Trying to understand how SH3 Commander's "Date" folder system works....

[pditty8811]

I have the latest SH3 Commander, my question is this.

If I start a campaign through Commander on say..... March 4, 1941, will Commander load all the "Date" folder files up to March 4, 1941 like Sept 39, Oct. 39' exc....?

Or just the March 4, 1941 folder?

TY in advance

Pditty

[pditty8811]

Also....

Does SH3 Commander overwrite the files in SH3/data folder? and puts them in the Backup folder?

Or does it just use the Commander files not touching what is in the SH3/data folder?

[frau kaleun]

I have the latest SH3 Commander, my question is this.

If I start a campaign through Commander on say..... March 4, 1941, will Commander load all the "Date" folder files up to March 4, 1941 like Sept 39, Oct. 39' exc....?

Or just the March 4, 1941 folder?

TY in advance

Pditty

My understanding of how it works is that Commander will load only the files from the folder with the most recent date that is equal to or prior to whatever your current in-game date is.

So if you have date folders for 19390901 and 19391101, anytime you start playing with an in-game date of Sept 01 1939 through Oct 31 1939, it will load the stuff in the 19390901 folder. It will continue loading those files until your in-game date gets to Nov 1 1939, and then it will start loading the stuff from the 19391101 folder instead, until the date of the next folder is reached, and so on.


Also....

Does SH3 Commander overwrite the files in SH3/data folder? and puts them in the Backup folder?

Or does it just use the Commander files not touching what is in the SH3/data folder?

It has to overwrite or add to some of the files/folders in the data directory in order to activate some of the options you have selected. And features like the Date, Uboat, and Flotilla folders exist specifically so that Commander can mod the game according to your preferences but only under certain conditions... for instance the flotilla you are currently in, which u-boat you've got, or - as noted above - what the in-game date is.

One example would be the use of different u-boat skins - say I have skins I like for each type of boat, but I don't want to enable all of them at the same time in JSGME (or can't because of file conflicts), and I don't want to worry about switching them in and out depending on which boat I choose to play. So I use the Uboat folders in Commander to do it for me. The files for each skin can go in the appropriate Uboat folder and Commander will enable them for me in much the same way JSGME would do - but it only enables the one I need for whichever boat I'm in. If I'm playing a VIIB, it sticks the VIIB skin in the game for me, and with Auto Rollback, it takes it out again when I exit the game. The next time I play I could start a new career in a IIA and it would enable the skin in that folder instead.

If you have selected the Auto Rollback option, any changes Commander makes to the game's files will be undone (and the files returned to their original state) as soon as you exit the game. Commander will then "mod" the game again, depending on what you've set it up to do, the next time you use it to launch a session. I strongly recommend using Auto Rollback as it eliminates many potential problems that can be caused by NOT undoing the changes Commander makes and then tinkering with the game files in between sessions either manually or by adding/removing mods with JSGME.

[pditty8811]

My understanding of how it works is that Commander will load only the files from the folder with the most recent date that is equal to or prior to whatever your current in-game date is.

So if you have date folders for 19390901 and 19391101, anytime you start playing with an in-game date of Sept 01 1939 through Oct 31 1939, it will load the stuff in the 19390901 folder. It will continue loading those files until your in-game date gets to Nov 1 1939, and then it will start loading the stuff from the 19391101 folder instead, until the date of the next folder is reached, and so on.




It has to overwrite or add to some of the files/folders in the data directory in order to activate some of the options you have selected. And features like the Date, Uboat, and Flotilla folders exist specifically so that Commander can mod the game according to your preferences but only under certain conditions... for instance the flotilla you are currently in, which u-boat you've got, or - as noted above - what the in-game date is.

One example would be the use of different u-boat skins - say I have skins I like for each type of boat, but I don't want to enable all of them at the same time in JSGME (or can't because of file conflicts), and I don't want to worry about switching them in and out depending on which boat I choose to play. So I use the Uboat folders in Commander to do it for me. The files for each skin can go in the appropriate Uboat folder and Commander will enable them for me in much the same way JSGME would do - but it only enables the one I need for whichever boat I'm in. If I'm playing a VIIB, it sticks the VIIB skin in the game for me, and with Auto Rollback, it takes it out again when I exit the game. The next time I play I could start a new career in a IIA and it would enable the skin in that folder instead.

If you have selected the Auto Rollback option, any changes Commander makes to the game's files will be undone (and the files returned to their original state) as soon as you exit the game. Commander will then "mod" the game again, depending on what you've set it up to do, the next time you use it to launch a session. I strongly recommend using Auto Rollback as it eliminates many potential problems that can be caused by NOT undoing the changes Commander makes and then tinkering with the game files in between sessions either manually or by adding/removing mods with JSGME.

Thank you very much, very informative.

It's too bad that commander doesn't load all the date folder up to the playing date, starting with 39' then overwriting that with the 40' folders and so on.

This makes the date folder feature alittle more difficult to deal with. Because say I want to add a skin to a ship in Nov. 39' because historically that ship had a certain type of ckin from Nov. 39' to say Dec. 41', so in the 19391101 folder the skin is in. But I start a campaign in April of 1940, so Commander uses the 19400401 folder? and nothing else? So my skin wouldn't even show up in the game when historically it should, because it isn't in the most recent previous folder?

Are you sure thats how the "Date" feature works in commander?

[frau kaleun]

Thank you very much, very informative.

It's too bad that commander doesn't load all the date folder up to the playing date, starting with 39' then overwriting that with the 40' folders and so on.

This makes the date folder feature alittle more difficult to deal with. Because say I want to add a skin to a ship in Nov. 39' because historically that ship had a certain type of ckin from Nov. 39' to say Dec. 41', so in the 19391101 folder the skin is in. But I start a campaign in April of 1940, so Commander uses the 19400401 folder? and nothing else? So my skin wouldn't even show up in the game when historically it should, because it isn't in the most recent previous folder?

Are you sure thats how the "Date" feature works in commander?

My understanding is that Commander loads the files from the appropriate Date folder as described above, and then removes them from the game when you exit IF you have selected the auto rollback feature. When you reach the date where another folder becomes the "current" one, it would load files from that folder instead. So, yes, I would assume that is how it would work.

However you could just put the same skin in every Date folder up until the one that matches the date where you want to stop using it.

Or you could just delete all the Date folders in between the "start" and "stop" dates for that skin. However there are some things already in the Date folders that come with Commander that you would lose, like the alternate .tga files for the campaign loading screen which show varying maps of German-held territory as the war progresses and the various versions of the sound file that it adds to your Gramophone folder depending on the date you're playing. If those things don't matter to you, you can delete whatever Date files you don't want and just use or add the ones you actually need. None of the Date folders in Commander are necessary, nor are any of the files that are already in there when you install it. I've deleted all the Sound subfolders because I just want music in my Gram folder, not date-specific radio broadcasts. And I've added many Date folders in order to have Commander load date-specific stuff that wasn't originally included.

Keep in mind, though, that if you use the Date folders to add u-boat skins, it will load your skins only by date with no regard for the type of boat you're actually playing. If you put VIIB skins in there but decide to play a VIIC for some reason, it's not going to know *not* to load a VIIB skin because you selected a different type of u-boat.

[pditty8811]

My understanding is that Commander loads the files from the appropriate Date folder as described above, and then removes them from the game when you exit IF you have selected the auto rollback feature. When you reach the date where another folder becomes the relevant one, it would load files from that folder instead. So, yes, I would assume that is how it would work.

However you could just put the same skin in every Date folder up until the one that matches the date where you want to stop using it.

Or you could just delete all the Date folders in between the "start" and "stop" dates for that skin. However there are some things already in the Date folders that come with Commander that you would lose, like the alternate .tga files for the campaign loading screen which show varying maps of German-held territory as the war progresses and the various versions of the sound file that it adds to your Gramophone folder depending on the date you're playing. If those things don't matter to you, you can delete whatever Date files you don't want and just use or add the ones you actually need.

I inspected the "Date" folder just now. I was looking at the ship models and the ship folder in example "NBBBismarck" there wer only like 4 or 5 total of those folders in the "Date" folder, and also for other ships there were usually around 4-8 for each ship.

So assuming that, and all the available date folders in the "Date" directory, I would think commander does load all the previous dates in sequential order up to the date of play. Because if that was not the case then we would see like 100 or so "NBBBismarck" folders and "NCCF" and so on, if commander was concerned about the historical accurate date models and skins.

So according to the evidence I have reached the conclusion that commander does in fact load all previous dates up to the playing date, in sequential order. This, if it happens to be true, is a huge asset to have to modders.

[frau kaleun]

You may very well be correct, I don't know. I just know the way I have them set up works for what I want them to do, I haven't attempted to switch out u-boat skins that way as I use the Uboat folders for that and don't vary those skins by date.

[Jimbuna]

I once experimented with different time dated skins for the Bismarck and Tirpitz without any success.

[irish1958]

Check the readme for SH3CMDR concerning the config folder/function. I think you can accomplish what you are trying to do via this method.
The date folder loads the appropriate date folder into SH3. My war radio mod for SH3CMDR uses this structure.