[Der Teddy Bär wrote:]
"The original SHIII Dev Team have been moved onto various other projects and are offering their assistance to the community as they can in their own free time. It was Ubisofts decision not to make available a SDK for SHIII, the Dev Team are only employees. However, it is only through the grace of Ubisoft that the SHIII Dev Team have been able to make such generous offers. So let’s not get into ‘yer but they said’ etc, it will not change anything."

"In May, the SHIII Dev Team had mostly been split up. Some having been moved onto other projects, and in some cases they have left Ubisoft.
Let me clarify something. There is NO add on for SHIII, there is at this stage NO SHIV.
Guys, you need to understand, SHIII is a finished project for Ubisoft. Finished, no more patches and no add ons, nothing. I would not rule out a SHIV, but I am 99% sure that ther most likely will not be one anytime in the next few years."


I am surprised that there are no comments on this news!

If there is really going to be an unofficial mini-patch, we MUST NOT argue about whether we want more merchants or warships, instead we have to take the chance to get exactly those changes made to the engine that give us maximum modding potential in the future.

It would be unwise to push the devs to include some long needed content (new merchant models, traffic in harbours and the like).
In fact it would be a waste of their precious time to do anything but open up the engine for new content that the community will create anyway during the following years - if the engine has that potential.
SH3 has a wonderful data driven architecture, and if that is extended to some now hard coded features, just about anything could be made of this great game!

I'd say ideally the patch would contain:

- optional pool of new IDs for further ship addons [see AvonLady]
- increased maximum number of ships/units (no cap around 128 or 256)
- no hard-coded weather (why not in a config file like campaign\weather.txt?)
- changes to sub AI
- changes to AI in general

This was just a quick shot at what should be in, but you should get the idea.

So why don't we get into contact with the devs and ask them if some of these minor changes could be done?

one more thing i would love to see added is more weapons because as it is we are limited to stock weapons so that means we are limited to ships with these weapons...so no scharnhorst ( 11ich tripple turrets ) or the yamato ( 18.5 inch tripple turrets ) :damn:

I agree Pants, we need a better libary of all types of ship weapons and the tools to use them. Like a Node editor along the lines of the CMP editor used in Freelancer, or a proper MDT. This is what I would rather see the Dev's do, is give the Community the means to do MODS. Now I know we have Sansals Pack3D tool ( and a damn fine job he did of it too) and the tools from Timetravler (again outstanding work) but even with these efforts we still aint really in the ball park so to speak.

Now that its been stated that "Thats it No more to follow" as far as Patch's and even a SHIV is concerned, I feel its only fitting that since we are now "Out in the cold" so to speak, that at the very least we could get some means of keeping SH3 alive via a semi offical means.

We dont need the nitty gritty nuts an bolts but just a few good tools to do things with that will allow us at least to add new content in all file types that are a must. I speak of adding in Nodes or new content to say a DAT or SIM file for example, that dont cause issues later on down the track because the means that we have used are not truly 100% compatable.

With these types of tools at our disposal we (the community) can carry on improving SH3 to at least the same standards as the Dev's or even better, because we have the time and the passion to do so.

I second what Gibs says.

Also there are several critical bugs that if fixed would help our job enormously, such as the AI ships losing waypoints after a reload, or the weather getting stuck after a reload, and so on.

Another major missing gap is AI units unable to fire torpedoes. If this was activated or if modders were given some way to enable it, it would help an awful lot.

DITTO!

Actually not quit true ;)

While the comunity can make some cosmetic changes to the merchant ships they cannot change it's base design. So while we can move 3D engine room to the rear of the vessel we cannot move the physical location of the engine room as that is codded in the various associated files.

This would be a 'poor' mod and would turn people off getting 'real' shipping mods. It also would have a negative effect upon the games reputation.

So we cannot move/change these items...
1. Cargo Space - hold
2. Engine room
3. Fuel bunker
4. Stern compartment

I am not sure if many of you are aware that the SHIII ships actually have compartments as per a real ship. Obviously the 4 above along with a comaprtment in the bow as well as the fuel bunker.

As an example, the C2 is comprised of the following compartments in the following order...
bow
cargo space
cargo space
cargo space
fuel bunker
engine room
cargo space
stern


If you used this as a base for a new merchant ship with the bridge/engine room moved rearward you would end up with the engine room 20+ metres away from the visual location.

As you guessed, it doesn't really work :rotfl:

How about we just send the dev team our models and let them decide what they want to make. I'm guessing if it is a moderate to good model, they will use it...

Where are these virtual dev team members?

Are they shy? Can't they post here? Why do we need an intermediary?

HELLO! DEV TEAM! YOOHOO! COME OUT, COME OUT WHEREVER YOU ARE!

:-?

Agreed. SHOW YOURSELVES!! :-?

If I don't feel safe here imagine how a Dev Team member would feel? :rotfl:

:o I did not know that it is possible to use real mashine guns on these forums. :rotfl:

Wouldn't it be a good idea to agree on a reasonable timeframe in which the models would have to be sent in?

I mean those merchant models aren't going to miraculously appear now, are they? In fact it could take months for the first ones to be complete.

Also the devs should better clarify what they are going to do, otherwise most people will not want to invest a lot of time. Just think of IL-2, Jippo did a wonderful Ju-88 and it has never been incorporated in the game.

http://www.ju88.equitatura.de/Index2.htm

I feel I should come up with a merhcant model before this chance will have passed, but unfortunately 3d modeling is not my area. And I know how picky I am about visual quality myself.

I never thought about the compartments before - I didn't realize they couldn't be changed :o. I did know they were there though.

I too agree that it is not really clear what those dev guys are offering to do - all we know is that they are putting ships in the game. Is there anything more specific you can tell us?

It would definetely by a good idea if they could post here - if they have some time.

Eh? I thought all these values were defined in the ships .cfg files? Any ship modders know any different? I find it very hard to believe that these couldn't be edited.

For example, from the NBB_Bismarck.cfg file:

Now, I assume these are for the recognition manual - but there must be similar values in the .sim or .zon files. In any case I find your attitude rather negative. As I said before, the best thing devs can give us are technical information, tools, and 'unofficial' patches fixing broken things or adding new features like functional ai-fired torpedoes. Please pass on such requests if you have contact with the devs.