Well, if you are lucky enough to have two monitors this will be a lot easier, but it can be done without it.
Since you say you have done this before but have CRS...(Can't Remember SH**, I have it too....really bad.
) it should be quite easy for you to do. And it will show you what has to be set up to 'clone' a ship and make it a sub. These are the same files you would need to clone a sub, except the Sub will already have several of the files that we need to add.
Thanks to Skwasjer a lot of this is simple using S3D. (I hope I spelled his name right) Make sure you get the new S3D, I don't remember which version added it, but you can now copy entire nodes, you don't need to export "chunks" and import them.
Make a copy of the Asashio MOD in a working location and we will start.
1. Change the Folder name to what you want to call your MOD. AkisukiDDPlayable for example.
2. Open that folder, there is a Data folder. If you start a ship/sub from scratch (or any MOD, the Data must be the first folder inside the MOD) You can change the Readme file or leave it for later.
3. Open the Data Folder.
4. First folder is "Cfg", these are files that improve on the range and sensor detection for the ship. These were made by W4lt3r for me. The folder is not needed for the ship to work. You can delete or keep it. I recommend you leave it is.
3. Skip the Library for now, it has the playable guns. Akisuki may need different guns, we will get to that.
4. Open the Menu Folder. The "Skins" folder has the backgrounds for the management screens. Again not needed to make the ship work, but they contain Japanese faces and medals for the Crewmanagement screen. Keep, delet or change to something you prefer. If you do your own, note the folder structure matches the game.
5. Same Menu folder, second folder Data/SubmarineClasses. View of the ship used in the mangement screens. "NSS_Asashio.dds". To create your own, I use Photoshop Elements with Nvidia .dds plugin, you need a progam to save alpha channel. Go to the Sea folder in the game files and copy the "NDD_Akizuki_sil.dds" to this folder, rename to NSS_Akizuki.dds, open with PS and crop the top ship silhouette. Resize the canvas size, NOT the image size to 1012X253 (Why? That is what the one that I saw work right was set, I would think it should be 1024 X 256, so try either way) Now make a selection of the white background, hold shift and select the white between the wires and the ship and anywhere that is enclosed. Menu/Select/Inverse. Menu/Select/Save Selection. Pulldown list select Alpha. Menu/File/Save as... Save as a .dds, "DXT3 ARGB 8 bpp | explicit alpha". That works for me. Delete the Asashio file. Go back to Data folder.
6. Open Roster/Japan/Submarine.
From the SH4 files open the data/Roster/Japan/Sea folder. Copy "DDAkisuki.cfg" to the Mod folder you just opened (Roster/Japan/Submarine). Change name to SSAkisuki.cfg. (these are names I used to define the "Classname" Just to avoid confusion, I will use the same ones. When you do your own, they just have to be different than the stock ones so there are no conflicts and MATCH each place they are used, as you will see later.)
Using the Asashio.cfg as a guide change the lines in the file:
ClassName=DDAkizuki........SSAkizuki
UnitType=4..................200
DisplayName=JP DD Akizuki ............Akisuki DD
Below, change Sea to Submarine, change NDD to NSS
TextureName=data/Sea/NDD_Akizuki/NDD_Akizuki_T01.tga
LightmapTextureName=data/Sea/NDD_Akizuki/NDD_Akizuki_O02.tga
NormalmapTextureName=data/Sea/NDD_Akizuki/NDD_Akizuki_N01.tga
TextureName=data/Sea/NDD_Akizuki/NDD_Akizuki_T01.tga
LightmapTextureName=data/Sea/NDD_Akizuki/NDD_Akizuki_O01.tga
NormalmapTextureName=data/Sea/NDD_Akizuki/NDD_Akizuki_N01.tga
Change the Unit names so they will not conflict.
Recheck the file and save. Make sure you save to the Mod folder and not to the game folder. Delete the SSAsashio.cfg.
7. Single mission folder, leave or delete, up to you. There is only one in there. Not a necessary folder for the ship to work, but it will give you a place to test it.
8. Now it gets a bit more complicated to explain. Easy to do, harder to explain.
I am going to post this now while I do a few things I need to do, and will finish it up in a bit. I also need to check a few things on the Akisuki, guns for example. And you can check this and see if you have any questions so far.
Peabody