[TEC] Searchlight values in S3D
 

I'm messing with these to see if I can get them more like RL. Turns out the 2 shipboard versions are in guns_radars.dat. The Search_Lights.dat has 3 more (unused on ships), and the land folder has it's own. We have searchlights to burn, so I can mess with a few to get differing effects!

Sadly, the person who knew the most about these was dave. I've had trouble even looking at files in the last week, frankly. Makes me sad. Anyway...

To business.

Angle is pretty self explanatory. I've dropped some from the stock 10 degrees to 2 degrees (RL was 1.25 or so, though they had a spreader for short ranged flood lighting---which is why I might make 2 types, and put both on the ships).

Color values are pretty self explanatory.

Range: Presumably in meters. The stock game uses 200 for this. I made one 7000. None of the ships seem to employ it past 2000m or so, however. This I need to figure out better.

Atenuation:
Within this there is A=5 (stock) and B=1 (stock). Not sure what they refer to, and what the range of acceptable values is yet.

Halo Size: 0.2 is stock. That's the big bright halo we see that totally obscures the target ship. Smaller numbers are smaller halos. I think 0.2 is too big, but 0.1 is probably too small. I want them to obsucre the target, but still have some detail on the ship visible.

Attenuation probably refers to intensity of start of beam (A) to end of beam (B). I'm not sure, you'll have to try it out a bit.

[edit] Woops, the description of the parent property says:

Light intensity = 1 / (A + B*<distance>)

So, yea, I'm about right, not entirely but close :)

That helps a lot.

Hey, if the parent property stuff is read by S3D anyway, is there a chance that such remarks could be available to see in a future S3D version? That would eliminate a gajillion "WTF does X mean?" questions...

tater

I've taken all descriptions from the game .act files. None are my own.

In this case, I'll copy the parent description to the A and B property. In some cases this is not wanted, and in some cases this isn't possible (some special cases).

If descriptions are empty or missing, this means the .act files had none for them, and therefor I left them blank, simply because I don't know what they mean. It's up to the users to tell me (and also, if they feel the description is not entirely acurate). Again, I have limited knowledge about what each property actually means and does, so you people have to tell me ;)

Now I need to figure out what controls turning them on in the first place. I've had them not come on with the ship already shooting at me at long range. It's clearly not detection.

I'd say they were treated as AAA, but they snapped on at 2100 yards and change or so (~2000m). AAA gun range was set to 1500m.

Also, they sweep around looking for a periscope sometimes and don't ever spot you.

I was kind of hoping to see a beam lancing out for a few nautical miles (they illuminated other warships at ~2nm type ranges in RL).

tater

Regarding S3D, I was thinking a "remarks" or "notes" area that would put whatever text in in the act associated with a given selected value into the notes box if it exists.

Dunno if that is possible, just a dumb user bugging you :)

tater

Do you mean this?

http://sh4.skwas.net/images/screenshots/3.jpg

In that case, it's time for you to upgrade ;p

I'm using 0.5.3, actually (grabbed the latest, but hadn't uninstalled and installed the new one yet.

As far as the distance of the beam, tater, this may be limited by the actual 3D model. I guess the model is a cone, and it may be limited to a certain range... (don't know if the game stretches the model using paraemters in this controller). Just a thought...

[edit] obviously doesn't explain why the don't point it at you when they are shooting at you

I'm an idiot.

I was clicking on the values, and entirely skipped over the parent since I knew there was nothign to edit. Sure enough, there is the description!

WTG, you're many steps ahead of the clueless end user :D

tater

Search this!!
 

Glad to hear you guys are tackling this issue. I always thought the Searchlights in SH4 were lame. I much prefer the way they are in SH3, where you could actually see a beam and not just the [much too dim] light we see on the water in SH4. Maybe post a few screeshts of different variations and let the Mob decide, like someone recently did with some video of adjustments to the pitch+roll sub physics. Good luck with this.:up:

Hmm, then why range and angle? I assumed it was generated based upon those values. I will try some extremes.

Leo said the lighthouses shared the same lights, but I'm beginning to wonder. Perhaps they use the search_lights.dat and its 3 lights. Might have to try setting that one to near zero and see if I can black out the lighthouses...



tater

Leo's thread:

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/show...ht=searchlight

Looks like I should start with ROW as a baseline for this to get the reflections, etc, right. (that's probably going to become a standard statement, huh?)

:(

<EDIT> Rereading that thread. It's interesting, I tend to be sort of a stream of consciousness sort of guy. I'm generally trying to be constructive (my negative posts, assuming you can find any are pretty explicit, frankly). Dave and I were on different wavelengths for much of that. Rereading it... wish I had made it more clear that I wasn't trying to be anything but constructive, now I can't correct it. Lesson learned.

tater

Maybe so. I was just guessing, as there is also a model associated with the beam node. Hell, I don't know anything tbh ;)

I actually think he was mistaken about that, modding the guns_radars lights clearly changes the shipboard ones, I'm confident of that. I independently stuck all 3 in search_lights.dat onto a ship via eqp, so I know for a fact they are different.