, but I've had real-life, school, issues of varying degree of severity to deal with and new games to play, so NorOps has not been a priority until very recently. Just now, though, I passed my hometown of Bergen on my 'lighthouse editing trip' from Oslo to the Russian border. This is a screenshot from the editor showing the coast in all its lighthouse glory. Most likely I'll be releasing NorOps in segments, NYGM-style (as the whole project will take an eternity to finish), with the Lighthouse Mod being the first to be uploaded.

Remember, I may be working slowly, but remember that all comes to those who wait. It's a long coastline and lots of lighthouses. And a few bouys. And at least one Light Ship.

Oh, and although I'm not good at all at answering them(), thanks a lot to all who have sent me encouraging e-mails about the project. You've been driving this project on and helped me work on it by reminding me that there are lots of people waiting for this to be released.

NorOps News Update for May 2007

I've officially 'taken a break from' Silent Hunter 4 at the time being - the U.I. was a bit cumbersome, the bugs annoying, and I didn't feel at home in the Pacific Theatre. Uninstalling the game also frees up precious disk space.

But most of all, returning to Silent Hunter III means working on my beloved NorOps (how it's missed me). First off, I'm 99% done with the first version of Bergen. This, in turn, means:

Traffic and moored/anchored ships both in and around the city:

The number of military and civilian vessels in the area has been greatly increased. The ships are concentrated in Bergen harbour itself, in Store Lungegårdsvann, the lake east of the city; at Laksevåg, just south of the harbour; at the 55th Vorpostenboot Flotilla's stutzpunkt, across the bay; and near the town of Nesttun, south-west of the city.

These ships range from leisure vessels to merchants to military warships, and will be either stationary or in transit. Some of them appear randomly.

During the invasion, there will be a wave of refguee boats leaving the area, and as the war progresses, there will be random Allied bombing raids, resulting in wrecked craft scattered about.

I've also added some floating barrels, boxes and such here and there from DivingDuck's mod. DivingDuck, I'm not sure if I've obtained permission to use these in NorOps - if I haven't, please get in touch.

The ships of the 55th Vorpostenboot Flotilla.

Historically correct fortifications:

Fortifications, from gun batteries to search lights to AA, have been added around the city, at historically correct locations. 'Fortress Bergen' finally lives up to its name.

Pre-plotted course for leaving city:

In addition to the pre-plotted courses for use in the Kiel canal, you will now also have a pre-plotted course for use in Bergen harbour. Use it to get out to sea from your base in Laksevåg, travelling along the north side of Askøy (the big island west of the city).

Map labels:

'Naval bases' have been added showing fortifications, villages, areas of Bergen, naval bases, and various other things of interest.

New harbour and city layout:

Both the harbour and distribution of city blocks has been re-created from scratch to be more historically accurate. In addition, the town of Nesttun has had its own city block added. Players are unfortunately not able to actually visit the town, due to the fact that the passage leading to it is blocked by the game, but it's reachable via the External Camera.

Herdla Airbase:

A new air base has been added at Herdla. The air cover provided should prove useful to u-boats patrolling close to the coast.

Allied operations:

Norwegian, British and American forces will operate by sea and air around Bergen. Their vessels will mostly be made up of Submarine Chasers, MTBs, civilian vessels such as fishing boats, Catalina search planes, bombers, and various types of fighters. Going on patrol in the fjords around the city, you may come across resistance hideouts. Be careful in remote areas - a Silent Hunter III engine limitation is that planes do not work around tall mountains, which means that air support may not always be available due to the steep mountains.

Laksevåg undergoing bombing from Allied B-24 planes.

An easter egg:

I plan to include several easter eggs, and the first one is already in. As of now, there are no planes of awarding the first players to find them, but go hunting when NorOps is out nonetheless.

Unfortunately, the April 9th invasion and Altmark case, which both involve Bergen city, are proving to be a bit challenging, and may not be in for the first release.

A second shortcoming is that I've as of yet not been able to find dates for when exactly the various forts or installations (such as the 55th Vorpostenboot Flotilla base) were built, so they've all been given placeholder dates.

Finally, I'm having some difficulty modifying the terrain around the city. There are several things I'd like to change, mostly blocked passages that are navigable in reality, but it'll unfortunately have to wait for the second release.

For those interested, I've taken a series of screenshots of NorOps in various stages and zipped them, and I'll see if I can't upload them somewhere. The zip file also contains some pictures from a terrific, idyllic u-boat fjord cruise I went on - in-game, that is.

In related news, I've decided, for a change of pace, to go over to something else than city planning and traffic control: I've finally discovered a list (at the Norwegian Wikipedia) that lets me do something I've wanted to do for a long time: To remove all the existing lighthouses from the Norwegian coast and start over again, placing them where they are in reality. This means two things: firstly, it means more lighthouses - far more lighthouses, owing to a coastline that would go around the world twice if you straightened it into a line. Secondly, it means historically correct lighthouses. The two downsides are that not all of them are lighthouses in reality - there are also some fog bells, etc. that'll be replaced by lighthouses in-game. Also, topography in-game does not match that of reality, so I've had to leave some lighthouses out and place others at historically incorrect locations. Still, it'll be interesting to sail around the Norwegian coast and navigate by lighthouses that exist in reality.

So far, I've only gone through fourteen lighthouses, discarding five and using nine, which means I've got about two hundred 'process' - I inticipate that about a hundred of these will make it into the game. The Oslo area currently looks like this:

Lighthouses of the Oslo Fjord.

Lastly, I'd still appreciate help with new vessels and installations (there's a 'wish-list' on my web site), or with terrain editing.

Hope you enjoyed the update and had a look at the attached screenshots. Have a nice month of May!

State of the Mod Report

With things slowing down on the NorOps front and the customary monthly update almost eleven days overdue, I figured this "news update" had to be written.

Long story short: NorOps has been slowing down for a long time. In the beginning I'd work several hours every day. Currently I work for half an hour to an hour, infrequently, sometimes with days between work sessioons. I've not gotten very much at all done, and to be frank, I'm considering just laying the whole project on ice and starting over come Silent Hunter 4, making NorOps an expansion to some other mod.

Bottom line is, NorOps is not cancelled, but it's not going very well either.

January News Update

---

Welcome to the third monthly NorOps news update - the first for the year of 2007.

This has been the slowest month yet for NorOps. I've had the visitation service course, school exams and catch-up work due to excessive absence (I have an excuse) to worry about, and at least one particularly nasty LND entry that causes CTDs (and when you have an LND layer file with 286 cities, finding the one or two causing the CTD is a grudging process of erasing first big chunks to figure out roughly where the culprit resides, for then to gradually erase chunks of the chunks... It's a monotonous task akin to ransacking a haystack for an elusive needle). I have however, gotten something done.

Said "something" is my hometown of Bergen, known by some as the u-boat city. Norway's second largest city, she's been mentioned in an earlier update, but up to now I've only focused on labelling cities, towns, etc. near her and re-creating the many forts surrounding her (a task which is still far from complete - I am only one person, after all). Now, however, I decided to give the harbour area itself a go.

Bergen, a 244 000-people city (2005 est.), was founded in 1070 and has since been named one of Europe's "14 secret capitals", had its Bryggen harbour named an UNESCO world heritage site, and been one of nine cities on the continent honoured by the title of European City of Culture in 2000. Its harbour area is by far Norway's largest, handling 50% of Norway's cargo annually. It is also the "gateway to the fjords of Norway", the site of the heliport that handles all traffic to and from the off-shore oil rigs, and the site of the Royal Norwegian Navy's key naval base (Haakonsvern).

Selected sources of income are the harbour, fishing industry, university, hotel industry, and oil industry.

When Operation Weserubung began, the city was among the first to be captured. Early in the morning of April 9th, a German task force fought its way past the shore battery of Kvarven fort and took the city with little resistance. The K Class cruiser Königsberg and the Artillery Training Ship Bremse were damaged in the battle and forced to stay in Bergen harbour, where British dive-bombers sunk her the next day.

From Bergen's capture to 1945, the Germans would expand the shore defenses greatly as part of their Atlantic Wall effort, and they would also, as early as April the same year, construct a submarine bunker at Laksevåg, south of downtown Bergen. This submarine bunker, named Bruno, was used from 1943 by German submarines of the 11th flotilla, and protected in part by two rings of anti-air guns surrounding the city. The defences were gradually increased in strenght, and by '45, Bergen was a fortress of artillery and anti-aircraft weaponry, most of which saw little action. Even the Königsberg was raised - fully uprighted, she served as a u-boat pier from 1934 to 1944, when she again sunk to the bottom (after the war, she was dismantled by the Norwegians).

Many of the bunkers and artillery placements remain to this day throughout the countryside, and even three of the pens of submarine bunker "Bruno" are not only intact, but still in use by the Royal Norwegian Navy.

In-game, the invasion of the city, as well as her extensive defences, will both be modelled, as will the harbour and the sub base at Laksevåg. Upon joining the 11th Flotilla, you'll launch from Laksevåg harbour south of the city, with the submarine bunker offering you extra protection if included.

The Bergen harbour model itself has been replaced by Wilhelmshaven's, as the latter is far more true to the real harbour. True to form, I'm filling it to the brink with ships, including the beautiful sailing vessels of Grey Wolves Expansion. I'm also adding some new city blocks to Bergen and the surrounding area.

In-game, this is Bergen city (I decided to be nice this time and post ImageShack pictures instead of the ones from the blog entry):

Bergen harbour:


The harbour, with Lakesvåg
in the background:


Sunrise in the harbour:



A German ship burns
after a British air raid:


Laksevåg under air attack
(yes, that u-boat sunk):

I'll see if I can't edit the terrain to fit the harbour a little better. It'd be nice if I could unblock the passage into Store Lungegårdsvannet, too (the lake just east of the city).

Additionally, I'm giving some buildings and/or docked boats to the other relatively densely populated areas near the city, such as Nesttun and Arna. I'm hoping to be able to use DivingDuck's marina for that purpose.

That's about it for this month, with hopes that the upcoming month will be more productive than December was. Wish me luck!


Other NorOps resources:
Poor ole Blücher... - Battle of Drobak Sound; Project Preview
"Look to Noh'vay - ve haff doggiez!" - Project Announcement
November News Update - Bergen area expanding, SH3 Commander news enhanced, new Type II and VII skins.
December News Update - Hagesund and Stavanger introduced.

All screen-shots depict a work-in-progress and are thus subject to change

December News Update

Safe-Keeper here with the second monthly Norwegian Operations update!

Two things before we start. First of all, with school and the Visitation Service training occupying much of my spare time, and possible illness creeping up on me, I've found progress slowing down a bit. Ugh. Nevertheless, I've still gotten a good deal of things done, so I can assure that you shouldn't lose faith in ole Safe-Keeper just yet.

Second off, I want to say once again that it's been great to see so many show interest in my project. I know my fellow Norwegians well enough to know they'd be ecstatic about the idea, but I had no idea whether or not foreigners would show interest in the project. I was afraid I'd end up with an obsessed Norwegian community and the remaining 98% of the forum not caring less. You've proven me wrong! My only fear now is that with Silent Hunter 4 only slightly more than a quarter away, I might not be able to get this project done on time before the community defects to the sequel. Let's hope not.

So - news. OK.

I've been focusing heavily on the Bergen area this month, too. As you can see below, even more labels have been added to the navigation map, down to, as was promised, minor things such as districts and villages. Furthermore, every fort in the Bergen area will been labelled (and every one will surrender to Germany at about the right time, too). Just one more step in the direction of making Norway the most crowded country in the Silent Hunter III world!

Bergen Area as of December 2006... Er, I mean April 1940.

(Uploaded this one using ImageShack so that there'd be one pic' you could easily access without going to my blog)

If you think this is bad, wait until I tell you that I'm still not finished adding villages and towns, and that there are still plenty of forts to add at various locations. As there are so many entries (from hereon labels) now, I'm giving those that have a function in-game special suffixes to denote the ones that mark something important:

-V-: Airfield. This symbol, made to be remniscent of the airborne infantry Army symbol, marks an airfield. Air support will take off from here. I intended to use "~V~", but the symbolphobic game wouldn't let me.

(F): Fortification. This suffix marks the location of a historical fort or fortress. Artillery and air defence guns will be concentrated around these positions. Note that there also will be guns throughout the map not labelled by this symbol. Be on your toes!

(P): Industrial Port. The "(P)" over neutral Norwegian ports denounces that once secured by Germany, this city's ports will have the capacity to re-fit submarines docked here. If you find yourself in need of repair, re-fuelling, or re-supply, you can seek to one of these towns. As in the stock game, they will turn blue when it's OK for you to dock at them, at which point the "(P)" suffix will become obsolote and disappear.

While talking about the Bergen area, allow me to proudly introduce two new-comers: First off is the town of Haugesund, situated between Bergen and Stavanger. The 31 738-people town turned 150 years old in 2004 and was, despite its small size, an important centre of fishing until the catch in the area died out. Today, it's an important centre of Norwegian ship construction and maintenance.

In-game the Haugesund consists of labels on the navigation map (no, really?!), 3D buildings, civilian and military traffic, and its share of defenses, the Atlantic Wall being what it was. When Norway surrenders, you'll be able to dock in the town if you find yourself damaged or low on fuel and unable to limp to Bergen or Stavanger. Watch the other ships, though, it's a narrow approach!

Haugesund of 1855:


Today's Haugesund:

And finally... Norwegian Operations' version!

No briges in-game, unfortunately. They had not yet been built in the fourties.

Second off is Stavanger city herself.

Beautiful Stavanger (from Old Norse Stafangr, meaning Staff-fjord) lies in Rogaland county and is called home by 115 157 people (2006 estimate). The beautiful community has been the centre of the Norwegian petroleum industry its beginning in the sixties (which is also when the town started to expand into the 110 000+ people strong city it is today). The city also once had a tradition of producing canned goods - in the year 1950 there were fifty canned food factories in the city. Today, while the last of them has been shut down, the city remains the headquarters of the Norwegian petroleum production machine, hosting the main offices of Statoil, the Oil Directorate, Petroleumstilsynet (the State's organ for controlling oil industry safety and work environment), and several other petroleum-related companies, Norwegian and foreign both.

In-game, Stavanger becomes available for docking shortly after the invasion is started. In addition, the city's air field, working in conjunction with other bases such as Herdla Airfield near Bergen, should give you all the air support you need while operating in Norwegian and North Sea waters. The city sports the mandatory labels on the navigation map marking districts, Sola Airfield, neighboring towns, and so on, civilian and military air traffic, historical defences, and, unlike Haugesund, a 3D harbour!

Stavanger, present day.
Interesting how the harbour looks so much like its Bergen counterpart.

I haven't done enough work on Stavanger yet to release screen-shots (no, the caption contest one in the Silent Hunter III forum does not count), but rest assured that they will be with you eventually, and that the goregous city will look good!

Stavanger and Haugesund are just two of several planned additions for Norwegian Operations range of 3D-rendered settlements. The island town of Tromsø and the village of Måløy are two other candidates awaiting inclusion.

Next off, I'd like to thank danlisa at the SubSim community for announcing the intent to make winter camo skins for the remaining u-boats of Silent Hunter III that don't yet have them. Good show, danlisa.

Last off on the skinning front is _Seth_'s splendid re-textured cutter deserves a mention. _Seth_, who's already contributed winter camouflage skins for u-boats, is working on a re-texturing of DivingDuck's excellent cutter and has agreed to release it exclusively to Norwegian Operations. Here she is (no screen-shots in thread due to image limit)!

And finally, I hereby announce a change in the way air attacks on Norwegian ports are handled in-game. Where in earlier versions you always had bombers attack the port at these and those times from this date to that date, bomber attacks on Norwegian ports are now randomized. No longer will you start a career in Bergen in January 1945 and know with 100% certainity that a flight of B-24 bombers is underway with an ETA of only a few minutes. Now there's a certain chance they'll not appear over the city at all. The system I'm using is neither the Random Area Radius nor the Random Generated Group system, but in my opinion far better for this purpose than both of them. Either way, the effect is that you either get attacked at the beginning of your patrol, or you don't. The following rates apply at the moment to the chance your port will be attacked by bombers at mission start:

Bergen:25%.
Haugesund: 10%.
Other cities and towns: T.B.A.

That'd be all for this month, folks. See you around the forums!

Other NorOps resources:
Poor ole Blücher... - Battle of Drobak Sound; Project Preview
"Look to Noh'vay - ve haff doggiez!" - Project Announcement
November News Update - Bergen area expanding, SH3 Commander news enhanced, new Type II and VII skins.

All screen-shots depict a work-in-progress and are thus subject to change.

As a PS: I'm still looking for modellers and 2D artists ; ).

November News Update

Time for a news update from the one-man NorOps team (I assume that there's at least no need to specify which of us is doing the writing!).

First of all, some bad news. Some time ago, I managed to somehow mess up my installation of Silent Hunter III (I believe a failure to rollback SH3 Commander was involved) and, when uninstalling, managed to accidentally delete everything I had added around Oslo, from the new cities and ports to the Battle of Drobak Sound. This provided me with quite a bit of frustration, a lesson to always back-up my work, and the decision to, quite frankly, screw the capital city for the the time being in favor of my hometown of Bergen (c'mon, where else?).

So currently, the area around my beloved and beautiful hometown now features six forts (with more to be added) and several new village names on the map. It will also soon be the site of a scripted German invasion, complete with accurate fighting and the sinking of the K-Class ship Königsberg. What a lucky little town!

Before NorOps (Grey Wolves 1,1a):

With NorOps (work-in-progress, more elements awaiting addition):

Second off, SH3 Commander users will be glad to hear I'm experimenting with adding Norway-related content to the program's immersion-building files, namely the nightclub and loading screen news bulletins! This means that when NorOps is released, a separate install will be available to 'Commander users operating out of Norway. The result - well, see below (the loading screen, although I like it, is probably is not there to stay):

The very last bit of news for now is that two great people at the SubSim site, Seth and danlisa, have been kind enough to sit down and make me some terrific-looking winter skins for use during those freezing Arctic patrols. The in-game result, illuminated in all her beauty, can be seen below. Thanks a lot to the both of you for making future winter patrols a tad bit easier!


That'd be all for this time. See you around the blog and SubSim forums!

All screen-shots depict a work-in-progress and are thus subject to change.