Playable BB North Carolina...(Can career) - Page 2

CaptSovhan · 12-25-08, 03:22 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tomhugill

Hey capt , what kinda values did you change for the damage model? Did you alter the zone.cfg at all? Also i found with my yamato that when i tried to put 3 different zones for the guns if one gun got damaged they all did

for all new damage medel I have changed the values in the three files, .zon and zone.cfg, and .upc file.
I think, it need new structures at COMPARTMENTS STRUCTUREs in the .upc file for each guns .
If the guns are in the same Compartment then they'd have been damaged as like one.

Quote:

Originally Posted by peabody

I have no problem with you using the deck gun, but it would be nice if you had asked first. So go ahead and use it. My Christmas gift to you. And I will delete the other comments.
Merry Christmas to you too!!

Thank you, peabody. IOU.

tomhugill · 12-25-08, 05:30 AM

So you have added 3 different deck gun entry to the zone.cfg file , like deck gun 1 , 2, 3?

CaptSovhan · 12-25-08, 06:03 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tomhugill

So you have added 3 different deck gun entry to the zone.cfg file , like deck gun 1 , 2, 3?

Yes. i did. maingun, foregun and backgun... ;

polyfiller · 12-28-08, 12:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by CaptSovhan

Quote:

Originally Posted by tomhugill

Hey capt , what kinda values did you change for the damage model? Did you alter the zone.cfg at all? Also i found with my yamato that when i tried to put 3 different zones for the guns if one gun got damaged they all did

for all new damage medel I have changed the values in the three files, .zon and zone.cfg, and .upc file.
I think, it need new structures at COMPARTMENTS STRUCTUREs in the .upc file for each guns .
If the guns are in the same Compartment then they'd have been damaged as like one.

Quote:

Originally Posted by peabody

I have no problem with you using the deck gun, but it would be nice if you had asked first. So go ahead and use it. My Christmas gift to you. And I will delete the other comments.
Merry Christmas to you too!!

Thank you, peabody. IOU.

CaptSovhan - I am trying to work out how to do the damage modelling - I've downloaded quite a few surface ship mods and am trying to work out how to get the damage modelling working and repairable. From your reply above you say you modified the .zon .upc and zone.cfg files ? I presume you mean zones.cfg in \data\ ? If so then I am a little curious as the download for the North Carolian did not have a modified zones.cfg ??

I am keen to learn what the required links are between the .zon file and zones.cfg and upc. For example in the .zon file under node 8, box 1 is type 113. Does this equate to zone 113 in zones.cfg ? And if so, how does this relate to what's in the UPC file ? And what makes the right compartment take damage and be repairable ?

Do you have to use a 3D editor to look at the location of the boxes in the .ZON file to see which ship part each box should relate to if it receives a hit ?

Any help much appreciated ... am just struggling to work out how this area works. TIA.

W4lt3r · 12-29-08, 04:39 AM

First, nice work with the ship. I really like it, but there are some flaws.

For starters, there is no "bridge point" in the ship, so you cant use binoculars to give targets to the gun crew
Second, The crew doesn't automatically start firing at hostiles, so it is up to you only to take out the enemy with the 2nd 16" triple turret.

Well, the most major flaws are there but shouldn't be too hard.

I can link you my gun range mod if you need it, though making one of your own isn't that hard.. Just need to alter two cfg files, that's all.

tomhugill · 12-29-08, 06:47 AM

@ Poly filler , heres how the damage modeling works (to the best of my abilitys):

Firstly you have the zones.cfg file , this give infomation about various compartments such as hit points , and how they flood , and what effect this has on the ships sinking.

This if u like is the set of rules on how the damage model performs.

Important: If you are constructing a new damage model you will need to create new zones in the ZONES.CFG file for each new element , for example for each bulkhead or diesel engine you will need a new entry , if you use the same thing twice ie deck gun you would need a zone for each gun rather than just one zone with 3 different damage boxes.

Next you have the ships upc file , for example the northcarolina.UPC . In this file you chose the the structure of the main compartments on the ship ie engine room. And then choose what systems go into each compartment. For example the diesel engines into the engine room , or various radars into the deck watch.

Also contained within this file is what sub systems the overall systems are made up of , for example your propulsion system made be made up of a diesel engine and a propeller shaft.
This is very imporatant because for some systems to function you need all the subsystems present in this upc file. For example the radar will need the radar cabinet and a radar antenna subsystems for it to function properly.

Lastly is the number of crew slows which can be edited in this file (Ive forgoten how to do this so ill add about it later).

This .UPC file is then contected to the ships .ZON file each of the compartments in the .UPC should have its own corisponding damage box withing the .ZON file which will have 2 sets of x.y.z cords. At the moments there is no way to physically see these boxes so I used a rough approximation based on various nodes from the .DAT file. Each damage box is assigned a system and can be given and armor value -1 corisponds to the overall ship armor value given in the zone file collisionable object bit , or you can set lower values. This is useful in giving the ship acurate values for various systems rather than a blanket value.

One thing to note is that when ships are made playable they still have all the zone from when they where AI ships , which dont show up on the damage screen (these are what caused the ship to sink when no damage was shown) Ive found its best to remove these or they interfere with the sinking mechanics. However it maybe possible to use their damage boxes to model the compartments better , something that I need to try).

Something I have found is by default that ships armor is far too strong , and that using historical value does not give adiquate protections (this only holds for BB sized ships) As with around 37cm (historical value from the KGV your very suceptable to fire from low cal. weapons). I have found values around 50cm to give protection from Small Cal. weapons but not enough to always bounce BB shells.

Now when i built my damage model for the yamato if felt the method of hit points governing the ship wasnt very acurate to how a battle ship would fail in real life. I mean it would keep fighting till its weapons systems stopped working or it sank or abbandoned ship. So in my yamato I gave her a huge ammount of hit points (in the magnitude of billions) but made the crash depth very small (about 25 meters (this is the point where the ship has pretty much sunk) ) and made the crash speed very high so it loses HP very quickly once it sink below this depth.
This did lead to a very long time spent trying to balance the values controling the sinking and flooding but i felt it worked well in the end.

I hope this ramble helps you if you have any questions give me a pm

CaptSovhan · 12-30-08, 04:03 AM

polyfiller · 12-30-08, 06:45 AM

Tom, Capt, many many thanks for the info. I think between Tom's excellent text and Capt's screenshots, I understand how it works now.

Capt - one quesiton - to look at where the max & min coordinates are in the 3d model, do you open the model with a 3d editing program, or as Tom suggests, you roughly guess which box is where ? Also, when I open the .zon files, there seem to be a huge number of boxes. I guess for the damage zones, I'm looking for the really big boxes ? What if the rear of a ship is made up of two halves (I know from Freelancer modelling big ships that it's a common tactic to model one side of a ship and then duplicate / mirror to create the whole. In this instance is it OK to assign the same damage ID (per your example) to more than one box ?

Many thanks again. Am going to have a go at this later today (think I'll start witht he Admiral Sheer - seeing as I like playing that).

polyfiller · 12-30-08, 11:24 AM

OK guys - having sifted through the files for the Admiral Sheer and the North Carolina & Yamato, I think I'm working out how to do things. Strange thing is both the NC and Yamato take damage to equipment in compartments, but only the Yamato has entries in the .ZON file for all the equipment types e.g. ExternalDamageZoneTypeID3D= 52 = radar in the zones.cfg. Strange.

Problem with the Admiral Sheer is that it's only got one compartment entry in the .ZON and UPC which match (207 = command room). I've started to do some rought guestimating of max, min coordinates to add the missing zones.

Now a really stupid question..... how do I add a new zone to the property tree in S3d ?? Or do I need to use somethign else ??

Thanks again.

tomhugill · 12-30-08, 01:43 PM

The admiral scheer wasnt properly damage modeled and there the problem of the whole lot going kaboooom which is a relic of the AI ships damage model. If you use the same compartment id eg 122 on more than one damage box i think that they will all take damage , or at least thats what shows up on the damage screen. This could just be limited to the damage show on the damage screen , as the ai ships use the same compartment id for many comparments.

Also if anyone can help I need to find a way to slow down repair times , as at the moment damage is fixed far to quickly , some one managed this with SH3 but i havnt been able to find out what to do in SH4

polyfiller · 12-30-08, 07:51 PM

Tom - thanks again for the reply. I've made some progress and have a damage model working for the Admiral Sheer. It needs some refinement. I found out how to add extra zones in the zone file (left click and select add array item) ... rather embarassed about that one ... should have spotted it ! Interesting thing is my test mission is against 4 cruisers (2 heavey, 2 light) and the damage zones hardly work unless I reduce the armour value for each zone to between 35 and 38. Suspect there is an indicator to how weapon poer relates to armour in this somewhere. Will investigate further tomorrow.

Anyhow in terms of refining the damage model, I'm thinnking of including zones for main armour belts and other stuff. Am trying to work out how to add or trigger a hit on a main magazine.

I know what you mean about repair times. I've left mine set to unrealistic for now in the realism settings while I'm testing all this damage zone stuff. What would be really cool is to change how long it takes to repair different items.

Thanks for the help Tom & Capt ... am making progress now

maddenman · 12-30-08, 11:07 PM

is there anyway to add more ammo to the side guns?, they seem to run out of ammo real quick

CaptSovhan · 12-30-08, 11:51 PM

it seem to be late, it's my think about damage zones...

they have same ids '112=FlotabilityGenB'

Quick repair and wrong explosion, many type errors are start from here...

tomhugill · 12-31-08, 05:38 AM

Those or the zones which control sinking for the AI ships , things like flotabilitygenb , flotptb etcbest to delete them. Btw how are you getting a 3d reepresentaion of the damage boxes

polyfiller · 12-31-08, 06:43 AM

Again useful info about those zones being for AI only - thanks Tom ... and I have the same question Capt - how are you displaying those zones ?

Without an easy 3D representation of zones, it's a real pain questimating where to put a zone by reviewing the .dat file in S3D. BTW does anyone know how to rotate the model up/down in S3d - so that I can see how low / high a point is ?

Tom - will post update later when I've done more with the Admiral Sheer - I'll be looking carefully at how you made the Yamato sinkable and using that to help me complete the Admiral.

12-30-08, 11:51 PM	#28
CaptSovhan Swabbie Join Date: Aug 2008 Posts: 9 Downloads: 1 Uploads: 0	it seem to be late, it's my think about damage zones... they have same ids '112=FlotabilityGenB' Quick repair and wrong explosion, many type errors are start from here... Last edited by CaptSovhan; 12-31-08 at 12:16 AM.

12-25-08, 05:30 AM	#17
tomhugill Planesman Join Date: Sep 2008 Posts: 184 Downloads: 23 Uploads: 0	So you have added 3 different deck gun entry to the zone.cfg file , like deck gun 1 , 2, 3?

12-29-08, 04:39 AM	#20
W4lt3r Ensign Join Date: Apr 2008 Posts: 222 Downloads: 43 Uploads: 0	First, nice work with the ship. I really like it, but there are some flaws. For starters, there is no "bridge point" in the ship, so you cant use binoculars to give targets to the gun crew Second, The crew doesn't automatically start firing at hostiles, so it is up to you only to take out the enemy with the 2nd 16" triple turret. Well, the most major flaws are there but shouldn't be too hard. I can link you my gun range mod if you need it, though making one of your own isn't that hard.. Just need to alter two cfg files, that's all.

12-29-08, 06:47 AM	#21
tomhugill Planesman Join Date: Sep 2008 Posts: 184 Downloads: 23 Uploads: 0	@ Poly filler , heres how the damage modeling works (to the best of my abilitys): Firstly you have the zones.cfg file , this give infomation about various compartments such as hit points , and how they flood , and what effect this has on the ships sinking. This if u like is the set of rules on how the damage model performs. Important: If you are constructing a new damage model you will need to create new zones in the ZONES.CFG file for each new element , for example for each bulkhead or diesel engine you will need a new entry , if you use the same thing twice ie deck gun you would need a zone for each gun rather than just one zone with 3 different damage boxes. Next you have the ships upc file , for example the northcarolina.UPC . In this file you chose the the structure of the main compartments on the ship ie engine room. And then choose what systems go into each compartment. For example the diesel engines into the engine room , or various radars into the deck watch. Also contained within this file is what sub systems the overall systems are made up of , for example your propulsion system made be made up of a diesel engine and a propeller shaft. This is very imporatant because for some systems to function you need all the subsystems present in this upc file. For example the radar will need the radar cabinet and a radar antenna subsystems for it to function properly. Lastly is the number of crew slows which can be edited in this file (Ive forgoten how to do this so ill add about it later). This .UPC file is then contected to the ships .ZON file each of the compartments in the .UPC should have its own corisponding damage box withing the .ZON file which will have 2 sets of x.y.z cords. At the moments there is no way to physically see these boxes so I used a rough approximation based on various nodes from the .DAT file. Each damage box is assigned a system and can be given and armor value -1 corisponds to the overall ship armor value given in the zone file collisionable object bit , or you can set lower values. This is useful in giving the ship acurate values for various systems rather than a blanket value. One thing to note is that when ships are made playable they still have all the zone from when they where AI ships , which dont show up on the damage screen (these are what caused the ship to sink when no damage was shown) Ive found its best to remove these or they interfere with the sinking mechanics. However it maybe possible to use their damage boxes to model the compartments better , something that I need to try). Something I have found is by default that ships armor is far too strong , and that using historical value does not give adiquate protections (this only holds for BB sized ships) As with around 37cm (historical value from the KGV your very suceptable to fire from low cal. weapons). I have found values around 50cm to give protection from Small Cal. weapons but not enough to always bounce BB shells. Now when i built my damage model for the yamato if felt the method of hit points governing the ship wasnt very acurate to how a battle ship would fail in real life. I mean it would keep fighting till its weapons systems stopped working or it sank or abbandoned ship. So in my yamato I gave her a huge ammount of hit points (in the magnitude of billions) but made the crash depth very small (about 25 meters (this is the point where the ship has pretty much sunk) ) and made the crash speed very high so it loses HP very quickly once it sink below this depth. This did lead to a very long time spent trying to balance the values controling the sinking and flooding but i felt it worked well in the end. I hope this ramble helps you if you have any questions give me a pm

12-30-08, 04:03 AM	#22
CaptSovhan Swabbie Join Date: Aug 2008 Posts: 9 Downloads: 1 Uploads: 0

12-30-08, 06:45 AM	#23
polyfiller Weps Join Date: Sep 2005 Posts: 356 Downloads: 40 Uploads: 0	Tom, Capt, many many thanks for the info. I think between Tom's excellent text and Capt's screenshots, I understand how it works now. Capt - one quesiton - to look at where the max & min coordinates are in the 3d model, do you open the model with a 3d editing program, or as Tom suggests, you roughly guess which box is where ? Also, when I open the .zon files, there seem to be a huge number of boxes. I guess for the damage zones, I'm looking for the really big boxes ? What if the rear of a ship is made up of two halves (I know from Freelancer modelling big ships that it's a common tactic to model one side of a ship and then duplicate / mirror to create the whole. In this instance is it OK to assign the same damage ID (per your example) to more than one box ? Many thanks again. Am going to have a go at this later today (think I'll start witht he Admiral Sheer - seeing as I like playing that).

12-30-08, 11:24 AM	#24
polyfiller Weps Join Date: Sep 2005 Posts: 356 Downloads: 40 Uploads: 0	OK guys - having sifted through the files for the Admiral Sheer and the North Carolina & Yamato, I think I'm working out how to do things. Strange thing is both the NC and Yamato take damage to equipment in compartments, but only the Yamato has entries in the .ZON file for all the equipment types e.g. ExternalDamageZoneTypeID3D= 52 = radar in the zones.cfg. Strange. Problem with the Admiral Sheer is that it's only got one compartment entry in the .ZON and UPC which match (207 = command room). I've started to do some rought guestimating of max, min coordinates to add the missing zones. Now a really stupid question..... how do I add a new zone to the property tree in S3d ?? Or do I need to use somethign else ?? Thanks again.

12-30-08, 01:43 PM	#25
tomhugill Planesman Join Date: Sep 2008 Posts: 184 Downloads: 23 Uploads: 0	The admiral scheer wasnt properly damage modeled and there the problem of the whole lot going kaboooom which is a relic of the AI ships damage model. If you use the same compartment id eg 122 on more than one damage box i think that they will all take damage , or at least thats what shows up on the damage screen. This could just be limited to the damage show on the damage screen , as the ai ships use the same compartment id for many comparments. Also if anyone can help I need to find a way to slow down repair times , as at the moment damage is fixed far to quickly , some one managed this with SH3 but i havnt been able to find out what to do in SH4

12-30-08, 07:51 PM	#26
polyfiller Weps Join Date: Sep 2005 Posts: 356 Downloads: 40 Uploads: 0	Tom - thanks again for the reply. I've made some progress and have a damage model working for the Admiral Sheer. It needs some refinement. I found out how to add extra zones in the zone file (left click and select add array item) ... rather embarassed about that one ... should have spotted it ! Interesting thing is my test mission is against 4 cruisers (2 heavey, 2 light) and the damage zones hardly work unless I reduce the armour value for each zone to between 35 and 38. Suspect there is an indicator to how weapon poer relates to armour in this somewhere. Will investigate further tomorrow. Anyhow in terms of refining the damage model, I'm thinnking of including zones for main armour belts and other stuff. Am trying to work out how to add or trigger a hit on a main magazine. I know what you mean about repair times. I've left mine set to unrealistic for now in the realism settings while I'm testing all this damage zone stuff. What would be really cool is to change how long it takes to repair different items. Thanks for the help Tom & Capt ... am making progress now

12-30-08, 11:07 PM	#27
maddenman Nub Join Date: Aug 2007 Posts: 2 Downloads: 0 Uploads: 0	is there anyway to add more ammo to the side guns?, they seem to run out of ammo real quick

12-31-08, 05:38 AM	#29
tomhugill Planesman Join Date: Sep 2008 Posts: 184 Downloads: 23 Uploads: 0	Those or the zones which control sinking for the AI ships , things like flotabilitygenb , flotptb etcbest to delete them. Btw how are you getting a 3d reepresentaion of the damage boxes

12-31-08, 06:43 AM	#30
polyfiller Weps Join Date: Sep 2005 Posts: 356 Downloads: 40 Uploads: 0	Again useful info about those zones being for AI only - thanks Tom ... and I have the same question Capt - how are you displaying those zones ? Without an easy 3D representation of zones, it's a real pain questimating where to put a zone by reviewing the .dat file in S3D. BTW does anyone know how to rotate the model up/down in S3d - so that I can see how low / high a point is ? Tom - will post update later when I've done more with the Admiral Sheer - I'll be looking carefully at how you made the Yamato sinkable and using that to help me complete the Admiral.