Starting out modding
 

Hello all,

I am a regular visitor of Subsim since I bought Silent Hunter 5 a while back. Now,I saw that I am not the only one who thinks that this game has some serious issues and is lacking alot of features, though it certainly has it's charms. What I discovered is that for most SH games the modding community is vital to the development of the game, since the developers themselves can't seem to pull it of totally.

Now Im not much of a designer, I'm a programmer (or scripter). And although I can't say that I looked very deeply in the possibilities, I was wondering if there is work that I can do to contribute to a mod or something. As far as I know, no SDK or something similar is released at the time of writing this. I would appreciate it if I can get some guiding lines IF there is work in my segment of development.

Well actually TheDarkWraith is working on the user interface and the AI , but someone really needs to work on the crew scripting .
C:\Ubisoft\Silent Hunter 5\data\Scripts\AI\crew .
Crew AI – Quick Start
Directories involved in the modification process:
"SilentHunter5\data\Submarine\NSS_Uboat7c" – files "crew_commands.txt", "waypoints.txt".
"SilentHunter5\data\Scripts\AI\Crew" – files containing strategies.
Steps:
Start by adding a command to "crew_command.txt" ( there is a lot of help there. )
Modify "waypoints.txt" accordingly.
Create / Modify scripts in "SilentHunter5\data\Scripts\AI\Crew".
Final Notes:
There is a lot of help in those files and there is also a *.doc file with help for the scripts in "SilentHunter5\data\Scripts\AI\Crew".

It's always a blessing to have programmers hanging around in a modding community. I'm sure you'll quickly find some job around !

-Oh, and welcome to Subsim ! :ping:

Welcome Forsith, its great to see a scripter coming to the scene.
Ye are in short supply :haha:, there's a lot of good people here that will be only glad to help you get started.
I've been doing a small bit of scripting on my HiDef UI Mod, not much (I'm a Noob Modder SH5 is my first time modding also). But if I can help in any way I'll do my best.
Hope you have fun here and look forward to seeing and trying your work in the future :yeah:.

Thanks for the warm welcome, I really appreciate it.:DL . I will dive (see what I did there:D) into the (scripting) API, where hopefully some documentation is provided.

Does anyone know about extending the actual game by programming things? As far as I know, that is not possible, and there is not a Software Development Kit provided. But if anyone knows about it, I would gladly hear it!

Thanks again for your help:yeah:

The Scripting API really has no documentation per se. You get only what the ScriptManager provides in it's sometimes criptic 'help' lines when you select an item. It's more trial and error to figure most things out :DL
I'm currenty extending the game commands by using an Automation class that I've designed. This automation class will let you combine known game commands and new commands defined by yourself into a group that you can call upon in game to be executed in sequential order (just like a captain giving an order and the crew following it).

I have been looking it for half an hour now, and I thought I write down a few assumptions/conclusions:

- The crew_commands script defines (all?) submarine commands. After the priority, and min/max crew members, the waypoints are set. The values for these waypoints are imported from data/Scripts, using the *.aix files.

- All possible waypoints (edges) are defined in waypoint_edges. I see something _about_ animations also in it, but I am not exactly sure how that works at this time.

Okay so, I must say I now know a good reason why the game is kinda sucky as-is. The devvers also left a lot of "tests" behind which should have been renamed or removed I think. So I was just wondering, am I right with my conclusions?

incorrect. \data\Cfg\commands.cfg defines all 'known' commands

Sorry my mistake. It seems that they have an overlap though, when it comes to commands of the submarine (and not the commands for the officers)

what do you mean by overlap? They call the same command but just another way

Overlap as in; the definition of submarine commands. Sorry that I wasnt clear on that.