Originally Posted by propbeanie
You start with using the File, Open, and choose the first file, such as 44a_Jap_CoastalTraffic.mis. The next files you use the File, Merge, and choose the next file in the list, such as 44a_Jap_Convoys.mis. You just go on down the list of files of 44a until you're finished, which in this case is seven files all told. Now, the "Merge" choice will bring up a little dialog box ("Merge Confirmation") that asks you if you want to "Mark merged data as saveable" with a little tick box and then "OK" and "Cancel" buttons. Be sure the tick box is empty, and hit the OK button. You will get that for each file. If you happen to have that box ticked, it then will merge the files together as one, and you'll have a big mess.
Once you have all the files you want loaded together, set the "Time Filter Date" in the top area, below the "Help" menu choice. You can choose year and month only (and it is a finicky control). So I set the time frame to "1944 07". Click somewhere on the map, else the last box you touch there stays "active" and will change on you. Off to the right of that date is a little red "+" circle, and a grey "-" circle. Those increment and decrement the Time Acceleration, and the "TimeAcc 1x" to the right of that, changes as you push those buttons. You can set that to at least 1024 or whatever before you "Play" the ME. If you've got to get close to the end of the month, and don't need to "see" anything on the way, push it up to something like 65536. It goes ~FAST~ though... 4096 will get you to the Fourth of July quickly enough, and is still almost too fast to "see" much of a Groups traveling.
After you've got that all set, press the Play button ">" and away you go. Use the "II" pause button to stop things where they are at the time. The Stop button, which is the filled in square, stops and rewinds in one fell swoop, and will ruin what you're looking at. You'll notice that there is no "Rewind" button, which if you miss something, you'll have to Stop and Play again. Off to the right side, above the misspelled "Tools Pannel" is the date and time, where you see the "YYYY-MM-DD HH-MM" format.
So, zoom in to where you want to see the action, and hit play. Control the speed with those buttons, and Pause anytime you see something interesting. Unfortunately, you cannot "see" the RGG, other than the green circle that represents them moving about. There also is no way to ID them, other than to trace their "line" back to where they started, take a screen shot, and then try to find them after you hit stop. If you zoom in all the way, it's still just a green circle. However, the scripted Groups, you can zoom in and see all the ships, follow them along, even if they're routed across dry land or into other groups, they'll keep going along like nothing's wrong, because they're just a script running right now. But if you see that, you could then make yourself a mission, and place yourself near that spot, and see what happens. It's usually quite different than what the ME played out. Just bear in mind that the "spawn rate" of a group does influence the way things play out, and you may or may not see "interaction" between groups when in a mission file, due to one or more of the groups seen in the ME Play might not spawn to show up, which is what I've had happen every time I've tried it for this.
Usually speaking, when there is a big slowdown like you experienced, there is a mass of vessels somewhere nearby, like what was seen at Miyoko Bay the other day, with the burning, exploding hulks of ships littered the hillsides and waterways. Or like Truk was doing a few months ago, where there were at least two Convoys and three TaskForces all in the one area and in each other's ways. The computer can't handle all the calculations necessary for all the collision detection going on, much less track all the damage incurred, which ships need fire and smoke, which are exploding, which ones occupy the same space and have "merged" themselves together. That's a lot of calculating to do when it gets busy. Now that I'm thinking about it, the "128x Time Compression" that you got is a clue also. Let me look into that and see what influences that, if there is a setting for that. If not, then it was just the level your computer could handle...
|