Interface Colors
 

Hey all,

Been playing DW with various mods for a while now, but haven't posted on these forums until now. Now however, I have an issue that is driving me insane and this seems like the best place to ask about it.

Ever since downloading and playing with the RA mod, I've been fascinated by the Victor III interface. Namely the fact that green is the general display color rather than red. I'm somewhat visually impaired and I find the green sonar stations MUCH easier to use and generally allow me to use manual sonar as effectively as I should. I would love to be able to use this color scheme in the Akula and Kilo.

So my question is, does anyone know which file(s) control this color change?

Speaking out of memory (Haven't DW currently installed) you could copy the files in the folder Interfaces/Victor3 to the interface folder of any other nuclear sub and they will work. For the Kilo, however, you must copy only the sonar files, periscope, etc. but NOT the ship control station, as it would cause a crash due to not having the apporpiate controls for diesel engines, etc.

Yeah, that's one of the things I tried. Unfortunately, the .GRP files only seem to include the static graphics of each station and so have no effect on the actual displays. The answer must be in the .DLL or .NDX files. I think it must be the .DLL files because RA's RA_OPFOR setup folder only has .DLLs and a few .BMPs (presumably to be used in the .GRP archives).

I'll keep looking into it, but I just can't seem to nail down what exactly causes the color change. I may end up having to just search the hex data of all the relevant files looking for the value FF 00 00 (hex for red), but that would take ages and I don't even know if it would work. Oh well... Any more ideas?

In RA, the Trafalgar has a sonar station with red, while the Trenchant has one with blue. If you want to change the color of the Trafalgar red to blue you just have to copy these files
SonarBB.DLL
SonarNB.DLL
SonarDemon. DLL

from the SSN774 folder into the Trafalgar folder.


Maybe you can change the color in the Akula using the same method since the Alfa basically reuses the same interface as the Akula I.

I guess I'm talking about pretty advanced modding, bordering on hacking.

I did actually manage to change the color of the Kilo broadband circular displays, but in an extremely cumbersome manner. I took a print-screen of the Kilo broadband station and pasted it into Paint. I then used the color picker to select the big orange ring around the edge and discovered that it's RGB was 255, 40, 0. I converted that to hexidecimal (FF 28 00) and used a hex editor to search for that value in Interfaces\Kilo\SonarBB.dll and found three instances. I backed up the file and then changed all the values to FF FF FF (white).

Well, it worked like a charm, but I then tried to do the same for the pointer in the narrowband station and it didn't work for some reason. I took a print-screen, pasted to paint, got RGB 90, 16, 0, but when I searched SonarNB.dll for 5A 10 00 I didn't find a single instance. My only guess is that it had something to do with the fact that DW runs in 16-bit color, but I'll have to try some more to see if this has an effect.

I think the main problem with this process is the Pain/color-picker method of findout out the value of the color I want to change. I need a way to find the exact hex, or failing that the RGB, of what I want to change to be able to search it. Anyway, if anyone here is familiar with basic DLL hacking or has any other ideas, I really need some help.