Depth Charger
11-06-13, 11:51 PM
So... I came back to SH3 a few weeks back, reinstalled it with GWX and MAGUI plus a few other new ones like SH5 water and all is working perfectly and it looks awesome.
But after just a few days, I found myself staring blankly at the SH3 Map while TC'ing at 1024 into the Atlantic. Ubisoft did a great job of SH3 but for some reason they dumbed it down and dulled the sensor instruments in favor of a map that sadly turns SH3 into an arcade style shooting gallery. Planned features for long range scanning of enemy frequencies, multi-task missions, escort requests etc. all seemed to fall by the wayside just before it was released in favour of a map that simply delivered easy targets up to us as we sailed by. But I am not here to moan because I love the game and I think that we can move some way to to resurrecting parts of the above in order to make it a bit more interesting for those of us who prefer to be a little bit challenged.
So, I have put together a little mod of sorts and I seem to be getting some interesting results from having tweaked/obliterated the SH3 map contacts settings, as well as slightly enhancing/massively boosting the radio traffic for contact reporting so as to provide your boat with news of the battle raging in the Atlantic. I have also shifted my main area of game-play from the map to the conning tower where I can now safely TC around at 512X while still being able to monitor both the weather and also the radio.
So this planned mod is not about eye candy, but is more about immersion and making the actual game-play a bit more realistic. My long term goals are to also dumb down the game's AI reactions/game-play support and to also improve the depth of the campaign missions. I am also not sure if this is something that people would want, but at this stage, it seems to be making my game a bit more fun and so I thought that I would float it here and see if anyone was interested.
I have a JSGME version ready but it's still very early days and although its working, I going to need some help. Also, as a warning, while it might be in “JSGME format”, it would be far more accurate to describe this mod, as it currently stands, as a lethal cocktail for causing CTD's. This should only be attempted by very serious modders who have plenty experience in tweaking their own installations extensively. Also, because all is new, I am not going to upload it now but will be happy to send it to anyone who wants to help me out with advice, testing and bug fixes. (Just PM me.) There are also some tweaks needed in SH3 Commander.
This is what I have got so far -
Map Contacts – Cruel Sea completely removes any and all contact info from the SH3 map. If you thought that the boys at GWX made finding convoys difficult when they took away your little contact tails, then you probably going to wet yourself if you load this one up... I also erased the various icon files and reduced the decay times to almost zero for radio contacts which in turn removed all the little messages from the map as well. I also removed the boat's own icon so all you can now see on the map is the green plotting line which is great if you into manual approaches during attacks. The only things left on the map are your current plot line and of course, anything that you draw yourself. (On another subject - If you are into Real Nav – then this will also finally get rid of that little dot left on the map from Van's mod, and there is also a stabilized version of 11Bravo's excellent sextant on the gun deck.) Getting back to Cruel Sea, I also use 11Bravo's map as you will need the long/lat coordinates for far northern operations.
Radio Traffic – In the SH3 game we are all alone, but back in WW2, there was an entire Kriegsmarine intelligence gathering operation under way, collecting data from boats and ships at sea, aided by the Luftwaffe and even spies on the ground. Bdu was then mass broadcasting this data out to something like 100 plus U-boats dotted all over the Atlantic/ Baltic etc. So I opened up the range in the config files to 6000 km's and oh my golly, did the radio traffic start pouring in to my little boat... You would think that this would be nuts to have yet more radio messages in SH3 but the effect on my game has been fantastic. The impact here is not that you get more intelligence - SH3 is still churning out the same number of massages for the immediate area around your boat. But what really happens is that this information becomes lost in a flood of messages from Bdu to the rest of the fleet and so you need to be on your toes all of the time! Another nice benefit, if you are lucky, is that you can sometimes anticipate “your” target convoy if it is one of those being reported on by Bdu, as you are heading towards your patrol zone. (Imagine chugging out of Bergen while reading a report of a convoy just leaving Murmansk and then getting updates as you head north so that you can start to plan!) I am not entirely sure how much radio contact traffic was going on during the war but I am fairly certain that the above is closer to the truth than the current set-up. With Cruel Sea you can get 30 plus messages in a day with some coming in groups of three at a time. Also, once SH3 establishes a contact, it assigns a higher retention rating and so as the mission continues, the reporting shifts and grows a bit but it does level off. I think that this is also why I am seeing a lot more reports of friendly warships and convoys while on patrol. (Which is great because I sometimes link up with them if they headed in my direction.)
Game-play – I have tweaked the SH3 Commander settings to allow for high TC at 512X in 3D mode and have also leveled the TC settings for both friendly and enemy sightings, as well as the shallows to 16X. This gets me out from the map screen and into the conning tower where as Captain, I should be spending a lot more of my time. And at 512X, I can make good progress and complete a patrol in good time. I also seem to be getting more aircraft contacts while TC'ing in 3D mode and I am almost hoping that it is currently delivering all of the contact content at 512 that SH3 would normally drop off in map-view when the user goes above 128X. This is still to be confirmed. In good weather its great to drive from the conning tower but in a storm, it's can get heavy which I suppose is more realistic as well. I hardly spend any time in map mode while using TC these days as it has become boring, but that might be a personal opinion which again is why I am looking for a bit of help to check if this is a good idea. .
What I am currently working/stuck on and where I now need help –
Radar Warning: Having removed the map contacts, I am busy trying to improve the radar warning message to also give us the direction that it's coming from. I am getting some garbled numbers at the moment but I think that it can be done. (In real life, I believe they were able to tell the direction.)
Radio Direction Finder: I have found some early posts about this working at some stage in the past but I think that it got disabled because it caused confusion, or was replaced by the easy opportunity contacts that magically pop up on the map. Apparently when a ship is sinking, you can sometimes get the radio chap to report that the ship is broadcasting from its radio and the direction the radio waves are coming from. Given that we removing all those easy contacts, I am hoping that we can resurrect this as a useful tool for tracking opportunity contacts and possibly even convoys from a safe distance. (Like they used to do.)
AI Crew Response – I cant remember when last I checked a flag on a ship and that needs to be fixed. So far, I have synced the TC reaction for friendlies and foes to16X each, next step is to blank out the “aircraft/ship sighted” sound files so that both instances give the same warning without sound. After that, I need to see if we can get the crew to either react to all ships the same way. In short, I really don't care how the little men look in SH3 – but what I really need is for them to stop giving away the target's identity thus forcing me to do a proper job of identifying its flag, or to take a risk like in a storm and let loose a torpedo and hope its not a friendly.
If you want to lend a hand then please PM me. My next steps are to sort the Radar Warning and type up a readme file for the install and notes on how to use/play. If you got experience with the contacts config files or scripting for messages then please PM me and I'll send the files through.
Lastly, it goes without saying that I stand in awe of the folks at Subsim/ Ubisoft and also all the modders' who add so much for us to SH3. Nice people.
Don’t forget to PM me if you want to lend a hand.
Depth Charger
But after just a few days, I found myself staring blankly at the SH3 Map while TC'ing at 1024 into the Atlantic. Ubisoft did a great job of SH3 but for some reason they dumbed it down and dulled the sensor instruments in favor of a map that sadly turns SH3 into an arcade style shooting gallery. Planned features for long range scanning of enemy frequencies, multi-task missions, escort requests etc. all seemed to fall by the wayside just before it was released in favour of a map that simply delivered easy targets up to us as we sailed by. But I am not here to moan because I love the game and I think that we can move some way to to resurrecting parts of the above in order to make it a bit more interesting for those of us who prefer to be a little bit challenged.
So, I have put together a little mod of sorts and I seem to be getting some interesting results from having tweaked/obliterated the SH3 map contacts settings, as well as slightly enhancing/massively boosting the radio traffic for contact reporting so as to provide your boat with news of the battle raging in the Atlantic. I have also shifted my main area of game-play from the map to the conning tower where I can now safely TC around at 512X while still being able to monitor both the weather and also the radio.
So this planned mod is not about eye candy, but is more about immersion and making the actual game-play a bit more realistic. My long term goals are to also dumb down the game's AI reactions/game-play support and to also improve the depth of the campaign missions. I am also not sure if this is something that people would want, but at this stage, it seems to be making my game a bit more fun and so I thought that I would float it here and see if anyone was interested.
I have a JSGME version ready but it's still very early days and although its working, I going to need some help. Also, as a warning, while it might be in “JSGME format”, it would be far more accurate to describe this mod, as it currently stands, as a lethal cocktail for causing CTD's. This should only be attempted by very serious modders who have plenty experience in tweaking their own installations extensively. Also, because all is new, I am not going to upload it now but will be happy to send it to anyone who wants to help me out with advice, testing and bug fixes. (Just PM me.) There are also some tweaks needed in SH3 Commander.
This is what I have got so far -
Map Contacts – Cruel Sea completely removes any and all contact info from the SH3 map. If you thought that the boys at GWX made finding convoys difficult when they took away your little contact tails, then you probably going to wet yourself if you load this one up... I also erased the various icon files and reduced the decay times to almost zero for radio contacts which in turn removed all the little messages from the map as well. I also removed the boat's own icon so all you can now see on the map is the green plotting line which is great if you into manual approaches during attacks. The only things left on the map are your current plot line and of course, anything that you draw yourself. (On another subject - If you are into Real Nav – then this will also finally get rid of that little dot left on the map from Van's mod, and there is also a stabilized version of 11Bravo's excellent sextant on the gun deck.) Getting back to Cruel Sea, I also use 11Bravo's map as you will need the long/lat coordinates for far northern operations.
Radio Traffic – In the SH3 game we are all alone, but back in WW2, there was an entire Kriegsmarine intelligence gathering operation under way, collecting data from boats and ships at sea, aided by the Luftwaffe and even spies on the ground. Bdu was then mass broadcasting this data out to something like 100 plus U-boats dotted all over the Atlantic/ Baltic etc. So I opened up the range in the config files to 6000 km's and oh my golly, did the radio traffic start pouring in to my little boat... You would think that this would be nuts to have yet more radio messages in SH3 but the effect on my game has been fantastic. The impact here is not that you get more intelligence - SH3 is still churning out the same number of massages for the immediate area around your boat. But what really happens is that this information becomes lost in a flood of messages from Bdu to the rest of the fleet and so you need to be on your toes all of the time! Another nice benefit, if you are lucky, is that you can sometimes anticipate “your” target convoy if it is one of those being reported on by Bdu, as you are heading towards your patrol zone. (Imagine chugging out of Bergen while reading a report of a convoy just leaving Murmansk and then getting updates as you head north so that you can start to plan!) I am not entirely sure how much radio contact traffic was going on during the war but I am fairly certain that the above is closer to the truth than the current set-up. With Cruel Sea you can get 30 plus messages in a day with some coming in groups of three at a time. Also, once SH3 establishes a contact, it assigns a higher retention rating and so as the mission continues, the reporting shifts and grows a bit but it does level off. I think that this is also why I am seeing a lot more reports of friendly warships and convoys while on patrol. (Which is great because I sometimes link up with them if they headed in my direction.)
Game-play – I have tweaked the SH3 Commander settings to allow for high TC at 512X in 3D mode and have also leveled the TC settings for both friendly and enemy sightings, as well as the shallows to 16X. This gets me out from the map screen and into the conning tower where as Captain, I should be spending a lot more of my time. And at 512X, I can make good progress and complete a patrol in good time. I also seem to be getting more aircraft contacts while TC'ing in 3D mode and I am almost hoping that it is currently delivering all of the contact content at 512 that SH3 would normally drop off in map-view when the user goes above 128X. This is still to be confirmed. In good weather its great to drive from the conning tower but in a storm, it's can get heavy which I suppose is more realistic as well. I hardly spend any time in map mode while using TC these days as it has become boring, but that might be a personal opinion which again is why I am looking for a bit of help to check if this is a good idea. .
What I am currently working/stuck on and where I now need help –
Radar Warning: Having removed the map contacts, I am busy trying to improve the radar warning message to also give us the direction that it's coming from. I am getting some garbled numbers at the moment but I think that it can be done. (In real life, I believe they were able to tell the direction.)
Radio Direction Finder: I have found some early posts about this working at some stage in the past but I think that it got disabled because it caused confusion, or was replaced by the easy opportunity contacts that magically pop up on the map. Apparently when a ship is sinking, you can sometimes get the radio chap to report that the ship is broadcasting from its radio and the direction the radio waves are coming from. Given that we removing all those easy contacts, I am hoping that we can resurrect this as a useful tool for tracking opportunity contacts and possibly even convoys from a safe distance. (Like they used to do.)
AI Crew Response – I cant remember when last I checked a flag on a ship and that needs to be fixed. So far, I have synced the TC reaction for friendlies and foes to16X each, next step is to blank out the “aircraft/ship sighted” sound files so that both instances give the same warning without sound. After that, I need to see if we can get the crew to either react to all ships the same way. In short, I really don't care how the little men look in SH3 – but what I really need is for them to stop giving away the target's identity thus forcing me to do a proper job of identifying its flag, or to take a risk like in a storm and let loose a torpedo and hope its not a friendly.
If you want to lend a hand then please PM me. My next steps are to sort the Radar Warning and type up a readme file for the install and notes on how to use/play. If you got experience with the contacts config files or scripting for messages then please PM me and I'll send the files through.
Lastly, it goes without saying that I stand in awe of the folks at Subsim/ Ubisoft and also all the modders' who add so much for us to SH3. Nice people.
Don’t forget to PM me if you want to lend a hand.
Depth Charger