[REL]War Progress Radio Messages
 

Hi all,
after a long time I have finally finished this mod. It's a small one (in terms of size) but extremely huge one considering the time I have spent on it.

Anyway, what is it?
Everytime I play SH3/SH4 I feel like I'm all alone in the sea and there is no war going on on the land. This has been addressed, to certain extent, by Lehmann's Radio news but I felt like taking the idea MUCH further....

During surfing the net I stumbled upon http://www.worldwar-2.net/ and got an idea. Why not create mod which will inform you about events happening in the war on almost day-to-day basis?

What does it do?
The mod expands \Data\Campaigns\Campaign\messages_en.txt (and in case of SH4 \Data\Campaigns\CampaignGE\messagesGE.txt) by VAST amount of data about actual events taking place and informs you about the progress of the war.

It is set up that, on days where there is something new to report, you receive (around 23:00 depending on your TC) message like this:
23:01 Radio Message
From: BdU
To: U-99
1939/09/02 OKW has issued the following announcement: Joint ultimatum was given to Germany to withdraw her troops from Poland within twelve hours or find herself at war with Britain and France. The Luftwaffe raided Warsaw. German troops captured the Jablunka pass in the Tatra mountains. Fighting continued for the strategic peninsula of Westerplatte at the mouth of the Vistula River. A massive attack was launched by 60 Stuka dive bombers of the II and III Stukageschwader Immelmann directed at crushing the garrison. Sweden issued a declaration of neutrality. German Ministers at Sweden, Norway, gave a declaration that Germany would respect the integrity of Sweden and Norway.

Pros and Cons
I play games mostly to entertain but also to educate myself so I believe that this mod adds huge immersion in the game (making you feel like you are part of living and breathing world). The down side is that the news are "too accurate", meaning they are known right the day they happen and to fairly deep details.
I realize that this mod will be love/hate type of the deal so use it if you like or don't, but please, respect the HUGE amount time I have invested to create it. As always comments and (positive) criticism is welcome.

Installation
Because your radio message file might have been already modified by another MODs there is no way to make this JSGME ready. Download the file, open it in Notepad and copy and paste the content into destination file.
SH3: \Data\Campaigns\Campaign\messages_en.txt
SH4: \Data\Campaigns\CampaignGE\messagesGE.txt

NOTE: The files for SH3/SH4 have slightly different structure so, please, make sure that you are attaching the correct one ;)

Download:
SH3 file: http://www.mediafire.com/download/rq...essages_en.txt
SH4 file: http://www.mediafire.com/download/0x...messagesGE.txt

Last note: Considering the huge amount of typing and also the fact that I was retyping all the info from present tense to past tense, typos are bound to happen. I'm currently testing the mod in SH4 and killing them. LOL
I would really appreciate help with this one. If you find a typo please either shoot me an IM with "day" of the typo and "what it says" and what it "should say" or post the info in the thread. It will take a while but I'm positive that eventually this might become typo-free mod. Thanks!

IMPORTANT: I have seen questions about how to add the new messages to the file.
You don't have to past them to specific area or even try to sort them out by dates. Just APPEND THE MESSAGES TO THE END OF THE FILE.

The people who hate being dragged out of TC all the time are going to hate it.

I, on the other hand, think it's brilliant! :rock:

I'm not playing right now, but I'll be glad to look through it and try to catch what I can. :sunny:

looks excellent conus! these are the type of mods that make sh3 what it really is-- a Sim and not an arcade game. any mod that increases the immersion and historical accuracy is most welcome:up:

Thank you for all the hard work that went into this mod! I did some work for myself on the old radio log files some years back, so I can appreciate the amount of work involved in doing this mod.:salute:

Thanks a lot :up:

With this, WB's Mission Orders and JFO! my radioman goes from NYGM's basically unemployed radioman to the busiest crewman aboard. :ping:

SH5?
 

This certainly immerses one into the time of war torn Europe!
Can this possibly be ported to Silent Hunter 5?
Thanks so much for your dedicated work!

Great mod. Thanks for all the work on this!! :up:

Nice !!
:up:

If SH5 uses similar Radio Message system, I believe it can, if someone can point me to the right file I will do it. ;)

Very good immersion mod.
Thank you very much for sharing your work with the community. :up:

Hi conus00,

thank you very much for your great work!
I would like to use it for LSH3_v6 in the messages_en.txt - Credits will be given!
But damn! No I would need someone to translate them into German and compare it with the messages already included in messages_de.txt :D

Maybe you would like to change "Bdu" to "BdU" and from the start until 17 October 1939 it would have been "FdU" - Führer der U-Boote. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F%C3%BChrer_der_U-Boote

"Accidentally" found a typo:
19450418 - The US Third Army capturds Nürnberg

Regards
Blueduck

Great work and thanks for all your hard work

Go ahead and use it if you'd like. Translating to German would be HUGE undertaking... ;)

I will consider your proposal for next update. Seems like great idea to me Thanks.

Do we have to mix the messages with the existing one? If yes, sorted by year/month/day?
If no, where do we put the new messagges in the messages_en.txt-file? Somewhere, at the begin or at the end?