fix for scapa flow
 

i don't know how to do this but many of you do - I noted that on the harbors they have respawn points given in latitude and longitude. so this gave me the idea for the fix for the Kaise Wilhelm kanal, but also it would work for scapa i think... this is from another post i made:

just a thought, would it be possible to set up a new harbor at the entrance of the canal area you mentioned, like the new bases in Spain? but set the repsawn point from that base (when you re-enter the game) at the other end of the canal with say a loss of 1 days? this would allow subs from Kiel to make the JUMP to the north sea without having to pass the islands of the Baltic.

i suppose you'd need another harbor point at the North Sea side to warp your boat back to the Baltic side.

IF this is possible it might be used as the missing Scapa Flow NE entrance, but only if the docking point can be created there without docks. this would allow U-boats to enter Scapa from the proper location. And since the Brits later blocked this entrance the docking-warp points could be set to vanish sometime in 41.

Its possible i think. hell if you really wanted to, i think you could put a german naval base in iceland have use that as a spawn point into the game.

However, ill go out on a limb and hazard a guess that there probably isnt much intrest into modding what your describing.

At anyrate, ya i hate kiel as a port too. Your choices are either go clear around north of the isles, or a short (and dangerous) jaunt into that mine infested shallow body of water i have lovingly called the English wading pool.

no there likely isn't much interest since i bet few even bother with Kiel, ,, i know i don't. since i now can start with a type 7 u-boat in Wilhelmshaven, why would i ever start in Kiel? its harbor is also a real butt to get out of.

just a thought but moddeling the whole world is not possible atm, i think
so the game probably uses the map we see (or some other map) to generate the land and sea
change that map and you would have the kiel kanal

cheers
Noline

I think this is a good idea, insofar as it could be used to implement the missing channels (Nord-Ostsee Kanal, Suez and Panama Channels). You should make a prototype and publish your success. If it can really be included in the game I would like to have it.

The Nord-Ostsee Kanal was used during the war, in Georg Ernst "Bis zur letzten Stunde" there are several mentions of his boat crossing it (ok, he only mentions that it happened during U-Boat training).

Concerning that missing NE entry to Scapa Flow. Hm, I only speak for myself, but better leave it.

There is no way to alter terrain yet. Well, at least no one has discovered how...

But do you know if anybody has really tried to? If it is derived from DEM data it should be pretty simple. Maybe nothing but height values on a x-y matrix.

Well, first of all, has anyone found out where the terrain data is located?

I would also love to see some altered terrain.

Most likely in
...data\Terrain\Data\TerrainData.BFD and
...data\Terrain\Data\TerrainData.BFI

I´ve been looking the file extensions, the two most near hits are:

a.- okino's internal format (big 3d translation software company),
I'm downloading a demo to check it,but I really don´t think it´s
a 3d format, It would be to complex to manage in real time,
b.- a paper I found on gis data," The D8 algorithm, also known as
Biflow Direction (BFD)".

However the file size is small to be full world dem map, maybe it's compressed. If I have any luck I'll keep you posted.

Ref

100 percent those files.

Gis data could be close. Though I think that BFD could also have been brought up internally at ubi.

Ah, yes, that sucks. You're probably right and it's compressed (the dem data should compress really well), and if it's like that we're not going to see new terrain anytime soon.

On the other hand I think the way Sh3 makes use of dem data to create a believable world is already extremely advanced and can not be improved very much. Just imagine this kind of complete world data in a game like Operation Flashpoint!

I don´t think it's necesary (or possible) to improve the quality of the terrain generation, but there are many things to be corrected,ie: kiel canal.
However it will also depends in the resolution of the dem map in use, if it's minimum resolution is 1 or 2 km, then the canal can not be added because its only 300 mts wide.


There where lots of stuff that I think couldn't been done, but reality shows other thing, just look at the amazing things the people in this forum have done. :up:

Just to add another bit of info, looking at the file TerrainData.BFI,
It's an index of some kind with records of 28 bytes :

4 byte value : numeric data
24 bytes a string (null terminated) aparently a grid name (ie: E001N000/E001N000MK.RL2) wich suggest they are run length encoded.

I'll have to dig a little more to determine what it means, anyone with graphics programming experience is welcome to jump in.

Ref

It doesn't look out of the question to make small channels in SH3. Look around, and you'll see that the smallest gaps are usually 200-300m wide... So it is possible to model a narrow channel.

Correct. For example, there is a tiny rock north of Scotland that I once discovered. I wonder what chance there is that people crash into this thing at high time compression :hmm:

Marhkimov,GlobalExplorer, you're right , I found this lines at Termaps.cfg

[Map3]
Format=data
Resolution=216000,108000,200; map width,height(in pixels) and density(meters per pixel)
ZoomLevels=200,100,50,20,10,5,2,1; meters per pixel
Tiles=360,180

MAP1 and MAP2 are the maps displayed in the nav screen, this map is 10x bigger, and apparently the minimum resolution is 200 mts.

So far I've been unable to open the data files, maybe is time to remove the dust off from my dissasembler and take a look into the code to figure it out, pet project for the weekend.

Ref

pd: as stupid as may seem the BF in .BFD and .BFI stands for Big File.

[quote="ref"] Even if the resolution was 10km it would be possible to create a 300m wide canal because the relationship between the slope and the water level is not binary.
i.e.

waterline -------------\-/---------------

The small dash in the middle is the with of the canal, even tho the walls of the canal are much longer. (assumeing that the vertical resolution (or value step) is at least half as big as the the 2 horizontal resolutions (it usualy is far bigger than that)

Guess studying geology wasnt a total waste of time!
(oh wait, it was)