Why shouldn't I allow expansion of my Flags.dat and FlagS.dat? You can go ahead and do that as long as results of modifications will be available for free and have proper credits.

That was bound to the condition "in case you avoid giving appropriate credits".

Because there was a reason for that. Isn't it?

Who cares.

Are you two going to keep fighting ? :nope:
Perhaps you can start a new thread for that and keep this for modding. ;)

The new NYGM RUb campaign files already have the great majority of neutral ships in convoys (only) changed to the closest Allied alternatives.

I know, because I did it. Mildly tedious, but not excessively difficult ,and no ships have needed to have their flags changed. There are a few omissions, where (for example) a convoy might enter the game in September 1941 and continue being used until September 1943. Such a convoy might still contain an occasional American ships (neutral until December 1941), just to make things interesting for the player.

Stiebler.

Why not just get rid of neutral ships altogether? Just make them all enemies.

The player should be able to use his or her disgression when deciding to attack or not. The blood-thirsty player will end up shooting on sight, whereas the realistic player will respect the rights of Neutrals... Case closed.

Sergbuto,

I would really like to expand your Flags.dat & FlagS.dat - with full credit, of course! :)

My problem is I don't know the file format well enough to know which bits to tweak, where to append, etc. All the currently available tools allow you to swap out flags, but not to append new ones.

Any information or suggestions would be appreciated! :)

Pablo

By the way, It would be great if all the modders start to make some sort of manual with the discoveries ( I don't know if the term is right, excuse my bad english :oops: ) they make so anybody that follows don't have to "rediscover the wheel", maybe a sticky thread, so the next time someone needs to add a flag (sergbuto, this is not directed to you :up: ), or change a sound value or add a ship, or ...
You see mi point, right?. The credit for the data should be properly documented so nobody feels bad about it ( Really is it so important ?, the advances of the modding Community should be what matters).

Ref

DAT file format has been decribed by lurbz on this forum. I do not have the link to the thread in question at hand but you can make a search for his nick. There are no tools which would allow to append new flags. You need to do manual hex-editing of flag.dat and flagS.dat for that.

I must be missing something on this subject?????
All I did was simply change the cfg basic file by deleting the neutral -.(minus)

It was:
NEUTRAL=-1
ALLIED=1
AXIS=-10

I made it:
NEUTRAL=1
ALLIED=1
AXIS=-10

and have never had any problems for months and months. The only time I have have ships hitting other ships is when they are targetting me and another ship gets in their line of fire.

As far as mod files go UBI owns the rights to all modified versions of their copyrighted stuff and the fact they do not impose on our fun does not mean they have given up any of their legal rights.

Wulfmann

Sergbuto,

Thank you very much for the tip - I found the thread by searching for lurbz - and away we go!

Pablo

Ignorance is bliss and I was not aware of all this. Thanks CG for explaining.

Now, if I may ask, why should I care about any of that in my little boat all alone in the Atlantic? If I sink Amerikaneren Schwein schiffs what are they going to do, send hunter killer groups out after me? I have never noticed ill effects and am not sure how some cities I never go to popping up has any bearing on me.
This may be more admitance of ignorance on my part. But, why would any of this concern and affect me?

Wulfmann

"Amerikaneren Schwein schiffs" :rotfl:

As a native german speaker I must say you really made me laugh with this one :)

:cool: That was the point a Merkun stereo type statement.
Besides I don't like looking things up; Mein Deutsch ist nicht so gut, Ich habe ein semester in der Uni Studert!
I have my speech set to German and so talk back in my ignorant speech.
I always call the US ships "Amerikaneren Schwein!!!"

Wulfmann

I like it! And can only be coined by a non-german. The mistakes only add to the the hilarity!

:rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl:

I'm just glad I'm not the only one who does that.

I imagine that my German would be pretty funny for a German to hear.

:ping:

Not really.

It's already done. I can fix it in about 5 minutes with a new version of IC that uses these nations in convoys instead of the original, sometimes neutral, nations.

The big issue, which I blew two hours on tonight, is editing the flag.dat and flagS.dat files. I don't have the background in hex editing, debuggers, and decompilers and such to succeed in a reasonable period of time. Given it's nearly 6am I think I'm done for tonight.

What's more, sergbuto's already solved this problem as his Nationality Mod v3.0 already includes nearly every nation I need access too, except these duplicate convoy-only entries. It seems silly to re-solve something he's already done.

If anyone knows the magic of flag(S)?.dat I can do the legwork myself without incident.

In either case, I'm on the verge of just making all neutral nations never be neutral, the poor fix, and just leave it at that...

:-?

Well I dunno if this is how Serg did it, but me, I'd copy the flag dat files to a temp folder. Then with Pack3D I'd clone it. Then with Hexeditor I'd change the names of all the flags to what I needed. Then I'd copy it all in side the Hexeditor and paste/insert it into the original flag dat files at the end and it should by rights double the flags (after making a backup of course in case it all go's south). Then you should have all the flags you need plus a few extras for "what if's" and all that would be left is to change the flag TGA's to what ever you need.


(I hope :lol: )

Interesting.

My only concern is Sergbuto mentioned in a different thread, six months ago, that if you wanted to swap in other nations you'd need to choose an existing nation with a name of the same length. I imagine the flag itself would remain unchanged.

I guess I have to actually boot Windows and poke around.

Ah, and copying stuff from the 'clipboard' into a file you're hex editing sounds like a Hex Edit Pro style thing. I wonder if I can do that with khexedit... I guess I really must boot Windows for this.

Sigh.

I noticed with Pack3D there's no obvious documentation. I was able to open the flag.dat file and see lots of interest information about what's inside it, but there was no relevant feedback from the application about under what circumstances I can clone or import or how to perform that operation correctly or even what to select for those actions to be successful.

Sadly, I'm totally in the dark.

:(