WOTK: Late April Update:
A very warm thank you again to people who helped out recently - vickers03, Kapitan Oliver Leinkraunt, Jeff Groves, Darthlucky, and SlySkydiver.
Once again, vickers03 is owed a particularly huge debt!
He resolved a crippling frame rate bug. Were it not for him, the new sub interiors would have been unplayable on some older systems. Before his help, I was getting about 35 FPS - now I am getting smooth performance! Smooth as a baby's ... stern, lol! Consistently 150-210 FPS, no hiccups, with engine parts operating!
In the interest of honesty, I must admit development slowed to an unacceptable pace throughout April due to me working overtime at my job. It will be slow for a couple more weeks - I have a family vacation, and they will smack me in the head if I spend my time modding during family time, I am sure you guys know how it is!
But on the plus side, work will be back to its standard output after the first week in May. I worked this Saturday and Sunday, but here are updates that I managed in recent days:
-Heavy Merchant model ~ 90% Complete
-Medium Merchant model ~90 % Complete
-New Lifeboat for most merchant ships ~80% complete
-Additional work on destructible hull plates
-Merchant ships now equipped with realistic Wellin Davits - modelled based on real diagrams of the RMS Titanic's lifeboat davits
-Work on crew boarding/lifeboat launch sequence for merchant ships
-For interiors, began making Wireless Room and Kitchen
-Research for minor tweaks to HMS "Hampshire" and sister Armored Cruisers
-Research on typical ranks present on WWI U-Boats, plus number of each type of crewman - officers, sailors, and "stokers" or engine staff
-Tweaked shell damage values
-Reduced potential damage area/blast radius for torpedoes
-Various changes to zones.cfg
One thing I would like to stress with cargo ships - although you only see a few types in recent screenshots, the final product will have many different bridge arrangements, masts, funnels, and paint schemes for the individual hulls. So you will see huge variety in ships. However, getting other parts of the mod ready is the top priority.