To display flooding in the 3D compartments of the sub would probably not technically be that difficult in theory. Essentially all it would require is a blue/grey-coloured box that was larger than the camera zones, made semi-transparent and cued to move upwards at a certain rate when flooding was occurring.
But I suspect that this might have been tried and found to bring a lot of problems with it. It is likely that such a feature would cause unsightly texture clashes with the sub's interior, and even if it didn't, it would perhaps be tricky to get it looking right under red AND normal lighting.
You can see where texture problems occur with the lighting in SH4 already because of 3D engine limitations, when you look at the crew, where their eyes look a little wierd under red light.
Adding water to the internal compartments would likely also cause problems if the water modeling from the main 3D world were to be used, because of the way the reflections work, in that they don't seem to take account of visibility conditions.
For an example of this, check out a ship at long range through the TBT or periscope in foggy conditions. What you'll notice is that despite the poor visibility, the 3D engine is still drawing the reflection of the ship on the water, which is a shame, as you can use this as a bit of a cheat to see roughly where ships will be when they are not actually in visual range yet. Of course this feature might actually be a plus point if you were trying to make water appear inside the sub, but maybe not.
One other problem would be that the crew would have to react to the water, otherwise in extreme flooding you'd have the guys at the dive plane controls casually sat underwater still at their stations, which would ruin the immersion, if you'll pardon the pun.
If you still desperately want flooding on your sub when it is damaged, you might want to try this:
Open the Water Burst 1 and Water Burst 2 sound files in the SH4 sounds folder and have a listen to them, whichever one you like the least, you can alter. Create a water sloshing about WAV file (most sound effect CDs will have one, or you might find on on the web, or you could try recording one with a bathtub full of water - careful though, electricity and water do not mix together in a friendly fashion). When you have a decent sound, save it with the same name as your least favourite water burst sound and replace it in the SH4 sounds folder. Back up your original files so you can change it back if you don't like it. Be careful not to make the sound too long, or it might cause looping problems and try and make it have a silence gap at the ends, so that it can loop without a noticeable jump. Testing a mod like this will be a pain in the ass though, as you'll need a save file with flooding occurring so you can check that it is working OK in game.
And don't forget a towel and a wrench to fix the leak :D
|
