[REL] FOTRS Ultimate Project

[max-peck]

Originally Posted by propbeanie

I'm wondering if anyone knows if the Sh.sdl file in the Sound folder is "exportable"?

I took a look at the SH.sdl file in S3d
I am afraid I could not see any way of exporting the data

[max-peck]

Originally Posted by XTBilly

A big thanks to all of the team for all of your efforts to make this mod alive and kicking.

pleasure to work with you Billy

I am very much looking forward to your sinking model
You are truly a man after my own heart
I can watch ships sink for hours, I find it truly fascinating

[max-peck]

Originally Posted by Rockin Robbins

It explodes really, really well! A finer test couldn't be done. And that underwater shot is just breathtaking! It's exactly what I would hope for. It appears that the AOTD team was thinking a lot of the same thoughts we have!

Billy, there's no way I can possibly live up to your portrayal. Here on Subsim for nine years I've been a cheerleader, gadfly, crash test dummy and tweaker, never a modder. Maybe my most frequent role has been as an irritant: someone with a good command of the English language and the power of persuasion and advocacy.

Is that enough to change the course of Silent Hunter modding and make it a player centered experience instead of a modder centered experience? No freaking way! Without you guys this job can't be done.

CapnScurvy, I could no more write OTC than flap my arms and fly to the moon. You have your own supermod and here you are, working on our project. You have more experience with the interconnected weirdness of SH4 than any single person since Ducimus, and you have a more rounded knowledge than he had. The quality of your work is the highest Silent Hunter 4 has ever seen. The only one who has ever complained about OTC has been me! And that's been only on a philosophical basis, not a quality basis.

I've never textured a 3-D model or done any 3-D models, as the Aces of the Deep did so beautifully. Max, your Razzle Dazzle is astoundingly good. Cdsubron, great missions are very, very difficult to produce, and if done right are the only way to draw in the more casual gamer or the one without the time to devote to a career.

Propbeanie, you've been a better crash test dummy than I ever was. Not only do you do great and exacting testing but you report exactly the feedback we need to fix issues and have great ideas on how to pursue them.

Florida Sailor, I've always been an admirer of your positivity, your great relationship with Ducimus (a difficult thing to be sure!) and the choices you made with TMOwTw. As a matter of fact, TMOwTw was my inspiration for interchangeable AI modules to allow the player to control the difficulty of his game far beyond the built-in "realism" controls.

Bleiente, you've led us to know what is possible and that big ideas can be successful with this old game where sometimes it seems no new ideas are possible. We haven't included your stuff yet because we're working on the core mod, which we want to keep as pure Maddy as possible, but in phase 3, where we do plugins we're going crazy.

And other people have joined the discussion and offered help: keltos01, fitzcarraldo, iambecomelife, Rabid Wolverine, Wilcke, Lt Commander Lare, Webster.......hate leaving people out and I'm sure I have.

I don't have the tools, time or knowledge to get this job done. I just had a love for Fall of the Rising Sun and Maddy and the AOTD crew's work. I saw it vanishing from the internet and neglected. I saw their best work inaccessible to most players. I thought if I was not afraid to enlist the help of a team of better modders than I am there was a chance to transform the Silent Hunter 4 experience.

We're gonna do that. We can already see the finish line for the core mod. That alone will be the best supermod SH4 has ever seen and will give Maddy and the AOTD crew the credit they deserve. Then we start the real work!

Inspirational post Boss

When you started this I thought it was going to be a quick matter of merging the two versions of FOTRS, doing some quick testing, and pushing it out the door for people.
It has snowballed into a beautiful, massive, and slightly scary monster
And I mean that in the kindest way

We need a team leader to keep us on track, and inspire us to do our best.

I can think of nobody who fills that role better that you mate

[torpedobait]

Originally Posted by max-peck

Well that is decidedly odd Capn.
Works straight away for me - don't have to give it any time to calculate - it is instant.

Can I check that you are using the same release as me?
100 FalloftheRisingSun_Ultimate_v.05Alpha_EN

Rockin Robins, XTBilly, CDSubron - can any of you guys check this in your installs?
Please check the Max Range at current speed button to see if it works please?

Either CapnScury of Myself have a problem with our install

I ran into this the other day. Seems I had forgotten to tell the navigator to resume following the plotted course! Soon as I did that the calcs were immediately available.

[max-peck]

And now another report with screenies!

I was always a massive fan of the TMO environment, which to some people looked too colourful and saturated (to be honest I did understand some of their criticisms)

The latest FOTRS environment has blown me away - the colours look just perfect to me (disclaimer - I am not a sailor)

Beautiful Blue


Love the foam tops


Black sea just before dawn looks great


Dawn looks astonishingly good


Picked up a contact whilst transiting the Java Sea on the way to the South China Sea

Oh man - that is a big old tanker
14000 tons


I read Silent Victory a few months ago and two things struck me

1 - The number of times boats operating in the Asiatic fleet were diverted to deliver supplies, pick up agents, recon beaches, land commando raids etc... Happened quite a lot, especially in the first two years of the war.
Looks like all those special missions are not sexed up Hollywood type missions after all, but based on reality. I am glad we have them in here.

2 - The number of tankers spotted in the 10-20,000 ton range was a lot higher than I thought it would be.
In stock, the largest tanker is 8000 tons. FOTRS gives us three that are bigger than that

Decided to give her three torpedoes.
If she is carrying oil or avgas she will light up like July 4th
But if she is in ballast who knows what it will take to sink her?



All three hit


She still isn't going down though


Some sucker is firing a 50 cal at me


Check out the tracers


And the deck gun


Finally


These screenies do not do the game justice
When you see all of the above in real time, animated, it is shockingly beautiful

[propbeanie]

Ain't it great, man?... Beautiful sunset...

I've got vid and pix of the rear gunner on that catapult ship, after being torpedoed by me, still shooting as they went down, all while surrounded by flames as the ship burned. I'll have to get me some time and post that. Unfortunately, I captured that vid prior to RR setting me straight on the MSI settings, but it's still strange.

I've almost got tears in my eyes from all the compliments flying back and forth here (and I sneezed), you all are a great bunch of folks to work with. Now, let's quit with the mushy stuff and get back at it!

I had me a post almost ready to send last night, all typed out on my tablet POS (Pile Of Scraps), when it decided to do whatever it decides to do when it wipes out stuff, so I lost all my enlightening thoughts... In the meantime: Looking at the game's main menu, where a player makes their choice of Campaign, or Single Mission, or Museum, etc., I had a crazy idea of perhaps adding a choice for "compatible" plug-ins from there, from like a sub-menu. Is it possible to add a 2nd page, similar to like if a person chooses a Single (Quick??) Mission, they go to a 2nd menu page to choose their mission. If it's possible to make it to where a person could choose from a sub-menu, say to play the SpyRon missions (got the idea from another thread that RR replied to), or the Tambor198 set, etc. Is it possible to "clone" the Single Mission sub-menu but make it for that? Sound ~way~ crazy? Maybe make the AI choices from inside the game also, like on the sensors tab, or crew management tab? Part of the Settings tab? Am I dreaming? ...hex editing? ...other forms of witchcraft?

I also propose that any mods that are found to be 100% compatible with FotRS Ultimate be called an "Ultimate™" mod, and given the number designations as referred to previously by RR. If there would be a way to denote something less than 100% compatible by the numbering system, that'd be great... ??

I'm back to Sh.sdl diving - looking for treasure, the CapnScurvy way - "emulate stock"...
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[CapnScurvy]

I'm getting really close to finishing my work. I've been fixing a few things as I go with the Museum...even though I've yet to open it up. I've had to make a new test mission for the Optics....CTD's with the v1.3 ships I was using. Fixed the issue with the two Conte Verde ships for the German and British side not being found when opening the Mission Editor. And fixed the Nagara with its texture issue (I found the ship to be dead, even though it was partially displayed).....better now.

Thought I'd run a couple of images by for comparison with the interiors. Here's the FOTRS Porpoise interior of the Valve Panel:



That's as close as you can get with the Stationary camera.

Here's Ultimate:



You'll be able to get a lot closer to read the panel if that's what you want. Thanks to Vickers03 for suppling most of the work, I just added it to all subs (which is no small task to make it work correctly).

This is FOTRS Electrical Panel:





Pretty dull over there.

Here's Ultimate when surfaced:





And when your submerged:

[propbeanie]

CapnScurvy, let me the first to say "wow, nice!". I also feel we should humbly refer to you as "Doctor - doctor of wow" - way cool.

Nice works.

[propbeanie]

OK, 'nother question..: If you look at the listings in SH.sdl, where it says like "Submarine sample.wav" and "Is Folder" is checked for "Yes" (I assume it's yes), does anyone know what the "folder" is that they're referring to? Is there another file that might list that? If I look in the Submarine folder inside of the Sound folder, there's 13 NSxxxx folders there. There's usually over a dozen fiiles inside of each folder. I do remember seeing sound files linked to in one of those in each folder, but which one? Is that what's referenced in the Sh.sdl file?

The reason I ask this, is that there are not ANY "Creak..." files listed in Sh.sdl, and I'm looking in the "stock" v1.5 WotP... There does not appear to be any rhyme nor reason to folder or file structure in the game, from my perspective. A lot of files are listed there, but quite a few are not... I don't follow the "reasoning", if there was any. Is it maybe a game-generated file?

Almost forgot to mention: I cannot get that very loud wave/ocean sound for about the last 2 dozen tests, including situations where I've taken significant damage (thank you very much side-thrown DCs... and hedgehogs... they even mangled my scopes and took out my radar that I never got to use, thank you very very much... Wow. I'm going back to "Easy"...

[J0313]

I have a suggestion. I would like to hear the crew answer back with a nice crisp, " Aye Skipper " instead of the usual, " Yes Sir ". Perhaps even have them repeat the order then, " Aye Sir " or " Aye Skipper ". That would, I think, add a lot to the emersion. Just a humble opinion.

[CapnScurvy]

Originally Posted by max=peck

......took a look at the SH.sdl file in S3d
I am afraid I could not see any way of exporting the data

You can copy and paste the individual files, rename them to whatever you like, but I'm not sure if you want to move the entire file by exporting it.

If you've looked at the sound files, you've probably noticed the sdl.bak file left in FOTRS. If you ask me, that file should be deleted since its just a backup file that isn't doing anything but taking up space.

Originally Posted by propbeanie

If you look at the listings in SH.sdl, where it says like "Submarine sample.wav" and "Is Folder" is checked for "Yes" (I assume it's yes), does anyone know what the "folder" is that they're referring to?

Not really, but I know there needs to be a "folder" to hold your individual sound .wav file (not that its directly in a folder anyway). I don't know why its like this.....it just is.

Is there another file that might list that?

Not that I know of, the only other sound files are the ones for the .ogg files that the 3D models use in their animation.

==============

I didn't mention this before........with the new 0.5Alpha running, there's no more sitting on the surface just a 1000 yards away from a Jap merchant without getting your behind kicked!! Their not waiting on your engines to kick in to detect you as before.....much more as one would expect!!

[propbeanie]

Originally Posted by CapnScurvy

You can copy and paste the individual files, rename them to whatever you like, but I'm not sure if you want to move the entire file by exporting it....

I'm just after getting the data out to compare the files between SHv1.5 and FotRSUv0.5Alpha. Not trying to alter or move them. Sure is boring typing them in one by one, but that's what I'm doing now. My plan is to add the data there into the spread sheet data, and make sure something marked as "3D" in sh.sdl is a mono file, and match the 22kHz of stock, and that all others are "stereo" at 44.1kHz. I'm now also wondering what the "priority" tag is in sh.sdl. is a "1" a higher priority than a "128", or the other way around?...

Originally Posted by CapnScurvy

... I know there needs to be a "folder" to hold your individual sound .wav file (not that its directly in a folder anyway). I don't know why its like this.....it just is.

I'm wondering if the naming "convention" used in the Sound folder has anything to do with this? Just makes me curious as to why the suspect files aren't in the sh.sdl at all, even in "stock"...

Originally Posted by CapnScurvy

Not that I know of, the only other sound files are the ones for the .ogg files that the 3D models use in their animation.

There's also reference to *.wav files in some of the animations, like the seagull sequences. It'd be nice to figure that out, because I'm thinking that's the way the "Creak..." files play.

Originally Posted by CapnScurvy

... I didn't mention this before........with the new 0.5Alpha running, there's no more sitting on the surface just a 1000 yards away from a Jap merchant without getting your behind kicked!! ...

I've been treated to a depth charging and bombing from the air, anytime I get near a group I created in a Single Mission, even in "Easy". They just get more accurate sooner with their drops when you "up" the difficulty. It's a little tough to test, when ya gotta keep dodgin' thangs. I've been run over even a couple of time. ~Mean~ sons of guns, I'm tellin' ya... You definitely can't lolly gag around the place any old way just a-kuzz yer testin'... And it definitely takes a while for things to sink. Destroyers are taking two, sometimes 3 torps to go, most cruisers are about the same though, but I can still hit the "hot spot" and light them up like before. They just don't sink all the way usually, 'cept that weirdo light cruiser with 3 stacks. Goes bow first everytime, no matter where you hit it...

I'm almost stressed from doing two Single Missions just now - took me over 45 minutes just now on one round. I was running through the thing in about 10-15 minutes, timing things after I hit them, staying at periscope depth. Now, you have to get back down deep in a hurry after maybe 4 shots, in order to keep the planes from nailing you. It's almost like someone has been radioing in my position... First time it happened, my first thought was "wow, torp got there sooner than I thought..." - It's gonna be a blast getting this going good.

[XTBilly]

Maddy and AOTD team did a great job. Fantastic job! Their graphics, environment etc. challenge everything been made so far, surpassing them by far is some sectors.

The FOTRS campaign is a masterpiece. One has to play it to experience the depth and the myriad of new elements introduced in it. The enemy AI also got an upgrade. Not at all easy as before. A change of tactics is advisable.

When we'll be able to release the core mod, "Maddy's Greatest Hits" , I'm sure that people will get the same reaction as mine, giving a last chance to FOTRS before a couple of months.

Look at what I've been missing all these years!!

A simple "thank you" is not enough for this masterpiece of a mod. Now it will shine in all it's glory, all of its pieces combined together, and a U-Boat campaing fully functioning.

CaptScurvy, your work on the interiors need no introduction!

Max, It's good to see that I'm not the only sinking weirdo around here!
These screenshots are fantastic mate. Cheers!

I'm having problems with the Mission Editor. While I'm able to select and place ships, the new ships are just not showing in the mission. The Akagi and Kaga fo example. My experience with the mission editor is below zero, but I must use it to test the ships. Both for the core mod and the damage model.

[Haukka81]

When i can get this? Need a beta / alpha tester?


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