SH4 Mod Wishlist-Community Input Appreciated

[ReallyDedPoet]

Originally Posted by Webster

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

Great page Webster, lots of fixes for sure. For folks new to SH4 who have not seen this, do yourself a favour and check it out.

[HertogJan]

What I'd like to see is a way of writing down stuff on the Nav.Map or on a notepad of sorts... The 'red' pencil was ment to do that but never got ink in it

[ReallyDedPoet]

Originally Posted by HertogJan

What I'd like to see is a way of writing down stuff on the Nav.Map or on a notepad of sorts... The 'red' pencil was ment to do that but never got ink in it

You would think that one would be fairly straight forward, or wouldn't it be nice to have a pulldown sheet where you could do the same thing. And edit as necessary or needed.

[HertogJan]

Something like a personal logbook would be great, being able to make notes on contacts, convoy (heading, speed ect.)

[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, its a little thing but would add a lot to the realism

I just finished making this for SH5. As SH5 is based off of SH4 this is possible to do in SH4 and SH3. It was a royal pita to code though Not for the faint of heart and you better have really strong coding/assembly/RE skills

[ReallyDedPoet]

Originally Posted by TheDarkWraith

I just finished making this for SH5. As SH5 is based off of SH4 this is possible to do in SH4 and SH3. It was a royal pita to code though Not for the faint of heart and you better have really strong coding/assembly/RE skills

Well we know that it is possible : )

[TG626]

I think an after death save would be nice. Final disposition of you career, medals, log record. Nothing you could play, just your final record. I remember games from 20 years ago having that...

[TheDarkWraith]

Originally Posted by ReallyDedPoet

Well we know that it is possible : )

Yes it is possible but not easy to do.

You'd be surprised how much SH4 is in SH5 but just turned off or disabled. All the watch rotation stuff and sounds for it are loaded when the game runs but right after that some new code ensures that those features are disabled or turned off so they are never used Just total piss poor and lazy coding (not to mention inefficient memory management - why allocate memory to things that are never used?). They also left entire chunks of SH4 code in SH5. Instead of stripping them out they changed the pointers to those functions to point to 'null' functions or stubs - functions that immediately return to the caller (once again inefficient memory management - why have code in memory that is never called/used?).

Oh but it gets even better! As SH4 was based on SH3 I even see SH3 code in the SH5 code. Same thing as I described above - instead of removing the SH3 code from SH4 they just set 'null' functions or stubs Laziness compounded onto more laziness...

[GlobalExplorer]

TDW you seem to be the only person here who has the ability and energy to unravel the mysteries of SH5.exe. I am not suprised that many of the old stuff is still there, if it can be made to work even it could be very fortunate. Really looking forward what you and others can do with the game.

It does not surprise me though that you find large portions of hidden, disabled code. They must have decided that with Silent Hunter 5 the engine needs to be completely upgraded. One reason would be that UBI wanted to have the AssCreed graphics engine in their newer product. Another will have been that many new programmers were bitterly complaining that the older stuff was not always working and that they were losing countless hours trying to figure out what would work - similar to our experiences with SH4.

So they would make tabula rasa, and put everything on a new, much improved foundation. Unfortunately the same old casualness set in quickly (management issues?), and some people refactored stuff from Silent Hunter IV, which was often stuff that had already been refactored from Silent Hunter III. At the same time fundamental changes must have happened inside of UBI that forced them to finish the game at a point where they were barely halfway on the move to the new engine. For I don't think I have seen many games that were out of the box so badly configured as Silent Hunter V.

[ReallyDedPoet]

When I get back home on the weekend I'll start to update this thread. In the meantime feel free to provide more feedback on the first and subsequent posts. Thanks : )

[TorpX]

I'll suppress the temptation to post a long laundry list of (probably impossible) mod wishes here.

This is something which I think would be possible without any fundamental breakthroughs: Better instrumentation in the boats. That is, dials that would allow us to order a precise course, depth, or speed, without having to try several times. This mainly applies to the HUD dials, but also to some extent, the interior instruments. For example: the inclinometers at the diving planes stations. The S-class have none, and they don't work in some others. Even where they work, they only go to 15 degrees, and the boats sometimes take on a much greater angle.

Just my two cents.

[ReallyDedPoet]

Originally Posted by TorpX

Just my two cents.

And it's appreciated : )

[Popeye the Salior]

Personally why not something like the Nautilus class submarine or a Collins class?

[haz]

thx webster for the ship fix,sure helps my battle against the ijn

[ReallyDedPoet]

Starting to update this thread later tonight .....