the high angle guns on the ship have no textures, they just appear as black masses shooting stuff, what wrong?

mods like this are awesome. i cant wait until you get it more fleshed out but the work thats been done so far is amazing. Keep us the good work guys, you are breaking new ground for a mod i wanted to see back in SH3 days

Mudpig I tested your new Materials.dat file. It works, the smoke is darker and looks better but it still isnt as dark as it should be :) It's much better now thanks!

However, the random sinking returned. I was mid way through a patrol, probably took 3 or 4 shells from a T3 tanker and not more than 5 minutes (real life time) later I was turning to head home and bam... sunk to 50ft. No reason for it. I would hlope that a Pocket BB can take that much damage and stay afloat :) No fires or anything!

Also one other glitch with the graphics. Occasinoally I'll get this huge black blob that shows up on the screen when viewing the PBB from the convoy that is getting decimated. Sometimes it will cover a large section of the screen and other times it just floats in air. I believe this is from the main guns shooting but it's not a cloud and it goes away if I go to the bridge view.

I wish we could figure out the random sinking thing as it's really getting old! Maybe it's related to the Dragons Triangle?!?!?! The bermuda Triangles counterpart on the other side of the globe!!! Doubtfull though :)

:|\\

I am happy it worked couldn't check the look because, if at all my poor old Laptop would run SH4 with 1.5 frames an hour! :rotfl:

I try to get it darker when I return home.

As for random sinking I can't figure how it can happen...maybe ammo bunkers flooding and go boom which isn't very propable, but well. SH4 is programmed so sloppy it might happen! The stubborness it refuses to accept real "ships" makes me think it really never been planed to include surface craft as player vehicle at all.

SDK bollocks...UBI isn't to freehanded with SDKs. Can't remember them to cough up any SDK ever. :stare:

I'm noticing it more in rough seas. Which means it's probably the torpedo room (which is the only room that reports flooding, ever) It's a shame that this has Torpedo's as I really could do without especially if it stopped the random sinking ><. This is also suported by the ship sinking down a bit as it enters high speed turns and in rough sea's the ship goes between several different depths. Probably enough to cause "flooding" that doesnt get reported then finally it sinks and it floods way too much. Maybe add another set of pumps or something to the Torpedo room? Or remove it all together? :) I've only ever used the Torpedo's on an attack run against a very large task force and most of the torpedo's died before they got to the task force and the ones that got there didnt make contact with anything >< Frustrating but I rarely use them and use the guns and a large standoff distance to do it.

Either that or make the Torpedo room invincable (or practically) :)

:|\\

Hmm, i keep getting sunk my small enemy ships. Sub chasers and the like, ones using front mounted 5' singles. It looks like the PBB cant handle any punishment from anything larger than a hand gun.

(edit) actually, any kind of damage will sink her. it just depends on how many holes are put into her that regualtes the speed.

After hours of tweaking the Pocket Battleship and having assigned all equipment to hitzone compartments and more stuff, I took the ship for a testdrive mission against a Iowa BB. The Iowa BB can still take the PB out of action with a few good blasts on the right spot (this may seem a random sinking, but you will now notice that all compartments and crew can and will suffer the proper damage). Also notice that smaller caliber guns will not damage the ship as much as the sheer awesome damage from the Iowa guns. [note: the Iowa ship has near 98cm armor, which is the reason the Pocket BB can't damage it (using TMO). Are these real armor values? Since that Iowa is impossible to sink atm]. The Pocket BB has now 700 hitpoints and 55cm armor, since these worked out to be best practice (if you want a stronger ship, best is to only tweak the armor up to a max of 100cm, since changing the hitpoints over 700, will only change a few zones and render the hull damage indicator useless...see below for more info).

I noticed that whatever hitpoints you assign to the ship, at a certain point just near half of the hull is damaged (btw: with the ship at full 700 hitpoints in the *.zon file, the damage on the equipment page is shown as 100%), a full damage to all cannons and several other parts are shown on the ship and fully in fire). I believe this is hardcoded into SH4 and results in all compartments being flooded, to sink the ship.
Just keep your hull damage below 40-50% damage and you will manage :roll:

Every individual equipment type is assigned to a zone (I even included a few more zones for the engines). Since I still have no option to visually inspect the hitboxes in 3d on the ship, I used a trick to assign 1 hitbox with 1 armor and 1 hitpoints and nice firework effects while the rest had over 6000 hitpoints with the max 100cm armor. I started up a mission were a Iowa hit me straight on, to show me were that hitbox was positioned on the ship. This way I worked my way down the hitbox zones (over 50) and finetuned the hitbox xyz-directX coords a bit.
After testing all hitboxes in the *.zon file, I assigned the (to me) proper zone types to them and rewrote the *.upc files so the equipment and crew suffer damage. Note: this way each zone has it's own hitpoints value, effect, sinking parameters and some with armor changes. I used several subs and ships as an example for the assignment of the zone types, so it is hopefully more realistic.
Also notice that I linked several ship equipment as systems (like the rudder is linked to the helm in the command room to simulate both should not be damaged being able to steer the ship OR the radio is linked to the radio antennea to keep the radio working...).

The whole package is wrapped with 7z and used a different mod-folder name.
Changed Playable Pocket Battleship by Ruco9999: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=ALYWUOP0

[Note: my package is made with TMO 1.5 installed and active, plz use your own knowledge and feel free to swap out or alter my included files. Since i also altered some sound mixing, a file in the sound folder is also included. If you wanne keep the original sound mix settings, feel free to delete it]

A changed "BBtest" mission is included with the Iowa in range to damage your Pocket BB. With the current settings I managed to sneak out at full speed without being sunk. If you stay at your position too long, watch your hull damage and prepare to leave your sinking ship lol.

Please let me know here, what your experience is with it (specially with the pocket BB against other ships, since with the current changes the last tweaks we can do is altering the 55cm armor level).

Question: am I right the stern flak gun can only turn 360 degrees without being able to aim the barrel up/down? I tried to change the parameters for it, but at no solution. I think it's because the flak gun parameters should be swapped to the other *.dat and *.upcge files (like with the subs) to get it working right?

Greetings,
Ruco

Yes, hell will freeze over first.

Damn, that's a lot of work. I really wish we had a tool for working with XYZ coordinates.

Ruco, in real life the Iowa's heaviest armor was on the surface plates of the turrets and was only 18-19inches thick (depending on the year) Which is only about 50cm of thickness. Taken from the ever untrusty source (yet backed up at the USS Iowa's main page)

Belt: 12.1 in (307 mm)
Bulkheads: 11.3 in (287 mm)
Barbettes: 11.6 to 17.3 in (295 to 439 mm)
Turrets: 19.7 in (500 mm)
Decks: 7.5 in (190 mm)

The Graf Spee faired far worse!

turret face: (160 mm)
belt: (80 mm)
deck: 40 mm)

at it's maximum point the armor was only 6 inches thick! That must have been some tough stuff!

I dont believe that the game accurately represents hull thickness. If it did then I'd rather have the USS Iowa then the Graf Spee/Admiral Sheer! I believe though the game does have some form of scale that is most likely used so that subs which shouldnt be able to take much damage can take some and still live.

I'm currently downloading your patch. I will update how it runs soon :) Cant wait!

:arrgh!:

Very very nice! So far so good. Like with Mudpig though the guns are white! I dont quite want to put in his materials.dat since I dont know what all it'll change but I believe that with the release you just released and some updated visuals as far as externals go, I think this is very close to accurate. Played against the Iowa, tried to fight it out with torpedo's and guns... lost, hardcore. He got a good hit right under the front turret and theentire ship exploded before my eyes!!! Merchant raiding went well, 150k and decided to go home. No damage to hull at all, mission started off as a recon to Freemantle so I got to duke it out with 4-5 destroyers and countless aircraft on my way in and out. Held up nicely! Havent found any bugs other than the repeating noise bug >< I dont know what is causing it but it does get old after a while. It doesnt do it in any sub though!

Now the question is, who wants to make the Iowa like this! :D

If we have any daring or courageous modelers here is a great webpage with lots of info on the Deutschland Class Ships.

http://www.deutschland-class.dk/

Lots of good photo's of the Graf Spee and Admiral Scheer. One thing I noted is that the open air bridge is actually imediately behind the front turret, not high on the superstructure like it currently is? I tried to my darndest to find a photo of the bridge and the "command room" but had no such luck finding any of the interrior at all.

Well done Ruco :up: :up:

Damage needed some serious attention and you seem to have done just that. These playables are fun up to a point but being able to shoot was only part of the story.

I've not had time to test it yet but will try asap tomorrow.

Canons and Amunition

Cannons
6..28cm.....105-120.Shots..2,5.....per Minute
8..15cm.....1100.....Shots...6–8....per Minute
6..10,5cm....?.........Shots...15-18.per Minute
8..3,7cm....6000.....Shots...30......per Minute
--------------------------------------------
AA Guns
6..10,5cm...6200....Shots...15.....per Minute
12.3,7.in.6.2000.....Shots...30....per Minute
Turrets
10.2 cm.....3000.....Shots...?......per Minute
---------------------------------------------

Regards
Rolf

This is the only bridge pic I could find. It's from www.deutschland-class.dk and shows the open bridge of Admiral Graf Spee after the ship was scuttled
http://www.deutschland-class.dk/admi...peewreck04.jpg

WOOT!
 

Ruco you're da man! I about to board the plane home, I try this as soon I hit home!

Nice!
I was looking forward to try this out.
Please, report your opinions about this newer version!

Right :) I said that the bridge is located down just aft of the front turret not up where it currently is. I was hoping to find better pictures of the open air bridge then that so we could potentially get something more close to it. I believe I was looking for Wheel House when I typed "bridge" in the part you quoted of me!! My mistake!

If we got a really adventurous 3D modeler he could probably turn the different area's like the conning tower and what not into specialized rooms like the Wheel house etc. It would be sweet if we could get a 3D view from inside the main turret but thats asking too much :D

:arrgh!: