[WIP] Day of Infamy

[CapnScurvy]

Originally Posted by Crannongman

I've mostly finished the reefs in Torres Strait, Palau, and Eniwetok. I have managed to find a lot of free-ish nautical charts that make the job easier. I think I have made a small breakthrough in making ships avoid land - I have been building the reef terrains more sparsely, but filling the gaps with anti-sub nets. My hope is that the 3d object will help AI ships avoid running aground, while the land on the navmap will help the human player avoid the nets and seek out the true channels.

That's great! I'm looking forward to trying it out.

So far, I'm running into my usual "summer time" issues of not finding time to work on my projects. Keeping up with the forum is about the only thing I've been doing on the computer.

[Crannogman]

PS there are a LOT of atolls in the Marshalls and Gilberts - but I'm having a hard time finding good charts for the Carolines, which are quite relevant for the Truk traffic

[james_nix]

What are your plans in regard to the environment? It'd be great if it was something like Improved Stock Environment, but I know it's a constant battle between AI sensors and game play vs eye candy.

I think real dark nights where you can barely see the horizon in the binoculars is more realistic, and it's more exciting in night attacks when you can't see anything.

I think RFB captures that better than TMO for example.

[CapnScurvy]

Originally Posted by james_nix

What are your plans in regard to the environment? It'd be great if it was something like Improved Stock Environment, but I know it's a constant battle between AI sensors and game play vs eye candy.

I think real dark nights where you can barely see the horizon in the binoculars is more realistic, and it's more exciting in night attacks when you can't see anything.

I think RFB captures that better than TMO for example.

Yes, I've got plans to change the stock environment.

For instance, here's a stock image of a calm sea/clear sky (all images are about the same time of day, facing the same direction):




Just for comparison, TMO 2.5 (for some reason TMO starts the same mission an hour earlier ):





Something I've been playing with:





I don't know if I like the glare that much or not!? It only shows like this when looking in the direction of the sun. But then again, there should be glare when looking towad the sun!!

All of these images are from the U.S. Campaign first default mission (Dec. 9, 1941) from Pearl, with an "Out at Sea" starting position.

The following is an image of the stock game looking back toward shore......remember seeing a T3 Tanker sometimes anchored toward the shore line outside of Pearl? The tanker is centered in this non zoomed image:




Here's the same shot with TMO 2.5 (the T3 wasn't positioned on this mission ). However, notice TMO's scale of the same distance object's, the Oahu Island size is quite smaller. OK, dont't strain your eyes trying to find the island....it's almost invisible except for the refelection:





With TMO (and the stock game for that matter), the Oahu Island is almost lost in the background. Only the reflection remains??
No way the island should not show, yet the reflection does!?!


Mine:





The T3 can be seen fairly clearly.....so is the Island.


Here's a zoomed binocular view of the T3 from TMO. The refelection tells you there's an island there:





Here's mine:





This isn't the interface I'm going to use....it's stock, I just used the stock interface because the "environment views" are the only thing I was working on in these images.

Still have some changes/tweaks planned, but you can see I've got something in mind.

Thanks for asking!

[Crannogman]

That looks great. The amount of glare sems appropriate

[james_nix]

Originally Posted by Crannogman

That looks great. The amount of glare sems appropriate

I agree! That's the only reason I never stick with TMO, it's the water and sky. It just too distracting for me.

Day of Infamy's water and sky looks wonderful!

[Crannogman]

Atolls are getting somewhat repetitive, and I haven't even finished the Marshalls yet. This evening I went through the standard-type US battleships and corrected their armaments. The New Mexico-class model was pretty lame vis-a-vis node availability, so I converted them all to Colorado-class models. All now start mounting an AA battery of 5/25 guns, and some are later refitted with 5/38 turrets. I also changed the redundant Tennessee (Early) to a stripped Oklahoma hulk, as it remained at Pearl Harbor until 1947.

Also, here are some screengrabs from Mission editor of Palau, Ulithi, and Torres Strait






Also, here are Oklahoma and Nevada cruising just south of Midway in late '44. The new reef (with subnet) is visible in the near distance.

[Rockin Robbins]

Originally Posted by CapnScurvy

This "Work in Progress" thread is to highlight a new modification for Silent Hunter 4 for both version 1.4 and 1.5. I've had a plan to make changes to the game for some time, to add to things I've already done. It's my intention to make this mod a comprehensive change with the hope of improving game play, and correcting/adding new elements. As I make changes, I will post them here within this thread to keep you posted on my progress.

If anyone has suggestions or comments, I welcome them all.

My first modification is to the opening video of the game. I put this video together several years ago.....it would seem appropriate to release it now for your viewing. It set's the tone of my game modifications, with the very words that were spoken a generation ago by President Roosevelt to the U.S. Congress on December 8, 1941....... yet ring so boldly today. I hope it provides a new insight to our nations history, and the courage these words brought forth at the time they were spoken.



The following is a partial list of what I plan to add/change to the game besides the modifications I've done through Optical Targeting Correction:

New planes and ships
Added missions to put to use these new game assets
Better AI ship handling and response
A better AI detection/attack system
Added Campaign missions
A wider, more historically accurate ship routes
A different Torpedo Attack interface that will improve gameplay
A new Recognition Manual that will compliment the new interface
Additions to the interior of the subs
Environmental changes to water/sea state
Corrections to gameplay at all levels, as found

Since I've been away I totally missed this! It's about time we got a new supermod. With RSRDC it was obvious that nobody would be able to make a supermod, tune it carefully and not have RSRDC not only introduce better shipping, more ship types and routes, they got their supermod destroyed in the process with different torpedo strengths and defect chances, enemy AI totally different (and to superhuman levels. With RSRDC's last version the Japanese effectively had radar on every boat). In other words RSRDC went way beyond its stated purpose and just clobbered every other aspect of the game. TMO didn't exist any more. RFB didn't exist any more. GFO didn't exist any more. I'll bet you can count on the players of those unclobbered mods on the fingers of both hands. The authorship of those supermods has been stolen from the authors. And LukeFF, Ducimus and Webster didn't seem to realize that their vision was entirely replaced with RSRDC. Webster's kind of an exception because he wanted to leave the game so unaffected that adding other mods was appropriate.

So it's good to see you making an all-encompassing supermod, not dependent on RSRD especially. I expect to like it better than any supermod/RSRDC "campaign" mod out there.

Something I proposed back in 2009 and was roundly drubbed for: modules. These are guaranteed compatible, guaranteed not to impact any realm of gameplay other than what they say they do, modules. There could be a TMO Keys module, for instance (I made one) which allows a player to use the TMO keyboard layout without impacting any other aspect of the game. There could be different plotting modules, from stock to TMO to something completely different. You might do the same thing for different difficulty AI.

The end result is that the player could in effect roll his own supermod without any conflicts and keeping play within the creative vision of the supermodder, who would have veto rights on the plugins. I actually gave Lurker quite a hard time about straying way out of the realm of campaign mod and actually making a stealth supermod. I called for some discipline and a sense of territory as an organizing principle. Didn't fly.

So that leaves your supermod as the only viable solution. Unity of purpose is essential to a harmonious game and I can't wait to play Day of Infamy.

[fitzcarraldo]

Dear CpnScurvy:

I see your screenies of the environments and yours looks nice, but - only to my taste - it could be more blueish tham greenish.

In fact, TMO 25 environment was a test from Ducimus to replicate the reflections and waves from SH5, but the result was awful.

Actually my played combination of mods is GFO with RSRDC and OTC. After try all the environments available for SH4, I finished prefering the stock (with some tweaks by me). The main problem I see is clarity: all the enviros are very dark in the sky, and the subs with dark hull seem black. Touching the gamma correction didn´t help in my installations.

Many thanks for the new great mod and best regards.

Fitzcarraldo

[CapnScurvy]

Double R your right in your assessment of RSRDC. It's intended goal was to provide an historical and accurate presentation of ship routes and battles.....yet it pushed open it's own agenda onto things the other mods hadn't expected. I'm guilty of that myself when making compatible mods, but I hope not to the same extent.

When I last talked with Lurker, he gave approval in allowing his work to be used for a new modification, and to modify it as needed. One of the specifics I ran across with his ship routes is the many way points he added within a given route......each with a different speed parameter.

Well, this is great to give a target varying speeds while it travels along its route. Nothing wrong with following a target; making a firing solution based on the current facts; just to find your torpedo's run wide because of an unexpected change in target speed. However, some of the speeds between way points dropped below an issue that the stock game has regarding the subs sonar (when manually used) won't allow the target to be heard if the target speed drops below half it's rated MaxSpeed found in its .sim file. Your sonar man can hear the target, yet you won't when you operate the passive sonar (no matter how close you are to the target). I've run across some of RSRDC's ship speeds drop to .001 between way points!! Your sonar is going to sound "broken" when these speeds are encountered. The stock game pretty much has all merchant shipping traveling at about 9 knts. Since that's well above half the usual MaxSpeed parameters for the stock game, you'll never run into this sonar issue.

By no means do I think I could have done better.....at the time, it seemed reasonable to add varying speeds to shipping routes. But as usual, one good idea creates another unforeseen problem.

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

Fitzcarraldo, your right in your observation of the water needing a bit more blue than green. I've seen it too and felt the same way. Those images are fairly old when I made the comparisons. Since then, the water is a bit more blue. Not as much as TMO's dark blue to almost black appearance, but bluer than these images show.

One thing the game creates is specific sun angle heights that change the water color. A certain time of day will allow for the water to look differently than another.....the same is true in which direction you look; toward, or away, from the sun. Getting it right, in all situations, is my focus. The one thing I'm particularly satisfied with is the ability to see a distant landmass during a clear, mid-day time frame. There's just no reason not to see it.

[Crannogman]

Originally Posted by CapnScurvy

When I last talked with Lurker, he gave approval in allowing his work to be used for a new modification, and to modify it as needed. One of the specifics I ran across with his ship routes is the many way points he added within a given route......each with a different speed parameter.

Well, this is great to give a target varying speeds while it travels along its route. Nothing wrong with following a target; making a firing solution based on the current facts; just to find your torpedo's run wide because of an unexpected change in target speed. However, some of the speeds between way points dropped below an issue that the stock game has regarding the subs sonar (when manually used) won't allow the target to be heard if the target speed drops below half it's rated MaxSpeed found in its .sim file. Your sonar man can hear the target, yet you won't when you operate the passive sonar (no matter how close you are to the target). I've run across some of RSRDC's ship speeds drop to .001 between way points!! Your sonar is going to sound "broken" when these speeds are encountered. The stock game pretty much has all merchant shipping traveling at about 9 knts. Since that's well above half the usual MaxSpeed parameters for the stock game, you'll never run into this sonar issue.

I haven't parsed all the traveling waypoints in RSRDC (I've put most of that on hold until I finished the relevant atolls/islands), but I did note a few places where such low speeds are necessary. A lot of the Guadalcanal shipping involves ships making supply runs where they do not stop for more than a few hours; it does not seem sensible to despawn the moving ships, spawn stationary ships for a few hours, then respawn moving ships. That said, when I get back to the shipping routes, I'll try to make sure they aren't dropping to slow-mo in the middle of the ocean

[Rockin Robbins]

One thing you can't win with is water color. Because water color is entirely changeable with sun angle, water depth, stuff in the water, wave action, what kind of bottom is under the water, clouds....... the list doesn't end. I've seen green water, blue water, gray water, white water, water so clear boats look like they're levitating....no computer sim is going to reproduce that.

But there's no such thing as the correct water color. I've seen lots of TMO water, for instance. And I've seen water that was bright green. I propose that you might just throw your hands in the air and give us orange water with a disclaimer.

One piece of advice. Don't do what Ducimus did. He started out with a true vision, which was his own. But he listened too much. He came up with what I called "Duci's evil airplanes" which could see you at periscope depth sometimes. They were genius and they were reality. But people complained so much he eliminated them. RSRD destroyed them too. He kept changing the AI all over the place as different people yelled louder and toward the end he had no vision at all. It was all complainers' ideas and I think the mod was much better at about 1.7 than it ended up at 2.5. Listen to people but keep your vision. Not everybody has to love your mod. If someone has something to say, you look into it and agree then it becomes part of your vision, go with it. But please, no changes unless they're YOUR changes.

[AVGWarhawk]

I have not played in a long time. I see this will start me to making patrols again!

[Rockin Robbins]

AVG, great to see you! I've been doing some patrols and about to make a stadimeter targeting video myself. This game sinks its talons deep and draws blood.

[AVGWarhawk]

Hello RR! I have not played in a few years. Played Fall Out 3 and New Vegas. Skyrim. Time to go deep again with mod.