V12 - p12
 

Here patch 12 :

- a bigger splash effect for stormy conditions.

- the experimental foam texture has been replaced with a basic texture used by SH3. This foam effect is more visible in calm sea. Flickering effect due to the waves, not looking very nice ... :-? What do you think ? If it was only me, I would not add any foam effect.

http://www.mediafire.com/file/7qm552..._-_Patch_12.7z

Hey Kendras, sorry for the concise answer but I am writing from my mobile. I have seen the screenies relative to patch 11 and they look good!
I will test patch 12 and let you know my impressions, together with my answers to your remarks, ASAP.

Keep up the great work, :yeah:
gap

So, after the splash effects, the only feature which has to be done is the damage model ? Let try it together with La Vieille lighthouse, as this lighthouse will have different damage boxes types, and is located very close to La Plate ... :D

Sorry for the delay in giving feedback, RL took over.

The splash and spray looks good now, more explosive (?). One suggestion, possibly, is to make the spray (not splash) more windblown - dependant upon windspeed? I couldn't see any difference between patches 11 and 12 as far as the foam is concerned - still white circles around the lighthouse looking like ripples.

Regards,

MLF

How should I use them? Do they require any previous patch? I see no particle library file in your patches, are the modified particle generators stored directly in materials.dat? :doh:

I have been experimenting myself with the foam effect, but I didn't release anything related with it as I wasn't not even remotely satified with it (yet).

I didn't get time to look into your files yet, so I don't know how you implemented the effect, but in my case the flickering problem was caused by foam particles being flat and not following wave ripples. The best solution would be finding a controller forcing the game to render particles directly on the sea surface (provided that devs had thought about such a controller). If that wasn't possible, I suppose that the second best solution would be making single foam particles quite small, and linking them to their particle generator as object particles, each of them with a floating object controller attached. I hope I am amking myself clear.

As for textures, please have a look at the link below:

http://unigine.com/articles/procedur...ent-generation

We could extract a single frame from that big texture or, preferably, we could use it as a whole and set it as an amimated texture (has I have noticedm PG's support them). Should the resulting animation look too stuttering, we could extract just a few frames, and generate the intermediate frames with a morphing program :03:

Tests with this controller have not given univocal results so far: sometimes it seems to work, other times it seems not to have any effect, and some other times it seems to do things worse. The game randomizing environmental parameters every time the testing mission is loades, doesn't help either :hmmm:

Terrific and frightful at the same time :o :up:

I wonder how lighthouse keepers could live in those wet traps in days like those lol, anyway I hope you guys aren't really aiming at mimicing that effect: wind speeds in SH games are limited to 15 m/s and such an huge splashes would be totally unrealistic even for the highest wave we can experience in game :yep:

The horizontal splash texture used for smaller waves is okay IMO, but I agree with you that the spray texture could be a bit better. Vapour mixed with small water drops is what whe should aim for. I don't think any of the smoke particles already in game are fit for it. I will see what I can do with it :up:

I have increased placement nodes under request by MLF, who complained about the poor look of the splashes when seen from top. During my tests with the modified files, I coudn't notice any notable side-effect, but I agree with you that, when in the same area we will have many models linked to the same PG's, some lagging could happen especially on low-end computers.
The cure to that could be restoring the number of placement nodes to 8 (as I think you did with your latest patches), or decreasing the number o particles per particle generator, so that the total number of particles won't change. In other words, the same number of particles would be distributed more evenly around the model (overall visual effect shouldn't change much when seen from the sea level, and it should be better from the top).
Talking more in general, something we should do is setting PG's opacity/density scale far parameters appropriately. By doing that, we would save computer resources and improve the far look of splash effects (not being affected by haze, when seen from far distance our splashes stand a bit too much on the horizon).

I couldn't agree more :yep:

Have you found any good sound for that? The submerged wave sound could be improved too. Oddly, it sounds okay inside the sub, but I can hear some sound distorsion (like a clipping) at the end of the SFX when it is heard in free camera :hmmm:

:up:

During your absence I dealed mostly with effects, but now that you are back on duty I will leave them to you. Damage models are nearly ready. Below you can see how the top tower will look (more or less) after all the detachable eave pieces (12 in total) are blown up:

http://i.imgur.com/LmKMiuc.png

I only need to twist/smash up/rip away the rebar frame (most of it will be gone in the final version).

Talking about effects and features that still need(ed) our attenction, I have reworked a bit your light effect. I have set its flashing period according to this graph:

http://www.sailingissues.com/light/cardinal-buoys.png

light flashes duration: ca. 0.4 s
short dark pauses duration: ca. 0.3 s
long dark pausel duration: 4 s

All in all, flashes last a bit longer now, and they are more easily conted. I hope you don't mind me modifying your setting; tomorrow i will post here my update.

Still talking about the light effect, I have calculated that its range in the SH world, for the La Plate lighthouse, should be ca. 15 km (eqivalent of 8 nm at the same latitude in RW), and I have set effect's LOD distance accordingly. Despite that, in calm weather and with perfect visibility, the effect becomes invisible at a distance of ca. 9 km, whereas the lights of the generic lighthouse models you have added with patch 1 are visible from further away. I don't know if this difference is caused by the different sizes of the two light effect, or by the fact that 'unit' objects become invisible before 'terrain' objects. I have also read that SHIII's skydome is a 3d model, and that different mods have been released to increase the visible range of far objects; this limitation might also come in the picture. What do you know on the topic? What's the radius of the stock SHIII atmosphere, and what the rendering radius? Talking about the latter, as far as you know, is there any differenece between units and terrain objects?

No, they don't require any previous patch, the particles generators are stored directly in LLH_LaPlate.dat and Materials.dat.

That's my problem too ...

... even with floating objects.

Very nice textures, but can be used only if they are following the waves' shape.

Sure ! :yep:

I think they didn't think about such a controller ... :damn:

Mmh. I set 0,5 for the light halo, and there is no visible change, the halo is not in front of the lantern as expected ... :-?

A horrible noise preventing you to sleep, and the building quaking as if it was on the point to fall in the raging sea ... :Kaleun_Sick:

True. Just a bigger splash effect when waves are 2 meters a. s. l.

Precisely, it's not. I explain. This texture has not a round shape. And it's always looking at camera. So when you see it from the air, you see 'lines'. Don't know if I'm clear enough. This results in this problem :

So, we have to not use it.

Really don't understand what you're talking about.

PS : What do you mean with FX, SFX and PG's ?

:huh:

Good work. :up:

You mean the rusty metalic structure all around the top of the tower ?

Yes, ok, no problem.

In stock game, the radius of the sky is 8 km. In GWX, it's 16 km. So, if the object is more than 8 km away from you, it will disappear.

The 'rendering radius' is controlled by the fog parameters.

Okay, I will test them right after replying your other remarks :up:

Okay, let me see if by digging stock files I can find any useful controller. If we don't, I think that animated particles might make the flickering lesser obvious. If also that trick doesn't work, we can always scrap the effect, though not seeing any foam on the sea surface after those big splashes, would be a bit unnatural :hmm2:

You might try some higher values, what do you want to achieve? On my system, after restoring the dummy 3D model linked to the same node as the light effect, the light is normally in front of the lantern (its glass looks illuminated) unless I move the camera too close to the lantern, in which case, depending on the angle, the light pops on the back of the lantern. When this happens, clicking again on the free camera (eye) icon, resets the effect and moves it back in front of the glass :yep:

I hope they were well paid for having to go through such an horrible experience throughout their lives :D

:up:

During my tests I have never noticed anything similar to what you are describing, and I find that texture pretty appropriate as main particle for low-medium waves, but to be honest my comments are only relative to side views of the effect: I don't care too much how the overall effect looks from the top, as we will rarely see it from that perspective anyway :03:

http://i.imgur.com/LnYmy5s.jpg

FX = effects
SFX = sound effects
PG = particle generator

Thanks :smug:

Exactly. Except for being rusty, that framework looks like it has been just set up and waiting for fresh concrete to be casted around it. I must try and imagine how the same structure would look after an explosion, with entire portions of it ripped away together with the eaves it supported, and the remaining portions badly twisted due to the explosion :D

You can copy/paste the reworked effect from the dat file linked below:

https://www.mediafire.com/file/5cpmf...ghthouse_FX.7z

I also suggest you to copy the light halo material embedded in the same file: it represents a light glow with rays not sticking out from the glow (as in the stock texture), but being part of the glow itself. The effect is best appreciated against a dark background, as the sea surface.

The 16 km atmosphere mod is a separate mod of GWX, but during my tests I didn't enable it. I will for my next tests and I will let you know the results :up:

This radius is actually longer than 8 km; a little more than 9 km measured on the nav map. After that limit the light disappears. What is strange, is that the effect linked to the generic models is visible from a longer distance...

I am talking about the radius beyond which any unit is treated in game as a dimensionless point on the map and information of its damage and remaining ammo storage is reset to standard values. This value in stock SH5 is equal to ca. 20 km and it is hardcoded (though there is a patch by TheDarkWraith for setting it at wish); I suspect it replaced the soft-coded atmosphere radius of older SH games.

Still talkin about SH5, dunno about SHIII and IV, fog parameters are only for player's visual, and they have nothing to do with the actual rendering radius (as far as an unit is within 20 km from the player, it will be treated as a physical object, whether the player can see it or not depending on weather conditions and fog settings).

Talking about our mod, I think the highest and most powerful lighthouses emit a light signal that, at best visibility conditions, can be seen as far as 60 km away from their source. I wish our mod to reflect those nominal ranges, but I am afraid that setting in-game rendering/atmosphere radius to 60 km, will be beyond the possibilies of the game engine and of our poor machines.
I am wondering what could be a good alternative. Scaling down the ranges by a factor 4-5 maybe, so that the longest ranged lights will be visible from a distance of 15-12 km, and shorter lights as La Plate will be visible within a radius of only 4-5 km? what do you think? :hmmm:

The range of La Plate is 8 Miles (13km) - modern chart in screenshot shows characteristic as:
A group of 9 very quick flashes over a 10 second period, 19m high (as you said gap:)) with a range of 8 Miles (13km)

Link to abbreviations and symbols - still searching for 1940's era symbols.

http://www.yachter.fr/shom/html5/sym...ndex.html#56/z

Regards,

MLF

@ Kendras

I have noticed that Hitman had created a 20-km environment mod, but unfortunately the link is down :-?

I have also seen that you had a 30-km environment mod planned. Did you make any progress with it?

A set of optional long-range environment mods especially developped for this mod would be a cool addition to it, but I am afraid their settings are a bit tricky :hmmm:

I have followed an empirical method in order to calculate (more or less) the equivalent range of 8 miles in the SHIII world.

What I have done, is plotting that 8-nm range on a nautical chart. Radius length on map was calculated based on the length of one degree of latitude/longitude at Raz de Sein's latitude. There are many on-line calculators that you can get this data from; I used the one below:

http://www.csgnetwork.com/degreelenllavcalc.html

The next step was squeezing the nautical chart I was drawing on, so that one minute of latitude was as long as one minute of longitude (as in the SH world). After doing that, La Plate's circular range became an ellipse.

I then measured the length of major and minor axes of this ellipse (real range), and I calculated the radius of the best-fitting SHIII range as the square root of the square of ellipse's semimajor axis plus the square of ellipse's semiminor axis. This is the result after drawing the SHIII radius on map:



At this point, knowing that in SHIII one minute of latitude/longitude is always equal to 2 km, calculating the desired in-game radius was a simple math. My result is 15,107 metres, with an ecceptable margin of error caused by the approximations used :)

Still looking forward to them :O:

If only all these converters were available when I was at sea:roll:

I'll resume the search for chart 5011 symbols mid-september. Off and away now:) Leave you in peace:yep:

Regards,

MLF

Were you in the navy? :)

Enjoy your holidays mate, when you are back you will find us here :salute:

18 years :03:

Thank you gap.

regards,

MLF

Bonnes vacances !

:Kaleun_Salute:

J'espère bien.
Merci Kendras.

You have all my respect Sir :salute: