[WIP] Changing radio washington to many small stations

[tedhealy]

Originally Posted by clayton

Interesting... I noticed that the farther I get from Midway the signal de-grades. The closer I get to the cut-off point, towards Japan, static and interference starts to take over until it completely drown it out.

Yeah, even with some of the things regarding the radio that don't quite work right, it still is a pretty neat sim of radio stations.

[tedhealy]

Originally Posted by Beery

One thing that might be worth testing...

What if we put in two channels with the same frequency but listed them in reverse chronological order? My thinking is this - with the channels listed in chronological order the game reads the first one and sets it going, but it can never read the second channel because it always reads the date on the first one and says to itself 'okay that channel is finished'. If the channels were in reverse chronological order it might read the first one (the last chronologically) and not register it because the date hasn't started yet. It might then go on, read the second one and it might just register it. Then, when the date for the first-listed channel comes up it might allow the change to be made because it sees it first in the file.

Not sure if that makes any sense, as it's 4am here so I'm about to collapse, LOL.

I can't get 2 stations to use the same frequency no matter what I've tried. I've tried reverse chronological order of operation dates, using different latitude/longitude, sharing content from the same folder, trying a different folder. I can't make it work. It looks like I'll be looking more at having stations that change hands use very close freq numbers.

[Beery]

Originally Posted by tedhealy

It looks like I'll be looking more at having stations that change hands use very close freq numbers.

Yup. Seems like that's the option we're left with. I don't see any real problems with it, and there may not need to be many changeovers anyway, if any at all. Although if changeovers were implemented it would be a nice way of showing how the war was progressing - not as clear as SH3 Commander's Newsmod, but maybe subtle is better.

[tedhealy]

Here's what I"m thinking. Have a station's name have it's frequency after it. This would kind of cover what's going on for station change overs if it's fudged a bit.

So you'd have a 'Manila x52.9x' at freq=52 for allied control. When it changes to japanese control at freq=53, the name will be 'Manila x53.1x' .... or something along those lines. The other stations that don't change over would also have a frequency number after their name.

Anyone have any suggestions for station names?

I'd also like to spread these frequencies around quite a bit more. More along the lines of having a 37, 89, 158, 220....etc. Anyone like/hate this idea?

Anyone want more stations? or are the 9 or so now ok? We don't want too many where you'll have to constantly be changing stations, but if we don't have enough, some of the effect of the stations moving with the front line is lost.

Other than that, I'm satisfied after some limited testing that adding change over stations won't cause a problem and will add to the atmosphere of this mod (once we get some radio tokyo content up and going that is). I'll start a new radio.ini soon.

[Beery]

Originally Posted by tedhealy

Here's what I"m thinking. Have a station's name have it's frequency after it. This would kind of cover what's going on for station change overs if it's fudged a bit.

So you'd have a 'Manila x52.9x' at freq=52 for allied control. When it changes to japanese control at freq=53, the name will be 'Manila x53.1x' .... or something along those lines. The other stations that don't change over would also have a frequency number after their name.

Sounds great to me.

Anyone have any suggestions for station names?

It's probably common sense to do this anyway, but I've been thinking that it might work best if the city (or the country if it's a small country or island) where the broadcast is coming from was prominently featured in the channel name. That way, when you tune to a channel called 'Radio Manila' or 'Phillippines Radio' when the Phillippines have fallen to the Japanese you'll instantly be reminded of this because you'll hear a Japanese broadcast and you'll see Manila on the dial. The idea being to bring home the fact that the Japanese are moving closer in the early war, and to bring a feeling of success when American stations take over later on. Very late in the war, American broadcasts from Okinawa would bring home to the player that the end was in sight.

I'd also like to spread these frequencies around quite a bit more. More along the lines of having a 37, 89, 158, 220....etc. Anyone like/hate this idea?

I'm for it. After all, if players don't like it they can always alter the frequencies themselves.

Anyone want more stations? or are the 9 or so now ok? We don't want too many where you'll have to constantly be changing stations, but if we don't have enough, some of the effect of the stations moving with the front line is lost.

I think most people will want what you describe above - as few as possible but enough to capture the feel of the territorial gains/losses. Anyway, probably the real trick will be finding the right broadcasts.

Other than that, I'm satisfied after some limited testing that adding change over stations won't cause a problem and will add to the atmosphere of this mod (once we get some radio tokyo content up and going that is). I'll start a new radio.ini soon.

This is going to be a great mod!

[tedhealy]

I feel good enough with where I'm at to put out a new radio.ini for people to play with. It's gone through limited testing for ranges and to make sure the stations actually work. I have not tested most of the operational dates. I'm going with the assumption that as long as I didn't screw something up in the .ini, the dates should work.

I've added Singapore (switches to japan in feb 42), Bougainville (switches to usa in nov 43), Tokyo, and made the other change over stations.

Here is the new range map all cluttered up with crude circles. Half red/white circles indicate stations that will change hands during the war. All red=japan, all white=usa.



If somebody wanted to use this as a jumping off point for their own mod, go ahead. I'd appreciate an acknowledgement of the work I put in on this if you do use this though. Not to mention a shout out to Beery for coming up with the idea of and testing of the stations changing hands and close frequency overlap.

All that's really missing now is scripted audio or music in the tokyo and washington folders. I want to figure out an average amount of time in game hours/days/months it takes to get through a 1, 3, 5, 10+ minute audio clip in the higher time compression modes before I start scripting audio events though.

To test this out, backup your radio.ini at \data\sound\radio and replace it with the following

[GENERAL]
RadioRealism=Yes
StartCh=1

[CHANNEL]
Name=Hawaii xx11.30xx
Folder=Washington
Freq=11
Antenna=01.01.1930-01.01.2000:21.00,-158.00:6000
;approx. 2600nm

[CHANNEL]
Name=Midway xx23.90xx
Folder=\Washington
Freq=24
Antenna=01.01.1930-01.01.2000:28.00,179.00:2800
;approx. 1400nm

[CHANNEL]
Name=Tokyo xx56.50xx
Folder=Tokyo
Freq=56
Antenna=01.01.1930-01.01.2000:36.00,140.00:6200
;approx. 2600nm

[CHANNEL]
Name=Australia xx91.60xx
Folder=\\Washington
Freq=91
Antenna=01.02.1942-01.01.2000:-24,133.00:3200
;approx 1600nm

[CHANNEL]
Name=Singapore xx107.50xx
Folder=\\\Washington
Freq=107
Antenna=01.01.1930-13.02.1942:1.00,104.00:1800

[CHANNEL]
Name=Singapore xx108.20xx
Folder=\Tokyo
Freq=108
Antenna=15.02.1942-15.08.1945:1.00,104.00:1800

[CHANNEL]
Name=Manila xx135.20xx
Folder=\\\\Washington
Freq=135
Antenna=01.01.1930-02.01.1942:15.00,121.00:1600

[CHANNEL]
Name=Manila xx136.80xx
Folder=\\Tokyo
Freq=136
Antenna=12.12.1941-01.03.1945:15.00,121.00:1600

[CHANNEL]
Name=Leyte xx137.9xx
Folder=\\\\\Washington
Freq=137
Antenna=01.11.1944-01.01.2000:12.50,124.50:2000
;approx 900nm

[CHANNEL]
Name=Guadalcanal xx168.90xx
Folder=\\\Tokyo
Freq=168
Antenna=03.05.1942-07.08.1942:-10.00,160.00:1100
;approx 500nm

[CHANNEL]
Name=Guadalcanal xx169.70xx
Folder=\\\\\\Washington
Freq=169
Antenna=09.08.1942-01.01.2000:-10.00,160.00:1100
;approx 500nm

[CHANNEL]
Name=Bougainville xx184.10xx
Folder=\\\\Tokyo
Freq=184
Antenna=01.01.1930-13.11.1943:-2.00,152.00:1100

[CHANNEL]
Name=Bougainville xx185.70xx
Folder=\\\\\\\Washington
Freq=185
Antenna=15.11.1943-01.01.2000:-2.00,152.00:1100

[CHANNEL]
Name=Saipan xx203.40xx
Folder=\\\\\Tokyo
Freq=203
Antenna=01.01.1930-15.06.1944:15.00,146.00:1500
;approx 750nm

[CHANNEL]
Name=Saipan xx204.40xx
Folder=\\\\\\\\Washington
Freq=204
Antenna=17.06.1944-01.01.2000:15.00,146.00:1500
;approx 750nm

[CHANNEL]
Name=Iwo Jima xx255.20xx
Folder=\\\\\\Tokyo
Freq=255
Antenna=01.01.1930-21.02.1945:26.00,140.00:1100

[CHANNEL]
Name=Iwo Jima xx256.30xx
Folder=\\\\\\\\\Washington
Freq=256
Antenna=23.02.1945-01.01.2000:26.00,140.00:1100

[CHANNEL]
Name=Okinawa xx280.60xx
Folder=\\\\\\\Tokyo
Freq=280
Antenna=01.01.1930-29.03.1945:29.00,127.00:1100

[CHANNEL]
Name=Okinawa xx281.10xx
Folder=\\\\\\\\\\Washington
Freq=281
Antenna=01.04.1945-01.01.2000:29.00,127.00:1100

;RADIO HOLLYWOOD MOD
;============================
;[CHANNEL]
;Name=Hollywood
;Folder=Hollywood
;Freq=300
;Antenna=01.01.1930-01.01.2000:34.09,-118.32:100000

;[CHANNEL]
;Name=Los Angeles
;Folder=Los Angeles
;Freq=310
;Antenna=01.01.1930-01.01.2000:34.05,-118.22:100000
;RADIO HOLLYWOOD MOD
;============================

Remember this is replacing the default washington station, so you have to get rid of that one too. If you just paste this stuff below the default washington [CHANNEL], this will not work.

If you are already using radio mods, I'd suggest commenting them out for now or you'll have to go through and look for frequency conflicts and station order and edit things. You want to have the stations go from top to bottom ordered by their Freq= Number and you want to keep station freq= numbers roughly 6 to 10 spots apart. For example, a freq=23 and a freq=27 station will overlap thier audio in game.

You'll also need to create a Tokyo folder in \data\sound\radio. I'd suggest putting some music files in the Tokyo folder and \data\sound\radio\washington\ folder. Don't worry about putting anything in the events folder. This way the stations will play randomly whatever you put in the washington and tokyo folders (the washington stations will also overlap scripted news events on top of the audio, but don't worry about that for now).

If anyone spots some ranges that are off in game, dates that are wrong, or whatever, please let me know. Like I wrote, this has only gone through some limited testing mostly pre 1943, and some 1944 cruising just to make sure things weren't broken anywhere.

[CaptainCox]

Great work man, will try it out after work tonight.

Maybe you mentioned this in earlier posts, did you figure how to turn off the music when news broad casts starts?

I am asking cause I had to do a reinstall of the game due to some PRETTY WIERD stuff.

I was fiddling with textures and accidentally modified a "ORIG" texture in the game folder. I had a back up thank God, but when I copied that over, the "MODIFYED" one would still pop back!...like it was still in memory or something. I reinstalled the game 2!!! times "CLEAN" install, deleted all folders and even cleaned the reg files. But that darn texture would just pop back with my green lines all over the boat (I did that to find the area for the "bow-planes")

Anyhow to make a long story short, I had to use "Acronis True Image" to install a image of VISTA I did just 2 days ago (thank GOD!) and now all is well...BUT! the volume of "music" and "news" is almost same now, its almost not possible to hear what is what.

[tedhealy]

double post

[tedhealy]

Originally Posted by CaptainCox

Great work man, will try it out after work tonight.

Maybe you mentioned this in earlier posts, did you figure how to turn off the music when news broad casts starts?

Unfortunately, no. I need to figure out how to approach that issue. One possible solution would be to have a few stations just be music stations while others are just news stations....or actually script songs to play on certain dates too.:hmm:

I haven't quit given up on trying to figure it out though.

[CaptainCox]

AHHHH! that last thought might actually do it, but...then again you will have a lot of "Silent" periods, on that perticular channel that is, unless you cram alot of music in to the channel = mega work and mega heavy.

[clayton]

Looking forward to testing this out! I'm using the CBS mod as Washington and I'll just throw in a couple of Tokyo Rose clips for testing purposes. Thanks again for your hard work and I'm a STL boy too!

[tedhealy]

Originally Posted by CaptainCox

AHHHH! that last thought might actually do it, but...then again you will have a lot of "Silent" periods, on that perticular channel that is, unless you cram alot of music in to the channel = mega work and mega heavy.

Yeah, that's the problem with scripted songs. You'll either have to deal with silent time, or you'll have a list of songs and news events waiting to be played after the current one finishes because you are cruising around in 8000x TC.

[bunkerratt]

ok ted...if i'm reading this right ..Antenna=01.01.1930-29.03.1945:29.00,127.00:1100
.the 1100 at the end of the line is the range of the antena? and if needed i can increse the numbers to increase range?

[tedhealy]

Originally Posted by bunkerratt

ok ted...if i'm reading this right ..Antenna=01.01.1930-29.03.1945:29.00,127.00:1100
.the 1100 at the end of the line is the range of the antena? and if needed i can increse the numbers to increase range?

Exactly. The only hard part is that 1100 doesn't seem to really correspond to any type of range in miles, nautical miles, or kilometers that I can figure out. Just when I think it does correspond to kilometers, I find a case where it clearly does not.

You can usually get away with doubling the range you want in nautical miles and using that number. For example, you want a 500 nm range station, put it 1000 or 1100. This doesn't always seem to hold up though, so it's best to test and fine tune it in game.

[bunkerratt]

ok tyvm i'll monkey around with it ..it's cool so far..