[REQ] Specific City/Harbor Fixes

[Suicide Charlie]

After reading these forums for quite a while you learn a lot of bugs, glitches, design errors/flaws, etc. within Silent Hutner IV. Some we can fix ourselves, others we cannot... I've noticed that a few have caught on to how the cities, ports, and harbors within the game are not always, if at all based on real representations.

The specific re-modding of Midway comes instantly to mind in this subject (I can't remember who was actually doing the work on that). I'm sure there are many more cities in game that do not really represent their real life counterparts.

One such city is San Diego. Being that I'm from and am back living in said city I was overjoyed that it was included in the game. However, looking at the map (I haven't been able to sail there and check out the layout first hand) it is modelled all wrong. I work down in the harbor and know a fair amount about the layout of the area, including depths, docks, piers, military installations (North Island Naval Air Station, Ballast Point Submarine base and Coast Guard facility, etc., etc.), commerical docks and airports and so on.

I was wondering if anybody is trying to take on and tackle this issue. While not one that effects game play it would be awesome to see and operate from authentic models of major cities within the game.

[tater]

The game has a limited number of harbor/city objects. They are dropped on the map as a big blob. This obviously limits choices. Presumably it's possible to take them apart and make more complex arrangements, but it would require a substantial amount of 3D skill, not to mention all the hex stuff to get them opened and back together.

FWIW, the mission editor is actually prettty straightforward in terms of using the stuff already available if you want to give it a try. Also, it has a "merge" ability so you can practice on a blank slate, and add it to the game file once you have it worked out.

tater

[Suicide Charlie]

Thank Tater. I'll look into seeing if I can't disassemble the blocks and at least place them at different cordinates, if not re-arrange them all together.

It'd be great to sail into a harbor such as San Diego and move past the old Battleship Row and Ballast Point or the jetti which was nicknamed John Wayne jetti because he ran his yacht Wild Goose up on it twice after coming back from Mexico and being quite sloshed.

[LukeFF]

Chichi Jima is another one that needs a massive overhaul. At first glance one would think it was a major population center at one time in the 30s and 40s. :roll:

[tater]

I dropped it to the smallest port in game. I think I'm going to simply dump the port facilities altogether from many places and stick with a map label, lol.

The "very small Pacific harbors" are huge.

"very small pacific harbor port facilities look like this:

http://members.spinn.net/~merrick/Stuff/SD_yard.jpg

Those are 150-300 ton sea trucks. "Sampan" sized, in other words.

http://members.spinn.net/~merrick/Stuff/Simpson_harbor1_sm.jpg
The huge, built up port facilities in Simpson Harbor, Rabaul.

http://members.spinn.net/~merrick/Stuff/truk_sm.jpg
The port facility at Truk lagoon.

[nematode]

Yeah, 65 years ago apart from mainland Japan US and Australia there were only a very few ports in the Pacific that bore any resemblance to the SH4 port objects, which really are just recycled northern European SH3 graphics. Offhand, I'd say Singapore, Hong Kong, Surabaja, Batavia, Shanghai, and Dairen were developed enough as ports to warrant a port object featuring concrete berths and overhead cranes, and maybe Tsingtao, kinda maybe Manila, and kinda maybe Penang as well.

The overwhelming majority of the other non-Japan, Aussie, or US west coast ports ports in the Pacific were like, before the Americans came, it was a wooden wharf or an earthen quay and a few shacks, after the Americans came, it was a concrete wharf and a few Quonset huts.

Those are great photos Tater, although they are downright advanced compared to places on Celebes or Halmahera or anywhere in the Solomons, or Micronesian islands, or anywhere in New Guinea other than Moresby, or dot islands like Christmas Island's The Settlement, which port-wise was nothing more than a loading chute for phosphate sticking out into Flying Fish Cove.

Except for those big city ports that I've mentioned, I've removed the port objects from my LOC layer altogether and replaced them with just the jungle city or the jungle village, since there's no object in the game that's even remotely appropriate for a primitive port. Visually, ships riding at anchor next to a town/village coastline actually does a perfectly reasonable & satisfying job of meeting my own sense of "what it woulda looked like".

[skwasjer]

You'll be able to edit different ports/cities with my (upcoming) tool, albeit a bit cumbersome. The chunk that defines the placement and rotation of every object in a port is chunk type 11. It mostly contains references to the harbor_kit.dat, so nothing local (although possible). Defining every single object therefor is a pain because you have to find the right id. My tool will enable you to do it a bit easier (it can generate lists of all id's), but it's still hard. Also, 'guessing' all vectors/offsets for correct placement doesn't make things easier. No hexing required though, so it will be easier nevertheless...