I think the thing needed the most is the way AI ships prosecute your
sub and the doctrine they use for searching, detection and attacking.
Here was my latest observation in doing some testing on my created mission:

"Patches from the devs are needed to fix bugs and make changes to the game engine & hard-coded elements.
Everything else (plain text files) can & will be addressed by the modders but they almost have to wait till the
devs release the patches first. From what I have observed so far: the AI DDs don't have the detection down
pat in SH4 like the Brit. DDs did in SH3 (actually this could be historical) and I can see that happening early in the
war years. The thing that irks me the most is when you do torp and sink a ship in the convoy they are guarding, the DDs don't seem to have a search plan they impliment in order to find you. Detection is one thing but looking for an enemy sub that just attacked the convoy the DD was guarding is lacking here. In plain words, the DDs in SH4 are just NOT doing their
job right. This may be hard-coded and a patch is needed to fix it. American Sub Doctrine at the start of WW2 in the
pacific was to protect the BB TFs and sink enemy warships (same as Japans). Adm Nimitz changed all that when he
figured that Japan, like England, was an island nation and needed to ship in all the resources to sustain itself. So he
used the German approach to go after the merchant & tanker ships (or convoys later) doing the resupply. I think that
caught Japan off-guard in relation to what American Subs would be doing till at least late in 1942 when they finally
started to catch on...."


JIM

If you want some changes/mods to the menu.txt file, here's one for the medal citation. The wording is taken exactly from an actual Navy Cross citation awarded to a submarine commander serving in the PTO. The "NEWLINE" formatting might need to be adjusted, but I think this wording is much better:

5890=The #MEDALNAME# is presented to #NAME#, #TITLE#, U.S. Navy, for distinguished service in the line of his profession as Commanding Officer of the Submarine #SUBMARINENAME# during a war patrol of that vessel. His outstanding courage and determined skill were at all times inspiring and in keeping with the highest traditions of the United States Naval Service.

Sry for the slight OT Beery, but:

CTRL+NumpadDel gets rid of the orange submarker both in SH4 & SHIII. Try pressing just the NumPadDel. :up:

But apart from a mod there's no way to get rid of it permanently, right? You have to hit Ctrl+Del every single time you do a patrol?

Hey Beery, I think Cpt-Blaubär's right about the ATI sun problem. I've seen some other guys talk about it already, but here's how my sun looks on a 7800gt nvidia:

http://img84.imageshack.us/img84/2267/07rw6.jpg

It seems like some or all ATI cards aren't rendering the bloom around the sun properly...

Funny enough, my sun loses the bloom around it when I line it up behind the edge of my sub's deck...


It's great to hear that you're starting up a mod for SHIV, though... I've always been a huge fan of the mods you've done for other games through the years.

ctrl +del does nothing in sh4.....the compas speed and depth gages still sit on the lower right of the screen...as well as the station panel on the lower left....

EDIT : I wrote this and then realised I'm using the key commands mod! LOL So.... with the Key Commands mod :

CTRL + DEL gets rid of the big orange marker on the surface of the sea when you view your sub from outside.

The numpad ./DEL key hides the interface.

r.

Feel free to plug in any of my tweaks so far! (namely controls, depth and battery mods)
Definitely a most welcome effort.

In SH3 you could just throw it in the trash, with no ill effect whatsoever.

I also vote for a focus on realism. nvdrifter, Ducimus, and CCIP have already made steps in this direction. Good to hear that RFB is underway!

PD

ok got rid of the gages and station bar...tyvm ..tyvm...:up:

It's not really bloom that's the problem though. Even on an Nvidia card if there's fog the sun's disc will be way too big. That's what the new sun mod addresses. Purely by chance it also happens to fix the bloom problem on ATI cards, but that wasn't the intention of the mod.

In short, the game's sun is too big and that's all the mod was meant to fix.

Thanks, I'll try that

I'm hoping to address it with a mod at some point, but unfortunately for a mod to be able to address the issue it's going to require a file to overwrite the old one. I'm sure I'll figure out a way to mod it eventually - I'm getting Photoshop Elements tomorrow (drool), so that will help.

Thanks. Good to see you plugging away at SH4. It will be nice to work alongside the same people again. SH3 was great fun with you and Egan around. I'm sure it will be the same with SH4.

Good to see this happen with SH4 as well! :up: And good to see the old gang here! Can't wait to see SH4 on the same level as SH3. I think that the mods will come in at a faster rate this time because the how-to is better known by now. Remember how much time we needed just for experimenting in SH3.......oh my! :doh: