[REL] FOTRS Ultimate Project

[torpedobait]

Originally Posted by CapnScurvy

One of the problems with players not noticing the game not keeping track of "game time" is the fact many players only play for a short period of time before they get killed. They play a few missions, and "poof", they go belly-up.....never seeing the games true incapability's with Campaign equipment upgrades for the sub. Torpedobait has, some others as well.

The stock game, or most mods for that matter, don't mention "when" an upgrade is to take place (when the SJ Radar get's put on the boat, or when it upgrades to the "Improved SJ-1" model), a player just moves along in his campaign progression never realizing he's missing something. If he meets his demise, he either restarts his Campaign all over again at the same starting point, or "moves up" the time ladder to a different starting point, where his chosen sub will produce the correct equipment and all is forgotten as to "where are my upgrades?



Yes.

I'm curious about the "Evolve" parameter that's listed within the Mission Editor when designing ships/subs for single mission play. I'm wondering if there isn't an evolve parameter that's not being "set" correctly during a Campaign game. I'm not even sure what the Mission Editor's "Evolve from start date" parameter does, or if it translates over to a Campaign ship/sub make-up. But, that's one parameter I'd like to look at within the Documents/SH4 folder and its campaign game files.

I wonder if by changing this entry, or some other parameter(s) within these files, "after" starting a Campaign game, would there be a correction in the game not picking up equipment upgrades as they become available? It might be by manipulating a campaign game by hand editing, the result may produce a different outcome when time progression takes place.

For information purposes, it is my practice to never advance the start date of a career if my boat is sunk or I encounter a rare CTD. I simply reload the last good save file and proceed with my career as if nothing had happened, at least for this testing process. Dead is dead means little if we are still trying to identify career related anomalies.

I don't think you can fix this one, but it has always bothered me that the medal award message adds one too many missions to the count of actual patrols completed. That is probably in the base game code and unfixable. Another is that it attributes the full count of patrols (plus one) to the current boat, instead of the captain's career. Probably unfixable also, but there it is. Another one of those nagging little things that detracts from the quality of the game...

Thanks for your efforts on our behalf. You guys are good!

[Rockin Robbins]

Originally Posted by torpedobait

For information purposes, it is my practice to never advance the start date of a career if my boat is sunk or I encounter a rare CTD. I simply reload the last good save file and proceed with my career as if nothing had happened, at least for this testing process. Dead is dead means little if we are still trying to identify career related anomalies.

Thank you torpedobait!

The "blind chimp" explanation is originally from Ducimus in about 2008, trying to explain the same situation. Too bad he's not around to ask for verification that he saw any upgrades at all taking place when the mission was started before the equipment availability.

In the real war, some upgrades necessitated installation back in the States, so if it was a pressing need that the boat remain available for missions, they might not take the trip to San Fransisco for that new piece of equipment for awhile.

I'm not going to question CapnScurvy's hunch that the game is illiterate, rather than employing a virtual blind chimp. He's been proven right very often.

Has anyone noticed that this mod team has discovered more stock game issues that nobody has ever talked about than anybody ever has? Ducimus, Lurker, the RFB team (featuring LukeFF) never mentioned these issues. It's a measure of the quality of the Fall of the Rising Sun Ultimate team that these stock game issues have been found, and that some of them have been corrected.

This one looks like it's not fixable, but don't count our Capn out yet!

[propbeanie]

I'll look through the menu.txt file, and see if maybe there's a placeholder like #boat# that can have #playername# input instead, so that it credits the Captain's career - if possible... as you say though, the count of missions is probably a variable in-game. Darn shame we can't do scripting in some of these game files to "fix" things like that... hmmm...

Edit: Some quick research:
"variable" Strings used in menu.txt

%s - ie: "You are transferred to %s".
%d
%s||%s (??)
80= on line 99 in the file: %s %s%s
81=TOTAL CREW;Sailors: %02d %02d|PettOfficers: %02d etc. (again ??) does the "pipe" here get a newline??
86=%.02f
95=Patrol %3d
98=Patrol: Start Date: %s %d, %d End Date: %s %d, %d - %s

From my previous edge-yu-mah-kay-shun, it looks like the %s pulls in a string, and %d pulls in a digit (thank you Mr Obvious), and the commas and dashes and colons and semi-colons are just text punctuation. I have no idea where the game pulls those strings and digits from. It appears that if you want a "comment" line, the semi-colon has to be the first character, and everything after that is just text. dunno fer sertinn... what the "f" is, is beyond me. I'm also not certain of the numbers with the %d, in that if you're after the 2 digit, why lead with a zero, and not do like the "%3d" example?... Oh, wait! I just found another, and it looks like it's formatting... %02d would be for like a date, leading zeroes, using 2 places, such that January 1st, 1941 with a "%02d/%02d/%04d" would render as 01/01/1941... %.02f would be 2 decimal places?? Or else adding a comma marker, such as "10,000"??

#BASE#
#DATE#
#FLOTILLA#
#MEDALNAME#
#NAME#
#NEWLINE#
#PATROLNUMBER#
#SUBMARINECLASS#
#SUBMARINENAME#
#TITLE#
#TONNAGE#
#UNIT#

5890 on line 2917 of the file has a lot of these for the President of the United States awarding #MEDALNAME# to #TITLE# #NAME# of #SUBMARINENAME# on #DATE#

5891 is the German version (or Japanese, if you do mods of that sort...)

All of the wording in that file can be turned around, so long as a person is careful with the white space, and doesn't lose the formatting. I'll see if I can do that good enough in the 5890 section for inclusion in the next round... It looks to me that one of the programmers misplaced their math in the looping for the patrol count, and we are stuck with #PATROLNUMBER# being what it is at one too many (for now)...

[CapnScurvy]

Regarding the 37mmDouble causing two sets of crew to display. I did a quick inventory of what the stock game does and what Fotrs added. Yep, there's added files that are screwing up the works.

The 37mmDouple is indeed a stock game gun in version 1.5. It's not in version 1.4 or earlier due to the fact its a gun used exclusively by the NCA_Deutschland (Graf Spee) that only appears in the latest version of the game. No other warship uses the gun in the stock game. In Fotrs, the folks there decided to use it more widely and added several new files that correspond to the gun crew (what's found in the added Library/Weapon_CREW_.dat file). The problem is the 37mmDouble is being used in a couple different ways (the stock game way, and the modded way). The files are confusing the game when it tries to follow its process of adding crew, but it doesn't know which to add....so it adds both.

The fix could be as simple as changing out the 37mmDouble for another gun on the Freighter, but it doesn't solve the problem of the gun itself. If you go to the Graf Spee you'll see the same double crew setup on the 37mm gun.

So, by eliminating the stock games reference in the 37mmDouble guns "CharactInstantiation" parameter (leave it blank), the gun will produce only one set of crew:



For those following along, you open up the FotrsUltimate "Data/Library/ShipParts/guns_radars_02.dat" file. Then remove the "CharactInstantiation" parameter of #AM_SOL_MRN_01 for both crew slots (WM1, WM2)...leaving it blank. The game is no longer confused (well, it's not confused on THIS self inflicted issue!!).

[s7rikeback]

Originally Posted by CapnScurvy

Regarding the 37mmDouble causing two sets of crew to display. I did a quick inventory of what the stock game does and what Fotrs added. Yep, there's added files that are screwing up the works.

The 37mmDouple is indeed a stock game gun in version 1.5. It's not in version 1.4 or earlier due to the fact its a gun used exclusively by the NCA_Deutschland (Graf Spee) that only appears in the latest version of the game. No other warship uses the gun in the stock game. In Fotrs, the folks there decided to use it more widely and added several new files that correspond to the gun crew (what's found in the added Library/Weapon_CREW_.dat file). The problem is the 37mmDouble is being used in a couple different ways (the stock game way, and the modded way). The files are confusing the game when it tries to follow its process of adding crew, but it doesn't know which to add....so it adds both.

The fix could be as simple as changing out the 37mmDouble for another gun on the Freighter, but it doesn't solve the problem of the gun itself. If you go to the Graf Spee you'll see the same double crew setup on the 37mm gun.

So, by eliminating the stock games reference in the 37mmDouble guns "CharactInstantiation" parameter (leave it blank), the gun will produce only one set of crew:



For those following along, you open up the FotrsUltimate "Data/Library/ShipParts/guns_radars_02.dat" file. Then remove the "CharactInstantiation" parameter of #AM_SOL_MRN_01 for both crew slots (WM1, WM2)...leaving it blank. The game is no longer confused (well, it's not confused on THIS self inflicted issue!!).

Thats exactly what i did last night and so far i,m having no cuddling crews..

[propbeanie]

Sure are some ugly fellers though... I bet even their mommas cringe upon seeing them...

[CapnScurvy]

Originally Posted by propbeanie

I'll look through the menu.txt file, and see if maybe there's a placeholder like #boat# that can have #playername# input instead, so that it credits the Captain's career - if possible... as you say though, the count of missions is probably a variable in-game. Darn shame we can't do scripting in some of these game files to "fix" things like that... hmmm...

Edit: Some quick research:
"variable" Strings used in menu.txt

%s - ie: "You are transferred to %s".
%d
%s||%s (??)
80= on line 99 in the file: %s %s%s
81=TOTAL CREW;Sailors: %02d %02d|PettOfficers: %02d etc. (again ??) does the "pipe" here get a newline??
86=%.02f
95=Patrol %3d
98=Patrol: Start Date: %s %d, %d End Date: %s %d, %d - %s

From my previous edge-yu-mah-kay-shun, it looks like the %s pulls in a string, and %d pulls in a digit (thank you Mr Obvious), and the commas and dashes and colons and semi-colons are just text punctuation. I have no idea where the game pulls those strings and digits from. It appears that if you want a "comment" line, the semi-colon has to be the first character, and everything after that is just text. dunno fer sertinn... what the "f" is, is beyond me. I'm also not certain of the numbers with the %d, in that if you're after the 2 digit, why lead with a zero, and not do like the "%3d" example?... Oh, wait! I just found another, and it looks like it's formatting... %02d would be for like a date, leading zeroes, using 2 places, such that January 1st, 1941 with a "%02d/%02d/%04d" would render as 01/01/1941... %.02f would be 2 decimal places?? Or else adding a comma marker, such as "10,000"??

#BASE#
#DATE#
#FLOTILLA#
#MEDALNAME#
#NAME#
#NEWLINE#
#PATROLNUMBER#
#SUBMARINECLASS#
#SUBMARINENAME#
#TITLE#
#TONNAGE#
#UNIT#

5890 on line 2917 of the file has a lot of these for the President of the United States awarding #MEDALNAME# to #TITLE# #NAME# of #SUBMARINENAME# on #DATE#

5891 is the German version (or Japanese, if you do mods of that sort...)

All of the wording in that file can be turned around, so long as a person is careful with the white space, and doesn't lose the formatting. I'll see if I can do that good enough in the 5890 section for inclusion in the next round... It looks to me that one of the programmers misplaced their math in the looping for the patrol count, and we are stuck with #PATROLNUMBER# being what it is at one too many (for now)...

Ok Professor........You're talking over my head!!

BUT, it looks like you're onto understanding those menu.txt string syntax formulas. That's important!

I can't remember if the Ultimate "Presidential Citation" is my doing or not....I think it is. When we first got started I put our medals/awards system to follow the mod I made, which adds/changes that 5890 line. Not knowing much about how the syntax worked, I changed the wording but kept it following the stock set up. Which puts the citation to read with the straight margin on the right side, instead of the left. I remember doing a lot of trial and error in just making the heading centered over the page. If you can make it look better....please do!

[propbeanie]

I ~do~ know how to mess it up - and bad!!!... I mean, there is text ~ALL~ over the page!

As further info, those %s thingies I'm guessing come from the UPCLocalization.tsr file - maybe... some of them do - or else the game assembles them, along with the %d stuff in some subroutine. Very strange stuff. Reminds me of an old job I had about 30 years ago, where some dude at a computer company had written a scripting language in DOS Assembler for use at displaying company produced data. He left the company, and took with him all knowledge of the script language. Yet the company kept using it, and ten years after (I'm Going Home), they hire me and put me on the task of trying to figure out the scripting language and how it worked... - At least they paid me money to waste all of their time and resources...

I'll have to remember your formatting CapnScurvy for that page for when I go to do the Japanese version of things, since you have a right-hand aligned page... - now, how to display vertically?...

It'd also be nice to have a "tool" to be able to see what the editing looks like, without having to play the game and actually win a medal... I'm not very good at that kind of stuff - I have crews that want to change Skippers before we go out on patrol...

[CapnScurvy]

Originally Posted by propbeanie

I'll have to remember your formatting CapnScurvy for that page for when I go to do the Japanese version of things, since you have a right-hand aligned page... - now, how to display vertically?...

If your talking about the written "Citation" for Keltos/Peabody's Japanese Sub Campaign, I'm pretty sure that was added by me when Peabody asked me to work up an award system for it. It still followed the stock game syntax set up, I just researched what the Japanese citation would usually state and put it into the modification.

[propbeanie]

Kuhl. I haven't even looked at that one yet. Sure is some cool stuff in his mod. btw, how does a person keep their sanity working in this menu_1024_768.ini thingie anyways?

[Rockin Robbins]

The worst thing about the infamous menu_1024_768.ini is that it's a one size fits every aspect of the game file. When you mod part of it you instantly have made a mod which is incompatible with any other mod. Using your menu_1024_768.ini tramples all over whatever custom changes you have been working with and they're just gone.

I nominate menu_1024_768.ini as the worst idea EVER to come from the SH4 dev crew. It truly sucks and a wise modder stays away.

Needed is an automatic gene splicer which could swap individual parts of the garbage file in and out with mod installation. It would be JSGME for a single file.

[propbeanie]

Trying to do the menu_1024_768.ini in a section that you only see every once in a while is a ~real~ pain... - and I'm much more wiser now about what I volunteer for in the future... Why'd I volunteer to do that anyway?... - Oh yeah, the squirrel made me do it...

[CapnScurvy]

Everytime I want to go to the "menu_1024_768.ini" file I have to go to school all over again........remembering what the heck I did to make this happen?!?

Fortunately there are some good tutorials to give me a run down on what I need to relearn about the file. Deconstructing the menu_1024_768" by zAmboni is a good start. I printed most of this thread off and have worn out the paper using it so much. I notice the images he had with this thread are gone....lost to the great "data in the sky" that's here today, gone tomorrow!

Here's another thread by my 'ol buddy SWDW "menu_1024_768 modders- if you know anything". Like the title states "If you know anything?"........speak up!! Well, the thread didn't last too long. Doing a search and going back to the early SHIII/SH4 days usually will give you some good advice. After that your on your own.

One of the worst things about the game is its inability to reproduce the kind of resolutions we use today for the pages that are displayed in-game. Some of these have been corrected by manipulating the menu_1024_768 file to bring both image size and file parameters together. Ultimate now has a correct Captain's Log page (displayed in the Captain's Office after a patrol) that isn't cutting off the bottom section of the page when using a resolution similar to 1920x1080 (they don't call this file 1024_768 for nothing......it's the stock game expected size of things!!). The stock game cut off the lower portion of the page, never revealing all of your ship sinkings (I think this may be why some players always wondered "Why doesn't the game show my sinking of Xxxxx??" It may have been due to the screen not being large enough to show the log). I was able to correct it with reworking both image size and "menu_1024" figures. For the most part, no ones the wiser.

[propbeanie]

That top link I'd never seen before Capn, thank you. I don't know why I couldn't find that in a "search"... That "deconstructing" word though, will find it...

I've very often wondered why they did their "gutters" the way they did in the game, and why there weren't more of them to scroll through the displays. I'm guessing that they were difficult to implement in the game's code, like doing old DOS-based stuff, where every little detail has to have 26 lines of code, resulting in 10 pages worth of code to just display one "window"... Besides, how does the game code know that the display is "off-screen" on this 'modern' stuff? It doesn't. "I am sorry. That does not compute. Dave, what are doing, Dave? Please refrain from that activity, Dave."

[CapnScurvy]

As the tutorial from zAmboni states, there are lines in the menu_1024_768.ini file that were used in SHIII, yet when they switched to SH4 using the same file, some of those lines are not used at all....and others were added!!?? Making just a mess of knowing what to do with them from a modding point of view. Even with his detailed understanding of the lot, he points out he doesn't know what some of them do. I've gleaned information from other sources that has helped, but its like picking up small tidbits from here and there and fitting them together that's proven the best way to understanding how some of the file works. If this game is supposed to be "modder friendly" I'll eat my hat!