[WIP] Depth charge sound degradation

[Albrecht Von Hesse]

Historically and realistically speaking, one of the drawbacks (from the Allied ASW point-of-view, anyway! :D ) of depth charge attacks was that the explosions severely degraded the ability to listen afterwards. It sometimes took up to fifteen minutes before they could clearly hear again.

As we've all noticed and experienced by now, that's not what happens in-game: almost immediately after a depth charge attack warships can hear a U-boat just as clearly and distinctly as they did before the charges went off.

The good news is that I'm working on a way to have a depth charge, after exploding, leave behind a pocket of disturbance just as they really did. The bad news (--cough--cough--) is that I'm a total newbie at playing around with what I need to play with to do this. So don't look for a release anytime real soon. --wry grin--

When I'm done, though (--fingers crossed-) what I intend to have is depth charges leaving behind pockets of disturbance where they have exploded, ones that last between 2-3 minutes (I'd like to have them last longer but I'm afraid that, based upon how the AI works for warships, that the result would be having warships just 'lock onto' those areas and just keep depth charging them over and over again instead of waiting for the noise to clear up a bit before continuing to search). I even have a sound file from WWII of an underwater explosion and the resulting sound disturbance that leaves behind that I intend on associating with the lingering after effects of a depth charge exploding (alas, another 'fun' thing I'm going to have to trial-and-error learn to do).

Wish me luck!

~Albrecht

[Myxale]

:up: Good Luck!

It this works....it's gonna be one of the most wanted "tweaks" to SH3

:ping:

[Philipp_Thomsen]

This is one of the most important things that we are needing right now.

Any help I could give you, just ask! :up:

[Graf Paper]

I'm rooting for you, AvH!! :rock:

Got my cheering section all ready to go and will make enquiries as to Balz and his choir making a charity concert to raise awareness for "U-boat Aid".

Lord knows us kaeluns already have the deck stacked against us enough as it is. If your mod idea does bear fruit, it will be a welcome addtion to leveling the playing field.

This might even be enough to have forgiveness for creating your ASW mod. :p

(Seriously, though. I really love that mod. I even went to the trouble of making sure it was properly integrated with Real Weather Fix, GWX Enhanced Damage Effects, Thomsen's No Instant Death Screen, and OLC Environment so I wouldn't miss out.)

Keep up the fantastic work and keep those great ideas coming! :up:

[Jimbuna]

Good luck in your endevours Albrecht http://www.psionguild.org/forums/images/smilies/wolfsmilies/thumbsup.gif

[swuboo]

Just as a thought; would it be possible to have exploding depth charges spawn invisible Bold decoys?

Although, that might not work very well---I can see destroyers frantically chasing down their own depth charge sonic residues, depth charging them, and repeating the process ad infinitum.

Worth experimenting with?

[Philipp_Thomsen]

Just as a thought; would it be possible to have exploding depth charges spawn invisible Bold decoys?

Although, that might not work very well---I can see destroyers frantically chasing down their own depth charge sonic residues, depth charging them, and repeating the process ad infinitum.

Worth experimenting with?

Thats the best choice you have... the bolds 1,2,3,4,5 have different noise times, you should experiment them and see which one fits best. The invisible decoy is an possibility also, I guess, but dont know how. But some guys here knows how to do that. Besides, even if it appears, no problem. Better then nothing. And it will make the job easy for you, once you just have to make the bold and deepcharges work together and the rest works on its own by default.

[Steel_Tomb]

If you can get this, it will be a major leap forward in ASW AI. I've always been annoyed by the fact they can hear you through the DC's, if I can't hear them they shouldn't be able to hear me! :damn:

Good luck mate, fingers crossed you can pull this off. Perhaps some of the GWX crew may be able to lend you some expertise from their experiance with altering AI.

[Sailor Steve]

The bad news (--cough--cough--) is that I'm a total newbie at playing around with what I need to play with to do this. So don't look for a release anytime real soon. --wry grin--
Some of the best-known modders here say that they started exactly the same way--changing one thing or another and learning as they went along.

Best of luck with it. I know I'll use it if you can do it.

[Woof1701]

Keeping my fingers crossed. Hope it'll work out. Great idea :up:

[spork542]

Good luck! If you succeed, it will certainly make the 1944-45 patrols a little bit more survivable... within reason, of course.

[Rubini]

Just as a thought; would it be possible to have exploding depth charges spawn invisible Bold decoys?

Although, that might not work very well---I can see destroyers frantically chasing down their own depth charge sonic residues, depth charging them, and repeating the process ad infinitum.

Worth experimenting with?
IIRC, Ref already tried this approach some time ago for GWX.

@AVH,
I guess that could be a good idea to contact Ref. He is a great guy and probably will help you with some important info and already some made tests on the matter.;)

And i ´m also looking forward for this mod. This will be a great and necessary adjust for the game.:up:

[von hally]

This is one of the most important things that we are needing right now.

Any help I could give you, just ask! :up:

i agree with phillip mate

surviving a few barrages of wabos certainly gave you a few minutes of breathing room beneath the waves...if what ive been reading is accurate. the sound disturbance gave you a window to alter speed and depth.

its probably one of the small annoyances with sh3 id love to have fixed.
those dd and escorts having super hearing right after a depthcharge assault is ridiculous

hope it works
good luck

[Albrecht Von Hesse]

Wow! Thanks everyone, for your tips, suggestions and, most important of all, your encouragement! :D :yep:

My head at the moment is exploding with particles, materials, particle and fastparticle controllers and generators . . . --eyes glazed and crossed-- . . . after playing with this all day yesterday I feel as if I've been ashcanned all yesterday! :p

It's going slow at the moment. I'm still feeling my way around with things but so far it still looks hopeful!

[Sailor Steve]

My head at the moment is exploding with particles, materials, particle and fastparticle controllers and generators . . . --eyes glazed and crossed-- . . . :p
I recommend either lots of band-aids or one big bandage, so you look like the mummy. Or a bungee cord.:rotfl:

Or a few hours playing and not working. I finally got a copy of Sid Meier's Pirates a few days ago. It's a great way to relax.

[LordNeuro"Serbia"]

And u hard work too make a game like Ubisoft needed too do. I hope u will sucseed in u hard work. and I think theat holl comunty is with u. Sorry for lacking the skill too bee of any help too u. Good luck.:up:

[swuboo]

I've been trying to give my inviso-Bold idea a go, (even if it's been done before, I'm curious,) but I have no idea whether it's working. I've modified depth_charge.dat to include @bold-eject, but I honestly can't tell whether it's doing anything, since I set the Bold to be invisible.

Game's not crashing, though.

[sabretwo]

I've been trying to give my inviso-Bold idea a go, (even if it's been done before, I'm curious,) but I have no idea whether it's working. I've modified depth_charge.dat to include @bold-eject, but I honestly can't tell whether it's doing anything, since I set the Bold to be invisible.

Game's not crashing, though.

Perhaps try it with a visible bold first to confirm that the concept's working. After getting consistant successful results and you're satisfied with the effect, change back to the invisible version.

I look forward to this one!

[Madox58]

Bold eject is merely the effects for a bold launch.
You must actually launch a bold minus the bold eject.

You create a new bold, assign it a new tga,
that tga is set to be invisible,
do not use bold eject,
and do not use any effects.

Any questions?
;)

[swuboo]

Any questions?
;)

Yes.

...what?

[Madox58]

:rotfl:

It's actually pretty simple to do.

It would actually be quicker to do it then explain it here.
So I'll let some others come in and explain it.

Not that I'm putting you off.
It's just that I'm swamped with.........
well GWX final things let's say.
Hope you understand.
:)

[swuboo]

Understand completely. Besides, I'm rather enjoying poking around like this. I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing, so each and every discovery is amazing!

[Albrecht Von Hesse]

After a few minor detours on some other mods I'm back onto this one. So far so good: I can get the Bold to appear after the depth charges explode, which is definitely a good thing. --grins-- Now it's just tweaking things so that you still get the depth charge explosions to both visibly appear and be audible, plus tweak the Bold so that it's not quite a Bold.

Thanks to nautilus42 for helping me find the location of the Bold objects themselves.

One drawback to this is that it will require changing the depthcharges.sim file (and possibly the particles.dat file, too). I just can't get around that. I don't believe other mods have made changes there (well, other than my ASW one :oops: ) but, if they have, I'd appreciate the 'head's up' on that so I can try to minimize potential conflicts.

Wish me luck!

[Graf Paper]

After the last few exciting mods you've done, AvH, I am very glad to see you're back to complete this one! :yep:

If you do have to make adjustments to the 'particles.dat' file, remember that "GWX Enhanced Damage Effects" and "OLC Environment" both make changes to this file.

While testing OLC's mod, I combined it with GWX EDE by simply using OLCE's 'particles.dat' file with GWX EDE's 'particles.dsd' file. Both seemed to work fine together.

Of all the amazing work you've done so far, this mod is the one I've been looking forward to the most! :D

I dub thee "The Accidental Maestro"! ;)

[onelifecrisis]

AvH, this would be :rock: :rock: :rock: :rock: :rock: :rock:
Good luck!!

[Albrecht Von Hesse]

Ok, I have a bit of 'good news, bad news' here.

I've got it so that, yes, when a depth charge goes off it generates a bubble cloud just like a Bold. One that I can adjust the overall life in minute graduations. However . . .

I either can get the bubble cloud to generate, and that prevents the visible signs of the depth charge explosions from being seen, or I can get the visible and sound effects of the depth charge explosions with no bubble cloud generation.

I've tried quite a few things but nothing seems to work the way it needs to. I'm not giving up, but unless I stumble across the answer this might take me a while.

****spoke too soon --big grin-- Got it to work

[difool2]

Killer-now you will have a chance to get away from the buggers while they're deaf.

[Albrecht Von Hesse]

Well, I did have it working. I repackaged the files to condense them, and afterwards I kept CTDing with a fault in kernel.dll. So I unpackaged them and, you guessed it, kept CTDing.

So while I'm not exactly back to square one I've got to debug and figure out where the heck the problem is. --grumbles-- For something that seemed reasonably straight-forward this is kicking my keester. :x

[danurve]

This is one of the most important things that we are needing right now.

Right next to control over the dive planes.

AVH best of luck to your quest.

[flakmonkey]

Maybe you could trigger BOLD decoys with each charge detonation (at the DCs location), it would seem a good starting point and would simulate the desired effect of the DC messing up the sonar.

[Albrecht Von Hesse]

Just a quickie update:

I've got an alpha-test version finished and, well, alpha-testing it. :doh: :D

My original idea for this seemed to have paralleled no few of your ideas and suggestions: have the exploding DC spawn a Bold decoy, and work from there. Actually that was pretty easy to do.

At the moment what happens is that, each time a depth charge explodes it spawns a Bold1 clone at the explosion site. The Bold object itself is invisible, so all you see is the bubble cloud. As well you also hear the explosion of the depth charges.

What you don't see is the depth charge explosion. No matter what I've tried it's been an 'either/or' situation: either you see the visible explosion but the spawned Bold bubble cloud dissapates after 10 or so seconds, or you don't see the explosion but the Bold bubble cloud lasts its set time. --mutters--

I'm sure there is a way around this, but it's stumping me for now.

For now future updates on this will be posted here: http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=134264

AvH