I think the rudder-triggered horn was just a never realized idea. :hmmm:

What is surely possible. is doing a ship to send horn/siren distress signals when she spots an enemy (through a virtual gun muzzle flash effect) and/or when she is damaged (through damage box effects) :yep:
Not stupid, but I would find the same sound looping every 10 minutes quite depressing and a bit unrealistic. After all, due to their speed, the Queen Mary and her sister ship the Queen Elizabeth were often travelling out of convoy and without escort screen. Why should they use so often their horns while sailing on a straight line, in the middle of the ocean and with no other ships around, if not for casting the attenction of any passing by attacker? :O:

P.S: I have finally managed getting night lights to work properly!
More on them later :yeah:

And also you won't hear the horn, because you stop hearing ship's sound from only a few km ...

Good news ! Without drawbacks ? :O:

Well, if the sound was set appropriately, it could be heard as far as the game 3D rendering radius :yep:

Yes and no. For textures not requiring an opacity mask, it works like a charm. I couldn't manage setting the effect to work with alpha channels though.
As for the specular map of the La Plate lighthouse, grey tones in the alpha channel are readeither as black (fully trensparent) or white (fully opaque), thus killing the smooth transition effect of light halos.

There must be somewhere in SHIII materials/textures maps, a flag not known to Skwas while he was working on S3d, that tells the game wether to use alpha channels as B/W (1 bit) bitmaps, or as greyscale (8 bit) images. As I said in one of my previous posts, S3d can read/write these unknown adress(es), but it doesn't display them among the other parameters and properties available for editing. The workaround I used for the specular mask, was replacing the old material with one copied from a stock file, where it was used for a similar purpose. Unfortunately, I couldn't find so far a texture map chunk connected with a greyscale alpha channel. That means that I need to discover where is the flag that I need to change, and tweak using an hex editor :doh:

Not if the horn's sound is read on the ship's sound, else you will hear the ship's sound from 30 km ! So, the horn's sound must be separated from the ship's sound.

I see, same solution as for La Plate texture (the tower was black) ! :up:

So, we couldn't switch on/off our lighthouses' light halo depending on day/night period ? :wah:

Wow, you know how to use these things ? Else, ask Jeff Grooves. :yep:

Okay :up:

Yep, unfortunately it doesn't apply in this case, because among stock files I couldn't find any example of a "texture map" (type 13/0) controller with an embedded opacity mask. The latter type of controller got the usual "Disable z-buffer + enable alpha blend" checkbox though (its name is S3d is actually misleading: it should be rather called "enable alpha test"), so I suspect that also the hidden (and actual) alpha blend flag must be there, though we cannot see/edit it :hmmm:

Maybe if I manage solving the opacity issue...

Not exactly. I can perform basic tweaks, preferably under the directions of someone who knows hex editing stuff better than me, but I am a curious guy, I like to learn, and I know how to find information on the web :03:

I wish Jeff was around. Unfortunately he has been unusually silent during the last months; I hope everything is well with him.

There are several other "old school hardcore" SHIII modders who might help us on this topic, including Anvar, but none of them has ever shown interest in our mods since when I have started cooperating with you, VonDos, MLF, LGN1, the_frog, etc.

Another modder who could offer us a valid support, is Rosomaha (Russian programmers always rock!). The last year he released in the SH5 modding section an upgrade package for S3D that makes Skwas tool fully compatible with SH5, besides adding several other improvements to it. He, like Jeff, could probably integrate the missing options in S3d. I will drop a PM to him, but unfortunately he too hasn't been active since the month of August.

In absence of better options, I will start digging inot hex editor myself, but let me know if in the meanwhile you can think of someone else who might help us :salute:

It must be my deodorant (or lack of it) 😝

...or my bad sense of humor :rotfl2:

I have news about night-triggered halo effects btw, and they are not good.
The ones who have read my previous posts, might remember that I suspected the existence of an hidden flag in the material controller, used for switching between two possible opacity sorting methods: "alpha test" (i.e. either fully opaque or fully transparent) or "alpha blend" (for shaded opacity masks). My hope was that, if I found this flag in SHIII materials, I could look for a similar offset in the texture map controller that must be used in conjunction with the CityLights controller, and I could set it to 'true' for enabling shaded night halo effects at night (and only at anight).
In short, what I have discovered is that there is not such a flag. The material chunk used for translucent objects in SHIII, is separate -though similar- from the regular material chunk. Differerences between the two types of material involve 7 offsets, but I coulnd't find the same sequence nowhere in the texture map material that I wanted to tweak.

https://i.imgur.com/FpXbkO5.jpg

That means no shaded light halos switching on only at nights and no lighthouse flares looking shinier at night than during the day, unless we find a way to use the city lights controller without 'texture map' materials :hmmm:

So, another argument to not use any halo for sectorial lighthouses (like La Vieille) ! :O:

@ VonDos : Could you paint all the rails in white, instead of black, please ? :)

@ gap : I'm waiting for the working lanterns in order to use the node for the portholes i'm going to add to the hull ! BTW, could you create a correct 3D porthole for me, with the light texture I have shown you a few posts before ? (you can find this texture on a transparent background in the .dat file of an enlighted ship of GWX 3.0)

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/show...&postcount=109

Easy.
I'm sending you an up-to-date version with improved funnels, reworked lifeboats (there was a bug), repainted rails and with some details repositioned:

https://image.ibb.co/nMv1Y6/SH3_Img_...0_48_1_714.jpg

Note: in wartime gray version, rails will appear gray.
Best regards,
Vd

Hi guys, sorry for the late replies, but RL came into the way :salute:

I have created a simple new model for the sidelights, and I am planning to do the same for masthead and stern lights.
The new sidelights look nice; I have set their minimum rendering dimension to 1 pixel but indeed, without a halo effect, they are hardly visible from a distance.
Today I will make one last attempt at fixing the night-triggered halos. If it wont work, I will scrap them and send you the working lights without halo.

Okay, no problem :up:

Got it :up:

:up:

What do you mean ?

I hope you will succeed !

I have a strange problem : the first funnel is more enlighted, even if the 3D models are the same for each funnel, and light nodes are at the same height compared to the full ... :k_confused:

https://i.imgur.com/Wt2gMbN.png

Hi!
Did you modify materials with different emissions?
Or isn't this Aldo related with tested lights maybe?

@VonDos : I'm going to send you my files by PM. Can you apply your last modifications (white rails, corrected bug, improved funnels ....) to my one files please ?