Need programming help

[irish1958]

JScones
Thanks for your input.
The ideal way to run this would be via SH3CMDR as noted above.
I think most people who play the game will save and exit many times during a patrol, at least I do. In real time, most of my patrols last several hours, and are played over several days or weeks. Saving the game, if the changes are made by a program run by SH3CMDR, would not result in any changes to the saved game files until they are loaded. So saving a game during a patrol does not activate the mod, and therefore the changes will not be cumulative.
I don't think the problem with activating the mod only via loading a new saved game is a problem, as these problems really should load only occasionally, since these illnesses and injuries should only occur infrequently as in real life. When they do occur, they should be at random and present a problem to the Captain with which he must deal.
The required files can be generated in a random fashion in such a way that many times nothing is loaded with a saved game.
Finally, the generated file structure is simple enough so that any player can generate scenarios to occur in the game, and share them with the community as their own mod.

[asanovic7]

Yesterday on schedule was a football match and in the end it was cancelled due to influenza spread amongst the players of one team(although I think they are lying, asw...s are just tired)..

Were there any occurences in the war like this one? Whole team out?

CHeers!

[Wreford-Brown]

Which war?

The Royal Marines had an embarrassing incident a couple of years ago in Iraq when they had 600 soldiers bedded down with D&V. That's an entire Battalion non-combat effective. They had to deploy a special medical team from the UK to find out what was going on.

If it can happen in the 2000s then I wouldn't be surprised if it happened to less than 50 men in the enclosed environment of a U-boat during the 1940s.

[irish1958]

Originally Posted by asanovic7

Yesterday on schedule was a football match and in the end it was cancelled due to influenza spread amongst the players of one team(although I think they are lying, asw...s are just tired)..

Were there any occurences in the war like this one? Whole team out?

CHeers!

You have no idea what importance health and fatigue play in war. There is a vast medical literature on this problem.

Typhus alone killed more soldiers in Napoleon's armies than all opponents in all battles combined.

German SS troops consumed vast quantities of amphetamines (speed) as did American fighter pilots and probably a lot more solders and sailors we don't know about.

Influenza killed more solders (and civilians) in 1918-1919 than the war did.

Malaria alone disabled more Americans in WWII than the Japanese did.

Hans Zensser's "Rats, Lice and History" in a marvelous book which shows some of the problems.

[Graf Paper]

I'm greatly looking forward to your progress on this idea, irish!

When you are able to implement events such as illness, injury, and more realistic fatigue, it will add another dimension to the realism and gameplay that helps make life aboard a u-boat more than shuffling crew from duty stations to their bunks.

By more realistic fatigue I mean not just being tired physically, as it is currently modeled in the game, but also mentally from the stresses of u-boat combat. Imagine the scene in Das Boot where the engineer, Johann, cracked under the strain of the u-boat being depth-charged. Perhaps even crew member deaths from the captain being forced to shoot them to keep the crew safe from raving maniacs..again that scene where the captain rushed to his bunk to grab his revolver in case he needed it to prevent Johann from trying to open the hatch.

Or imagine using fatigue to reflect the crew's overall health. Instances like..."Food supplies have spoiled, your crew's efficiency is reduced due to malnutrition." or "An outbreak of lice infests the u-boat, making everyone itchy and irritable."

Too bad the original SH3 devs did not set it up where you could place your medic in one of the Damage Control slots to treat injured crew in the compartments that were being repaired.

Many possibilites here that would greatly justify using renown and training for that medical specialty for one of your officers!

Please don't give up on this mod!

[asanovic7]

to see this idea was not based on an offshot basis (wtf that means?)..

Just wanted to say in my own way, that idea is great.. It would boost the realism, it would then feel like you have to care about the crew.. One great thing would be to improve selection(when you have the choice, ofcourse) of the crew in the port, like their medical reports, how many times he sailed out etc. To feel you have to nurse your crew..
But you would have to implement it in a way that it doesn't become the main concern for the player in the game.
Like, I play besides this game oblivion, I downloaded the diseases mod, now I play the game in a way I am only looking for cures.. :rotfl:Which ok has to be when you are bitten by a large rat, but it's a bit annoying.. Still looking for the crap and piss mod..

Nevermind this diggression..

Lowered efficiency of the men as a group or individually(how to achieve that?), lowered fatigue or morale etc.. But one thing I have to say, it would be silly if in getting out of the harbor I realize half my crew is crapping the pants.. It would have to be seldom, random, on the sea, right?

But main thing would be to see the mod surface..

Cheers!

[Parkera]

And...it stopped there? The possibility were great and has anyone implemented this anywhere or something close??

[YellowFin]

I'm currently involved with some SH4 fixes, but I'd be ready to look into this as well (as a programmer). We should

1. Identify how crew health can be affected in game (which files, etc)
2. Do we have to use saves as triggers or can we use independent triggers
3. start with some simple mechanics: accidents, injuries (from attacks), illness

SH3 Commander looks like a great starting point. Does anyone know whether we can (-> are allowed to) inspect and modify SH3 commander?

I don't think the realism can be questioned. Some subs had to return to base because the captain fell ill and the crew did dive training off helgoland with the I.O. until he recovered.

Sometimes I feel we should start from scratch, write a completely new, open source sub simulator. It would overcome so many difficulties posed by the closed source. There is free terrain data, including oceans available for a realistic fine grained world map. I am already looking into this, but it looks like a huge project.

Originally Posted by YellowFin

There is free terrain data, including oceans available for a realistic fine grained world map. I am already looking into this, but it looks like a huge project.

And what about a 3D world, with realistic sea surface areas and real coordinates, and real celestial objects movements ?

[YellowFin]

Originally Posted by Kendras

And what about a 3D world, with realistic sea surface areas and real coordinates, and real celestial objects movements ?

NASA combined forces with several other organizations and scanned the earth with satellites and ships and they offer (for free) bathymetric data with 30 arcsecond (~1 km at the equator) resolution of the whole world. So the oceans would be covered, and even correct elevations, say the atlas mountains in Morocco could be correctly incorporated.

I think modelling a night sky is not very difficult. You take a star map with the visible objects (or 90% of those) and model a movement over time (to model continuous, seasonal and YoY change). Those movements can be described by (somewhat complicated) functions, it should be easy to model. A 1916's night sky is different from a 1940's night sky.

I will open a new thread about this.

[YellowFin]

Take a look at this thread where I brainstorm on a Naval Simulator from Scratch that would cover all aspects discussed in the previous two posts (and more).

[gap]

Originally Posted by YellowFin

NASA combined forces with several other organizations and scanned the earth with satellites and ships and they offer (for free) bathymetric data with 30 arcsecond (~1 km at the equator) resolution of the whole world.

Hi Yellowfin, in the past I had read about bathymetric data offered by NASA. All I could find from them is this page. Bathymetric maps you can download from there have a max resolution of 10800x10800 sq. pixels, each covering an area of 90 deg of latitude x 90 degrees of longitude, i.e. 120 pixels per degree or, as you put it, 1 pixel per 30 arcseconds.
Unfortunately, that's exactly the resolution of SHIII's height maps, so data shared by NASA doesn't add much to what we already have in stock game.

EDIT: talking about vertical resolution, NASA bathymetric maps are greyscale images. A gray value/depth scale is not provided, but it is likely that white pixels on them are equal to a depth of 0 m, while the black colour should represent the deepest point on Earth (i.e. the Mariana Trench = ca. 10,994m u.s.l.). There are 256 shades of gray in a grayscale image. Assuming that tones of gray are equally spaced on those maps, each tone would cover a bathymetric range of ca. 43m (10,994/256).
Talking about a WWII sub simulation, such a depth resoltution would be way too much for the deepest points (which we would never visit), and not enough for the shallowest waters around land masses. A few days ago, Kendras has posted a depth scale as used in SHIII. If you look at it, you will notice that -as it is logical- map colors denoting shallow waters cover a much narrower depth range than the ones used for deep waters.