Lately I've been spending my time going over the sensors....exclusively the "AI Visual". I've come to notice a few things. I've had success in getting an enemy to see a raised periscope during the day at 1000 yards, and have success in
not being detected at that same distance at night while surfaced. Which for the first time, this game will have a surfaced night attack ability like no other mod has provided (or the stock game). I'm using the feature I added to the external camera that provides a 7x power to the view. By transporting myself onto an enemy ship, I can use the typical 7x "binocular power" to see how the sub appears at night, or at distance during the day. So far so good!
I'm also being shot at a lot and have found some of my crew, especially the deck gun crew, taking a beating! To aid in telling which crewman died I've changed the color for the dead, compared to the injured:
No big deal, just made the dead turn "Blue" in their picture.
What I'm thinking of doing is adding these gun crewmen for all subs (I've been using a Balao lately) to the Damage Control Team slots. When their there, they don't pick up an injury....kind of like the Hogan's Alley that's in RFB. You have the crew in a safe place when they aren't called on to "man the guns". The game will start with these gun crews in this Damage Control area, and you'll have to fill the slots when you want the guns to be manned. Unfortunately, the best way would have been for the game to add these crewmen automatically when you send the command to "Man the deck gun"....but that's not what the game does, so you'll have to go to the above Crew Management screen, and move them over individually.
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Ok, on to the Moon.... Alice!!
Where is it??
This is one of my test missions, and couldn't help to notice there's a huge reflection on the water, looking West.....but no moon?!?
So, I went through the FOTRS v0.63 files and added some new modifications. We've got a moon now:
Obviously, I also reworked the reflection too.
Here's the old look at moon set:
Here's the new:
After moon set, at 1:45 AM:
Same time, with the new changes:
The newer night environment is slightly darker.
What this is going to do is require the player to move to the Night Scope (Observation Periscope) to help in conducting attacks.
Here's the Attack Scope I've got in the game now:
I actually darkened it a bit to produce the darker look to the view.
Here's the same ship using the Night Scope:
There's not a lot of difference, the ship is a bit brighter. The advantage in the Telemeter Divisions being lighter makes them easier to read. I really can't do anymore with the lighter scope. If I make the Attack Scope too dark, it will be noticeable when using it during the day....so this is about as good as it gets.
Just wanted to post regarding our work and the coming new Beta for Fotrs Ultimate.