1 game day later, the same two ships left Manila Bay. The next day again, whilst on my way back to Java, found same two ships again, heading same course.

Problem with RSRDC and RFB mods
 

I recently decided to start playing SH4 again so I loaded up the two above mentioned mods...except shortly after the end of 1941, I stopped receiving radio messages updating me on major ship positions and it doesn't seem like any of the major battles that should occur actually happen.


For example, as a test, I started a campaign just before the Battle of Midway (June 4th 1942) and stayed very close to the island until well after it was supposed to be over...literally nothing happened. I tried several times, nothing changed.


I reinstalled the entire game, reinstalled the mods...nothing.


The current order I have them in is:


RFB_2.0
RFB_2.0_Prach_23April2010
RSRDC_RFB_V575
RSRDC_V5xx_Patch1


Am I doing something wrong here? What happened to everything?


Also it really just seems like there are no ships...anywhere. All I see is planes constantly harassing me over and over, day in and day out. The only time I'll ever really see ships is in the harbors.


No contact reports, no major battles, no convoys...nothing! What's going on?

The renderings of battle scenes may or may not function correctly, but lurker did the best job of any of the SH4 modders in that regard. (Warning - pendantic info follows) When doing mods, it is important to not have your game installed in a Program Files folder on your hard drive. You can make your own folder, such as "Games" in the C: drive and copy and paste the game there if desired. Also of equal importance is the emptying of the Save game folder, which by default is found in the "C:\Users \UserName \Documents \SH4" folder (or similar, dependent upon your OS). The game stores all of its information that it runs the game from in there, and if you don't empty it prior to playing a new mod, you will still have portions of the old mod or Stock that are active. Another way to avoid the situation is to use a different copy of the game for the different mods, and then use MultiSH4 to write a new Save folder for each copy, with a unique name for each.

RFB for the most part uses the Stock campaign files, which includes the "messages.txt" (28kb) file in the Data / Campaigns / Campaign folder. RSRDC will overwrite that file (64kb), and give you about two and a quarter times again as much info, including intel on where some of lurker's Random Generated Groups will track for you to go hunt... Generally speaking, lurker did not use the Ubi-styled contact reports very often, which you would get by the game showing a box on the NavMap screen in Stock. You can still do the radio "Contact Report" stuff though. :salute:

Oh...that may actually be it. Didn't know installing it into a Program Files folder would be a problem.


What's strange is it worked fine initially with the radio messages but now they just don't show up at all

Well, I reinstalled the entire game completely clean, no mods, no nothing, reinstalled all the mods and JSGME from scratch, all new everything and still the same problem. No radio messages, no Battle of Midway, nothing. Could there be a file left over from somewhere I didn't see? A registry file for SH4 or something? Could the save files somehow be screwing things up?


I don't know what's going on :(

Windows considers the Program Files folders as "protected" territory, so you might see splash screens and other graphic files take, but anything "cfg" is taken as a "system" file, and does get "rolled-back" to the previous "authorized" version (too many quote marks... :roll: ). The Windows behavior varies with other files, so you might well be seeing the Stock game's messages.txt file, which sometimes looks like someone got tired of filling it out about February 1942 :03: - some months there are no reports. Back out all of your mods, make yourself a new folder somewhere, such as "C:\Games", and then <Ctrl><C> the game folder ("Silent Hunter Wolves of the Pacific" or whatever) and <Ctrl><V> inside the new folder to copy what you have over. If you want a short-cut on the desktop, you'll have to make a new one of those. After the move, re-apply all of the mods, and either use MultiSH4 to create a new Save folder (such as RSD or whatever), or empty the existing Save folder. You will have to re-set your screen resolution and all of the gameplay settings, but you won't have Windows trying to protect you from yourself anymore either... :salute:

Edit: Oh! as for the traffic, you'll have to find the "shipping lanes", and lurker does have a map - either on the Captain's bed, or somewhere on the sub - that shows where the traffic generally is. You will notice also though, that the levels (frequency) is quite a bit lower, like maybe one fourth of what there was in the stock game because of the "historical" layers that lurker made. You might go an entire patrol with only seeing airplanes, if you don't know where to look. On a side note to that, once an airplane "sees" your submarine, others are directed to "search" in your general area, so you will see even more airplanes than normal. If they see you, change speed (faster or slower, doesn't matter) and change course. Just be mindful of fuel usage and what's in your bunker... :salute:

Yup, I freshly reinstalled the game, moved it to C:/Games...nothing. Same problem.


I'll try putting it in a different drive instead of my OS drive and see if that works. If it doesn't then I have no idea what happened.



Also doesn't MultiSH4 only work with v1.2? Maybe moving the save file to a different folder with MultiSH4 would work but would it even work with v1.5?


Update: tried moving it to my E drive which is purely for storage, same problem. No messages of "heavy IJN units spotted" like there should be at least sometimes or anything like that anywhere. Something's wrong with the scripting, I'm suspecting my save files are to blame for this somehow.


Another update: okay, now it SEEMS like the units for the Battle of Midway actually shoe up (3 Hiryu class carriers and a Soryu along with two Kongos and some CAs and destroyers, but still no radio messages.)

MultiSH4 1.5

It is named "1.5" to indicate it works with SH4 v1.5. If you don't use that, just empty your Save folder. You can delete the whole thing, at "SH4" level, found in the "C:\Users \UserName \Documents \SH4" folder, or you can delete the "Data" folder below that. A re-install of the game does not remove the Save folder. After you delete it, the game will recreate that folder when you next start it. If you don't delete it, the game sees all the files it "needs" are there, and doesn't attempt to overwrite some of the important ones. However, do not do the delete until ~after~ your mods are active, so that their settings all come into your game...

You will lose your campaign progress and everything associated with it, as well as being set back at 1024x768 on screen resolution, but the settings are easy enough to re-set. It's the loss of campaign progress that might hurt a bit, as it stands now, you can't use stock with your save folder, and you can't use RSRDC with your save folder, and you can't play RFB by itself, or with RSRDC, because your Save folder has a mix of both mods and Stock, but not all of any one of them... :salute:

Alright, the only thing left now is the radio messages. What about those? I deleted the entire save file folder (I didn't really care much about what was in there anyway, nothing special), and the messages still aren't coming through.


Also for the radio patrol messages, it's still saying to patrol specific coordinates...maybe my memory is wrong here but aren't the orders for your sub supposed to say something like "patrol off the shore of Tokyo bay for 96 hours and attacking shipping" or something along those lines instead of just saying "patrol at coordinate 0711 1255"?



Maybe my memory doesn't serve me there but yeah.


Sorry for all the headache :(

Where is the Phillipine Sea fleet?
 

I positioned myself at the mouth of the San Bernardino Strait on June 14th 1944 and I have gotten radio messages about the position of the Japanese Fleet with 4 carriers.



However, when the date/time rolls around and even when the radio report rolls in pinpointing their EXACT location...there's absolutely nothing.


Do I have to be far enough away for them to spawn in or something? I've checked the game files and I know I'm in the correct spot, directly at the mouth of the San Bernardino Strait, to attack them when they come through but there's literally nothing, even in spite of constant reloads, nothing. Could the mod have been broken somehow? I didn't mess with the mods after I started my career and everything up to this point has been fine from the slot runs to the Convoy reports.

Let me ask you this then, did you look at a Group's Properties page, and then click on the "Accept" button? The reason for the ask, is because if you do click on the Accept or OK buttons on Properties boxes or Define Group Contents boxes, the Mission Editor changes the background text of the mis file found the Campaign folder, and you don't even have to click the Save button in the Mission Editor for this to happen. The game "knows" that you don't want to use the values that lurker put in there, because it has "default" values that it wants you to use... and with that, everything in that particular file you looked at is now 24 hours late, and has other undesired changes. If you did that, de-activate the RSRDC mod, then delete its folder from your MODS folder, and un-zip a fresh copy of the files. That is just the way the Mission Editor works - for whatever reason...

Secondly, even if you did not do any button pushing, the game does not spawn the same way twice. It varies, since it uses Random Numbers generated by the computer to decide what to do. One time, group 1 spawns first, but the next time through, group 7 spawns first. Similarly in the group itself, ship 1 might spawn first, or ship 23. It just varies. In line with that, is the fact that since each group might be a little "off" in its timing, it might run into different scenarios during its journey, such as one time, the weather is calm, the next time it is rough, so it takes longer for it to get there, or it might encounter a group that it normally wouldn't. At the same time, that text file that displays in your sub is "static", and does not change Throw everything above at the text file, and it is bound to miss a bit each time, but sometimes by a lot.

If you look where the circle in the picture is, you are nowhere near a spawn location, so it isn't that in this case. I would more suspect the files got messed up, or maybe they ran aground on Ticao trying to make the turn... :salute:

https://i.imgur.com/3kc508Q.jpg

I did look at the group properties page but all I did was look at the waypoints. I did not touch ANYTHING at all via the Mission Editor. Also this happened before I even looked at the mission editor files.



I guess I'll just have to reload from a point before they spawn...or even restart the patrol.

Are you doing a campaign patrol, or a Single Mission file "SM05 Battle off Samar"? :salute:

It's a campaign patrol, and it's not the Battle off Samar I'm looking for, it's the Battle of the Philippine Sea in June of '44, not Samar in October of '44

Ahh, so you're trying to be the Flying Fish, only with a different agenda, eh?... :O: You're laying in wait on the groups coming out of Tawitawi / Guimaras, eh?... According to what I see, there should 30 ships of the CarDiv1 departing Tawitawi 13th June, 1944, and then exiting the San Bernardino Strait at 1930 15th June 1945, in the deep water by 1940, the message coming across at 2000... :salute:

Edit: A little side-note to that. The group is built wide, at 4x across, plus the escorts. Just because the Mission Editor says they'll make it on time, does not mean that they will... The ships are spaced at 1,000 yard apart, to that's a minimum of 3,000 yards wide between the four columns, then add an escort either side makes that 5,000 yards at a minimum. Then the DD have to do their Knuckle turns to check their baffles, that another 1000 yards either side, so now we're 7,000 yards across... real close to three and a half nautical miles wide, making turns through the Masbate and Ticao passes and the Strait... not an easy feat to do... I've never investigated if they do make it through. If I get some time in a few weeks, I might make that trip just to see... :salute: