Ducimus
10-05-07, 03:18 AM
Guess at some point i need to talk about some of this stuff,but seeings how its a lengthy discussion and my thoughts on each topic are many (hence its too much to write down), i figured id give this a go anyway.
So i know alot of people are wondering, why is this like that? or Why did he do this? Or, I dont like this, i want that. Well, heres my feeble attempt to explain as much as i can by topic. Although this is something that is best discussed in a person to person context as the details are many and its very hard to write everything down.
First of all, what ultimately did the aim of the mod become? Looking back i think my intent was threefold.
To force realistic behavior,
to force realistic tonnage.
To enhance Sh4's overall gaming experience. It pained me that Sh4 wasn't given the attention that SH3 recieved, and having alot of modding experience in SH3, along with a passion for fleetboats, i figured to myself that if i don't do it, nobody else will.
To force behavior and tonnage?
Yeah i guess so. You see when you create a modpack, you have an aim. A vision or dream if you will of the final, polished game. You see how things can be improved, or what can be changed, and you start forming the game to fit your vision. Because your forming the game around a mental mold.. things simply become forced upon the player. Some things players will not like, but they still in small ways contribute to the overall scope of the game. It all ties in like a big all of yarn, each string is important, and without it, the rest just doesnt hold together.
Why did you incorporate individual mods?
SImply put, to save time. There were many aspects that orginally i intended to do myself. Campaign scripting is one of them. Damage model is another. But due to the scope and size of a "supermod", it is inheirantly a group project. Modders in general have specializations. Some are graphical guru's. Others are masters of the 1024 ini file, others are great at campaign scripting. Everyone has talents their most adept at. Personaly if i was to evaluate my own abilities, id say i was probably better in working with the AI, campaign scripting, and patrol/flotilla scripting. But in the end i can't do it all, so i really didnt have much of a choice but to adapt and incorporate other mods where i saw something i liked.
Why didn't i just make a team?
Simply put, i wanted to keep the work open to the public, and keep the commitment open ended. I ddidnt want this to become something done behind closed doors, or a job like commitment. Ive always believed a mod forum, or to mod a game, is a community effort where knowledge should be freely shared among all on how to better improve the game, and as something that people do for fun as a hobby. By creating a formal team, it promotes working behind closed doors, and commitment, both of which ive seen in Sh3, and decided that i didnt want to sow the seeds, nor promote the same thing in SH4.
Now then, the nitty gritty.
Why the damage model change?
This was something i struggled with for some time. In the end i decided to use the natural sinking mechanics mod, but with some of my own changes. The summary of it is, it behaves much like mods in SH3. I implented it, primarly for four reasons.
1.) reduce deck gun effectiveness. Even with a modded stock damage model with redueced shell damage you could duel it out with a DD and still win. This should never happen under any circumstances.
2.) to reduce tonnage.
3.) make you think a bit more about torpedo placement.
4.) increase time you loiter sinking a ship (which reports your position when it spots you), thereby increasing your chances of encountering a plane or HK group.
Does it have problems? Oh yes. The zone placement is skewed in some ships, but its not in my ability to fix. I do not have the 3d modeling know how, nor tools to do it. I ran into a few problems with certain types of ships when adjusting the zones.cfg file, (IE, they woudlnt sink) and my solution was to weaken the keel zone so that 2 or 3 torpedo hits is enough to weaken the keel enough to sink it. Im thinking of large merchant ships in particualar as well as some warships. It was the best compromise i could do since ship types share the same zones.cfg settings. While some people may complain about this, i know i spent 8 or 10 hours a day for 3 or 4 days working on patch 1.6.2 to get it as "right" as i could, and to fix oversights by NSM orginal author in the zones.cfg. Smoke on the water. yes i knew about it. I think it happends when you hit a lifeboat with a torpedo. I figured it was rare enough that i woudlnt have to worry too much about it.
The AI.
I do not think its that hard. Infact, i really didnt change that much over stock settings. Earlier versions i changed it drastically, but not so much after the last patch. The AI is set to force realistic behavior on the part of the skipper. If you approach the game from a realistic point of view, you shoudlnt have too much trouble. Its meant to keep your head down, and to discourage, the player from just going deep, silent running, go in a striaight line, and wait tell the AI gives up and goes away. Some people will acutally just SIT there doing nothing at all. Both of which i find boring and unrealistic. You should be worried, you should be manuvering. Otherwise the AI just becomes a formalilty and not a real threat.
Why didn't i decrease the AI's night visual acuity ?
The AI is very touchy when it comes to its visual sensor. Waves effect it, fog effects it, and dark conditions, IE, night. Night time to the AI, is dawn, dusk, evening, and midnight. The game has avery loose interpretation of nightime. Which could start as early as 6PM if experience from Sh3 still holds true. I chose not to adjust the AI's visual that much for fear of making it dumb in dawn/ evening conditions where to the player its rather light , but to the AI, its not. I did adjust the night visual aquity to be less then stock, but i was VERY CONSERVATIVE with this adjustment.
Why not 16KM visual distance in the scene.dat?
Simply put, because then id have to rebalance......
EVERYTHING!
Just about every aspect of the visual node would have to be readjusted, as well as wave attunement settings in order to achieve the best behavior from the game. This would require hours.. days.. weeks, of testing various different types of ships, in varing enviorments, and trying to achieve a compromise in variables that worked for all ship types, in all enviormental settings. In Sh3, this made sense, but in SH4, since its such a radarcentric game, i saw no reason to go through this effort. On top of that, it also keeps lag down to a minimum, which is always a concern of mine. Whats more, so long as each Unit in the game shares the same visual node, it's a futal effort. A REAL fix for this, is to create different visual nodes for the varying unit types, but even then you have weeks of aforementioned testing. Since i knew my time to work on the mod wasn't finite, and i didnt have to time do handle all of this myself, i opted to not go beyond 9KM visual distance.
Target ship spawn frequency.
This is acutally part of taters campign files, but since this is somethign i normally adjust myself it bears mentioning since its a usual complaint. Simply put, if the games tossing ships in your lap, things are too easy. Part of any sub sim, is the hunt for ships. When you find one, the thrill of finding it is increased, and your less likely to let it go, and sink anything you can find. The long term results are also you use your ordinance on less then choice targets, and your patrol length is increased to what i feel is more realisticl levels. Rather then sinking your limit in two weeks, saving the fish for the most choice targets, and then running right back out for another two week patrol. On that kind of schedule, your end career tonnage would be astronomical, and counter intuitive to my aims. That said, nobody knows more then i do about how boring searching fruitlessly for hours and not finding a ship is. So a balance has to be achieved between goals for the simulation, and fun. tater i think pretty much nailed it.
Just about every thing that i adjusted in this thing, theres a reason for it. And its very hard to list them all. I could get into things varying depth charge settings, to submarine crash speed, to why i set the D key functionality to where i did, and why its different for the balao. Since ive just run out of steam for writing this post, if you have any specific questions, ill check back in a day or two and see if i can answer it.
So i know alot of people are wondering, why is this like that? or Why did he do this? Or, I dont like this, i want that. Well, heres my feeble attempt to explain as much as i can by topic. Although this is something that is best discussed in a person to person context as the details are many and its very hard to write everything down.
First of all, what ultimately did the aim of the mod become? Looking back i think my intent was threefold.
To force realistic behavior,
to force realistic tonnage.
To enhance Sh4's overall gaming experience. It pained me that Sh4 wasn't given the attention that SH3 recieved, and having alot of modding experience in SH3, along with a passion for fleetboats, i figured to myself that if i don't do it, nobody else will.
To force behavior and tonnage?
Yeah i guess so. You see when you create a modpack, you have an aim. A vision or dream if you will of the final, polished game. You see how things can be improved, or what can be changed, and you start forming the game to fit your vision. Because your forming the game around a mental mold.. things simply become forced upon the player. Some things players will not like, but they still in small ways contribute to the overall scope of the game. It all ties in like a big all of yarn, each string is important, and without it, the rest just doesnt hold together.
Why did you incorporate individual mods?
SImply put, to save time. There were many aspects that orginally i intended to do myself. Campaign scripting is one of them. Damage model is another. But due to the scope and size of a "supermod", it is inheirantly a group project. Modders in general have specializations. Some are graphical guru's. Others are masters of the 1024 ini file, others are great at campaign scripting. Everyone has talents their most adept at. Personaly if i was to evaluate my own abilities, id say i was probably better in working with the AI, campaign scripting, and patrol/flotilla scripting. But in the end i can't do it all, so i really didnt have much of a choice but to adapt and incorporate other mods where i saw something i liked.
Why didn't i just make a team?
Simply put, i wanted to keep the work open to the public, and keep the commitment open ended. I ddidnt want this to become something done behind closed doors, or a job like commitment. Ive always believed a mod forum, or to mod a game, is a community effort where knowledge should be freely shared among all on how to better improve the game, and as something that people do for fun as a hobby. By creating a formal team, it promotes working behind closed doors, and commitment, both of which ive seen in Sh3, and decided that i didnt want to sow the seeds, nor promote the same thing in SH4.
Now then, the nitty gritty.
Why the damage model change?
This was something i struggled with for some time. In the end i decided to use the natural sinking mechanics mod, but with some of my own changes. The summary of it is, it behaves much like mods in SH3. I implented it, primarly for four reasons.
1.) reduce deck gun effectiveness. Even with a modded stock damage model with redueced shell damage you could duel it out with a DD and still win. This should never happen under any circumstances.
2.) to reduce tonnage.
3.) make you think a bit more about torpedo placement.
4.) increase time you loiter sinking a ship (which reports your position when it spots you), thereby increasing your chances of encountering a plane or HK group.
Does it have problems? Oh yes. The zone placement is skewed in some ships, but its not in my ability to fix. I do not have the 3d modeling know how, nor tools to do it. I ran into a few problems with certain types of ships when adjusting the zones.cfg file, (IE, they woudlnt sink) and my solution was to weaken the keel zone so that 2 or 3 torpedo hits is enough to weaken the keel enough to sink it. Im thinking of large merchant ships in particualar as well as some warships. It was the best compromise i could do since ship types share the same zones.cfg settings. While some people may complain about this, i know i spent 8 or 10 hours a day for 3 or 4 days working on patch 1.6.2 to get it as "right" as i could, and to fix oversights by NSM orginal author in the zones.cfg. Smoke on the water. yes i knew about it. I think it happends when you hit a lifeboat with a torpedo. I figured it was rare enough that i woudlnt have to worry too much about it.
The AI.
I do not think its that hard. Infact, i really didnt change that much over stock settings. Earlier versions i changed it drastically, but not so much after the last patch. The AI is set to force realistic behavior on the part of the skipper. If you approach the game from a realistic point of view, you shoudlnt have too much trouble. Its meant to keep your head down, and to discourage, the player from just going deep, silent running, go in a striaight line, and wait tell the AI gives up and goes away. Some people will acutally just SIT there doing nothing at all. Both of which i find boring and unrealistic. You should be worried, you should be manuvering. Otherwise the AI just becomes a formalilty and not a real threat.
Why didn't i decrease the AI's night visual acuity ?
The AI is very touchy when it comes to its visual sensor. Waves effect it, fog effects it, and dark conditions, IE, night. Night time to the AI, is dawn, dusk, evening, and midnight. The game has avery loose interpretation of nightime. Which could start as early as 6PM if experience from Sh3 still holds true. I chose not to adjust the AI's visual that much for fear of making it dumb in dawn/ evening conditions where to the player its rather light , but to the AI, its not. I did adjust the night visual aquity to be less then stock, but i was VERY CONSERVATIVE with this adjustment.
Why not 16KM visual distance in the scene.dat?
Simply put, because then id have to rebalance......
EVERYTHING!
Just about every aspect of the visual node would have to be readjusted, as well as wave attunement settings in order to achieve the best behavior from the game. This would require hours.. days.. weeks, of testing various different types of ships, in varing enviorments, and trying to achieve a compromise in variables that worked for all ship types, in all enviormental settings. In Sh3, this made sense, but in SH4, since its such a radarcentric game, i saw no reason to go through this effort. On top of that, it also keeps lag down to a minimum, which is always a concern of mine. Whats more, so long as each Unit in the game shares the same visual node, it's a futal effort. A REAL fix for this, is to create different visual nodes for the varying unit types, but even then you have weeks of aforementioned testing. Since i knew my time to work on the mod wasn't finite, and i didnt have to time do handle all of this myself, i opted to not go beyond 9KM visual distance.
Target ship spawn frequency.
This is acutally part of taters campign files, but since this is somethign i normally adjust myself it bears mentioning since its a usual complaint. Simply put, if the games tossing ships in your lap, things are too easy. Part of any sub sim, is the hunt for ships. When you find one, the thrill of finding it is increased, and your less likely to let it go, and sink anything you can find. The long term results are also you use your ordinance on less then choice targets, and your patrol length is increased to what i feel is more realisticl levels. Rather then sinking your limit in two weeks, saving the fish for the most choice targets, and then running right back out for another two week patrol. On that kind of schedule, your end career tonnage would be astronomical, and counter intuitive to my aims. That said, nobody knows more then i do about how boring searching fruitlessly for hours and not finding a ship is. So a balance has to be achieved between goals for the simulation, and fun. tater i think pretty much nailed it.
Just about every thing that i adjusted in this thing, theres a reason for it. And its very hard to list them all. I could get into things varying depth charge settings, to submarine crash speed, to why i set the D key functionality to where i did, and why its different for the balao. Since ive just run out of steam for writing this post, if you have any specific questions, ill check back in a day or two and see if i can answer it.