HEMISENT
01-04-07, 09:43 PM
This was posted at WAW forums earlier in the week, it was relatively well received so I thought I'd bring it over.
Now that all the dust has settled and GWX has been out for short while I finally returned from Patrol 13 and settled down this weekend and plugged in GWX plus an assortment of mods. I've been reading all the trials and tribulations here at Subsim so I went into this with a pretty good idea of what to expect. For the record I have been mostly a mod tester for quite a number of different mods out there, made up by a whole lot of immensely more talented individuals than myself.
Here are my first impressions, you can take them or leave them:
Starting with the required fresh install + patch I found that the GWX exe. program runs flawlessly. I was expecting a bit of trouble judging by what a number of users at the forums have reported. This was not the case. I believe most of these install problems stem from either NOT uninstalling/reinstalling SH3 (laziness?)or NOT deleting the SH3 folder in my doc's. Seems that historically this has been the case for all the major mods.
My current NYGM friendly SH3 Commander 2.7 is so loaded with different random and dates files I chose to simply rename it and park it elsewhere for safe keeping. I'll gradually bring things over later. I DL'd a fresh Commander 2.7 and installed it into the UBI folder. Inserting the four "GWX Only" CFG files into Commander I set up a career, hit launch and again everything worked as advertised. *Note* GWX comes with Jscones' JSGME mod enabler already packaged-cool.
Loading SH3 with GWX is almost like watching paint dry-long and boring. I did not install the optional Das Boot intro film as this only adds to the pain, interesting as it may be. Once loaded, a new career entered, the game now takes a similiar excruciatingly long amount of time to load. My computer is not an ultra high line model nor is it a bottom of the barrel junkyard dog. I think I'm pretty much in the of middle of the road or a bit better. Comparing the two mods-GWX simply is so full of stuff it takes awhile- it's a fact of life-I'll have get over it.
For testing purposes I have all the difficulty options checked except for outside view(f12) and nav map updates. No event cam, manual targeting enabled, etc, etc. And yes, for testing I even have the stealth meter turned on.
For me, the first impression is that of a lot of lagging and jumping. The boat starts in port at St Nazaire 1942 (it's my home port as I'm assigned to 7 Flottille) and immediately moving the free cam or even the bridge view is difficult. NYGM is smooth and virtually effortless. GWX at first, is choppy with a lot of lags. Again, it's my computer and my graphics card, everyone will be getting a different experience. There are simply so many ships, boats, planes, sailing boats etc, etc. The port, it seems, is much busier. GWX comes with an optional Harbor Traffic Lite file for just this scenario. I've not installed it yet, however I've played NYGM in the later war period with air raids going on and I can envision things coming to a complete standstill with GWX-I need to either update something or reduce the workload.
At this stage of the game, aside from the lag everything is similiar. In the crew management screen-I've gotten used to the reduced crew levels and very little of the ugly green health bar showing. In GWX the full crew is back along with the bar (more on this later).The nav map shows the boat icon with the 360deg targeting circle around it. This is a matter of choice. I'm used to NYGM and nothing but a dot for the boat's location so it seems a bit busy-not bad just different.
The pull down menus and movable chronometer are there, the namograph is now gone. The torpedo's can be set to impact or magnetic vs. NYGM magnetic setting only. The pop out guages menu still pops out from the lower left as it should. The map labeling is different. GWX uses a different font and size for labeling, I don't like it much, however the Indian Ocean is modelled. I can live with the fonts until I figure out how to combine the two. In the grand scheme of things I guess I can live with it if I have to.
I noticed that the boat tends to rock and roll in the gentle swells a whole lot more. Never mind the rough weather. I purposely stayed surfaced and engaged a couple fighters in 6m seas. In NYGM the the gunsights are relatively stable, tracking the planes was no problem, with GWX it's a whole new feeling. The gunsight is forever swaying, bobbing up and down and rocking to and fro, good luck even seeing the plane never mind hitting the damned thing. A very positive experience and one I enjoyed immensely.
A lot has been said here at Subsim about the GWX night being TOO dark. It is. No question about it. People have complained about not seeing anything but pitch black out at sea. They're right, you can't. Here's what I found out. If I turned "All" the lights in the room off, then turn the lower guage panel off leaving simply a full dark night screen on the monitor after awhile my eyes adjusted and I could make out smoke on the distant horizon, I don't mean 16km away but I could see outlines and shapes out to 4-5 km with no problem. I guess this comes down to personal preferance and monitor settings. Everyone has a diffent set up and everyone plays differently. At the end of it all I like this, it just "seems" more realistic to me. Personally I like to attack convoys on the surface at night in stormy weather. My boat takes a huge beating everytime but I get a kick out of it. The acid test for me will be the GWX night vision in a stormy night-Haven't run into that yet this weekend but hope springs eternal.
As far as AI visual detection goes, I did a lot of NYGM testing awhile ago on the distances a U boat would be detected by the AI in various sea states, weather conditions and deck heights-I think it was evolved from the theory that running decks awash actually was modelled in NYGM. My tests proved that it did make a huge difference. I approached a convoy in daylight, from the back in very heavy seas. I was able to slide between two escorts both 4000m to port and stbd before I was detected. Of course once they found me they called a few friends and killed me. I saved the game and ran this a couple times with similiar results. Again, same as in NYGM your profile and sea state makes all the difference. The acid test for me will be night time detection levels in nasty weather. So far I'm very pleased with this aspect of GWX.
The damage repair times in GWX simply reek(my opinion) I've never really liked the damage times in NYGM but they were better than vanilla. I've gone out and intentionally gotten hit by DC's and AC fire, I even lowered my boat on top of a mine in St Nazaire. The GWX game "it seems" in this regard has reverted back to stock vanilla. I cannot say what or what not has been modified but comparing the two, NYGM is definately better-still lame but better. Damage repair times are one of my hot buttons and I bitch endlessly about this-no one listens but that's irrelevant.
As for AI evasion and detectability underwater. I really see no difference between the two. The same tactics that work in NYGM seem to work in GWX. I cannot find one to be more or less difficult than the other. Again, everyone plays differently, everyone's expectations are different. For me, I'm ok with this aspect of GWX, for now at least.
I just completed a single mission in which I fired a salvo of four against a carrier in the middle of a slow convoy. Upon seeing my fish (G7a's) heading for it, the carrier increased speed and cut the rudder hard to port to evade. The first three missed but number four hit the ship in the stern which caused the carrier to immediately lose way. Using the outside view (f12) I found all three screws stopped. I figured I would go deep and evade then reload and sink her. As I was being trounced by multiple DD's the carrier fired up all three screws and with rudder cranked a few degrees to port took off away from the convoy along with two escorts. I never saw this happen before. I've blown off screws and rudders completely but never caused one to jamb. Using free cam the ship continued on making a lazy turn to port off into the distance. GWX or stock behavior- I don't know but it was neat.
My huge and overactive ego comes into play here. I'm pleased to report that the GWX team did not feel the need to completely rewrite the Sabotage & Malfunctions or Thermal Layers mods. They're still included in SH3 Commander and both work as advertised, although now the player has the option of enabling or disabling their use.
One thing that bugs me is: In NYGM the player's boat would gradually sink when sitting still. It was called the anti-hummingbird mod and there was a lot of back and forth pro's and con's which I won't go anywhere near in this. Bottom line is if you sat still your boat sank very, very slowly(slight negative bouyancy). If you interrupted a crash dive then your boat would behave funny and be difficult to trim at slow speeds. Enter GWX, If the player's boat is travelling at 1kt or less your boat will gradually rise(slight positive bouyancy). Both mods claim this to be factual, both claim historical precedent but having never been on a WWII era sub I cannot say which is right. Again with one mod you sink gradually and with another you rise-gradually.
Ok, so much for my impressions on the straight, out of the box GWX. I had enabled the "supplied," GWX approved 16km Atmosphere, Officer Icons, LateWar Sensors, Special Effects and English Map and Grids mods. I added a couple eye candy mods but I also plugged in Nvdrifter's Longer Repair Times(LRT) mod-Drifter came out with a version specifically for GWX so I tried it. HUGE DIFFERENCE. I put the boat intentionally in harms way and took serious hits. I even sat down on the same mine in port. My damage times increased from minutes or seconds to hours and hours. There was some talk about the original mod screwing up some portions of GWX, hence the new and improved "Lite" for GWX only. So far works great. Oh, before I forget, using the LRT mod gets rid of those green health bars in the crew compartments. *Note, at this time I have no idea if the LITE version messes up GWX, as of right now, all seems normal. Caveat Emptor!
I guess the bottom line for me is I like it a lot. GW used to be known as an "eye candy" only mod. I don't think that's the case anymore. A bunch of new ships, new planes, a whole lot of new sounds for sure, but so far I think the AI work and the "difficulty" we're all looking for now exists in GWX.
If anyone finds this useful or interesting I'll be glad to add my further testing results and impressions here. If not just tell me and I'll go away. The powers that be have approved it for WAW so I'll be using on the next patrol.
http://wolvesatwar.org/radioroom/Themes/classic/images/icons/modify_inline.gif
Now that all the dust has settled and GWX has been out for short while I finally returned from Patrol 13 and settled down this weekend and plugged in GWX plus an assortment of mods. I've been reading all the trials and tribulations here at Subsim so I went into this with a pretty good idea of what to expect. For the record I have been mostly a mod tester for quite a number of different mods out there, made up by a whole lot of immensely more talented individuals than myself.
Here are my first impressions, you can take them or leave them:
Starting with the required fresh install + patch I found that the GWX exe. program runs flawlessly. I was expecting a bit of trouble judging by what a number of users at the forums have reported. This was not the case. I believe most of these install problems stem from either NOT uninstalling/reinstalling SH3 (laziness?)or NOT deleting the SH3 folder in my doc's. Seems that historically this has been the case for all the major mods.
My current NYGM friendly SH3 Commander 2.7 is so loaded with different random and dates files I chose to simply rename it and park it elsewhere for safe keeping. I'll gradually bring things over later. I DL'd a fresh Commander 2.7 and installed it into the UBI folder. Inserting the four "GWX Only" CFG files into Commander I set up a career, hit launch and again everything worked as advertised. *Note* GWX comes with Jscones' JSGME mod enabler already packaged-cool.
Loading SH3 with GWX is almost like watching paint dry-long and boring. I did not install the optional Das Boot intro film as this only adds to the pain, interesting as it may be. Once loaded, a new career entered, the game now takes a similiar excruciatingly long amount of time to load. My computer is not an ultra high line model nor is it a bottom of the barrel junkyard dog. I think I'm pretty much in the of middle of the road or a bit better. Comparing the two mods-GWX simply is so full of stuff it takes awhile- it's a fact of life-I'll have get over it.
For testing purposes I have all the difficulty options checked except for outside view(f12) and nav map updates. No event cam, manual targeting enabled, etc, etc. And yes, for testing I even have the stealth meter turned on.
For me, the first impression is that of a lot of lagging and jumping. The boat starts in port at St Nazaire 1942 (it's my home port as I'm assigned to 7 Flottille) and immediately moving the free cam or even the bridge view is difficult. NYGM is smooth and virtually effortless. GWX at first, is choppy with a lot of lags. Again, it's my computer and my graphics card, everyone will be getting a different experience. There are simply so many ships, boats, planes, sailing boats etc, etc. The port, it seems, is much busier. GWX comes with an optional Harbor Traffic Lite file for just this scenario. I've not installed it yet, however I've played NYGM in the later war period with air raids going on and I can envision things coming to a complete standstill with GWX-I need to either update something or reduce the workload.
At this stage of the game, aside from the lag everything is similiar. In the crew management screen-I've gotten used to the reduced crew levels and very little of the ugly green health bar showing. In GWX the full crew is back along with the bar (more on this later).The nav map shows the boat icon with the 360deg targeting circle around it. This is a matter of choice. I'm used to NYGM and nothing but a dot for the boat's location so it seems a bit busy-not bad just different.
The pull down menus and movable chronometer are there, the namograph is now gone. The torpedo's can be set to impact or magnetic vs. NYGM magnetic setting only. The pop out guages menu still pops out from the lower left as it should. The map labeling is different. GWX uses a different font and size for labeling, I don't like it much, however the Indian Ocean is modelled. I can live with the fonts until I figure out how to combine the two. In the grand scheme of things I guess I can live with it if I have to.
I noticed that the boat tends to rock and roll in the gentle swells a whole lot more. Never mind the rough weather. I purposely stayed surfaced and engaged a couple fighters in 6m seas. In NYGM the the gunsights are relatively stable, tracking the planes was no problem, with GWX it's a whole new feeling. The gunsight is forever swaying, bobbing up and down and rocking to and fro, good luck even seeing the plane never mind hitting the damned thing. A very positive experience and one I enjoyed immensely.
A lot has been said here at Subsim about the GWX night being TOO dark. It is. No question about it. People have complained about not seeing anything but pitch black out at sea. They're right, you can't. Here's what I found out. If I turned "All" the lights in the room off, then turn the lower guage panel off leaving simply a full dark night screen on the monitor after awhile my eyes adjusted and I could make out smoke on the distant horizon, I don't mean 16km away but I could see outlines and shapes out to 4-5 km with no problem. I guess this comes down to personal preferance and monitor settings. Everyone has a diffent set up and everyone plays differently. At the end of it all I like this, it just "seems" more realistic to me. Personally I like to attack convoys on the surface at night in stormy weather. My boat takes a huge beating everytime but I get a kick out of it. The acid test for me will be the GWX night vision in a stormy night-Haven't run into that yet this weekend but hope springs eternal.
As far as AI visual detection goes, I did a lot of NYGM testing awhile ago on the distances a U boat would be detected by the AI in various sea states, weather conditions and deck heights-I think it was evolved from the theory that running decks awash actually was modelled in NYGM. My tests proved that it did make a huge difference. I approached a convoy in daylight, from the back in very heavy seas. I was able to slide between two escorts both 4000m to port and stbd before I was detected. Of course once they found me they called a few friends and killed me. I saved the game and ran this a couple times with similiar results. Again, same as in NYGM your profile and sea state makes all the difference. The acid test for me will be night time detection levels in nasty weather. So far I'm very pleased with this aspect of GWX.
The damage repair times in GWX simply reek(my opinion) I've never really liked the damage times in NYGM but they were better than vanilla. I've gone out and intentionally gotten hit by DC's and AC fire, I even lowered my boat on top of a mine in St Nazaire. The GWX game "it seems" in this regard has reverted back to stock vanilla. I cannot say what or what not has been modified but comparing the two, NYGM is definately better-still lame but better. Damage repair times are one of my hot buttons and I bitch endlessly about this-no one listens but that's irrelevant.
As for AI evasion and detectability underwater. I really see no difference between the two. The same tactics that work in NYGM seem to work in GWX. I cannot find one to be more or less difficult than the other. Again, everyone plays differently, everyone's expectations are different. For me, I'm ok with this aspect of GWX, for now at least.
I just completed a single mission in which I fired a salvo of four against a carrier in the middle of a slow convoy. Upon seeing my fish (G7a's) heading for it, the carrier increased speed and cut the rudder hard to port to evade. The first three missed but number four hit the ship in the stern which caused the carrier to immediately lose way. Using the outside view (f12) I found all three screws stopped. I figured I would go deep and evade then reload and sink her. As I was being trounced by multiple DD's the carrier fired up all three screws and with rudder cranked a few degrees to port took off away from the convoy along with two escorts. I never saw this happen before. I've blown off screws and rudders completely but never caused one to jamb. Using free cam the ship continued on making a lazy turn to port off into the distance. GWX or stock behavior- I don't know but it was neat.
My huge and overactive ego comes into play here. I'm pleased to report that the GWX team did not feel the need to completely rewrite the Sabotage & Malfunctions or Thermal Layers mods. They're still included in SH3 Commander and both work as advertised, although now the player has the option of enabling or disabling their use.
One thing that bugs me is: In NYGM the player's boat would gradually sink when sitting still. It was called the anti-hummingbird mod and there was a lot of back and forth pro's and con's which I won't go anywhere near in this. Bottom line is if you sat still your boat sank very, very slowly(slight negative bouyancy). If you interrupted a crash dive then your boat would behave funny and be difficult to trim at slow speeds. Enter GWX, If the player's boat is travelling at 1kt or less your boat will gradually rise(slight positive bouyancy). Both mods claim this to be factual, both claim historical precedent but having never been on a WWII era sub I cannot say which is right. Again with one mod you sink gradually and with another you rise-gradually.
Ok, so much for my impressions on the straight, out of the box GWX. I had enabled the "supplied," GWX approved 16km Atmosphere, Officer Icons, LateWar Sensors, Special Effects and English Map and Grids mods. I added a couple eye candy mods but I also plugged in Nvdrifter's Longer Repair Times(LRT) mod-Drifter came out with a version specifically for GWX so I tried it. HUGE DIFFERENCE. I put the boat intentionally in harms way and took serious hits. I even sat down on the same mine in port. My damage times increased from minutes or seconds to hours and hours. There was some talk about the original mod screwing up some portions of GWX, hence the new and improved "Lite" for GWX only. So far works great. Oh, before I forget, using the LRT mod gets rid of those green health bars in the crew compartments. *Note, at this time I have no idea if the LITE version messes up GWX, as of right now, all seems normal. Caveat Emptor!
I guess the bottom line for me is I like it a lot. GW used to be known as an "eye candy" only mod. I don't think that's the case anymore. A bunch of new ships, new planes, a whole lot of new sounds for sure, but so far I think the AI work and the "difficulty" we're all looking for now exists in GWX.
If anyone finds this useful or interesting I'll be glad to add my further testing results and impressions here. If not just tell me and I'll go away. The powers that be have approved it for WAW so I'll be using on the next patrol.
http://wolvesatwar.org/radioroom/Themes/classic/images/icons/modify_inline.gif