Sheesh
 

Talk about be out of date before the warranty has expired, the Solver is the model for all others.:D I am glad you didn't invent the televison.

not quite sure what you mean by that.

simple
 

You invent a new tool. I try to learn how to use it. Before I do, you create an new version. I try to learn that. When I do, you create a newer version. I feel like I am chasing a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow.

well its pretty much finished now. not really much more i could add to it.

1.3.3 will merely just a be a minor update to fix the distance chart tool-tip bug. I will probably leave out the ship length browser though, unless someone else wants to do the gruntwork of putting all the ship lengths in the XML config file (i dont really have the desire to do it anymore). The config file for the browser is pretty simple to figure out.

If you make the tool available, with instructions on how to fix the ship length problem in the XML file, someone will do it. I suggest you release it for the TMO mod as you have developed it, and place instructions in the Readme on how to correct it for other installs.
A classic example of how this would work in SailorSteve's addition to SH3CMDR for the ship names, a work in progress.

Could I host this tool on the new filefront site?

starforce
 

what was the story about filefont purging its files? Many SH4 downloads disappeared. Now, apparently, you want them back?

gutted - great job
 

I have completed three of the videos. You have done a superb job. Congratulations. I am surprised that YouTube only indicates that around 100 people have watched them. Yours is a very sophisticated piece of work. It will take some time to practice the techniques in a game setting.

By the way, I went back to your initial attack scenario when you first opened the thread. A troop ship was accompanied by two destroyers. I was in shallow water and lined up for an attack using the Intercept Wheel. The lead destroyer passed and then returned and laid down depth charges, but they missed. My target, the troop ship, reached the intercept point, and I fired 6 shots. The first missed its bow. The other five either were duds that either failed to detonate on impact, or shots that beneath its keel. Its keel was 28 feet and my torpedoes were set at 20 feet. Aaargghh!

After the torpedoes were fired, I dove to avoid the destroyers. The sea bed was only in 80 feet, so I submerged to 75 feet. That is not deep enough in TMO 1.8 beta. I was depth charged and sunk in 10 minutes. Double Aaagghh.

Notwithstanding that I am now deceased, your whiz wheel is reliable. It is a challenge for some like myself to grasp, but is well worth the time spent to understand the concepts underlying your program. It is a great teaching tool. Thanks for sharing your program with us. :salute:

This is the finest targeting tool ever made. As a bonus, it requires no assembly and batteries are included! Your solution solver is to a whiz wheel as our computers are to cuneiform and clay tablets!

This was the result of the owners going bankrupt. Filefront is now back in the hands of it's founders, and one of the top coders is back (the guy who designed it in the first place). Also, you are refering to userfiles. Files on the game sites were not affected aside from a few files as the result of isolated bugs. I've run BCfiles.com, which is a site for startrek bridge commander, and one of my first mods from 2002 still works.

It should be noted I also lost my usefiles (though I copied them down and deleted them before they got it) and I've yet to be able to upload back to them..dunno why. in short, dedicated gaming site and individual user files are 2 different things. When I notice how files in this community were often spread out in little clumps, making things dificult to find, when the new (old) owners decided to open new gaming sites, I requested SH4 be one of the first. I am the longest seated site admin on the network, running BCfiles since somewhere's in 2002. I know what I'm talking about.

Uhhhh:oops:.......I really hesitate to say anything.......could I request......just one more little feature?

Would it not be cool to have a torpedo type selector with complete list of torpedoes for U-Boats and fleet boats that then entered the correct speed in the torpedo speed input? Be sure to keep the manual input as well! (selfish request to accomodate my Slightly Subnuclear 30 knot Cutie)

Already I've gone from admiring fan to slave driver!:haha: With your permission this will be the first link added to the Sub Skippers' Bag of Trick thread post #1 in months. Thanks, gutted, for showing me that my hard and fast rule of "no outside tools used for targeting" can be trashed at will by someone with the ingenuity to produce a tool so useful it makes my rule look silly.:D

Starforce
 

I appreciate the explanation. I believe it is more than satisfactory. FileFront has lost some goodwill on this site I believe. You might want to advise Neal Stevens, who is the head of the site. He may offer some advice.

glad you're enjoying it. i did go abit all on it hehe.


but to be honest.. i dont really use it all that much. or shall i say, i dont use all the features that much.

for single targets... i mainly just use it to for approaching without having to stare at the map.. and then switch to the TDC when i get close enough to get accurate stadimeter readings. I use the target course i figured on the wheel to know when the stopwatch isn't lieing to me.

now, for a convoy, it's a different story. The ease of figuring out their course with the wheel and the radar is just OMG easy!! Just put yourself under the periscope line and match the target dial to the oirentation of the confoy on the radar. Then after figuring out the speed of the closest target when i get close enough.. i'll get my shoot bearing and see how much it will change if i turned in ~5-10 degrees.

drive in and fire at first target, turn "in" 5 degrees and fire at another. then run like hell.

I thought about it initially, but decided that i didn't want the program to be tied to any one sub program so i opted not to.

but...

if you reallly want a drop down box with common values, i can deliver. I'll make it configurable through a file, so that it can be extended for any game. Most likely i'll make it so that the program internally just has values for SHIV... but if a certain file is found it will pull the torpedo speeds from that instead. That way when we get our paws on SHV.. we can extend it if they add any extra torpedo types or what have you.

but anyway, i actually came here to post the 1.3.3 "final version" i've been hoarding the last week or so, but i guess i'll hold off.

1.3.3 will include the ship length browser for the speed solver. will come with a default config file that has ship lengths for common merchants and jap warships in TMO. Not sure if the lengths are different from stock or not, nor do i care.. because im not uninstalling TMO to check. :DL

You'll have to add any ships that's missing on your own. I may include my ship length "sniffer" program to help with that. but then again, it's specific to SHIV... and my goal was to not have it specific to any game.


so.. uhh, i'll add that one feature then i'll post 1.3.3 "Final". I say final because i'm pretty sure there's nothing else to add. Anything else will be the odd bug fix if someone finds one.

It may be a few days though, I just upgraded to Windows 7 from XP a few days ago, and dont have programming environment back up yet. I did notice that in Win7 the distance chart is not wide enough. For some reason the columns are wider in win7. So im going to have to make the window size wider, and make it sizable this time.

oh and not sure if anyone noticed, but the distance chart's tooltip is bugged. On XP it was working right, but i tried on a vista machine and someitmes it was giving conversion info for the wrong distance (as if you clicked a different one). That fix is also in 1.3.3.

haha, thats partly why i made it.

i kept looking at the whiz wheel in the sticky thread.. and was telling myself "One day i'll get off my lazy bum and make me a really good one.. with plastic and sticky back printing paper. The whole nine yards!" just like the OP of that thread did.

but i realized i was just a lazy bastard, so i downloaded his printable template and fired up Visual Studio 2008. In about an hour of C# coding I had a working software whiz wheel. :D

Initially i was just going to leave it at that, but that same night while having a smoke.. it dawned on me that if i made the dials aware of their orientation to each other... i could do all sorts of neat things. And it ballooned from there.

:cool: Well, if BCfiles is any indication, I gotta agree. Great place to find Bridge Commander mods ... mostly because it has a well-structured index, nice screenshots, and an informative description of each mod.

sure, why not.

after i release the final update (soon), this thread may get lost in the clutter when no updates are posted to it.

so having a link to this thread from there might not be a bad idea.

Done! This thread should never get lost. The Solution Solver is just too good!

@starforce: by the authority stolen by me from nobody in particular and a with good deal of bullschnitzel according to many, I hereby charge you with the responsibility of finding something to bring to the table more than merely duplicating Subsim's great download section, already stocked with a couple hundred mods and already sorted by category, game and author.

"Me too" ain't good enough. Imitation ain't innovation! Dig, man! Dig!:D Surely you can come up with something that isn't already being done well here at Subsim. If you don't bring something new to the mix, you're condemned to always futilely playing catch-up to Subsim. Carotio did it and you can too.

gutted,

Just DL the app for a peak, watched your tutorials. This is just the bomb! Well done! I know that RR has already groveled at your feet but let me do so as well.

Case of your favorite beverage on its way via FedEx!

Btw, still flying for JG52?

no, i hung up my online dogfighting wings bout a year ago. At the time i had taken an extended break from world war 2 online, and the squad fell apart in my absence. Website went bye-bye as well.

Figured there was no point flying anymore because the only reason i stuck around so long was that i enjoyed flying with my squad mates. If it weren't for them, i probably would have quit way earlier, as it just got tiresome. Take off, shoot down a bunch of snot nosed spitfire pilots, then get jumped by a horde and run away... rinse and repeat. Was almost chore-like.


I also grew bored of IL2 long before i did ww2ol. I hate repetition. Probably why i can't play Silent Hunter for more than a few months at a time before needing to walk away for awhile. hehe.