[REL] FOTRS Ultimate Project

[cdrsubron7]

Announcement Time



Pig Boat Missions

I've begun work on a new set of single missions devoted to the S-Class submarines that saw action in the earlier parts of the war. These missions will come from all theaters where they participated. These areas include the Aleutians, East Indies, Solomons........ect. There will originally be a set of ten missions and how many after that depends on how many ideas I can come up with. These missions will only be found in FOTRSU and will only work with FOTRSU. They should start showing up in the next Beta release I would think.

If anyone would have an idea about the S-Class boats in these single missions feel free to make a suggestion and I will see what I can do to accommodate you and your idea.

[gutted]

Tried out those files you sent me cdrsubron7. Did a patrol in april '44. Didn't run into any super DD's yet, but i'm still using up almost all of my torpedos on whale factory ships before ever reaching Japan. My Tonnage is going up through the roof. Think i might just strt avoiding them now.

[gutted]

You know, i just realized that after completing a patrol objective and radio'd HQ in the .4 beta, i would routinely get new patrol objectives.

But in the very next .5x beta, that seems to have disappeared entirely.

[TheBeast]

Up to Post #1930 now but making progress.

Has the FoTRS v1.3 "Tokyo Express" issue been resolved?
This is the very long line of fast moving DD's.

I remember this from times past. Not sure if it was ME Scripted, Campaign or Mission.
If this task force is found taking the same course/route every time it is scripted.
Plot a line from Tokyo to the port of Manya (29N - 130E), if the Task Force passes next to Manya on that course, it is the Tokyo Express.

There were 3 things in FoTRS v1.3 that had major problems and this was one.
Mega ship spawn at either Port Gobo or Port Tanabe. One or the other, don't remember which one.
There was another Mega Spawn location but I can't remember where it was. Not a senior moment, it has been several years since I have played FoTRS.

When I say MEGA SPAWN. I literally mean ships spawning on top of ships damaging each other covering several thousand meters filling the entire port area.

Regards!
TheBeast

[propbeanie]

Originally Posted by gutted

Tried out those files you sent me cdrsubron7. Did a patrol in april '44. Didn't run into any super DD's yet, but i'm still using up almost all of my torpedos on whale factory ships before ever reaching Japan. My Tonnage is going up through the roof. Think i might just strt avoiding them now.

I'm still noodling with those spawn rates. I turned them down for the next release, but apparently the people of Japan need a ~lot~ of whale blubber, because they still spawn too many 'whaling convoys', so I'll try again...

Originally Posted by gutted

You know, i just realized that after completing a patrol objective and radio'd HQ in the .4 beta, i would routinely get new patrol objectives.

But in the very next .5x beta, that seems to have disappeared entirely.

I don't think we touched anything there...

[torpedobait]

After rethinking the suggestions about testing FOTAS Ultimate Beta 0.52 with a sterile version, I did a clean sweep. I uninstalled the game and wiped all references on the computer (game, Docs, etc. , including those in the Registry, and rebooted. Then I loaded a new V1.3 from the CD, applied the patches to bring first to 1.4 and then 1.5, and added only the latest FOTARS Ultimate after reinstalling JSGME in the SH4 base directory.

Starting a new career, I encountered no previously reported anomalies until I received an assignment to Recon Osaka. Now I know that you are trimming down the recon missions, but I wanted to run it anyway as a legitimate assignment in the current release. Here's what I found. As you can see I have a fairly heavy rig, able to handle almost anything SH4 can throw at it without stuttering, but Osaka is not good for me. As soon as I neared the inner bay, passing through the narrow (shore gun-guarded passage), the game slowed my computer to a crawl. The fastest it would run was at 32x tc, and that very herky-jerkily (?). Finally, after being able to crawl to the center of the deep water area, and running at 1x tc, the game CTD'd. The third time it happened I just quit in frustration. The closer you get to Osaka, the worse the performance until it won't run at all.

It may be that there is so much traffic and port detail to handle, but I have been there before under TMO and TMO/RSRDC with no similar experience.

All this is anecdotal, but perhaps there is enough there that another, more formal testing process, can find a bug or ???

Thanks for listening!

[propbeanie]

Originally Posted by TheBeast

Up to Post #1930 now but making progress.

Has the FoTRS v1.3 "Tokyo Express" issue been resolved?
This is the very long line of fast moving DD's.

I remember this from times past. Not sure if it was ME Scripted, Campaign or Mission.
If this task force is found taking the same course/route every time it is scripted.
Plot a line from Tokyo to the port of Manya (29N - 130E), if the Task Force passes next to Manya on that course, it is the Tokyo Express.

There were 3 things in FoTRS v1.3 that had major problems and this was one.
Mega ship spawn at either Port Gobo or Port Tanabe. One or the other, don't remember which one.
There was another Mega Spawn location but I can't remember where it was. Not a senior moment, it has been several years since I have played FoTRS.

When I say MEGA SPAWN. I literally mean ships spawning on top of ships damaging each other covering several thousand meters filling the entire port area.

Regards!
TheBeast

What we found on some of those super-spawns was a vessel was set, apparently with the intention to do a 'looping' route, but the loop point wasn't put in, or was accidentally deleted, and being a looping ship, did not have a 'delete on last waypoint' set. Yet they had a spawn rate to repeat them. By the time the player would get to 1944, there would be hundreds of the vessels running around the world. Another set of vessels would be set to spawn, and would have their loop points set correctly, but set to spawn every couple of hundred hours, and by the time the player would get to the location, there'd be hundreds of vessels. So many in fact, that they couldn't move out of each other's way. Most of these offenders were found in the Jap_HarborTraffic file. We're still working on 'tuning' that, and the latest idea on it is to go ahead and split it up into time frame layers, like most of the rest of the game is. There's over 2200 RGG in that file, which is entirely too many for a for year time frame, in my opinion...

Originally Posted by TheBeast

Playing with contact decay rates in ~\SHIV_Root\Cfg\Contacts.cfg a bit can help when leaving port or any where for that matter.

By decreasing the decay rate (increase how long the contact display on screen) you can better emulate a real life scenario.

The big benefit of doing this is that you are not dropped to TC1 every 30-60 seconds for Radar and or Sonar Contacts and will greatly improve the user experience when starting from in Port or at any time while on Patrol.

When the contact is first detected you are dropped to TC1. The Radar/Sonar operator has done their job, You now know there is a contact within range. If at this point you again jump to a high TC and run into the ship or task force, that is on you.

Regards!
TheBeast

Which of the 5 decay time rates has the most effect on entering and leaving a base?

[propbeanie]

Originally Posted by torpedobait

After rethinking the suggestions about testing FOTAS Ultimate Beta 0.52 with a sterile version, I did a clean sweep. I uninstalled the game and wiped all references on the computer (game, Docs, etc. , including those in the Registry, and rebooted. Then I loaded a new V1.3 from the CD, applied the patches to bring first to 1.4 and then 1.5, and added only the latest FOTARS Ultimate after reinstalling JSGME in the SH4 base directory.

Starting a new career, I encountered no previously reported anomalies until I received an assignment to Recon Osaka. Now I know that you are trimming down the recon missions, but I wanted to run it anyway as a legitimate assignment in the current release. Here's what I found. As you can see I have a fairly heavy rig, able to handle almost anything SH4 can throw at it without stuttering, but Osaka is not good for me. As soon as I neared the inner bay, passing through the narrow (shore gun-guarded passage), the game slowed my computer to a crawl. The fastest it would run was at 32x tc, and that very herky-jerkily (?). Finally, after being able to crawl to the center of the deep water area, and running at 1x tc, the game CTD'd. The third time it happened I just quit in frustration. The closer you get to Osaka, the worse the performance until it won't run at all.

It may be that there is so much traffic and port detail to handle, but I have been there before under TMO and TMO/RSRDC with no similar experience.

All this is anecdotal, but perhaps there is enough there that another, more formal testing process, can find a bug or ???

Thanks for listening!

Unfortunately, the only real way to test is like this, by actually playing the game. When we run the player in the Mission Editor, it doesn't spawn the individual vessels, only the groups, and there isn't any collision detection. Plus, no player vessel. Not only that, but if a mistake in routing is made, and a ship is routed over dry land, the ME's player doesn't care, and just drives the ship right on over. You won't know there's a problem until actually in the game, and the vessel strikes the land mass, collision detection says a massive collision occurred, and then initiates an explosion, fire, smoke & mayhem...

I'll look even closer at the Osaka area. We are having a good bit of trouble with the harbor areas...

[s7rikeback]

Originally Posted by TheBeast

Up to Post #1930 now but making progress.

Has the FoTRS v1.3 "Tokyo Express" issue been resolved?
This is the very long line of fast moving DD's.

I remember this from times past. Not sure if it was ME Scripted, Campaign or Mission.
If this task force is found taking the same course/route every time it is scripted.
Plot a line from Tokyo to the port of Manya (29N - 130E), if the Task Force passes next to Manya on that course, it is the Tokyo Express.

There were 3 things in FoTRS v1.3 that had major problems and this was one.
Mega ship spawn at either Port Gobo or Port Tanabe. One or the other, don't remember which one.
There was another Mega Spawn location but I can't remember where it was. Not a senior moment, it has been several years since I have played FoTRS.

When I say MEGA SPAWN. I literally mean ships spawning on top of ships damaging each other covering several thousand meters filling the entire port area.

Regards!
TheBeast

Good evening TheBeast.

I have just checked out those possible spawn locations you mentioned starting out from Pearl 1941.

Port Tanabe - Single ship in port with no issues, took 4 torps to sink.

Port Gobo - 4 ships in harbor - three ships piled into each other in the same berth... Several bonfires going on as a result of this.

On a side note:
An Atami Gunboat - was rocking very heavy in very calm seas around the Osaka area and was the start of my demise....

Sailing out again and will revisit for double checks.

[s7rikeback]

Originally Posted by torpedobait

After rethinking the suggestions about testing FOTAS Ultimate Beta 0.52 with a sterile version, I did a clean sweep. I uninstalled the game and wiped all references on the computer (game, Docs, etc. , including those in the Registry, and rebooted. Then I loaded a new V1.3 from the CD, applied the patches to bring first to 1.4 and then 1.5, and added only the latest FOTARS Ultimate after reinstalling JSGME in the SH4 base directory.

Starting a new career, I encountered no previously reported anomalies until I received an assignment to Recon Osaka. Now I know that you are trimming down the recon missions, but I wanted to run it anyway as a legitimate assignment in the current release. Here's what I found. As you can see I have a fairly heavy rig, able to handle almost anything SH4 can throw at it without stuttering, but Osaka is not good for me. As soon as I neared the inner bay, passing through the narrow (shore gun-guarded passage), the game slowed my computer to a crawl. The fastest it would run was at 32x tc, and that very herky-jerkily (?). Finally, after being able to crawl to the center of the deep water area, and running at 1x tc, the game CTD'd. The third time it happened I just quit in frustration. The closer you get to Osaka, the worse the performance until it won't run at all.

It may be that there is so much traffic and port detail to handle, but I have been there before under TMO and TMO/RSRDC with no similar experience.

All this is anecdotal, but perhaps there is enough there that another, more formal testing process, can find a bug or ???

Thanks for listening!

Good evening torpedobait,

Following up your problems with the above area... I have just been sunk by a sub-chaser north of Port Gobo and just south of the Osaka area.

I encountered very heavy traffic including in one screen:
1 x sub-chaser
1 x sampan
1 x tugboat
1 x coastal steamer
1 x whale factory ship
1 x Amati Gunboat (called the sub-chaser that sunk me, 1 depth charge and RIP)

All these vessels were single entities and we had spotted serveral other ships further out before we dived for the last time.

Ok, I have now also had a CTD, just outside Osaka Horbor:




Perhaps this is the problem?



But I will say, there is alot of traffic here also, plus stationary DD's & Sub-chasers for those night surface travellers.. And boy, those shore batteries are very highly trained.

And yes, i'm using the beta, just tinkering and playing with the HUD files. As I prefer the backgrounds on the top icons / shortcuts

[Lt commander lare]

I have never encountered the Yamato where is the best place to encounter the Yamato actually sailing would like to give her the Deep Six.


Lt Commander Lare

[Lt commander lare]

Hi I was wondering is there anyway you can restore the medal of honor Medal to Fall of the Rising sun I was just curious I loved getting that medal.


Lt Commander lare.

[cdrsubron7]

Originally Posted by Lt commander lare

I have never encountered the Yamato where is the best place to encounter the Yamato actually sailing would like to give her the Deep Six.


Lt Commander Lare

I think that it is almost impossible to say where the Yamato could be found at any time. Since most of the taskforce mis files are RGG groups the ships don't appear all the time each time they spawn. Heck, I don't remember the last time I had a carrier in my periscope sights in FOTRSU.

You'll just have to get lucky sometime.

[Lt commander lare]

Thank u for answering happy Hunting .