SHIP SILHOUETTES
This Modder's Resource Pack is a collection of clean and complete Ship Silhouettes inspired by the vessels in the Fall of the Rising Sun Ultimate Mega Mod. It will hopefully also be a useful resource for owners of other Mods that add to the vanilla ships.
This is not an actual mod itself that you can install using JSGME. Rather it is intended to allow other modders (including FotRSU) to incorporate accurate silhouettes into their own mods. If you are using a mod that you think has incorrect or incomplete silhouettes, please ask the author to have a look at this mod in case any of the vessels are a direct match for theirs.
Each vessel in the game has a folder in Data\Sea\VesselName\ in which is a VesselName_sil.dds file. You will probably find that your favourite mods may or may not have one or more silhouettes at 90 degree, 45 degree and 0 degree offsets. The 45 degree and 0 degree silhouettes are often absent. My new silhouettes contain all three viewpoints.
All silhouettes are taken with an Orthogonal viewpoint rather than Perspective to show masts and rigging to best effect and to avoid perspective issues with funnels and bows.
Unless the silhouette states otherwise by the use of a "red aiming line", it is assumed the Top Of Mast point is to be used for all vessels. It is my intention that the very large majority of vessels will use this standard.
The vanilla silhouette textures are normally 512x256 pixels in size. This only allows 128 pixels for each view of a ship and is somewhat small. I have decided to issue these silhouettes in 1024x512 size to incorporate greater detail in the pictures. It will not affect the size of your Recognition Manual on your screen. If you are playing the game at low resolutions you will probably not see much difference but players with larger monitors will hopefully see an increase in detail in the silhouettes with reduced "fuzziness". If you need to reduce the size of the textures back down to 512x256 due to constraints in your hardware, any suitable graphics program should be able to do so. They are saved as DDS DXT5 with Alpha but no MipMaps.
SIZE DOES MATTER!
In addition I have calculated exact Length, Draft and Height values for every vessel in this resource pack based on the actual dimensions of the model used in the game. You will find that over the years the dimensions of the vessels have often been estimated and are frequently grossly incorrect.
Length will benefit those wanting to use manual speed calculations. Draft is essential to know what depth to set for contact or magnetic torpedoes. An accurate height is essential for good rangefinding with the Stadimeter.
Of the vessels checked so far, the Ansyu Maru is only actually 75% of its listed length. The Ada Maru is only half its listed draft while the British War Melody freighter is almost double. The Akita Maru and Zinbu Maru are actually 80% taller than their figures suggest. This makes good firing solutions almost impossible for these vessels.
The correct figures will be listed in table form with every block of vessels released. In the "Method" section below I will outline how I have derived these figures.
To use the accurate figures, compare them to what is in the Data\Sea\VesselName\VesselName.cfg file using Notepad and make any appropriate changes.
PERMISSIONS
You don't need ask me for permission to use the contents of this mod for any reason. You have it. You can add to, subtract from, alter, enhance, embellish, patch, improve to your hearts content. You may add these resources to Compilations. You may re-upload it anywhere. You may print the images in your own hardcopy Recognition Manuals. Once complete I will release the Photoshop PSD file to help you do this conveniently. This is an Open resource that will hopefully prove useful to any Mod or Mega Mod that adds vessels to the game.