[TEC] Reorder Recognition Manual

[WernerSobe]

As you know there is a new order of nations in recognition manual since 1.3. That brings up a question. Is it also possible to reorder the ships in more natural way.

I would like a manual that doest have 12 nations with same ships in. But much more a manual with only japanese vessels but ordered more handy.

This is the structure i wanted to realize:

• Merchants (KSS)
  • small modern composite
  • small old split
• Freighters (KMS)
  • medium old split
  • medium old composite
  • medium modern composit
  • medium european composite
• Cargoships (KLS)
  • large old split
  • large modern composite
• Passenger (PP)
  • small passenger carrier
  • modern passenger carrier
  • large old passenger carrier
  • huge european liner
• Destroyers (DD)
  • all destoyers here (im to lazy)
• Light Cruisers (CL)
• Heavy Cruisers (CA)
• Carriers (CV)
• Battleships (BB)

Now my problem is i cant find the files where the order is defined. It should be possible though, i remember back in sh3 there were mods that added new ships to the manual or new nations. So there must be a way. Any ideas?

[tater]

Of course in RL the ships were NOT organized by size, but by APPEARANCE.

Passenger ships in one section (superstructure >= 1/3 ship length)

Composite Superstructures in another section (subdivided by deck (flush, raised, raised 1-3, etc), then funnel/goalpost/mast features).

Split superstructures in another section, similarly subdivided.

Engines Aft last.

To do this in game, the merchant order would change to:

• Passenger
  • huge european liner
  • large old passenger carrier
  • modern passenger carrier
  • small passenger carrier
• Merchants, Composite
  • large modern composite
  • medium old composite
  • medium modern composit
  • medium european composite
  • small modern composite
• Freighters, Split
  • large old split
  • medium old split
  • small old split
• Engines Aft
  • large modern tanker
  • medium tanker
  • small old tanker

The small craft should be in their own section, too (ONI 208-J Supp)

tater

[WernerSobe]

i agree that order makes sence.

well its just an idea. Of course another order can be chosen and we can even make something looking very simmilar to ONI. btw ive forgot the tankers ^^

But the first step is how to change the order at all. You know im sick of going through all battleships and all cruisers just to pick up a destroyer, even if i know what kind of destroyer it is i have to id it for TDC and it just takes to much time to go through every warship or every merchant.

[tater]

Wasn't a criticism, it's a great idea. As you say, once figured out, it can be done in different ways, more tools are always a good thing!

<S>

tater

[tater]

tater

[WernerSobe]

well thanks. thats going to be the next step.

We can make it appear like this its not a big problem. The problem is to find out how the rec manual is put together and where is the order defined.

[WernerSobe]

looks like im on the right way now. Ive managed to make a new country file. Looks like the recognition manual just reads the Roster folders. Now ive just to find out how it decides the order of ships. propably about the same silly way

[WernerSobe]

more foundings!

so rec manual reads the roster folder. Opens each ships cfg file and looks for its unittype. If it is a unittype 0-15 (warships) it is shown in that section. If it is unitype 100-200 (merchants) it is not shown here but in merchant section.

But unittypes for the roster must be matching to the unittypes in "sea" folder which contains the data for that ship. Changing it there too means that all the unittypes for that ships must be matched for every country.

That seems to work for the editor. It does show the new country with all the ships in their new unitype. However the game crashes when trying to start a mission. The problem might be in campaign layer. After all it used another unittypes everywhere so that ship does no longer exist.

So i must try to find a way around.

[tater]

Doesn't look like any normal odering for the roster I can see.

Could it be the order in names.cfg?

(not in front of game on this machine)

tater

[WernerSobe]

na i think you cant do much in names.cfg

it helps to understand how the both cfgs are conected.

ill try to show how rec manual is put together.

Well fist it reads the roster and creates a country tag for every folder in first order. So basicly making a copy of Japan will create a new country called "Copy of Japan" which will contain same ships.

However there is no "Merchants" folder. Every country contains both, warships and merchants. The Recmanual reads the ship cfg files and sorts all the merchants out and puts them all to "Merchants" tag which is a collection of all merchants from all countries.

But since we want have different tags for different merchant types we must work around it. Well my idea was first just to give all the merchants a warship unittype so they would appear in each country and not in the merchant collection. That seems to work in general because the editor doesnt show any errors and shows all the merchants to be warships.

The game crashes however and think i know why. The unittype in roster must match the unit type in data\sea. Which is not a big problem but it seems like the campaign layers do not work because they want to put merchants in and the game cant find them because they are in the warship tree now...

Another idea that im trying to realise is to create a copy of every ship, give it a warship unittype and leave the old ones untouched. But i cannot find where is the connection between the roster cfg files and the ones in sea folder. Thats where i am atm.

[WernerSobe]

yea it seems ive figured it out.

Ive managed to create a new country file with a merchant ship showing. That is enough for the mod. Now it is indeed a lot of work matching all the shipfiles for evrey country. So it may take a while but...

HEADS UP its coming. Status set to Work In Progress