[REL] FOTRS Ultimate Project

[cdrsubron7]

Originally Posted by propbeanie

- that reminds me, your IJN Oil mission doesn't have a "mission name" in the mission language settings parameters in the MIS file, so it's a "blank line" in the game's menu... Still works though. I *think* I got the right one...

Is it possible to see a screenie of what you're referring too.

[cdrsubron7]

Upon further review the whaler from FOTRSU doesn't look much like the Tonan Maru #2.



Tonan Maru #2

[CapnScurvy]

Originally Posted by cdrsubron7

Just guessing here, but changing the merchant ship names and tonnages can be done the cfg ship files, correct?

You don't change the names of the ships in the .cfg file. That "ClassName=" is the UnitName I was talking about. It's used through out the game to keep track of the particular model it represents.

You want to change the name of the ship within the Names.cfg file. So it shows in the Recognition Manual, the TDC, and the Ships Log for sunk ships.

Use the ClassName found in the ships .cfg file to track down the correct entry in the Names.cfg file.....you change the name there. Here's an example:

Look up the NKLSS_Hansa in the Data/Sea folder. The NKLSS_Hansa.cfg file lists the "ClassName" as "KLSSHansa". Don't change this name. This is the internal name the game uses in several places to represent the ship in question....don't mess with it.

Now, open the Roster/Names.cfg and find the entry....KLSSHansa. You'll find it like this.....KLSSHansa=Big Split Merchant. You will want to change the name "Big Split Merchant" to something appropriate like Hansa Maru..... or whatever you think is best to describe the ship.

The name changing is done in the Names.cfg file.

As far as the tonnage changing, yes the ships .cfg file is where you can change what's shown in the Recognition Manual. If you think the figure for "Displacement=xxxx" is off.....you can make the correction there. Don't expect the displacement to make a difference in the ships appearence in sitting in the water.....it doesn't do it there. It will only change the figure in the RM. Don't mess with the other figures though. The Mast or Length need to be checked by more than just what's reported in a book. Each ship model is only a representive of the real life ship......in no way is it going to be close to measuring correctly in-game just because a book says so.

[CapnScurvy]

Originally Posted by cdrsubron7

Upon further review the whaler from FOTRSU doesn't look much like the Tonan Maru #2.



Tonan Maru #2

Maybe not an exact match......but who's to know?!? The model in-game could be a made up thing-a-ma-bob from who ever put it together. A mast here, a boom there, put the superstructure over here....your done after calling it a whaler. Do the best you can with the matching, but don't expect to find an exact match every time.

That's why I said in my last post, don't rely on Mast Heights, or ship Lengths, or Displacements to be accurate just because a book says so.

[Rockin Robbins]

Originally Posted by Jeff-Groves

No.
The free hex editor will not do the needed stuff.
I started with that and moved on to a better which is 010.
010 is much more then a hex editor!
Don't let that part of it fool you!

Now I will pay for one license for this project.
The good people at Sweetscape know I'm willing to do that and will switch whatever to see one of you get's the license.
I just need a final name to do this.

As much as I would love to play with it, I'm not the guy to get the best use out of it. That leaves a bunch of people.

We could just have a simple duel to the death, single elimination I guess, and the winner gets it but that would decimate the project.

It seems to me that objectively, CapnScurvy would put it to best use, but I'm open to reasoning, persuasion, coercion, collusion and bribes!

And Jeff, I can't say enough how much we appreciate your help. Miss one ship name in a hidden campaign file hidden in the weeds and you mess up the game. 010 will fix that with its great search and destroy feature.

[Rockin Robbins]

Originally Posted by CapnScurvy

Maybe not an exact match......but who's to know?!? The model in-game could be a made up thing-a-ma-bob from who ever put it together. A mast here, a boom there, put the superstructure over here....your done after calling it a whaler. Do the best you can with the matching, but don't expect to find an exact match every time.

That's why I said in my last post, don't rely on Mast Heights, or ship Lengths, or Displacements to be accurate just because a book says so.

Actually, this was the dilemma of sub commanders in the war. The ships in their recognition manuals never seemed to be exactly the ship they were looking at. So they used certain rules of thumb: deck heights, stack configuration, cranes, etc and matched up as best they could. They were mostly wrong because there weren't any right choices available to them in the recognition manual.

Sometimes we wonder why our tonnage totals are so high in comparison to reality. This is a pretty big part of it. The Achilles heel of the stadimeter method of targeting is the necessity of identifying the ship, or at least the height of the mast or other prominent feature of the target to gauge range.

Makes you envy the Germans, hunting in a sea of pretty identical Liberty ships!

[CapnScurvy]

cdrsubron7, I should point out, there are several ships that are cross used over the different nationalities. I'm going to let you find this out, but that Hansa ship I pointed out.....I'm pretty sure it's also used by the British. You'll need to check the Roster/Nations folder to see if the same ship does double duty for the Japanese and another country. If so, you'll need to rethink your naming scheme. You'll need to come up with a name that's generic to the ship for all nationalities.

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

Later, I'm going to be posting what I've been doing with the sounds, sensors, and airplanes (yes I've been meddling with the airplanes).

[Rockin Robbins]

Capn, what are your thoughts on sensors and airplanes? What kind of changes do you have in mind and why? All that will be in the readme and in the thread when we actually do the [REL] thread.

With ships that are shared between nationalities, is there any problem with corrected tonnage for all? Of course there is the possibility of the same model being used for ships of different tonnage. Then I wouldn't worry about it, just have the Japanese tonnage in there. After all we don't get tonnage score for sinking Allied vessels, do we? Okay, credit, but not the credit we want....

[propbeanie]

Originally Posted by cdrsubron7

Is it possible to see a screenie of what you're referring too.

Here we go (if I don't mess it up... ). Clicking on the images should take you to Photobucket, to a larger version. You can use their + sign thingie to zoom in closer if you need to (like I do ):

Here's the menu in-game, with the blank line and no mission briefing, showing between two others of your missions.

.

Once you start the mission, here's the mission map just after starting. It loads and runs just fine, and is quite a blast (literally)... :wink:

.

And here's what the Mission Editor of the file looks like. Notice the title bar of the window, and the ME's "Language Specific Settings" pop-up dialog window.

Now, I might have either the old one, from when you first did these, but it's got the "FOTRSUC7xxx" nomenclature, so I think (reasonably certain) it came out of the "700FOTRSUSingle Missions" pack. Just needs your "touch" on that portion is all...
.

[propbeanie]

Originally Posted by cdrsubron7

300FOTRSUAI_Levels

This has been uploaded to our storage area. There are five levels as requested bu our fearless leader. A brief description is below. The levels go from highest to lowest.

Level 5 - This is the highest level, only for the bravest of the brave, I call it IUBL level. IUBL translates into Impossible Ultra Brutal Level. Try it at your own risk. Not for the faint of heart.

Level 4 - This represents the AI levels you would find in TMO v2.5 created by Ducimus. Just below Level 5.

Level 3 - This will be for FOTRSU. It's middle of the road, but you still can't relax for a minute.

Level 2 - This will represent the Stock Level. Shouldn't present any problems for you pros out there.

Level 1 - This level would be equivalent to TMOwtw. The sonar operators on the Japanese DDs seem to be deaf.

These levels are not written in stone and can be changed without much difficulty.

Neglected to say that this file is in JSGME format also.

Back to this now...

I did the four and five this morning... SHEESH!!! is all I can say about #5. It's next to impossible to be quiet enough to slip through the defensive screen, even below a thermal layer, and on silent running, especially if you have to do a final move into place. I was dead before I started, and just didn't realize it for about 45 minutes is all... It was night time, my boat was never topside, never above 100 foot of depth, never above ahead 1/3, and that was *way* at the start. The first can-run, and I had damage. The 2nd can-run I had severe damage, and was getting ready to blow the tanks (batteries) when the 3rd run came over and finished us off. We changed depth the whole time, trying to get away from the cans. So we went from 350 down to blub blub blub pretty quick

When I was doing #4, I was caught on the surface by an airplane. Surprise surprise surprise (Gomer Pyle there). They strafed us, hitting us on their first pass. The bombs they dropped straddled us, causing minor damage also. Now, in this particular Single Mission, the boat has radar. I have it on. I have it scanning continuously... I've got surface contacts reported, bearing 52 (& others) "Long range"... Nothing from the air radar... I also have lookouts posted on the bridge, the sub crew is "veteran", and NOT ONE of them says anything about an airplane approaching? hmmm.... Anyway, after that, the DD screen of the convoy apparently had real good radio communication and co-ordination with the airplane, and used his hyper-powered intuition to guess where I'd try to sneek under the screen at ahead 1.5 knots, below the thermal layer at 166 foot, going straight at him under silent running conditions. Shades of Level #5, I was dead again, but this time, in only two passes... hmmmm.

I went ahead and did the same mission again, but at Level #3, and let the same thing happen with the airplane, and very similar results with them being on us like stink, maybe not quite as accurate, but the destroyer screen was "killer" again, only in three passes...

Conclusions:
1. Airplanes can somehow figure out how to come in from the sun everytime, apparently... Have I mentioned how much I *hates-ez mee aeroplanes-ez*?...

2. If you have a surface radar contact already, you may not get any warnings of inbound aircraft - definitely visible on radar...

3. Even with supposedly relatively qualified crew members, at their stations at the look-out posts, they are either mute, or blind, or they scammed the recruiter who got them signed-up...

4. Once an airplane has spotted you in Level #3 or above, just turn around and kiss your @XX bye-bye, if there's any support for them nearby...

I'll still have to go back and check out the airplanes in Levels #1 & #2, and see how "mean" they are there. I'm not finished with Levels 4 & 5 either, because I never got to fire a single shot in either yet...

CapnScurvy, I sure hope you're thinking of calming them airplane "bees" down some...

I will say this about XTBilly's "ship excelleration" (and I've got a couple of screenies to put up on a destroyer getting nailed just aft of his stack): They might try, but they can't quite get up to speed so fast. I was within 900 yards, sitting about 75 degrees off, did a real quick peek & shot, aiming for the 2nd turret, just in front of the bridge, and hit halfway back, under one of the rear turrets, so they can move, just not like the jackrabbits of before, where they would have outrun that shot rather handily.

[propbeanie]

Neglected to mention, CapnScurvy, but - in my opinion - there should definitely be a change in the radar detection AND the crew's reporting (or failure to) of other contacts. If the captain is at the chart, planning his approach on a convoy, and has all the "report contact" stuff on radar and sonar turned on, and has both radars set to full-time scan, why oh why is there not - at the least - a verbal report, or maybe a mark on the chart (or both, dependent upon difficulty level)?... On the proposed Level 5 of what cdrsubron7 and Florida Sailor have been working on, OK, maybe leave it like that, but a person on Level #3 would not expect such behavior (at least, I didn't)...

[cdrsubron7]

Wow, there is a lot of the table today.

First, with the ship name changing scheme, the first thing I'm going to do is get each ship ided as closely as I can. It obvious to me that it'll be rare if I find an exact match. Once I get the ship names down then we can see what exactly has to be down in FOTRSU to make this work. It's also seems obvious that this project will be more involved than at first glance.

As for Jeff_Groves very generous offer of the 0110 Hex Editor for one of us to use, I think it's great. However, I don't think I would be the choice on the one to use either. My learning curve doesn't exist on some things especially new software. CapnScurvy would seem the logical choice to me also, but he's already doing so much for us, donating his time to work on different aspect of the game, giving up work on his own mod to help us. I surly don't won't to over burden him. At the moment, don't know what the solution would be.

@pb. I will look into the problem with the IJN Oil mission tonight after I get home and correct it and then upload the corrected version to Area 51.

[cdrsubron7]

Originally Posted by propbeanie

I will say this about XTBilly's "ship excelleration" (and I've got a couple of screenies to put up on a destroyer getting nailed just aft of his stack): They might try, but they can't quite get up to speed so fast. I was within 900 yards, sitting about 75 degrees off, did a real quick peek & shot, aiming for the 2nd turret, just in front of the bridge, and hit halfway back, under one of the rear turrets, so they can move, just not like the jackrabbits of before, where they would have outrun that shot rather handily.

I know that the destroyers still can outrun a Mark 10 torpedo, I found that out while working and playing with my Aleutian Missions. If their alerted they dodge, but if you catch them flatfooted, they sink just like any other ship with two torpedoes in them.

[max-peck]

Originally Posted by CapnScurvy

Maybe not an exact match......but who's to know?!? The model in-game could be a made up thing-a-ma-bob from who ever put it together. A mast here, a boom there, put the superstructure over here....your done after calling it a whaler. Do the best you can with the matching, but don't expect to find an exact match every time.

Absolutely agreed

cdrsubron7 - do not worry yourself about getting an exact match in every case
As long as you are in the ballpark, and we end up with a consistent naming convention, I would say you have done a great job

[max-peck]

Now hear this - now hear this

Last version before release

800 Razz Dazz FOTRSU v0.6 is now available on the Secret Lizard Men Rulers Of The World Google Drive

I have done 10 skins for all tankers, replenishment, troopships and freighters

Anything else I decide to do from now on will just be tweaking the existing skins to my satisfaction

Consider it nearly finished

That is all