[WIP] Ships database for TDW UI - SOAN

[Zedi]

Database for SOAN is done, its included in TDW UI. Direct download link.
Many thanks to Trevally who was so kind and helped out with this WIP by making the Escorts, Troop transports and Tankers. Thanks! The result of this WIP cand be already found in the TDW UI mod.

For further references, here are the basic rules about formating the AIT files, so anybody can edit them by adding/changing info and pictures.

Originally Posted by TheDarkWraith

- In SOAN added ability to define bold in the additional info by wrapping the text with <b> and </b> tags

- In SOAN added ability to imbed images into the additional info text by using the <img> and </img> tags
- images to be embedded into the additional info text are to be placed in '\data\menu\gui\Additional info sea images' folder
- maximum image size is 404 x 256
- to embed images in the text add the <img> and </img> tags. Note: width and height are defined in the image tags. i.e. <img>200,65,test_embedded_image_1.dds</img>

- Every new AIText= defines a new paragraph of text
| will add a new line
| | will add a new paragraph

A leading ; on a line is a comment and will be ignored. This can be used to insert comments into your .ait file.

Template:

[AdditionalInfo]
AIText=<b>This is a bolded title</b>| |<img>200,65,test_embedded_image_1.dds</img>| |Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Nam non convallis magna. Nulla quis congue erat. Vestibulum at purus eget nisi feugiat lobortis. Nullam risus nunc, posuere ac gravida sed, pellentesque non est. Donec lacinia nisl ac erat elementum hendrerit imperdiet orci pellentesque.| |<img>380,256,MyImage.dds</img>| |
; paragraph 2
AIText=Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Nam non convallis magna. Nulla quis congue erat. Vestibulum at purus eget nisi feugiat lobortis. Nullam risus nunc, posuere ac gravida sed, pellentesque non est. Donec lacinia nisl ac erat elementum hendrerit imperdiet orci pellentesque.
[AdditionalInfoEnd]

Ingame shot:



==============================================
There is another project taking birth here, is called The Library. Is an application for books and lectures about ships, famous people and anything related to the game/ww2. When it will be done and a template will be available, anybody can contribute and develop it further by adding new books and lectures.

This is a preview for the Library:

[Trevally.]

Good work Magnum,

I will have a go at the tankers. Not too many of them

For the information you are displaying, are you stopping at 1945

[Zedi]

So far yeah, but is a good question. Should we stop at 45 or include the later years? I have to admit that some of these ships had a interesting history after ww2, but the whole recon manual in SH is about class not ships. And gathering info about a class sometimes is harder than on a particular ship.

Just because you will go on tankers, check what I made so far on Cimmarion. It was very hard for me to find info about the T2-3 oiler class, mostly the info I found was about ships included in this class, not the class itself. Anyway, it was very interesting to found out that only 30 tankers were build, 4 converted to carriers (!) and only 1 lost (USS Neosho (AO-23); launched & commissioned 1939, sunk during the Battle of the Coral Sea, 1942). Now I feel a bit lame after I sunk dozens of these tankers in the game

One more thing, now that I got your attention. Can you please give me a link to read about how to make tutorials? I saw those made by you, excelent job by the way, and Im thinking to make some books using the tutorial engine. For example, take the story of some famous ships and add some heavy image fedback to it. It would be a very nice lecture on long travels, finally something to do on our boats while wait for a target.

[Trevally.]

Originally Posted by Magnum

So far yeah, but is a good question. Should we stop at 45 or include the later years? I have to admit that some of these ships had a interesting history after ww2, but the whole recon manual in SH is about class not ships. And gathering info about a class sometimes is harder than on a particular ship.

Perhaps we should just stick to the war years as it is a lot of work.
There would always be an option to add more info at a later date.

Just because you will go on tankers, check what I made so far on Cimmarion. It was very hard for me to find info about the T2-3 oiler class, mostly the info I found was about ships included in this class, not the class itself. Anyway, it was very interesting to found out that only 30 tankers were build, 4 converted to carriers (!) and only 1 lost (USS Neosho (AO-23); launched & commissioned 1939, sunk during the Battle of the Coral Sea, 1942). Now I feel a bit lame after I sunk dozens of these tankers in the game

Yes this was the first one I looked up, only to find some very limited info.
Where this is the case it may be an idea to end with a ship that was in the Atlantic. The USS Chemung had this little snippet :-

"Chemung departed from New York City 20 August 1942 with a convoy bound for the United Kingdom. Two days later Ingraham collided with her at night. The destroyer sank almost immediately when the depth charges on her stern exploded. Chemung, although heavily damaged by the explosion and resulting fires, reached Boston, Massachusetts 26 August for repairs."

One more thing, now that I got your attention. Can you please give me a link to read about how to make tutorials? I saw those made by you, excelent job by the way, and Im thinking to make some books using the tutorial engine. For example, take the story of some famous ships and add some heavy image fedback to it. It would be a very nice lecture on long travels, finally something to do on our boats while wait for a target.

Thanks,

Good idea about the books. There is no link for info on making tutorial, only the read me in TDWs UI.
As I had gotten used to writing auto and nav scripts, it wasnt too hard for me to pick it up. I had alreay made every mistake possible with making auto scripts.
To use the tutorial for displaying text and picture is not too hard. I will write a small tutorial in my thread on how to do that

See yellow

[TheDarkWraith]

Originally Posted by Magnum

Not sure about how we can use Bold, Italic or different font size and color, maybe TDW can help with more details.

I'll try and add some entries into the German.SHSS file and see what I can do

[Zedi]

Very nice, is so much fun to read these stories. And is interesting that these tankers operated mostly in Pacific, still we encounter a lot in Atlantic. Another point in the to-do list for a complete rewamp of the SH5 campaign. T3 it has to be a very rare ship in convoys.

It would be very nice if you can setup a "tutorial" for books and stories about ships, so we can add more and more to it. Actually, would be nice if TDW can help and make a book application in game based on the tutorial engine, so we dont mix stuff.

Thanks Trevally, this will be a nice addon to the game.

Originally Posted by TheDarkWraith

I'll try and add some entries into the German.SHSS file and see what I can do

Sounds good, some text formating could help a lot on readings. Thanks.

[TheDarkWraith]

Originally Posted by Magnum

Actually, would be nice if TDW can help and make a book application in game based on the tutorial engine, so we dont mix stuff.

Not following you here so I'll need more information on this. Pictures would help immensely

[TheDarkWraith]

Need to know the following:

- a list of all the fonts you want to be available for this (found in \data\Menu\Pages\Menu_1024_768) and whether you want that font to be able to be bolded and what colors you want available for that font (if any)
- a list of all the colors you want to be available for each font (can be ANY color as the color is specified in RGBA format - 0xRRGGBBAA where RR, GG, BB, and AA are values of 0-255. The font, by default, being used is Univ_11

I have added the ability to bold text. There is one slight problem with it though. As the base text color is 0x101010FF (almost dark black) I can't make the bold text be 0xFF (solid black) because it won't stand out. We have to assign bold text a color. What should it be? Red, green, ??

EDIT:

Tried changing the bold to a color and it didn't look right. So I tried something else: increased the font size and made the color solid black:


I think that looks acceptable for bold text no?

You bold text by wrapping it in <b>....</b> tags where .... is the text to be bolded

Now we should be able to imbed images in the text also. Going to try and make that work now.....

EDIT2:

Wouldn't you know it, no documentation on the stylesheets the game uses either I have no way of knowing what properties the stylesheets can use Once again have to rely on code to do my dirty work Although the ScriptManager says you can use <img> tags in the stylesheets, without documentation it's worthless. I'll try coding something to allow images to be specified in the text.

[Zedi]

Originally Posted by TheDarkWraith

Not following you here so I'll need more information on this. Pictures would help immensely

Here is a proposal based on SH5 style. Should not be so hard to make it, you can use the background used in the credit screen. Not sure about how we can insert images. So here I need your feedback about if is doable or not.

If we can do this, I will need to think about a bookshelf, a menu where we can choose the books to read, similar to the tutorials.

[TheDarkWraith]

I can change images on the fly, no problems there (figured out how to do that in code some time ago ).
Is it doable? Yes. There are many ways one could implement something like this. What I need to know is how you want your library to work? Sketch/drawing would help also. I'm guessing you want Automation to 'run' your library?

[Zedi]

Originally Posted by TheDarkWraith

...
I'm guessing you want Automation to 'run' your library?

Not sure I understand this part... Im not using any automation, is that why I dont know what is all about.

About how to work... mostly as the tutorials work now. What is most important for me is to make it simple to use as in time people can add their own books. There is a huge amount of stuff to be written/put in the Library.. ships, subs, famous captains, strategy etc So I will try to think of a simple bookshelf where the books can be sorted in categories, like the tutorials now. /brb

[mobucks]

were you going to add pictures of critical damage zones? Another post described something like that for SH3. Would be fun for gunner marksmans.

[stoianm]

Originally Posted by mobucks

were you going to add pictures of critical damage zones? Another post described something like that for SH3.

are these critical damages zones for real in game?

[TheDarkWraith]

Originally Posted by Magnum

Not sure I understand this part... Im not using any automation, is that why I dont know what is all about.

About how to work... mostly as the tutorials work now. What is most important for me is to make it simple to use as in time people can add their own books. There is a huge amount of stuff to be written/put in the Library.. ships, subs, famous captains, strategy etc So I will try to think of a simple bookshelf where the books can be sorted in categories, like the tutorials now. /brb

It sounds like you want Automation to do the heavy lifting for you The easiest way to do something like this and to keep it like the tutorial feature would be to use Automation. Just thinking out loud here but the user would define a .SHA (Automation file) that would have one command in it - DisplayLibraryBook (and that command would list the book to 'play'). By defining an Automation command one can specify the Category and Subcategory that the Automation file falls under. When the user then runs this Automation file in Automation, Automation calls up the interface you posted earlier and 'plays' the library file specified in the DisplayLibraryBook command.

[Trevally.]

Originally Posted by TheDarkWraith

It sounds like you want Automation to do the heavy lifting for you The easiest way to do something like this and to keep it like the tutorial feature would be to use Automation. Just thinking out loud here but the user would define a .SHA (Automation file) that would have one command in it - DisplayLibraryBook (and that command would list the book to 'play'). By defining an Automation command one can specify the Category and Subcategory that the Automation file falls under. When the user then runs this Automation file in Automation, Automation calls up the interface you posted earlier and 'plays' the library file specified in the DisplayLibraryBook command.

This sounds like the answer.
I could work just like the tutorials but the text box can be a lot bigger.
The small text box in the tutorial is good for tutorials but not reading this kind of book.
As someone using it will not be needing to switch screens etc, having a large text area should be fine.

Images could work the same as tutorials. Having new images pop up when getting to certain stages in the text can be controlled as in the tutorial commands.