[TEC] Modding SH3

[Tycho]

Originally Posted by Tycho

Most likely not. I'm not programer, I'm incompetent to add new things, I only find and change bytes. And honestly, I'm already tired of this, there is only one more thing I want to find and then I finish digging into the .exe file.

And, I found it.
I will not look in the sh3.exe again, I promise, at least this year.

What I found, is part of the code that draw the lines / graticules on periscopes.
Now I have proper Uzo with only vertical line.
I bring back 1.5 zoom to be default, and this give me proper work of "Cam_zoom_cycle", that I can now will make with menu command.

 

[makman94]

Originally Posted by Tycho

What I found, is part of the code that draw the lines / graticules on periscopes.
Now I have proper Uzo with only vertical line.
I bring back 1.5 zoom to be default, and this give me proper work of "Cam_zoom_cycle", that I can now will make with menu command.

Another really great find Tycho,bravo
the degrees reticles at UZO (and the horiz line) is not historical correct being there and it was something that annoying me see it.

[makman94]

Speaking about the UZO,
does anyone know if the vertical line of uzo was highlighted (to green or to whatever color) during night ?

[makman94]

Originally Posted by makman94

Speaking about the UZO,
does anyone know if the vertical line of uzo was highlighted (to green or to whatever color) during night ?

pump,

....anyone ?

[Tycho]

Originally Posted by makman94

Speaking about the UZO,
does anyone know if the vertical line of uzo was highlighted (to green or to whatever color) during night ?

If we look over British report on U-570.
For Attack Periscope - nothing about.
For Observation Periscope:

The graticule is illuminated by luminous material carried in glass tubes around the edge of the graticule. The illumination begins to show on the graticule after about 12 seconds application of the eye to the eyepiece in the dark, and after about 3 minutes the divisions can be distinguished. The numbers cannot be read.

For UZO:

A graticule is provided in the right limb. It consists of a vertical line which gradually thickens from the centre to the outside of the field. The line is provided with night illumination by a self-luminous placed in a compartment to the right of the graticule. There is an external lever which controls the illumination from "hell" (Bright" to "dunkel" (Dark). In the bright position the illumination is visible after 2 to 3 minutes' observation in the dark and plainly visible after 10 minutes. In the dark position it is just cut out completely.

[makman94]

Originally Posted by Tycho

If we look over British report on U-570.
For Attack Periscope - nothing about.
For Observation Periscope:

For UZO:

Thank you Tycho

[Tycho]

According to above information, I decided that attack periscope didn't have illumination.
So, I decided to rework a little my scopes reticle:

tga files:

 

Attack periscope, day and night:

 

Observation periscope, day and night:

 

UZO, day and night:

 

[BigWalleye]

Tycho, this work is very interesting. Could you please post a link to the .tga files for the graticles? I would like to try them. Thanks.

[Tycho]

Originally Posted by BigWalleye

Tycho, this work is very interesting. Could you please post a link to the .tga files for the graticles? I would like to try them. Thanks.

Sent you PM.

[BigWalleye]

Thanks, Tycho.

[Tycho]

I'm not doing anything about SH3 these days.
Yet, from time to time, in my thoughts something interesting emerges.
In my recent dealing with sh3.exe, during the spring, I saw something.

Now I think, that it will be possible, for example, to take some of kriegsmarine grid and to move and rearrange its lines, in order to create new grid.

Looking over SH3 kriegsmarine grid representation, I see the grids that are absolutely not needed, like: PA, PB and PC, and maybe GK.
So, why not to move, rearrange and rename these, and create for example: CL and CP (Black sea and East Med) .
Or maybe: AA, AB, AC and AT, for north operations.

 

When I will do that, I don't know. I have other priorities to do in SH3 for this winter.
First I will test the possibilities, and if it is possible, through the next year will make something about that.

[gap]

Interesting topic

In the past I have been messing with SH5's terrain types, I even had some clues by one of the devs, and I must say that things haven't changed much from SHIII to SH5.

Thank you for sharing your knowledge Tycho & Co.

[Tycho]

Not much time for SH3 lately, but here I made something to enhance my game.
I sail hardcore way. Without my boat on map, I use dead reckoning and coastal navigation. Deep in the sea, except dead reckoning, two or three time per day I make fixes by ctrl+left click, if the sky objects are visible.
First, look over this thread by Sjizzle:Long / lat.

So, if debug is activated in EnvSim controller, we will have this thing on screen.
It will be on every external camera directly over the scene, under the Gui. The whole looks:

 

I decide to make use of this.
Well, I need only Long/Lat information, now let's dig, from where this come. Probably from the EnvSim.act file, and yes I found it there.
First, I don't need this red compass thing, it show the camera orientation with respect to the world directions. Found some bool and switch it off.
Next are these color index/ratio informations, also not needed. Just changed its color to transparent, now this part is invisible.
Now, where to put Long/Lat? First, I thought about upper right corner of the screen.
Ops, setback. There is only one byte for vertical coordinate, I can't move it more than FF.
For horizontal coordinate it is the whole word, so no problem there.

And here a idea come in my mind. I moved the Long/Lat information in the lower left part of the screen and cut a hole in my interface.
Then I took the Stiebler's Weather meter graphic element, moved and changed it, to cover the Long/Lat. Made "none fog" and "light fog" with some transparency, medium and havy fog without transparency.
So in bad weather Long/Lat is covered and not visible. Screens:

 

Yes, there have weather conditions, that spoil the impression, like: light fog and overcast clouds.
But, I have enough self control, to not use it in these cases.
If it is possible for Stiebler to make the weather meter to count also the clouds state, not only fog state....?
Screen:

 

Now, what to do with this? Calculate and plot on map. Let's do it.

 

What we have here, Long: -8,19221 and Lat: 43,42171
Obviously, we are at 8° and a something West of the Greenwich, 43° and a something North of the Equator.
In SH3 world, 1° is 120 km. So we take the number after decimal, like whole and multiply it by 1.2
We get the distance in meters. Plot it on map after appropriate degree.
We can use a calculator, or by hand on paper, but I like to do it directly in game, so I use sliderule, and it come to this.
We multiply 19 and 1/4 by 1.2 and the result is 23km and 50m, and plot this on map:

 

Then, multiply 42 and a little by 1.2 and the result is 50km and 500m, and plot this on map:

 

Now, the tricky part, take the horizontal (Long) line, grab the zero side and move it straight up and make it vertical.
The same with vertical (Lat) line, grab the zero side and make it horizontal. The two line must cross, and where they cross is our position.
Screens:

 

If we do it with calculator, the results are:
19220x1.2=23064
42171x1.2=50605

If we check the exact position, it is on mark 1.
Screen:

 

So, with calculator it will be absolutely correct.
But, when you sail without boat on map, you get used to that your exact position is not so important and needed.
In fact, the real U-boat almost all of the time are not on exact position, but on assumed position.
Even for a few hours after fix they have accumulated several miles of incorrectness.
You can see this in most of U-boat KTB's. And probably, their Celestial fixes were also not so accurate, a few hundred meters are not a problem, there.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you all.

[Tycho]

Some time ago I realised, that to make the screenshots to go in separated folder will be very easy.
You know, the screenshots are written in the main directory, between the other files.
I have two variants for that.
Will put this here, until update my TychoSh3Patch.

So, I open sh3.exe with HexEditor and use search for text - ".bmp", and found this string: "SH3Img@%u-%u-%u_%u.%u.%u_%u.bmp"

 

It is in rdata section, and must be used somewhere in the code section, by it address.
I look the address of the first byte, and I go in beginning of the file and use search for hex value: ecda5100
And found it here:

 

I see that it is pushed there, but let's look the disassembled code for more explicit view.
I take the address for the previous byte "68" and go there in the disassembled code:

 

So, I see that the string is pushed, then something else is pushed, and then have call for function that will use this pushes.
Further research shows that this function is: MSVCR71.DLL!sprintf
Looking further, how this function is used in other places in the code, I see that there is no problem the string to be pointed with location.
The conclusion is that, I can very easy make the game to write the screenshots in separate folder, with change of only one byte.

I go back to the string and change this byte (address: 0011DAF2) from 40 to 5C, from @ to \

 

For use with TychoSh3Patch:

 

@@@ The screenshots will go to the SH3Img folder
#
0011DAF2: 40 5c
#
#

I go in the main game directory and I create a new folder named exactly SH3Img.
Now, the screenshot will be written to the "SH3Img" folder, but the screenshot will not have this prefix: SH3Img@date_hour.minutes...bmp,
but will start directly with the date, for example: 17-10-2018_18.35.42_681.bmp

But, for me is more satisfactory the folder to be named "Screenshots", so I make something else.
I see that to the end of the rdata section have some free space. So, I write there:
Screenshots\SH3Img@%u-%u-%u_%u.%u.%u_%u.bmp

 

Then, I take the address of the first byte: 0013A100, I go to where the string is pushed (00001A4E) and change the bytes there, from: ECDA5100 to 00A15300.

 

For use with TychoSh3Patch:

 

@@@ The screenshots will go to the Screenshots folder
#
00001A4E: ec 00
00001A4F: da a1
00001A50: 51 53
00001A51: 00 00
@
0013A100: 00 53
0013A101: 00 63
0013A102: 00 72
0013A103: 00 65
0013A104: 00 65
0013A105: 00 6e
0013A106: 00 73
0013A107: 00 68
0013A108: 00 6f
0013A109: 00 74
0013A10A: 00 73
0013A10B: 00 5c
0013A10C: 00 53
0013A10D: 00 48
0013A10E: 00 33
0013A10F: 00 49
0013A110: 00 6d
0013A111: 00 67
0013A112: 00 40
0013A113: 00 25
0013A114: 00 75
0013A115: 00 2d
0013A116: 00 25
0013A117: 00 75
0013A118: 00 2d
0013A119: 00 25
0013A11A: 00 75
0013A11B: 00 5f
0013A11C: 00 25
0013A11D: 00 75
0013A11E: 00 2e
0013A11F: 00 25
0013A120: 00 75
0013A121: 00 2e
0013A122: 00 25
0013A123: 00 75
0013A124: 00 5f
0013A125: 00 25
0013A126: 00 75
0013A127: 00 2e
0013A128: 00 62
0013A129: 00 6d
0013A12A: 00 70
#
#

I go in the main game directory and I create a new folder named exactly Screenshots.
Now, the screenshot will be written to the "Screenshots" folder.

[makman94]

Another comfort addition ,now all pics at their folder

Thank you for sharing