SH4 Mod Wishlist-Community Input Appreciated

Originally Posted by Snarf

One I would really like to see is for the ability for AA gun stations to engage ships, and for the main deck gun to be able to engage aircraft. More often than not when the deck gun was in action against a ship the AA gunners were raking the ship as well (the enemy fires theirs at you), this should also have the effect of suppressing the return fire on smaller ships and from manned gun stations (not turrets).

I agree all the guns should fire on any enemy ship you are engaged with but AFAIK the deck gun was rarely used if ever for fleetboat AA defence so im not sure how practical that would be since I don't think it ever even has any AA ammo slots for it (but I think the german subs did )

[ReallyDedPoet]

Hi folks. I am on my way south ( Florida ) for the week with the family. I will check in when I can here, keep the discussion going! As mentioned previously, I plan to use that Reserve Post of mine to do up a summary of the discussions at some point.

On a related note I plan to finish Thunder Below while on vacation : )

[TorpX]

Originally Posted by Webster

I don't know if I mentioned it before but the absolute sniper accuracy of enemy gunners in the game needs to be GONE.

Yes. The whole gun/ballistics model is FUBAR.

I don't think they even tried to get it right, probably didn't seem important to them.

[ReallyDedPoet]

Originally Posted by TorpX

Yes. The whole gun/ballistics model is FUBAR.

I don't think they even tried to get it right, probably didn't seem important to them.

Or as CS said above, they built most of SH4 on top of 3, so many things were overlooked
or not done properly.

Originally Posted by TorpX

Yes. The whole gun/ballistics model is FUBAR.

I don't think they even tried to get it right, probably didn't seem important to them.

have to agree, I think they only looked at it from the point of how much penalty you would pay in some situations to add to the immersion or suspense or "danger factor" the player feels and never gave accuracy or realistic gun usage a thought. hence the game sending a DD in from 8000m away and goes straight on top of your position to attack you even though you are submerged and position is undetected on silent running.

sure it might happen in a few rare cases where you were detected or your position known but not on such a routine basis as it happens in the game so it becomes a cheat factor the game uses to keep you feeling threatened and immersed in the game so it doesn't become boring.

I think the subs not using small weapons against ships in a surface battle is a good example. if you are in a running surface battle with any ship you fire ALL guns even those you know are probably going to be powerful enough (light machine guns) to be effective because you might just get a lucky shot and take out some of the crew.

not to mention how any ship near you while at periscope depth will almost ALWAYS turn to run right over top of you to take out your scope as thought you had a marker buoy with flashing lights marking your exact location, direction, and speed. but again I think this was part of that enemy threat they try to keep you under so you feel like your always trying to survive rather then be boring and attack unseen and undetected.

while you are looking for ideas I would like to suggest a mod that made flags and signal lights stop working as soon as a ship registers as sunk.

also it would be nice if flags were to go the same direction as smoke and follow the wind directions, its a little thing but would add a lot to the realism

[TheDarkWraith]

Originally Posted by Webster

also it would be nice if flags were to go the same direction as smoke and follow the wind directions

that's a great idea I'll have to make this for SH5

[GlobalExplorer]

I have to agree. After ca 5 years trying to figure out SH4 I think it is a non-deterministic mess. Of course the game has nice data driven structures that theoretically give the greatest flexibility in creating almost anything. The modder sees this, goes through the cfg files, models exactly after the blueprint of the original data, makes sure that everything is correctly referenced, loads up the game and expects to have made another breakthrough. Only to find out the game does not give damn. Possibly the data is already cached somewhere, variables got defined in multiple places, are just completely unused, etc.

I often wondered if SH4 is written in C++ at all or just plain ANSI C, and if the persons designing it learned coding before the advent of OO programming. Take for example, the crew files which are just an overcomplicated way of initializing an array, resulting from most primitive text readers (basically ReadPrivateProfileString in the WinAPI or something equivalent). Everyone who understands ini files knows that lists of elements require special features, and that the tricks used in SH3/SH4 are basically just the same hacks you might have used before discovering proper ways to do it.

Another example is the use of exception handlers, or lack of it. Have you noticed how often the application would result in a black screen, only because a single reference was wrong? Have you ever seen a window like "could not load data xy", with the application still working afterwards?? No? Me neither. My guess is that they simple left out exception handling, and rather made sure the data is hundred percent correct, completely forgetting the plight of others (us).

My feeling is that there could have been too little control over the programmers. They created a great program all the same, but several of the concepts seem ancient. This resulted in the onion layer strategy of programming, which becomes a real nightmare when too many layers are added by to many people, and makes everyone just yearn to start over eventually.

The minimal, incomplete and often confusing comments are no real help either. But this is not the problem. Logically organized files, with verbose names can be reverse engineered easily, but only if there was little or no confusion on the part of the programmers themselves. And if I look at the data in SH4 I think programmers were often as confused as us. But at least they could change the source code or scrutinize it to understand what needs to be done. We can't.

That all could be the reason lurker eventually gave up, that no one else has taken up the ATO side, and people are either staying with SHIII forever (which was a lot less confused), or moved on the other battlefield that is SHV. He did many incredibly feats with his mods, but Operation Monsun introduces some strange bugs that are not his fault, simply could not be tracked down. He may have simply trown in the towel when he realized that it cannot be made to work, at least not with normal human effort. When you have booted the game several hundred or thousand times to see if your mod works if you change X or Y or perhaps rather Z, only to be denied a complete, predictable result most of the time .. you will understand how he must have felt.

The only long term solution I see would be to clean up this game first. Someone should strip it down to a bare minimum so that mods can start with a basically empty game. A minimal modding platform. I always wanted to try this first, but the amount of work scares me, and the small achievement from it ..

Because it is sad, when SH4 is working it is imo the best of the three games. It has all the features and athmosphere of SHIII, plus better graphics, better weather, native resolution support, many new features and fast loading times through a much better organized campaign. If it just were not so damn unpredictable and glitchy ..

plus to add to the above the german boats have very messed up files so its common to suddenly find your boat surface draft to be decks awash or riding half out of the water after you resurface again which made trying to set correct draft heights useless

[ReallyDedPoet]

Originally Posted by GlobalExplorer

The only long term solution I see would be to clean up this game first. Someone should strip it down to a bare minimum so that mods can start with a basically empty game. A minimal modding platform. I always wanted to try this first, but the amount of work scares me, and the small achievement from it ..

Because it is sad, when SH4 is working it is imo the best of the three games. It has all the features and athmosphere of SHIII, plus better graphics, better weather, native resolution support, many new features and fast loading times through a much better organized campaign. If it just were not so damn unpredictable and glitchy ..

Cleaning it up, that is part of it I think. Then after that seeing what can be done to add to it as far as additional functionality, etc. I think in some ways it is largely untapped. I say thus after what has been done with SH5.

Personally I would like to see the focus be on the PTO first. We have SH3 and SH5 for the ATO. Perhaps after that is can be applied to the U-boats. There won't be another submarine sim for the fleet-boats, at least for a number of years if at all.

[Hitman]

Yes, SH4 is the only hope for fleet boat sims for now.

Regarding the clean up (Something that I also thought about and probably anyone who has modded a bit this game), I know the UBM expansion added features, but I wonder if the job would be done easier starting from SH4 1.4

Are the extra things done for 1.5 really worth the nightmare of the leftovers and confusing files?

[CapnScurvy]

Originally Posted by Hitman

Yes, SH4 is the only hope for fleet boat sims for now.

Regarding the clean up (Something that I also thought about and probably anyone who has modded a bit this game), I know the UBM expansion added features, but I wonder if the job would be done easier starting from SH4 1.4

Are the extra things done for 1.5 really worth the nightmare of the leftovers and confusing files?

If only the patched 1.4 version could have been a good starting point!? Version 1.4 was just a further step in their plan to bring the German side into SH4.

It's unfortunate, but as I said earlier, the game was destined to play both parts from the start. The mess started at the very beginning of version 1.0. The UBM with patch 5, was the "finishing" of the process for them. The menu_1024_768 file, the specific German image files, the leftover files from SHIII were all there from the very beginning........ intended to use SH4 as a further extension of SHIII.

Unfortunately, doing neither justice.

Specifically, I would like to see the manual targeting reworked to allow for the Stadimeter to be less "useless" than its set up to be. Besides the many height figures being inaccurate, the Stadimeter throws in an "error", depending on where the reading is made within the scope view. If the reading is taken towards the top of the scope (as if the target is closer to the sub) the misplacement of the water line image of just one pixel width could be only a couple of yards off from what it should be......when compared to the reading taken while the target is much closer to the water line (indicating its further away from the sub) the same one pixel error placement can be hundreds of yards off in accuracy. This "error" is figured in with the Stadimeter math that's in the game files we can't get to (no math calculations are available for us to change!). So, the game engine files are off limit's to us, yet these very files are what keeps us from having this Stadimeter "error" less problematic.

The same is true of the resolution/aspect ratio issue of the camera views within the scopes (the eyes of the sub). Depending on what resolution/aspect ratio you play the game with, what you see can be different in size compared to someone who plays the game at a different resolution/aspect ratio. Without having a target show equally in size to ALL players, there's no way using the Periscope Telemeter Divisions will give you an accurate measurement (a function that was commonly used in range estimates). This inaccuracy can be made up with different mods for different resolutions....but the true fix is to have the game engine figure out the math and have the game displayed as expected for all players (no matter which resolution/aspect ratio the game is played on).

For me, there's more than enough needed fixes to have warranted additional patches from UbiSoft, things we can't fix unless we have access to code.....but they left it as-is. If there is a way to alter the code (TDW), I'd like to know where to start.

[Admiral Halsey]

Originally Posted by CapnScurvy

If only the patched version 1.4 would have been a good starting point! It really was only a further step in their plan to bring the German side into SH4.

It's unfortunate, but as I said earlier, the game was destined to play both parts from the start. The mess started at the very beginning of version 1.0. The UBM with patch 5, was just the "finishing" of the process for them. The menu_1024_768 file, the specific German image files, the leftover files from SHIII were all there from the very beginning........ intended to use SH4 as a further extension of SHIII.

Unfortunately, doing neither justice.

Maybe it's time we start seeing which of those leftovers do something and which don't? It might take awhile but a file by file check will eventually get rid of all the clutter that was left over from SH3.

[haz]

the things i would like to see with many others probly,is the destroyers doing 7 to 50 knots in 4 secs,and their hardly ever missing you with dc,and seperate engine and screw areas,sh3 is ok but always liked sh4 more for some reason,never played sh5 figured it was probly more messed up then 4 when it came out,besides like the pto more.i will help where i can,have experminted with game files for years to see what they do.but dont know how to make nodes etc.

Originally Posted by haz

the things i would like to see with many others probly,is the destroyers doing 7 to 50 knots in 4 secs,and their hardly ever missing you with dc,and seperate engine and screw areas,sh3 is ok but always liked sh4 more for some reason,never played sh5 figured it was probly more messed up then 4 when it came out,besides like the pto more.i will help where i can,have experminted with game files for years to see what they do.but dont know how to make nodes etc.

I made a ship maneuverability fix to solve the rapid acceleration and instant stopping on a dime as well as race car like cornering around turns problem. http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=150164

I have done quite a few fixes for the game already, check my mods page