[REQ] Changing radio washington to many small stations

[tedhealy]

Is anyone interested in changing radio washington from one all encompassing station that broadcasts around the world, to many smaller stations that go on and off with the war's progress?

It would require researching who had what territory when, coming up the latitude and longitude for a radio base in the area, and working with the map to come up with a good range for that station.

The tech details for example, the default radio washington is:

[CHANNEL]
Name=Washington
Folder=Washington
Freq=22
Antenna=01.01.1930-01.01.2000:38.53,-77.02:100000

The antenna portion is what we are interested in. First you have the date of operation, then the latitude and longitude, and then the power. Currently power is 100,000 meaning the station goes out 100,000 nm - around the world.

I'd like a mod to change this so that radio washington becomes many smaller stations broadcasting with limited ranges.

So for example we could have a radio San Fran with a power of 2500 to just reach hawaii. We could have radio pearl with power of 1200 to just reach midway. Radio Midway with power of 700....and so on with stations at dutch harbor, one or two in australia depending on their power, one or two in the philipines depending on their power, one at port moresby, and then as the allies gain territory, add small stations to places like Guadalcanal, marshall islands, mariana islands and so on. Then probably at some point in late '44, most of those stations could be replaced by a handful of ultra powerful stations that will range right up to and maybe even including some of Japan. Then sometime in the spring of '45 add one last station that encompasses all of japan and the pacific so you can hear radio washington no matter where you are.

The content itself could come later, if ever. For now they could just broadcast the same stuff as the current radio washington, but on different frequencies. This way though there would be spots where you could not pick up radio washington and as the war progresses, radio washington's range will increase.

As a similar project, if we ever get enough japanese content, the same thing could be done with radio tokyo stations. A few other similar ideas would be to have the sub bases broadcasting something with a very short range like 100 - something that would probably require some voice recording. Have them broadcast the latest news of top aces, subs that haven't come back, or just general war news. Another idea that would require new voice recordings would be to have either many short range stations out in the pacific broadcasting as other subs or one large range station broadcasting on one frequency. You could tune into the submarine frequency and hear reports of sinkings, sightings, sos, or whatever.

So enough rambling, anyone want to work on this? I'm finishing up a radio mod that will add a ton of war years old time radio shows for a new station/frequency. When done with that I want to actually play the game some, then I'll probably start looking into this idea. If someone wanted to get a head start on this or take it over entirely, it would help. Or just tell me this is stupid and it will be forgotten:damn:

[tedhealy]

I found out sh4 doesn't like different stations/frequencies pulling the same content from one folder. Seems like there would be 2 options: either duplicate all the audio files into a separate folder for each station which increase the size sh4 takes up on the hard drive, or provide separate content in a separate folder.

1st option isn't too bad in that the radio stations that come on line later wouldn't need the earlier content. If I find out any more, I'll post.

[clayton]

I will help all I can. Wonderful idea!:up:

[clayton]

Some WW2 Australia stations...

http://www.radioheritage.net/Column5.asp

[clayton]

The link above is a wealth of information on WW2 Pacific radio...

[tedhealy]

Indeed it is. I personally wasn't planning on making the radio stations 100% accurate, I guess that's always an option if we can get a heck of a lot more info on allied radio in the pacific.

Right now I'm more interested in getting the dates correct and sort of winging the area covered. For example a station could be modded to start on Saipan in June of 1944. Was there one there at that time? I don't know, but the allies invade Saipan at that time so it provides an opportunity to start a new radio station there. Is that 100% accurate? Probably not, but it will help to give a sense of how the war is progressing as you are able to hear radio washington further and further out into the pacific.

My plan would be to have most areas not covered in december 1941, by august 42 increase coverage to the solomons and north of australia covering most of new guniea, by mid 44 increase coverage to the central pacific island chains, by early 45 increase coverage to the phillippines, and by spring of 45 the whole map gets covered.

[clayton]

Sounds great! I believe the 'base' radio stations should be up first though their distances should be shortened. Not familiar with radio atmospherics and all that, but would like to pick up Radio Hawaii after a successful patrol just before Wake or so! Makes it more realistic. Once Tokyo, Australia, Hawaii, and the States are up then we progress smaller stations are the war advances... :up:

[tedhealy]

Ok, here's where my thinking on this is at right now in crudely drawn circles to highlight radio ranges.

Dec 41. Only 2 stations - Hawaii and Manila with Manila stopping it's broadcast sometime in January 1942.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v290/yurkb/sh4/SH4Img25-3-2007_10.jpg


Jan 42
About the same time Manila falls, a station for Australia begins. I toyed around with this station in lots of different spots and as 2 or 3 different stations, but I'd really like to limit the number of stations where possible. With a station in the middle of Australia more or less, it covers the ride up from Brisbane and Fremantle into the war zone and you get coverage of Port Moresby.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v290/yurkb/sh4/SH4ImgMAP2.jpg

August/Sep 42
A station for Guadalcanal/Tulagi is added.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v290/yurkb/sh4/SH4ImgMAP3.jpg

Now there is a long gap where no stations are added for 1943. Possibly one for Bouganville could be added, but it sort of overlaps a Guadalcanal station too much to be worthwhile. Any suggestions for any additions for 1943?

June 44
A station gets added for Saipan. I put this one in arbitrary spot on the map in order to maxmize coverage and minmize overlap. That is the broadcast would not actually originate from Saipan on the map, but would cover that area.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v290/yurkb/sh4/SH4ImgMAP4.jpg


Sep 44
Possibly could add a station for Pelilu. Even though it's small, it would help to broaden coverage for 1945.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v290/yurkb/sh4/SH4ImgMAP5.jpg

Jan 45
Turn Manila back on

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v290/yurkb/sh4/SH4ImgMAP6.jpg

Late Feb 45
Add Iwo. I forgot to draw the coverage for Pelilu on that one. You can see the gap to the east of the Phillipines.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v290/yurkb/sh4/SH4ImgMAP7.jpg

It might be nice to never really fully cover Japanese waters, but then again, maybe it should be covered at the end of the war. I want to keep the number of stations to a minimum where possible, so I'm not sure on that one. At the end of the war we'd have 7 stations going with Pelilu added, but without anything covering Japan's coast. The Iwo station does encompass some of the southern part, but not much.

Any ideas or suggestions?

[CaptainCox]

Great stuff !!! I like the way this is heading! I will try to look up some more audio files, especially news stuff. Maybe one should do a sort a pool on filefront or something where one could dump sound files...only thinking loud now. As this feature has become so diversive it really opens up many possibilities. Keep it up man!!!

[clayton]

Spot on! I like your setup. Noticed a gap around Japan that can be filled nicley by Radio Tokyo. I remember reading about how guys would change to Radio Tokyo because they perfered their music. This leads me to believe that their station must have been very reachable. Food for thought.

[tedhealy]

Spot on! I like your setup. Noticed a gap around Japan that can be filled nicley by Radio Tokyo. I remember reading about how guys would change to Radio Tokyo because they perfered their music. This leads me to believe that their station must have been very reachable. Food for thought.
What would we play on radio tokyo though? I have a grand total of 3 Japanese audio clips.

A short 15 some second clip of Tojo announcing war in 1941
A short intro from Tokyo Rose and a song
The Emperor's speech announcing surrender.

It would be kind of odd to get USA news from radio tokyo. I guess we could just have it play music and no news events.

EDIT: I could include a rather poor attempt at radio tokyo. I do have a grand total of about five 30 second tokyo rose clips of intros and sign offs. I could just throw those in with a bunch of music that would play randomly.

For now I'll plan on adding a simple radio tokyo with this mod, but hopefully a much better radio tokyo can be made with a different mod. I'll have the station broadcast the whole war and it's range will go from tokyo to just short of midway.

[tedhealy]

With the above map drawings, I'll try and get these radio stations up and broadcasting with no content just to get the framework of frequencies up. I'll run some tests for different years and do some sailing to test ranges and how well this can work.

[clayton]

I seem to remember reading a couple different accounts about how GI's liked Radio Tokyo because they liked the music they played! Below is the music itinerary from the Tokyo Rose show! I think it was called 'Zero Hour'

loud opening number Strike Up the Band by the Boston Pops Orchestra
Messages from POW's: 'Hi mom, this is Corporal X, we are OK but we need socks and food
The Orphan Annie Show: 20 minutes of high quality American jazz and semi-classical records introduced by Annie
American home-front news: titbits picked up from America by Japanese monitoring stations
'Juke Box' 15-20 minutes of popular jazz
'Ted's news highlight tonight': more news from overseas SW broadcasts
News summary: sometimes read by Charles Yoshii, the Japanese 'Lord Haw Haw'
Military marches

http://www.radioheritage.net/Story41.asp

[clayton]

Tokyo Rose Click on broadcasts. Sign-on's for her...:up: BINGO! THIS IS REAL BROADCASTS FROM RADIO TOKYO AND LONG TOO

http://www.earthstation1.com/Tokyo_Rose.html

[tedhealy]

After some quick testing with radio manila, I've found that I didn't judge the ranges quite right. They are coming out to be about half of what I expected.

I'm guessing maybe the range in the radio.ini file is in kilometers but the range on the map I've been using is nautical miles. More testing.

earthstation1.com is where I got the few tokyo rose clips I have. The problem right now with the longer ones is that they are streaming files so someone would have use a stream ripper to grab them.

[tedhealy]

Yup, I'm going to conclude that the power portion of the antenna line is indeed in kilometers.

This mod is very doable, everything is working as I expected. I tested a Manila station with range of 1480, or roughly 800 nm, that was to cease operation on the dec 20, 1941 and it did just that. The range was perfect too, the station started to fade out at about 750 miles out of Manila.

I also had a station in australia starting on dec 25 1941, the start date happened perfectly and the range was as expected.

Stations that are not currently broadcasting due to being the wrong date will still "tune" on the radio. As you search for stations, the radio will stop at the frequency of a station and give you the name even though it is not within the broadcast dates. I suppose this isn't too bad as it serves to help keep frequencies from overlapping. You'll only get static when you tune in stations out of date.

I'm going to start coming up with dates of operation and latitudes and longitudes and test those.

We need to come up with names for these stations. I'm terrible at coming up with names. They can't all be the same name it would seem, but I think the name should make it known somehow that even though the frequency is different, it is still broadcasting the same content.

So far, I just came up with the simple solution, Washington-Pearl Harbor, Washington-Manila, Washington-Australia, and so on. Anyone more creative than that? Please suggest some names.

We also need frequencies. Any suggestions on those? I was thinking along the lines of increments of 5 or 10. 22, 32, 42, 52, and so on. I don't want to use frequencies used by other mods already though, so maybe something really high would be good like starting at 100.

For dates so far, I have

Pearl - Entire war
Manila - start of war to Jan 2nd 1942 (date Japanese take Manila)
Australia - Jan 15 1942 - end of war (I've sort of picked that date out of thin air. Anyone with a better suggestion?
Guadalcanal -august 20 1942 - end of war (start date for the day the airfield was built there)
Saipan - June 22, 1944 - end of war (start date a week after invasion)
I'm thinking of just leaving Pelilu out
reactivate Manila Jan 45 to end of war
Iwo Jima - feb 23, 1945 - end of war (suribachi "taken")

and if I did a simple radio tokyo station it would operate the entire war.

[clayton]

Will these stations be broadcasting what is in the Washington file or will they have different content? Seems like a lot of work with changing the content per site, though I would love to see three main stations: CBS (exellent mod BTW), Hawaii, and Tokyo. All with the type of content that the CBS mod has. Maybe, in the future we can come up with a Australia station with accented radio. Makes sense! I will work on finding a way to rip those longer Tokyo Rose files...

[Banquet]

Good luck guys.. this mod is very exciting.. will add so much atmosphere to the sim!

[tedhealy]

Will these stations be broadcasting what is in the Washington file or will they have different content? Seems like a lot of work with changing the content per site, though I would love to see three main stations: CBS (exellent mod BTW), Hawaii, and Tokyo. All with the type of content that the CBS mod has. Maybe, in the future we can come up with a Australia station with accented radio. Makes sense! I will work on finding a way to rip those longer Tokyo Rose files...
Right now, I would plan on the content being the same as radio washington, but expanded. Along the lines of the Radio Honolulu mod.

I guess I could also release it as 2 different versions. One would just uses the content from in game already. It would just kill the current radio washington and turn it into the smaller stations. It basically would be a text/ini file and readme with instructions on copying content already in the game into new folders

A 2nd version could be a rather large download with added news events and music that would supplement the audio files already in game.

Also anyone could take the radio.ini and edit in new stations to their liking and provide different content for each station. The file structure is set up to provide for that. If you want to provide new audio content played on specific dates and times, you'll have to get familiar with the events.ini which is very easy.

[OSO]

The problem right now with the longer ones is that they are streaming files so someone would have use a stream ripper to grab them.

You should be able to use any sound recording software and windows to accomplish this.

Just set the recording options in Control Panel\Sound and Audio devices (Audio tab)\Sound Recording to "What U Hear".

Then create a new audio file in your recording software, set it to record, and finally begin playback of the streaming audio file on the website.

[tedhealy]

The problem right now with the longer ones is that they are streaming files so someone would have use a stream ripper to grab them.
You should be able to use any sound recording software and windows to accomplish this.

Just set the recording options in Control Panel\Sound and Audio devices (Audio tab)\Sound Recording to "What U Hear".

Then create a new audio file in your recording software, set it to record, and finally begin playback of the streaming audio file on the website.

Ok, I'm downloading those files. I'm not sure if it's enough content to justify an entire new mod or not. A proper Japanese version of this mod where many small Japanese stations come and go as the war progresses would be nice, but I don't think there's enough content to do that for the entire war considering these tokyo rose files are all for 44 and 45. I thought they started the tokyo rose broadcast in 1943?

As of now, after I finish the allied side I'll plan on throwing together a radio tokyo that will play mostly random music with these zerou hour broadcast played on specific dates. If more content is found, a whole separate radio tokyo mod could be made.

[tedhealy]

I've got all the stations set up by date. I need to test the ranges as pearl is coming up funny.

The last number in the antenna line now does not look like a range in any distance now. For ranges around 1000 nm, you can get away with doubling the distance you want in nm and plugging that in as the power. You want a range of 700 nm, put in 1400 and it works more or less. When I put in a power of 5400 to get a range of 2700 nm out of Pearl Harbor, it only reaches out some 1500 to 1700 nm.

When I up it from 5400 to 20,000, the range only goes up to 2100 nm. So I'm now beginning to think this power number is not related to any actual distance unless something is bugged.

[tedhealy]

:damn: Lol. I finally figured it out. Radio station ranges do not cross the international date line at 180 longitude. Any station to the east of the date line, say one originating in pearl, will not be heard to the west of the date line. That is why no matter what I was setting the range to, stations out of pearl would die at the same range.

The reason you can hear radio washington is because it is set so high, it actually gets you from the other side of the world and hits the date line from the opposite side.

It was easy to test once what was going on hit me. I just made a station with about 2000 nm range at longitude 178 E in the central pacific and what do you know, I can't hear leaving pearl. As soon as I crossed the date line the new station comes in just fine, and it doesn't fade in like it normally does, it just came in quickly. Cross back over the date line towards pearl and away it goes.

This will probably mean another station, but at least I think I"ve solved this.

Here is how the ranges look now

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v290/yurkb/sh4/SH4mapranges.jpg

I'm thinking I will move the Guadalcanal and Saipan stations some distance the east and increase their range to make up for the lost range out of pearl. I might add a Tarawa station for November 1943 too, I'm not sure.

And here's a revised range map

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v290/yurkb/sh4/SH4rangeNEW.jpg

I've added a midway station to the west of the date line to reach up to Japanese main land waters. Guadalcanal is moved to the east some and given more range while Saipan actually shrinks some.

Midway would be running for the duration of the war.

[clayton]

Good find! That may explain why when subs entered Empire water all they had was Radio Tokyo too listen to. Looking forward to this...:up:

[tedhealy]

I'm no electrical engineer, but the invisible radio wave force field at the date line is a bug...or I've botched something...which sort of gives me an idea, a station actually on the date line at 180 longitude. I'll have to try that.

xxxxxxx
Nope, that didn't work. It's odd because the game recognizes the difference between longitude 178 and longitude -178, but it treats the 2 as if they are worlds apart. Rather than a bermuda triangle where strange things happen, we have a pacific line where radio waves get eaten.

[tedhealy]

I'll probably release some sort of beta version to play with tomorrow. It will just be a radio.ini and instructions on mod setup. Basically you'll just create a new folder for every new station and copy radio washington's content into those folders. I'll create a new thread with a [WIP] tag when I do.

It's unfortunate that I can't seem to get different radio stations to draw content from the same folder. Without being able to do that, the size of this mod will balloon rather quickly as you must have duplicate copies of files in different folders. This isn't too bad with the default radio washington files, but I'd really like to add a heck of a lot of news clips which would add a lot of size to the mod.

[castorp345]

Adding a back slash before the folder name in the radio.ini file allows the sharing of content from one folder. The size issue I was worried about no longer applies.

brilliant!
keep up the good work, mate!

[tedhealy]

Lol, you caught me. I didn't want to jump the gun too quickly on that one to make sure it worked so I re-edited that out. It seems to work though. Not only that, now the radio wave blocking international date line seems to be gone. I need some sleep.

It's all just very odd. I can get the backslash to work for one folder/station, but not another. I'll attack this again tomorrow to recheck syntax errors.

Also odd is that when I set radio realism = No instead of Yes in the radio.ini, the international date line radio wave blocker is gone. Is there something I don't know about the international date line?

[tedhealy]

Turning radio realism to =No in the radio.ini I'm going to guess just tells sh4 to ignore the range of a station to make theml heard anywhere on the map. So it doesn't really fix the date line radio wave blocker, it fudges it like setting the range to 100000.

Now for the magic backslash oddity. In order to get new stations to feed off of the same folder, you seem to have to add a backslash to the front of the folder name for every new station.

So you end up with

[GENERAL]
RadioRealism=Yes
StartCh=1

[CHANNEL]
Name=Washington
Folder=Washington
Freq=22
Antenna=01.01.1930-01.01.2000:21.36,-157.96:6000

[CHANNEL]
Name=Washington-Midway
Folder=\Washington
Freq=42
Antenna=01.01.1930-01.01.2000:28.00,179.00:2800

[CHANNEL]
Name=Washington-Manila
Folder=\\Washington
Freq=52
Antenna=01.01.1930-02.01.1942:14.40,120.35:1600

I've tested this and it works, I need to do more testing though to see where this crazyness ends. Without the one backslash for Washington-Midway and without the two backslashes for Washington-Manila, those stations simply do not work. Not only that, using one backslash for Washington-Manila does not work. It had to have two.

Folder=\\\\\\\Washington for a 7th station feeding off the Washington folder seems like where I'm headed. I guess I don't have to understand it as long as it works :damn:


EDIT

SUCCESS! The magic backslash is indeed how you get successive stations to draw off the same folder. With this discovery, keeping the number of stations to a minimum is less important. I might go wild and draw up a radio range map with more stations of even smaller range and see how that looks. I'll then make a [WIP] thread and release some sort of early test version with no new content. You'll just recycle the current radio washington content (or actually any folder of audio content you want).

[tedhealy]

Now a WIP

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?p=465630#post465630