[REL] FOTRS Ultimate Project

[propbeanie]

Originally Posted by torpedobait

Mine occurred on December 25, 1942. On one of the attempts before the CTD, I took a look around the narrows with the external cam. I saw shore emplacements on both sides of the entrance right where you'd expect them to be. They were on dry land and commanded both directions into and out of the bay. I also took a quick "fly-by" at the first harbor on the port side going into the bay. There were multiple vessels (warships) docked side by side, several occurrences of three each. I did not linger or check other harbors.

OK, just using torpedobait's date, that's the 42b layer, but the 42a and 43a layers are very similar...
1. Jap_CoastalBattery.mis is a scripted layer, and covers all years of the war. Everything "spawns" just once, as the game loads, and only drawn when the player sub comes within viewing "range", whatever that is, I cannot remember, but like 20-30k. Highly unlikely to have an issue here, unless something else would possibly trash it, but how would that happen? I haven't a clue as to how that emplacement ended up out in the water. The possibility of a render issue with the free camera is the cause. All looks good in the ME on full zoom, all the way around the Osaka Bay, Inland Sea, and Kiisuido Strait.

2. Jap_HarborTraffic.mis, an all encompassing file layer, covers all years of the war, has multiple RGG that spawn, for the most part, at about a 50% rate every 900 hours, except we've gone through and given most of the "patrol" vessels a termination point and a percentage to loop a few times. This has greatly lessened the load on that file, but it really should be split into similar layers as most of the other files, for the benefit of the "docked" vessels.

3. 4Xx_Jap_CoastalTraffic.mis, mostly fishing vessels up and down along the exterior coasts, but one or two vessels originate or terminate near Osaka each "cycle" of the file. Nothing looks bad here.

4. 4Xx_Jap_Convoys.mis, is 4-6 vessels with escorts every spawn. Most of these groups coming into, or originating in the Osaka area are 5 vessels of Merchants, with 2-3 escorts, with generally 1 or 2 terminating, 2 or 3 originating, at a 75% spawn rate on average, every 720 hours, or once every 2 weeks. Nothing wrong found, but should be edited for more variety and less frequency, with fewer escorts early.

5. 4Xx_Jap_Merchants.mis is one or two unescorted vessel(s) each RGG, of which 3 or 4 terminate and 2 or 3 originate near Osaka, every 96 hours, or every four days, at about a 75% rate. Could also stand some editing for variety.

6. 42x_Jap_TroopConvoys.mis - none originate or terminate near Osaka in the early or mid part of the war...

7. 42b_Jap_TaskForce.mis - 3 terminate, 1 originates at Osaka in the 42b layer. The smallest being 17 vessels every 336 hours (14 days) at a 75% rate, Singapore to Osaka. (That works out to each RGG spawing every 19-20 days.) Two are 28 vessels every 336 hours at 75% rate, and the originator is 27 vessels every 336 hours at 75% rate. That's 19.5 groups [b]each[b], or about 487.5 vessels each group during the time frame, for 78 groups with a total of 1950 vessels just in this file for a one year period of time... About every 3.5 days on average in Osaka Bay, you'd have one of these groups. The odds of encountering two or more at a time are actually quite high. We do have to do this differently. For one thing, too many BB, and not enough CV and CVE...

8. 4Xx_Jap_SubHunters not considered.

A lot of the strates & bays along the Southern coast have similar issues at varying times.

It would probably be better to write a whole new campaign ...
MadMax had then only the multiplayer part in the target.

[propbeanie]

We've already done quite a bit of editing to slow things down a lot, and since it's just the TaskForce layers seemingly needing some more "lessening", we'll stay closer to what MadMax had with just a few more edits. Doing a whole new Campaign would take a considerable amount of time (and strain the limits of sanity) that I don't think most of us have... However, splitting both HarborTraffic layers would most likely help considerably also...

[Duskbringer]

Yeah don't push yourselves to far. Taking on too much at once and not getting anything finished would be bad. Don't want to see you guys go the way of the surface warfare team.

[Lt commander lare]

I just finished the war last night I did get a couple of crash to desktops near Osaka and some of the warships guns were black while the other ones were painted I was near Grid 6 by Osaka but other than that outstanding work I love the mod to each and everyone of u working on this its a 5 star mod. Also noticed damage control is taking way to long to fix damaged items and the destroyed items are not being repaired even though I have the repairable damage ability might want to look into that as well.

thanks to all

Lt Commander Lare

[CapnScurvy]

Originally Posted by Lt commander lare

I just finished the war last night I did get a couple of crash to desktops near Osaka and some of the warships guns were black while the other ones were painted I was near Grid 6 by Osaka but other than that outstanding work I love the mod to each and everyone of u working on this its a 5 star mod. Also noticed damage control is taking way to long to fix damaged items and the destroyed items are not being repaired even though I have the repairable damage ability might want to look into that as well.

thanks to all

Lt Commander Lare

If you could have gotten us an image of those guns that would have been a big help. Knowing just which ones were the troubled ones would make it much simpler to fix. I'd guess their ones that FOTRS added to the game....not one of the stock game guns.

I think we can look at the time for repair and compare it to the stock game....coming up with something in-between might be a good result if others have noticed the same thing and feel the same.

[propbeanie]

Originally Posted by Lt commander lare

I just finished the war last night I did get a couple of crash to desktops near Osaka and some of the warships guns were black while the other ones were painted I was near Grid 6 by Osaka but other than that outstanding work I love the mod to each and everyone of u working on this its a 5 star mod. Also noticed damage control is taking way to long to fix damaged items and the destroyed items are not being repaired even though I have the repairable damage ability might want to look into that as well.

thanks to all

Lt Commander Lare

Since you "finished the war", I'm guessing you were in 1945? If so, by that point in time, the HarborTraffic file is saturating the area with a lot of vessels, even though they should in actuality be decreasing. I'm working on that, but the real fix will take a while yet. Hopefully, the next version coming soon to a computer near you will help a little.

CapnScurvy, can you think of why the Jap_CoastalBattery file would draw things in the middle of the water, instead of where they're put in the file, or do incomplete skinning? I'll go through that particular file once again, but there's only so much in it. Can bad dates on the guns' skins themselves cause something like that? Can the spawning of all the other layers mess up a scripted layer like the CoastalBatteries that way?

[gutted]

Originally Posted by propbeanie

can you think of why the Jap_CoastalBattery file would draw things in the middle of the water

decks awash. Sneaky sneaky.

[propbeanie]

"Ahead two thirds. We'll get ourselves that sub fer sher fer sertin like this"...

[Lt commander lare]

Hi Capn Scurvy I will get you that photo for ya on the guns roger that !!!!.

[CapnScurvy]

Originally Posted by Lt commander lare

Hi Capn Scurvy I will get you that photo for ya on the guns roger that !!!!.

I just went through the entire Museum inventory, all models looked correct in the Museum. No issues at all! Least we've got that issue corrected.

That doesn't mean there isn't an issue during a Campaign mission though. Since its only a gun skin of some type, I'm surprised that it happened. Unless the particular gun has a Start/End Date attached to it that's not normal.....the date ends before the mission is over, causing the game to not understand what to do with the gun? Most guns, and lots of other equipment, try to avoid conflicts by having them start like 19380101, and end after the war 19451231. No conflicts with those dates when a mission takes place between 19411207 and 19450815 or so. I mentioned the gun could be one of FOTRS additions....they just didn't think to make it easy on themselves if they have an abnormal equipment Start/End date.

Originally Posted by propbeanie

Capnscurvy, can you think of why the Jap_CoastalBattery file would draw things in the middle of the water, instead of where they're put in the file.

No not off hand. As long as no one monkeyed with the earth's size, or the map size, I'd think the placement in the Mission Editor would be the same in-game. One thing though, I'm not convinced that the Mission Editor was designed to make Campaign Missions, or Dynamic Missions that are used during a Campaign game. I've believed that the ME will produce a working Single Mission...but I'm not so sure it will produce a Campaign Mission correctly. Lurker always talked about not using the ME to change his files. I remember him saying most of his work was done by hand because the ME wouldn't produce the .mis file that the game expected for a Campaign. Just how he got the placements right might have come from him running the .mis file through the ME to get the coordinates, yet when it came time to finalize the .mis, he used a text editor like Notepad to add his changes to the original stock game files.

.....Can bad dates on the guns' skins themselves cause something like that?

I'd be really surprised that there's a date for the gun skins.

[propbeanie]

I've been through all sorts of files also, including the bunkers, turrets and guns, and all have embedded texture. In the CoastalBattery file, all emplacements have the same settings, other than the location placed, height above water and the direction they are pointing. Most are MediumTurret, with a few LargeTurret thrown in. No extra lines in the data, all calls match, all "start" before the game and end after. None are placed in the water, shallow, deep or in between.

The slowdown in the Osaka Bay area seems to be from too much traffic. There are a lot of Group and Unit spawns there and in the Inland Sea. There are also TaskForce spawns there, which contained upwards of 30 vessels, and Convoy and Merchant spawns there also, so it might just be the game engine is overworked in that area and is unable to keep up with all the variables involved, I don't know. What I have done in recent edits is reduce the spawning in the area, and move it all around the clock, so that everything isn't a midnight spawn, and doesn't run 24 hours a day. I've also reduced the size of the TaskForce group sizes from there a bit. We'll see if that makes a difference.

I do know that if a person uses the external camera and initially travels East, as an example, the terrain is not fully drawn behind the view, to the West. Therefore, if you turn the camera and then travel West, you will encounter some apparent anomalies like incomplete hills, due to that partial rendering, and see mostly a "water" background, so I'm hoping that's all these instances were... if you guys could describe how you used the external camera, it'd really be appreciated.

[CapnScurvy]

I did a quick look through the stock games "Jap_CoastalBattery" file, and compared it to FOTRS "Jap_CoastalBattery" file.

A lot more bunkers in FOTRS....THAT usually means lots more chances for errors!!

There were a couple of things I began to browse through looking for...starting from the bottom. I was looking to see if the Parameters of "Speed=0.000000" and "Radius=0.000000" and "RandStartRadius=0.000000" were all the same. Nothing foolish like one of them stating 0.000 or some other typed error. I don't know if missing a couple of zeros could mean a misplaced gun emplacement...but that's what I was looking for.

I did find that FOTRS has some changes to the GameEntryDates and GameExitDates. Wouldn't you know, FOTRS monkeyed with these trying to be more authentic I guess. Just makes it all the harder to keep track of what's what.....any of these have a nonexistence date like an April 31?!?




One thing that didn't take too long to notice from my browse from bottom to top......Where's the Waypoint entry for the [Unit 407]?? There isn't one. I don't know where this particular bunker is located (Long=20751080.000000; Lat=162510.000000) but I'm guessing it isn't going to be working as expected without the proper file listing.

[propbeanie]

The Capn and his good eyes! There's that magical April 31st. I wonder if there's also some June 31st listings in there also?... I had just looked around the Bay area and didn't go any further, but it looks like maybe it is in order here...

That particular #48 emplacement there CapnScurvy, is down a little South and East of the Homeland:



As you can see on the "close-up", it doesn't "point" like the other guns around it


and just for another show-and-tell, here's the MediumTurret, which is what was "floating" in the middle of the bay for s7rikeback earlier:


This just shows ta go ya how important them date thingies are...

Edit: I've found six Units without WayPoints. They are corrected, but I don't know if I'll beat the printing press...

[CapnScurvy]

Propbeanie, I'm wondering if you have ever taken a copy of one of the stock game Campaign .mis files and put it into the Mission Editor. Don't do a thing to it, but save it. Then use WinMerg to compare the two files to see if there's anything added/subtracted to the .mis file?

Just wondering?