VLS - Is it possible?

[treblesum81]

Hi All,

Just like the title says, I'm wondering if its possible to manipulate the orientation of the launch tubes to allow for VLS tubes, or even the upward / outward angled missile tubes present on many SSGx type subs.

Thanks,
Greg

[ivank]

I have been looking into this for my surface warfare super-mod. at this moment I was thinking of have an AA gun(b/c of high angle) and just editing the damage, range, 3D model, flight patterns, of its shell. I am open to any other ideas. But this will not take over my teams mod work untill after all 4 currently planned mod versions are released.

[ETR3(SS)]

I've been considering looking into this for my 688i mod. From what I have learned about launching torpedoes, is that it all goes back to the torpedo tube muzzle door. So without any testing yet, in theory if you rotate the muzzle door vertically you should get the desired effect of a VLS launcher. It's on my list of things to do, but at the moment it still pretty far down on that list. More than likely it take a considerable amount of time to get it right.

[polyfiller]

Ivan - already tried using a "modified shell" solution - doesn't work becuase you want a slow speed (in shell terms) to emulate a torpedo - and when you reduce a shell speed .... the game engine knows to reduce the range.

So if you want a torpedo with a range of 5 metres - I can do that :)

[treblesum81]

See the reason I ask is both because of the 688i VLS setup, and because I think that the Ohio model would be much more appropriate in game as a SSGN than SSBN.

ETR3, could you point me to the files that I might need to look into to test out your idea of turning the torpedo door upright so that I might be able to try it out and see if its a viable option? I may not have huge amounts of time to offer, but at least a little collaboration might just improve the outcome...

[ETR3(SS)]

Go to the dat file for the boat and look for the node(s) for Door 2. There's an entry for each tube. The location is something like FLD for example. Where F=Forward L=Left and D=Down

[treblesum81]

Well, sadly, simply rotating the hatch door 90* didn't produce a different result, nor did aligning all of the associated animations and models at 90*. I have a feeling that the launch direction is buried a little deeper than that... this being said, moving the hatch door does indeed dictate where the torpedo will begin its run, but I've not been able to change the orientation as of yet... I'll keep exploring tomorrow on a fresh mind and maybe I'll find something that will work. Though I can't expect to find a way around this, I really hope that the horizontal position isn't hard coded into the game.

Any other thoughts?

Greg

[ETR3(SS)]

Hmm, I wouldn't be surprised if it was hard coded. We could always try to turn a deck gun into a Regulus launcher though. :D

[treblesum81]

Hmm, I wouldn't be surprised if it was hard coded. We could always try to turn a deck gun into a Regulus launcher though. :D

I'm not so sure, at least not that its unchangeable. I think that one of the problems that we might be running into is that all of these are based on modified stock subs. This makes things much easier because you don't have to formulate all of the different nodes to get the thing to work, but I think that it also introduces a lot of limitations. Of course I could very likely be wrong, but I have a feeling that a "ground up" sub would be able to launch vertically...

[ETR3(SS)]

I think I just saw a grey hair appear from that thought lol. But that is an idea. Also the torpedoes themselves would be something to look at as well. there might be something in there that could provide a clue.

[treblesum81]

I think I just saw a grey hair appear from that thought lol. But that is an idea. Also the torpedoes themselves would be something to look at as well. there might be something in there that could provide a clue.

LoL, yeah it seems like its just a little daunting... it looks like each sub has about 80-100 individual descriptors, though most of those are single identifiers, so I don't think they would be all that complicated to produce.

What I would like to know is whether or not Silent 3ditor 0.9.4 shows all available information, both adjustable and not. I know this is something that I might need to take up with its creator, but I get the feeling that there is more to some of the entries than what is displayed. For example, some nodes which seem like they should have some sort of effect (cfg attached to the name) only have their name and id stated and then nothing else...

On the idea of working with the torpedoes instead of the launchers, I think that there might be something there, though I'm willing to be that any solution is going to have to be a combination of both, first by getting the torpedoes to be able to mover vertically, and also by getting the launcher to eject vertically. Right now, I'm playing around with the torpedoes.dat trying to get the TASMs to at least achieve vertical before exiting the water to see if I can't trick them into shooting up before out....

[treblesum81]

Ok, I think I've figured it out, but I don't know if the fix is doable... The torpedo will always align itself with the horizontal direction of the primary node (ie. the one that hosts everything else, including the 3d model), so I think the solution, in the short term, is to create a "phantom" node which has been set at a 90* angle to the non-phantom model to contain the VLS tubes. The phantom node could be invisible except for the tube hatch doors (inner) which dictate the lateral positioning of the torpedo launch.

This all sounds good in theory, but I can't seem to get the game to accept a second "primary" node. No matter what variables I set, the game crashes as it tries to render the scene after the session loading screen (the one right before you actually start playing). Now, I've tried making everything invisible, copying the primary node over to the secondary node, and even remapping the id structure, but nothing seems to get it to work.

Now, I'm really hoping that this is all owing to the fact that I have very little experience working with the structure of the .dat file, and that someone with a great deal more experience than I knows either a way to get it to work, or is at least able to tell me why the idea won't work... mostly so I can try and find a workaround... and also where I can find some sort of documentation or tutorial about how to work with the .dat file of a sub.

Thoughs?
Greg

[polyfiller]

Interesting find on the primary node alignment. In terms of implementation - are you having, in effect, two complete copies of an entire sub in the .dat, one visible, one not, and one rotated vertically ?

If so ... not sure if this will cause CTD. If you've remapped all ID's, then it should. One thing I would recommend is removing nodes with duplicate names for;

rudder, torpedo doors, propellers, bow plans. These are refereced by name and not just ID in the subs .sim file - for example where a torpedo door name in the .dat does not match the names in the .sim, you get CTD. What I think you may have is one of the above items appearing twice causing a lookup failure / issue in the .sim file.

Whenever I work on torp doors, I always have the .sim file open at the same time and step through each tube in turn, if that makes sense.

Good luck.

[keltos01]

this really interests me even though my IJN subs don't need it ;)

when the torp/missile is fired vertically, how do you intend to make it turn back to the horizontal and fly like a real missile towards the target ?

keltos

[treblesum81]

Interesting find on the primary node alignment. In terms of implementation - are you having, in effect, two complete copies of an entire sub in the .dat, one visible, one not, and one rotated vertically ?

If so ... not sure if this will cause CTD. If you've remapped all ID's, then it should. One thing I would recommend is removing nodes with duplicate names for;

rudder, torpedo doors, propellers, bow plans. These are refereced by name and not just ID in the subs .sim file - for example where a torpedo door name in the .dat does not match the names in the .sim, you get CTD. What I think you may have is one of the above items appearing twice causing a lookup failure / issue in the .sim file.

Whenever I work on torp doors, I always have the .sim file open at the same time and step through each tube in turn, if that makes sense.

Good luck.

Actually, I created a whole new node which was rotated 90* with only a label and two sub nodes to hold the two inner doors. All three had new unique labels and I did go into the sim file and replace one of the original four torpedo tube door set references with the new ones. When this gave me a ctd, I started trying turn the second node into a copy of the first one, unfortunatly, I ran into two distinct problems... first, Silent 3ditor won't copy the parent child structure for some reason and won't allow you to simply tell something to become the child of another chunk, so I had to manually copy all of the values into each chunk... and second, the program refused to allow me to even place a 3D model chunk into the second node, let alone copy the 3D model of the sub into it.

I actually think that this isn't the way to go about it though, because I can foresee quite a few issues arising from the vertical model sticking out of the top and bottom of the boat, visible or not... the game my try to calculate collisions with the ground using the piece that's hanging down 100-200 feet, or enemies might be able to see it despite the fact that the sub is submerged because the bow is an extra 50 feet in the air. Instead, I think that the best way to really work this idea into a sub model would be to build the vertical node so that it only contains the inner and outer doors, since they are the minimum required to make the missile / mine exit the sub, or to really build the sub in seperate sections. The second option here would probably have the main node contain the parts of the boat needed to be aligned correctly (prop, rudder, planes, sail, and most of the body), and then the second node containing the sections of the boat which need to be aligned vertically. The only reason I can see to really go through this much trouble is that there might be some instability or ctd caused by the two primary nodes overlapping each other as they are in the first model.

Either way, I've still not gotten the setup to even load in game yet, so I'm not even sure that the thing will work. One part of the problem that I've found, is that the game wants the boat to settle with its primary node parallel to the horizon. I figured this out when I was testing the torpedo initial alignment theory because I had set the original primary node at a 90* angle, and when I loaded the game, the sub was pointing straight up, but then immediately began settling to horizontal. What this means is that any secondary node will need to either a) have no mass so that it will not try to settle, or b) be shaped in such a way as to have to real reference to "up" except for where the weapons launch from.

this really interests me even though my IJN subs don't need it ;)

when the torp/missile is fired vertically, how do you intend to make it turn back to the horizontal and fly like a real missile towards the target ?

keltos

This is actually done for you in the same way that they would turn to horizontal if you were to launch a torpedo while diving or ascending. The torpedo / missile comes out aligned with the horizontal of the sub and then turns up or down or side to side as necessary. The same would be true of the vertical launch, the only difference being that it would have to go from vertical to horizontal rather than some small angle to horizontal. That being said, you would definitely have to be at a deep enough depth the launch this way, because if you were too shallow, the missile would shoot up into the air, dive straight back in as it porpoised and blow off your sail, creating a missile launch depth just like in real life.

Anyway, I'm still playing around with the dat file trying to get it to work, but I really feel like I'm just stumbling around in the dark. So without some additional pointers and direction (thank you already polyfiller), I'm not sure how long this will take, if I can get it to work at all, but that being said, at least its a start.

Greg

[treblesum81]

Also, polyfiller, were you saying that by remapping everything I've caused it to start CTDing, or that because I did that, it should be working?

[treblesum81]

One last question for the moment: does SHIV have a debug mode, or at least is there a way to find out the cause of the crashes? I'm using Windows 7 (could be part of the problem, but SH4 runs clean in it so I doubt it) which, unfortunately, doesn't readily provide information about what caused the ctd. If I could find out where the conflict is, I could much more easily determine the solution...

Any thoughts?
Greg

[polyfiller]

Sorry - by remapping ID's I meant that by doing so you should avoid crashes i.e. if you don't remap Id's (more than own ID the same in the .dat or .sim file can cause CTD's).

Sadly there is no debug mode I've been able to find.

Given what you say about the verticle node settling to the horizontal, I reckon you're flogging a dead horse here. There is a controller for torpedo launching (torpedo_eject.dat) but this doesn't look to have anything about launch angle and given the reference in it to @torpedo_eject, I reckon that the reference is hard coded i.e. if you do change this, it will efect all torpedoes.

If you want to persist with the duplicate aligned "ghost" node, start with a basic node, import the 3d model, with NO OTHER nodes attached to it, then load the game - this should work, if it doesn't then what you're trying doesn't fly. If it does load, begin to add some nodes and see what happens.

As I said before good luck ... I have a vested interest in this being figured out - I want destroyers in the TSWSM to launch their torps sideways and not for/aft.

[treblesum81]

Given what you say about the verticle node settling to the horizontal, I reckon you're flogging a dead horse here. There is a controller for torpedo launching (torpedo_eject.dat) but this doesn't look to have anything about launch angle and given the reference in it to @torpedo_eject, I reckon that the reference is hard coded i.e. if you do change this, it will efect all torpedoes.

If you want to persist with the duplicate aligned "ghost" node, start with a basic node, import the 3d model, with NO OTHER nodes attached to it, then load the game - this should work, if it doesn't then what you're trying doesn't fly. If it does load, begin to add some nodes and see what happens.


After what I've learned in my investigations, I can tell you that the torpedo_eject.dat is only the effect of the bubbles and sound that plays when the torpedo is launched out of the tube and has nothing to do with the actual firing of the torpedo.

Also, I keep running to this problem with silent 3ditor where if I create a second primary node and then try to place a 3D Model child chunk into it, it refuses to make the parent child association and simply places it on the same level. Can you tell me if this is something I'm doing wrong, or something inside of S3D that is not working correctly, or even if its doing something right and you just can't do that?

Some more messing under my belt since the last bit of writing here... I've tried just adding a new node into the existing structure, which leads also to a CTD. As a result, I firmly believe that I'm not doing something correct in the process leading to dangling ends in the data that are causing the CTDs. Aside from adding a node and naming it, what else is required to make that function without issue? I've added the entries into the sim file for the new torpedo tube and doors, but what else needs to change? Do I also need to go into the various upc and cfg files to make alterations? Are there other parts of the dat/sim/zon/etc. structure that I need to change as well?

Finally, is there some documentation about how to do this somewhere, or even perhaps a tutorial? While you might be right that this really isn't possible, I won't be willing to accept that until I know that it isn't some stupid mistake I'm making every time I try to make an alteration.

Greg

[ETR3(SS)]

Like polyfiller said I too have a vested interest in this project. I'd like to include this in the 688i mod as well. Version 4 for stock SH4 should be up by the end of the week. Not sure what boat(s) you're testing this with but figured I'd throw that info out there if you wanted to use that as a test bed.

[treblesum81]

Well, I've actually been using ver 3 at the moment, only because this way, if I get the ctd figured out, then I can work on fitting the launch points to the right place. all of this being said, I'm still not able to get the ctd issue solved, and the more I work at it, the more I think its something I'm doing wrong and not something that can't be done. What I've arrived at now is that I can manipulate any value in any existing chunk without a problem (however this doesn't produce the correct effect), but if I try to add anything at all, label, node, 3D model, etc., then all of the sudden I start getting the ctd, and always at the same point... the loading bar fills completely and then several seconds later, before the scene loads, the game crashes. So, I need to figure out still what I'm not adding, editing, or changing when that I need to be when I add in a new chunk.

[Webster]

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