Importing Silent Hunter 4 Stock Ships to Silent Hunter 5 Tutorial
Part 1. Basic Import
To begin, you need a copy of SH 4 and Skwasjer's great Silent 3ditor and a very limited modding skills. There is example import included at the end of the post.
1. Select a ship you want to import from SH 4 (SH4/data/Sea) and copy it to SH 5. I suggest you make a new mod for it. Copy also the selected ships roster file (SH4/data/Roster/*Nation name*/Sea/) and place it to your mods roster folder to the nation you want it to have. Keep the same filestructure that Sh 4 has.
2. Your new import ship works already, and should show in game, but it doesn't have Collision model yet. So open your ships dat-file with S3D. I'm using as an example NKSSS_Kasagisan-ship. Now click the ships main node, in this case it's called 7:Node - NMFMSSS. Create a new child node (type 4/100) to it by right clicking it. Then create a new child node to the node you just created. This time select 8/0 Label-node. Now give the label node a name called
DMG_col_NMFMSSS. This is the most important thing! NMFMSSS means here your ships main nodes name.
You notice when you click your new node that there reads in blue text
Linked 3D model. Currently there is none. So open again the ships main node 7:Node - NMFMSSS and click it's 3D model node. Up center of the S3D screen there reads the 3D models ID number. Copy it and paste it to your new nodes Linked 3D model/Model ID field. Then uncheck the DMG_col-node's Visibility.
Voila! Now you have basic damage model to your ship.
3. Search (Ctrl + F) for WaterReflection and delete all those nodes and their child nodes too. SH 4 water reflections just don't seem to work, so it's not neccessary to keep those.
4. It's ready, and fully functional*! Save and apply your mod. Check the situation in Mission editor, if your ship doesn't show there, something is propably wrong with the roster file. Create a new single mission and test your ship in action!
*Known Bugs:
-Ships don't break in half
-Ships don't cast shadows
-There is no water reflections
-Ships don't show through water when looked above waterline
Download Kasagisan example import ship mod!
Note: I'm not saying this is the right way to import ships, but this is the easiest and most functional way that I know. And after this you need to add guns and crew to your ship, possibly tweak your ships floating mechanics and adjust the textures. But that is a story for another night!
Big thanks for this goes to TDW! If I forgot something, please tell and I'll update this. SteelViking can also add if there is mistakes. And sorry if it's not understandable, making a tutorial is much harder than it sounds... I hope that you also study the import threads, there is no point importing if you just follow instructions, you need to know what is going on too! Good luck
