You are still working on this, right?


Don't make me come over there...

:D



JCC

:haha: Yup, although to the dissatisfaction of my other half :haha:

Got 90% of the Graphics Done and imported into SH5
Got a bit hung up over the last few days getting things to work the way I wanted. Also I have done a few new things that will be of Interest (No screen shots yet.) ;)
Have started to script the switches and stuff now - had run into a programming problem due to my lack of Python or programming skills.
Trying to figure them out as I go along.

Eg. was 2 days trying to get a button to toggle an Item visible/hidden.
Was trying everything I could think of in the script but nothing would work. Turned out it was NOT the programming but my layer order of the button and the item in question :nope:.
Well back on track now though.

So you will have it out tonight, right?

Right?









hello?



JCC

Being a while since I posed some WIP screen shots, its being a bit slow as its at the stage where I'm trying to get things working (And I don't know how).
I've being messing with scripts trying to learn how to do things and its not going well a lot of crashes and script errors.
Also very hard to find info on how to do stuff regarding Silent Hunter even for previous versions. Pity there's no Wiki on SH Modding - Maybe its something to look into :hmmm:.

I've Redone the Obs station and removed the TDC and firing station from there. Obs is now just for that - Observation.
Have got the Attack Disc (Angriffsscheibe) working also have incorporated the Range and Angle on Bow Finder (RAOBF) - Thanks to karamazovnew and Hitman with there help and permissions on this :up:.
Buttons to activate the RAOBF and Target lock (Lock icon removed from onscreen) are placed at the bottom of the scope and are currently working.

The Scope has been Made Larger than the Attack Scope and placed to the right so now the map and attackdisc in conjunction with the RAOBF can be used for plotting and solutions before moving to the Attack Scope for firing.

Attack Disc
http://i236.photobucket.com/albums/f...-Station-1.jpg

RAOBF Obs Scope
http://i236.photobucket.com/albums/f...-Station-2.jpg

Have also Incorporated the RAOBF into the Attack Station:

RAOBF Attack Scope
http://i236.photobucket.com/albums/f...-Station-1.jpg

Left to Do:
Now I just need how to figure to create buttons in the slide out Orders Bar to create Hide/Show commands for all the TDC Panels and the AttackDisc.
Also need to create a toggle button for the Ship Control Dials for when not in use. (They can be in the way on the obs scope otherwise)

I have created this for 1080P and its displays ok in the resolution - But I have noticed something when using other resolutions:- The RAOBF Markings read perfectly at 1080P but at lower resolutions they do not line up its as if the Game Engine is also scaling the Display.
I.e. In 1080P the Cimmaron class tanker at 1000m in 1.5 zoom reaches 4 ticks on the RAOBF (Thats correct).
But if played at standard resolution (1024x768) the same ship at the same distance is only 3 ticks high :damn:.

Does the game engine scale the display (no constraints) as well when scaling up for higher resolutions :06:. If so That will mean that separate RAOBF Graticule markings will have to be created for different resolutions (Not nice).

Gorgeous! I am sooo waiting for this one ;P

WTF, the Periscope Bearing still displays over ALL OTHER ITEMS? AGAIN?!!!
Reaper, can you tell me if there's such a thing as an individual periscope bearing dial in the game? Since all scopes now rotate in 3D there must surely be a way to use that info separately (move the Bearing out of the screen, then make a new dial which can be hidden behind the AOBF).

However, the last time I've looked in the dials list, it was mostly identical to the old one. :(
PS: this is just a graphical issue, but worth noticing. I KiUB, for some of the needles I also used a separate Highlight object. A simple overlay static image placed on top of the needle. That way no matter how the needle rotates, the highlights remain static. Otherwise, fast rotating needles (such as the gyro tenths) look weird when turning.

Yes the Scope bearing appears to be Hard coded to be on top, doesn't appear to follow its order in the Editor. I am currently working on a workaround for this, hence why there's no bearing in the Obs scope pics above :03:.
I have used the background from the Heading bar hidden in stock for behind the bearing.
And using scripting I will set this and the bearing to hidden when the RAOBF is selected :up:.
In regards to the gyro Needles, how do you create a separate Highlight object. Is this a transparent image or solid - can the needle below be seen thru this when stopped :06:. Afraid I'm relatively new to all this and still only have the basics.

HI reaper....

thanks for persisting with this mod!

Please please please dont make the field of vision through the scope too small though as you add more and more dials and items etc.

question: is green the right colour for the scope markings? just curious

:)

BUT Fantastic efforts and work!!!!

Ah.. :D Nope thats not the actual default Attack scope view as above. Like the Obs perisope its got a switchable RAOBF. In the Screen stot above its switched on hence the very small field of vision and Green Graticules which are used to calculate range and AoB.

Just tried scripting to make it not visible in the obs pericope.py file and no luck. Not sure how to move its cordinates of screen via scripting yet, will look through the other scripts to see how the devs do it.

Take the fat needles for example, with the rounded plastic bulb that hides the metal screw. It has 2 highlights, diametrically opposed. What I did was copy a small section of that bulb and mask it. It's already done, it's inside the same tga file that has the needles. You'll have to figure out what the exact pixel position is by backtracking the crop line (easy to do with the menu editor). My dials were all done something like this:

1. All dial Background embedded in one single image due to cropping issues. This is clickable and does nothing (click mask)
2. Dial group:
2.1. Dial Background (transparent but clickable)
2.2. Needle Shadows (2 separate needles, you also have them there, just check the alpha channel).
2.3. Needle
2.4. Needle Highlight (static bmp)
3. Glass
4. Metal Panel.

So yeah.. it was a bit complex... but when I tried to stack them up in the normal way i got clipping margins that looked ugly. By default, when scaling images for different resolutions, the game will display about 1 or 0.5 pixels around the mask of the images. This means that all items will be surrounded by an ugly dark line if they were placed on a dark background in the dds file. Double so when overlapping images (as you do when you create dials). So I always made sure to retain a bit of slack around my objects, you'll see that all of my items in the tga files have a bit of metal background around them and a generous mask. Now you know why :D

The real Marks were always black. Only the center lines were lit because they were painted with glow-in-the-dark paint. But since we don't have red bulbs in our houses, we're using all-green marks at night.

The original marks in the game are made to change colour by hardcode at night. By placing any image inside the same group as the marks, you can fool the game and create custom auto-lighting marks. But the AOBF "special" marks must be placed in the AOBF group so... you either have always-green or always-black marks there. :cry: Maybe something can be done through scripting.

WOW, thanks for that info. Will defo look into it.
Couldn't get my head around the cropping required for states etc by the editor when I started out.
My workaround was not to do it the game way, but every object I've created so far is its own dds file (No sheets of graphics)
So far I've around 40MB of graphics and around 98 seperate files and growing.
Still it makes things so much easier everthing crops at 0,0 ;) and points to its own file.

"All dial Background embedded in one single image" What is meant by this?
Sorry if I'm being a bit slow :88).

Just astonishing work here :o

It looks so technical and kind of daunting to the layman....Exactly how it should be! :03: At last, we're finally getting what looks like a Subsim, not some Subsim Lite for the XBox 360 crowd :up:

I was reffering to the TDC_Panel_Inner.tga and Torp_panel_Inner.tga. Those are the only places where you'll be able to see the dial plates. You'll see that they're already obstructed by the metal panel.

I think it's a bad practice to use separate files for each item. The game takes longer to load. Cropping is easy once you get the hang of it. Doing it in Notepad and starting the game each time to see the results was NOT fun. But I got used to it after a while. That Menu Editor is a gem :D.
There's also one more thing you need to worry about when placing items sepparately. Just before releasing my mod I decided to decrease the brightness for all items. By only having to change 2-3 files it took me a couple of minutes. Imagine trying to edit 90+ files :har:.

Aaaah.. 2nd time I've typed out a reply and wnt to post, only for it to crash. (Hmm... restart again)

Regards Dials, Ok. Got ya now. Cheers. :up:

I will prob redo the graphics into sheets down the line when everythings working ok. As it stands now its quick to do changes fo files, I've redone the glass dials a few times as well as the TDC Dials to its quick regards development (Must say i haven't noticed any loading hit with my graphics).

Ya the Menu Editor is great, I cant Imagine doing things the SH3/4 way of everything being in that one main1024.ini file :nope: (Gives me the shudders).
Its great that every thing is split into its own ini and page file. :rock:

This looks excellent. I love having the emergence factor of having buttons to press, switches the flip. SH5 Stock had removed all that emergance.

Are you going to incorperate the speed and heading dials too?

Also hurry up i really want to play with it :P :)

Wow great work here!! :yeah:
Can you post a pecentage of the work you've done?? Are you at 50% or...70%....or 99%? :O: I can't really wait to use this great mod!!

Possibly about 85% to an Initial release. But its the slow stuff holding me up - trying to get things working via scripting (Poor scripting Knowlege).

Dude, that looks just great!
Are all the Dials for targetbearing etc. working properly?

Maybe you could work together with TheDarkWraith to get all the scripting and stuff working.

Looking great, period. :huh: