[oscar19681]

Originally Posted by Heretic

Mod status and future plans.

I'm pretty satisfied with the bridge watch. I could make it somewhat better with some different animations, but that's starting to look more like something to hope for in patches and expansions. If that changes, I'll be glad to revisit it.

I've investigated adding more crew to the deck gun and torpedo room. I have one more thing I'd like to try on the deck gun but the torpedo room is a bust. There's a only two usable waypoints in there and they're both occupied. Finding usable animations that are offset from those waypoints has proven futile. Not a big disappointment for me since that's just a sideshow. The aft tube doesn't have any loading sequence at all. 90% of the action takes place in the control room and bridge.

I'd still like to do something with the bosun. Having him occasionaly touring the boat checking on the crew seems a good choice. Possibly having other crewmen moving around a bit makes sense too. I don't know if that will be in 1.2 or not.

Which brings me to something pretty exciting I'm working on for 1.2 - command based actions. Currently the crewmen are just looping through a set of animations with no connection to what the boat is doing or orders the player has given. The devs have implemented a command interface to allow the crewmen to perform action based on the command, but it's pretty limited and unfinished. Some of the functions referenced are very intriguing (OperateLeftTelegraph, OperateRightTelegraph), but sadly not functional. I'm working on a method to utilize that interface to drive the idle scripts, where I have more freedom.

What this means is when you issue a command, like 'dive', the Chief will call out ballast tank and hydroplane orders using the sound files already in the game- "flood main ballast tank", "fore planes five degrees down", etc. Then the planesmen will operate the correct controls, the ballast tank operator will turn his valves, and so on. The devs made the sound files, animations, and interface to make this all possible, but never got it completely implemented. I'm pretty sure I can get it functioning well enough to be a nice addition to the atmosphere and realism.

Someone should have BDU give you a knights-cross for this man! Also since you seem to be able to find your way around this stuff , what are the possibilaty to add more crew to for example the bunks?