[REQ] Asking for help form the pro's.

[chrispottsov1987]

I am hoping to get some useful help from some of the Vet's on here to help get me into modding SH4.

So far I have done no real work on the modding side of the game, aside from changing a few small things in the Career settings and the SAV. files mostly just as a cheat to make the game a little easier. Giving more renowen, better boat etc.

Now I am looking into making some mods of my own. Mostly just for fun but if I am able to get the help and enough interest in the project then I may consider a public Beta release of the project. Those who help out will receive their due aknowledgement in the txt. file.

First off I am not starting with my own boat from scratch. Instead I am going to build on some of the mods that have already been released by others. This is not to rip off your work or in any way be-little the work you have done so far. It is in fact the opposite, your fine work on making the surface ships I have played so far is the reason I am now so interested in fine tuning the ships to allow for better playability.

*Note that although I may use your models to build off I will NOT release any work based off YOUR hard work without first securing your permission and giving you the credit you deserve for you contribution. In time I hope to create my own ships from scratch, however for now as a time saver and until I learn how to do so I will simply use this as a short cut.*

Thats the intro side of this done, Now to tell you of my idea in the hopes of getting some guidance on how to proceeded.

Here is what I am hoping to achieve from this project.
1. All guns are crewed by real crew members, no AI's.
*Only the crew on staff can man guns and must be assigned to the task.
*Weapons are only manned during battle stations or when assigned to them Via the MAN GUNS/AA
2a. Re-work ship design to include fore/aft magazine compartments.
*These should hold all ammo for main guns and AA guns. With ammo being transferred to the weapons topside similar to how the torpedoes were transferred from external storage into the ship. That way the Main weapons do not have 2k plus rounds of HE and AP shells inside the turrets.
*These compartments should be inside the ship and subject to the same damage/destroyed conditions as any other part of the ship, With the added cost that loosing the forward compartment means the forward guns can get no ammo until it has been fixed. If this does not cause a fatal explosion that sinks you, e.g.. Through flooding rather than a direct hit.
2b. All guns should only hold enough ammo to fire two to three salvos. Before requiring reloading from the main ammo stores. This should be done fairly quickly to simulate ammo being supplied to the turrets form inside the ships main magazines.
3. All weapons should be subject to the combined skill of the people assigned to them. I.e.. low skill can result in more shells missing the target and subsequent damage to turrets or injuries to crew should also reduce efficiency. Ultimate result being all crew in say Main turret 1 gets killed, that turret will no longer be able to fire.
5.Removal of torpedo tubes from front of the ship to sides to simulate the side attack the destroyers had, If this can not be done then simply deleting the tube from the ship altogether should be enough, provided this does not cause problems with gameplay, Im guessing that since most ships I have played so far still have one tube even if never loaded, the game must require you to keep at least one on the model as it still resister's it as a sub.
6. Fore and Aft crew compartments/Torpedo compartments should be re-assigned to act as the main turrets crews, With appropriate number of crew slots available for the number of guns on the ship. I think 2 men per barrel will be reasonable.
* Crew for the AA guns should remain as stock numbers for the guns fitted. These should be placed in the AA section of the crew management, with the current deck gun being used to hold members of the crew who man the Auxiliary turrets, the ones on the side of battle ships, or as the case with destroyers the ones in the middle.
7. AA shells loaded into weapons that support them, and other types of ammo being removed from the guns that don't.
* Possible to do this with star shells also, Make it so you can order them to fire one salvo of star shells to light up the sky in order to see the craft you want to start shooting.
8. Although this sounds like it should be simple I doubt it. But I would like to make it so that All the Weapons onboard the ship are player controllable. Hoping this is simply a matter of adding the standard .cam file to each weapon, but if it was that simple I think it would have been done already.
9. Replace the Torpedo crew with Munitions specilaist. Non of these ships have torpedos anyway.

Thats it for now. Later I might look into changing the inside of the ship to reflect a generic room so you don't have to look at the inside of a sub every time you right mouse click by mistake.

Any tips on how to go about this will be greatly appreciated. Although I would welcome other members of the community helping on this I would prefer to be able to do the work myself rather than simply rely on others to do it for me. At least to get this project into an alpha stage, then accept direct contributions from other modders to complete a beta stage and get ready for a public release.

I know this is not going to happen over night. Nor do I believe it to be as simple as I have tried to explain it above. But that does not mean I don't want to give it a try. I have seen the work many of you have done already, So even if I am asking for the moon I have seen enough of your skills to know there are at least a few NASA scientists out there to help make it happen. But please try and keep it under $150billion

I have already looked through one thread that holds a few good answers to get me started

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=165965

But any help advice you can offer would be welcomed.

I already have the S3d editor; Major kudos to Skwas for that little gem.

[chrispottsov1987]

Realise I have made a good little introduction and explained what I want from the mod, but I have not really asked any questions. How else am I going to get any answers?

1. How do I alter the weapons on the ship to make it so all guns have to be manned by crew members, and not generic AI's?

2. How do I change the name of the crew specialities? (No need for torpedo spacialists on board a battle ship.)

3. I know how to change the name on the pre-ezisting compartments, But how do you create new compartments from scratch? Designate their type, crew compliment and damage modles? (Some of this I think I can manage already but advice never hurts)

4. If I am able to create a dedicated ships magazine how do I create a transfer of munitions from the compartment inside ship to the guns topside?

5. Can I make a .cam file for each turret and gun onboard the ship so that each weapon is user contorllable? (This might be a tough one).


6. How to make the froe/aft compartments become the gun crew stations?

7. Make each turret, subject to the combined skill of those crew manning it.

8. Possibility to remove the torpedo tubes, TDC and Periscopes from the ships model, to make it less like a sub and more like a ship? (Maybe leave the TDC onborad the bridge, but alter its function to serve as a range finder for the guns?)

If you have any answers to these questions above I would like to hear from you. Or if you can recomend who may be able to provide some answers to these?

I have looked through a lot of forum threads in hope of finding these answers myself, however the few active threads I have found relating to these topics are somewhat vauge in their descriptions. Only a few threads have promised to provide a full noob guide to modding, however these all seem to be deleted or are hosted off this main forum and all the links seem to have expired. Not supprising with a game this old.

As I said above, All this work is going to be done for the most part by myself where possible, I am not trying to get you to do the work for me, simply point me in the right direction.

Thank you for your help.

you need to start smaller, first ask your questions one or two at a time so you can deal with each issue seperately then you can work your way through your list.

you have so much to read here oi think some people might just skip over it without reading.


since you are looking to create a surface ship mod then send a PM to the modders who made the ones simular to what you are thinging about so they can help you figure out what can and cannot be done within the limitations of the game.

good luck and good hunting

[peabody]

I don't think anyone has even tried the things you are suggesting that is probably why no answers.

Yes, I do think you need at least one torp tube. The scopes are easily hidden in the ship. I don't think you can make all guns playable, I never tried it but I think the limit is 3 AA and 2 Deckguns, but the two deck guns needs to be set up right, it won't work with two separate entries.

Even if you could make each guns Playable where would you put the buttons to select them, you would run out of room.

There is a bunker in the upc files for ammo, but it doesn't show like the torpedoes screen. And when you have external torps they don't actually show on the sub only on the management screen. Maybe it could be done with the menu 1024_768.ini, but I really don't know.

And you can't say "none of these ships had torpedoes", several did. PT boats of course, most DDs, several Cruisers and heavy cruisers and even some BBs.

I would imagine the AI animation sailors on the guns are there to conserve memory and speed. I think you could change some if they had the correct animation for that gun, but I don't think there are "crew member" animations for a lot of the guns you find on ships.

As I stated you may not get a lot of answers because no one has tried a lot of the things you want to do.

[chrispottsov1987]

Shortly after I wrote this, I realised the sheer scope of what I was really asking.

Thanks for the input so far.

Think I need to cut back on my grand design, try starting small. Right now I'm trying to build a skyscraper before I know how to paint a house.

also there are a lot of game engine limitations to what you can and cant do with this game and even though you can do a lot of modding there are many many things you cant mod so dont be discouraged if half your list or more may not be doable

for what is doable you will find all the help you need here from fellow modders but i think a lot of it you will have to discover on your own through trial and error

also most things in this game are interconnected so when you change one thing it can effect 3 or 4 other things

[Armistead]

Many good mods come from ideas.