[REQ] Ship icons (gray)

[pythos]

I have an idea. Is there a way all the ship icons can be of a generic shape, and Grey. No more Red for enemy, Blue for Good, and Green for Neutral.

That way we don't automatically know what class the ship is, or what nationality it is, so you have to close in and identify.

Perhaps the same with the sound contacts.

[Nausicaa]

I second that !

[thekamikaze]

I'll third that. I think there should also be an icon that indicates that a target is required for a mission objective. Cause Im sick of sinking ships that don't count.. :cry:

[Kopcap]

Good time of day.
And you can do whatever the card was clean with no icons on contacts?

[BowfinSS287]

pythos why don't you set your game to no map contacts
once you start turning off the player aids, you will have
a much better sim....if thats what working towards
at first your tonnage will go down , but you'll have to
work harder to sink ships.....check out these links

http://www.paulwasserman.net/SHIII/#Step 9: Determine the Target’s Course (WM)

http://174.123.69.202/~subsimc/radioroom/downloads.php?do=file&id=1711

read the file called "Sonar_Tracking.pdf" in 2nd link

[THE_MASK]

Here is an sh3 mod . Download it and it will give you a guide as what files you need to change .
http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showpost.php?p=1051071&postcount=5

[SteelViking]

Well, I just took a glance around, and I think I found the texture files which are used to render those little symbols(I have seen them before, so I pretty much knew where they were). Here is the good news: It looks like it would be very easy to make them all the same shape(so they would not tell what class it was). Here is the bad news: they all appear white in the image files, which means they are being given color by something, either scripting which one of the UI boys could change or it might be hard coded.

Mind you, I did not spend too much time looking into this, if someone were to dig deeper, they may find I am wrong.

Edit: @ Sober, are you sure that the mechanism used in SHIII for those symbols is the same as SH5?

[Royale-Adio]

Well, I just took a glance around, and I think I found the texture files which are used to render those little symbols(I have seen them before, so I pretty much knew where they were). Here is the good news: It looks like it would be very easy to make them all the same shape(so they would not tell what class it was). Here is the bad news: they all appear white in the image files, which means they are being given color by something, either scripting which one of the UI boys could change or it might be hard coded.

Mind you, I did not spend too much time looking into this, if someone were to dig deeper, they may find I am wrong.

Edit: @ Sober, are you sure that the mechanism used in SHIII for those symbols is the same as SH5?


I think they are hard coded too. I took a glance at them also, and I saw exactly what you described. Theres the Shapes folder which contains SHP files that, when opened with text, looks like jibberish. It look like HEX, but I'm no expert so I'm not sure.

[THE_MASK]

I think they are hard coded too. I took a glance at them also, and I saw exactly what you described. Theres the Shapes folder which contains SHP files that, when opened with text, looks like jibberish. It look like HEX, but I'm no expert so I'm not sure.The only shp files i have found are dds files ?

[Royale-Adio]

I meant in the menu folder.

[Vanilla]

... Here is the bad news: they all appear white in the image files, which means they are being given color by something, either scripting which one of the UI boys could change or it might be hard coded.
...

My very rough guess is that if you give them colour (grey), they will not be coloured anymore, since typically a game engine would look for alpha-chanell to colour it in a particular colour and white just represents where is this alpha-. So if the thing is given a colour - alpha-chanell will be overlayed with the colour and then it doesn't matter what the game does to the alpha. I guess. :) Or just remove alpha-chanel.

[Vanilla]

I think they are hard coded too. I took a glance at them also, and I saw exactly what you described. Theres the Shapes folder which contains SHP files that, when opened with text, looks like jibberish. It look like HEX, but I'm no expert so I'm not sure.

I looked into the .shp files, that is what I found:
Not sure about the first number, maybe it is a color.

The second number gives you number of dots. I.e. 28 means that there are 28 dots.
The three-numbers rows following are the XYZ coordinates of those dots. Since we are talking about 2d shapes - z is always 0. X and Y are just that - X and Y. So if you take MS Excel or OO Calc and make it to plot XY graph on the coordinates given in the first part of our file - you can roughly see the actual shape coded in the file. Try it for example on the ring.shp file - the name is self-explanatory.

I guess the second part gives you shapes (thickness, maybe color) of the lines between the dots. But I cannot figure out what do the numbers mean.

However even knowing this I just do not undertand how and what to those .shp files are used in the game,

[Seeadler]

I intend to publish my Shape Viewer in a few days.

I developed this tool in the past for some of my own map mods.
The viewer can display the shapes, export / import to/from OFF so editing of the shapes in others app is also possible.

http://s10.directupload.net/images/100727/lnxmkmga.png

[Vanilla]

I intend to publish my Shape Viewer in a few days.

I developed this tool in the past for some of my own map mods.
The viewer can display the shapes, export / import to/from OFF so editing of the shapes in others app is also possible.



Wow! Great news! Thank you so much! Now I don't have to spend my whole night looking into those files.

[TheDarkWraith]

the color is done by a shader and yes the color can be removed and set to just one color ;) Here all contacts are set to black in color:
http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/picture.php?albumid=305&pictureid=2760

Now trying to take the color away from the contact lines......

[SteelViking]

Nice work TDW. Now you should replace all the different icon .dds files with the same one.

[TheDarkWraith]

Nice work TDW. Now you should replace all the different icon .dds files with the same one.

doesn't work like that. The symbols for the ships are drawn using the .shp files. The coloring for them is done with a pixel shader.

[Seeadler]

Objects on the map like ship icons, location names, mission areas etc. are shapes (one or more 2D models in a *.shp file).

A shape file can include a texture or not. If it has a texture, the texture colors are rendered by a pixel shader on the 2D shape model.

a simple SH5 shape file:

1
arrowbody.dds
4
0.0 0.954569 0.0
-16.3476 1.51965 0.0
-16.3476 -1.51577 0.0
0.0 -0.951302 0.0
0.9995 0.813524 0.5
0.082804 0.999501 0.5
0.0828592 0.000499517 0.5
0.9995 0.186274 0.5
2
0 1 2
0 2 3
line 1: 1 = shape use texture 0 = shape has no texture
line 2: texture name
line 3: 4 = vertex count
line 4-7: vertices for object
line 8-11: vertices for texture coordinates
line 12: 2 = triangle count
line 13-14: Indices of vertices forming a triangle

[reaper7]

Objects on the map like ship icons, location names, mission areas etc. are shapes (one or more 2D models in a *.shp file).

A shape file can include a texture or not. If it has a texture, the texture colors are rendered by a pixel shader on the 2D shape model.

a simple SH5 shape file:

1
arrowbody.dds
4
0.0 0.954569 0.0
-16.3476 1.51965 0.0
-16.3476 -1.51577 0.0
0.0 -0.951302 0.0
0.9995 0.813524 0.5
0.082804 0.999501 0.5
0.0828592 0.000499517 0.5
0.9995 0.186274 0.5
2
0 1 2
0 2 3
line 1: 1 = shape use texture 0 = shape has no texture
line 2: texture name
line 3: 4 = vertex count
line 4-7: vertices for object
line 8-11: vertices for texture coordinates
line 12: 2 = triangle count
line 13-14: Indices of vertices forming a triangle


Look forward to your shape program. I tried following your shape tutorial from before with no luck. :03:

[TheDarkWraith]

A shape file can include a texture or not. If it has a texture, the texture colors are rendered by a pixel shader on the 2D shape model.

even without a texture the color for it is rendered with the color value passed to the pixel shader. I edited the pixel shader used for 2D map shapes and overrode that color value passed and used black to make all the contacts one color (0,0,0, colorpassed alpha)

[Seeadler]

Look forward to your shape program. I tried following your shape tutorial from before with no luck. :03:

It takes some little time because the shape program contains currently some dll's which I did for one of my clients and I can not release them (licensing reasons). I created the shape viewer quickly with these dll's because I needed a tool to effectively convert many of the map location names to an editable format. Now I just have to remove the customer-specific functions from the dll's.