[WIP] Printable SH IV recognition manual
 

Hello, me again...

I've been thinking about having a printable Recognition Manual (based on the stock game) so that I can flip through it whilst I'm playing rather than clicking through the in-game one.

I noticed that some people have done this in the past and released them, but none of the links I've come across are working.

I don't really want to spend £20 on a used copy of the SH IV collectors edition but that seemed to be the only option open to me if I wanted a SH IV RM booklet, until I started poking around in the files and realised I can make my own...

...so, I've started making my own in a booklet type format and I decided to make my RM capable of being printed on A5 sized paper/thin card.

There are 103 silhouettes in the stock game so if printed one on each side of each piece of paper/card that makes 52 sheets (51.5 rounded up) plus 1 or two for a cover of some sort. I'm am as yet undecided personally how I will approach binding this, I thought of making several separate RM's, one for each section on the in-game RM, i.e. 1 for Japanese warships, 1 for Merchants, 1 for British Warships etc. or I could just make one big one and have some dividing sheets, but however I do it I'll be buying some cheap A5 ring bound notepads and chucking the note paper so that I can use the ring binder. I'll use a hole punch to put holes along the left edge of the cards. That'll save on buying a fancy ring binding machine...


So far I've completed the Japanese Warships section (only took me a couple of hours to do) and this is a sample of the layout I've chosen, the white border is the extent of the A5 card, the blue bits around it are just where I used windows snipping tool to grab the picture, I left a blank margin around the artwork because I'm not sure my printer can do borderless printing and also I didn't want the ship image/text being right on the left edge as the left edge is where the binder will go -

http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/800...0/542/du1u.jpg

As you can see it pretty much matches the in-game recognition manual, I find the information on the in-game recognition manual sufficient so I don't plan on putting any more info on the cards, although I can do if I choose to at a later date.

The images are from the game _sil.dds files, and the info is what's shown in-game so any errors are not mine.

Let me know what you think.

Also, as I'm using game files to make this (i.e. the artwork) are there any restrictions on me making a release of this?

If I release this RM it will be released as a set of .pdf files but I may also release a set of M$ Word .docx files so that people can adjust the size of the pictures to suit their printer.

I shall also in due course be making one for SH V in pretty much the same style as above as I'd like a hard copy RM booklet for that also.

How are you dealing with the fact that some mods add ships to the book?

I'm not. The printed collectors edition manual (which is basically what I'm trying to replicate/emulate on the cheap) didn't include ships added by mods.

This is for the stock game only (with GFO, I'm not aware that adds any ships though).


If someone wants to send me a complete list of ALL the ships added by ALL mods along with their names and info and their _sil.dds files I can add them to this though, or if people wish to make their own cards to add to this I can supply a template in the form of a photoshop .psd file.


I just completed the cards for the merchants, took me a little longer than the Japanese ships (mostly due to locating the correct _sil.dds, they aren't as obviously named as the Japanese ships were) just need to arrange them in a PDF/M$ Word document ready for printing now.

The rest of the cards should be fairly easily done because the majority of the ships used by the other nations are already done, besides the warships, I've done about 50% of the ships already though.

And thinking about it my SH V version won't take as long either because many of the ships in SH V will already have been present in SH IV - so I might make this one big RM covering both SH IV and SH V, although I'll probably have to add metric measurements for SH V because I play in metric when in a U-Boat and in Imperial when playing SH IV as a US sub (I have my SH IV measurement options set to "Authentic"), will have to play with the format of the cards, perhaps just add the metric measurement alongside the imperial measurment...

I am not entirely sure how to bind 70 odds cards though (or the 50 or so just for the SH IV ships for that matter), the problem will be getting the holes right for the binder I'm pulling off a notepad, but that's an issue for my personal copy, not really related to supplying the files to anyone who wants this.

For my personal hard copy of an RM, as said above, I plan on using a ring bound notebook and swapping out the paper for my printed cards.

So, in my hunt for one I came across this one which I think will be perfect as it looks like it has a nice hard pair of covers - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Derwent-Sket...+pad+landscape


But of course I still need some dividers for each section, like on the in-game RM, so I cobbled together this image from the artwork in the game, to print onto 1 side of one of the A5 sheets of card, to which I'll glue a little tab to the edge to make flipping easier, with the appropriate word on it (like Japan for the Japan section, probably with the same leather texture also), I may however change the brown leather to black so it matches the outside covers of the notebook -

http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/800...0/689/dojw.jpg


Because the cards will be A5 sized I had to resize the artwork for the leather RM cover in photoshop as well as resizing but maintaining the shape of the flag and bar with the word on it. Turned out quite nicely though, just need to find a "flag" to use for the merchants, in-game they don't appear to have one on the RM.



I'll also be using "ivory" coloured card to print on so it should look nice and authentic.


I would offer to sell people a hard copy as per how mine will be, but I'm in the UK so shipping costs will likely be horrendous, and the materials for the hard copy will in fact set me back about £15. So nearly the cost of a used copy of the SH IV collectors edition, but my RM will likely end up covering both SH IV and SH V ships.

Probably going to use up quite a bit of ink on my printer doing this also, but the result will be worth it...

Have to stick to supplying you guys with the files so you can print your own I think.

I believe someone already did this, but the filefront link seems to be broken.

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom//sho...d.php?t=129912

Seems to be only the IJN ships. And as you said, the links are dead (seems to be the case with all the printable RM's I've come across), which is precisely why I'm doing this, for myself as much as anything.

Filefront has a habit of deleting files that aren't used for a period of time, I will probably upload mine here if possible, or to somewhere that won't delete the files after a period of time.

Besides I'm doing all ships that are in the stock game (both SH IV and SH V), not just the IJN.

I may add the length, although I don't understand the relevance of it.

I need to tidy up the text at the top of each card a bit anyway on some, the Class text isn't as long for some as it is in the sample pic I posted and it looks a little untidy not being in line with the end of the line of text below it.

As for the angle of the view I can add that text on there below each view I guess, but the only one's I know are the obvious ones, 0 and 90 degrees.

The third looks like it's something like 20 degrees, but I can't tell exactly, one would assume all the silhouettes have the same angle for that 3rd one?


One tweak I've done already is to remove that black border that you can see around the "tan" coloured artwork in the sample pic above, I didn't like it and it will look better without it when printed on "ivory" coloured cards.

if you know the lenght you can figure the speed of the target by how long it takes by the use of a stop watch

Ah OK, not sure how to do that myself, I usually just mark position on the map, wait 3 minutes and mark again then use the compass to measure the distance, which gives me the speed in knots.

I'll add the length though as I can see now how that would be handy.

I finished doing all the cards for the SH IV ships this afternoon, so just text tweaking text on each card, some extra bits of info to add (like metric values for mast height and draft), and arranging them in a M$ Word document to convert to PDF format.

I would imagine adding the SH V ships won't take too long, just a matter of working out which ones I've already got from SH IV.

OK I've finalised the format of the cards. By my count there is some 60 cards (not including a divider for each country/section) for the entire stock SH IV RM!! This will probably end up being a 100 card set by the time I add stock SH V ships!!

I've added a flag to the cards, as per the in-game RM, I've added length and AOB also. All info is currently as I see it in-game playing as the US with Authentic measurment on, so all lengths in feet for example.

I will eventually put them in Metric also, probably on a line underneath the Imperial values.


So far I've only added the Length info to the IJN cards, it will take longer to do the Merchants because they are not named how the files are named (so I'll have to match the _sil.dds file with the card I've made and then find the .cfg for that _sil.dds), then obviously I have the other countries to add the Length info to also (which won't take long because there's not that many, I made all the cards that aren't the IJN or Merchant in an hour or two this afternoon), and the AOB tags are only on two cards so far, I think I'll have to adjust the position of those on a card by card basis because I don't think a standard position will work with some of the silhouettes.

I'm also making the assumption that the third angle of silhouette is 20° because I don't know exactly what angle it's at.

Here's how the cards will look now (these are the raw .jpg images I'm generating, these are what will be going into the pdf/M$ Word document) -




http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/800...0/834/9igi.jpg
http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/800x600q90/20/mgtv.jpg

For the most part, I do the same, but it is worthwhile to have another method, at times.

In the simplest case, you are timing the target ship as it crosses your periscope reticle in front of you, so you divide the length by the time, and multiply by a constant to convert from ft./sec. to knots.

I gave a full explanation of the "timing by wire" math in post 58:
http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=200846



About the angled target views, they appear to be about 45 degrees. This can be estimated by the fact that they look to be about 7/10th of full length, and sine 45 deg. is ~.71.

It is important to get the aspect of the ship views correct, as they can be a stumbling block if they are in error. I played SHCE for quite a while, having difficulty making good AoB estimates, before I finally realized the rec. manual was not accurate in this regard. I guess they "squeezed" the images at some point, without thinking about how this changes the aspect of the views.

I made a nice one for SHCE using screenshots from that ONI-208-J manual however Ubisoft still owns the SSI graphics so I didn't publicly release it.

There are scans of real ONI-208-J manuals on the internet which seem to be a match for so many of the SH4 Marus - and could be made into a 'super' - realistic booklet. :)

For example:
http://www.hnsa.org/doc/id/oni208j-japan-merchant-ships/index.htm
-
http://www.hnsa.org/doc/id/oni208j-japan-merchant-ships/front023.htm

http://www.hnsa.org/doc/id/oni208j-japan-merchant-ships/pg001.htm
...... etc, etc.

http://www.hnsa.org/doc/id/index.htm
...... etc, etc.

IOW, the ships added seem to meet the specs of their RW counterparts...

Happy Hunting!

aanker has given me an idea...

I came across this thread by WernerSobe where he was reorganising the in-game RM so that it's more like how the ONI was ordered.

So, what I will do is put the cards I've created in the order as per that thread/the ONI in my hard copy version of the RM - it actually makes more sense to have it like that I think.

I may also add the real names of the ships alongside the names that are shown in-game for completeness.

Not sure how that's going to work with all the other ships included as well, especially the SH V ones, but I'll see how it goes, it will certainly cut down on the duplicate cards, because I've got about 3 or 4 versions of the Armed Trawler because the in-game RM lists it under 3 or 4 countries...

Also what do you mean aanker when you say Ubisoft still owns the SSI graphics? Do you mean the artwork I've been using?

So, trying to recategorise some of the ships into ONI style categories and I've hit a bit of a bump in the road.

I've got some me4rchant ships that I don't know which category they fall into, because they're not Japanese Merchants from what I can tell.

The ships I'm having a problem with are -

Libery Cargo
Victory Cargo
Troop Transport


I don't know which of the following merchant categories to put them in -

Cargo Split
Cargo Composite
Passenger



How do I tell if a cargo ship is split or composite?


I'm also wondering what category to put the Flower Corvette into, because it's larger than a Patrol Craft and small than a Destroyer, the same for the British Black Swan Sloop, it's a Frigate. It seems silly to create a category just for 1 ship - would putting it in the Destroyer category (which I'll name Destroyers, Frigates and Corvettes) suffice?


And I have no idea what category to put the Armed Merchant Cruiser and Submarine Tender into - so I've categorised them under "Misc" for the moment!?


I'm thinking I'm going to have all sorts of problems like the above categorising the additional ships that SH V has...


Thanks in advance for any advice on this little wrinkle.