[WIP] Depth charge noise; a few brave alpha testers wanted

Ok, I'm at the point where this works . . . kinda. As you can see here:



It's not perfect; there are still things I want to add or adjust (a sound bite associated with the bubbles, taken from a real WWII recording of an underwater explosion; adjusting the bubble cloud to look more spherical and 'churning', for example) and one bug that's kicking my butt.

For whatever reason I can't get the visible depth charge explosion to appear, no matter what I've tried, without it breaking the 'link' to the bubble cloud. If I have the visible explosion appear the bubble cloud only lasts ten seconds; without the visible explosion it lasts as long as I program it to last. --mutters--

Anyway, I'd like to have several people play with this and test it out. I'm looking for several things: 1) Are there any frame-rate hits/degradation? 2) How do single attacking warships behave? 3) How do multiple attacking warships behave? Especially over time and repeated depth charge attacks.

One of my concerns is that this doesn't really mask a warship's hydrophone hearing as much as it creates a 'sound target'. I'm concerned that after one attack warships will just fixate on their prior attack zone and completely ignore a U-boat creeping away. Not that that's a bad thing, exactly! :p :rotfl: But it's also not terribly realistic.

[Philipp_Thomsen]

Originally Posted by Albrecht Von Hesse

Ok, I'm at the point where this works . . . kinda. As you can see here:



It's not perfect; there are still things I want to add or adjust (a sound bite associated with the bubbles, taken from a real WWII recording of an underwater explosion; adjusting the bubble cloud to look more spherical and 'churning', for example) and one bug that's kicking my butt.

For whatever reason I can't get the visible depth charge explosion to appear, no matter what I've tried, without it breaking the 'link' to the bubble cloud. If I have the visible explosion appear the bubble cloud only lasts ten seconds; without the visible explosion it lasts as long as I program it to last. --mutters--

Anyway, I'd like to have several people play with this and test it out. I'm looking for several things: 1) Are there any frame-rate hits/degradation? 2) How do single attacking warships behave? 3) How do multiple attacking warships behave? Especially over time and repeated depth charge attacks.

One of my concerns is that this doesn't really mask a warship's hydrophone hearing as much as it creates a 'sound target'. I'm concerned that after one attack warships will just fixate on their prior attack zone and completely ignore a U-boat creeping away. Not that that's a bad thing, exactly! :p :rotfl: But it's also not terribly realistic.

BRING IT ON!!!

Where do I sign?

[dertien]

Na dann kommt !!!!

[Wolfehunter]

I might be asking too much but is it possible to add like a shock wave?:hmm: Sorta like a expanding wave bubble that slowly vanishes?


What do you think?


TY

WH

Originally Posted by Wolfehunter

I might be asking too much but is it possible to add like a shock wave?:hmm: Sorta like a expanding wave bubble that slowly vanishes?


What do you think?


TY

WH

I'm not sure. I like the idea, yes. But I've having a damn-all hard time trying to get the visible flash explosion to appear without that breaking the Bold link. If I figure out what's screwy there and get that to work I don't see why an expanding, slowly-vanishing shock wave bubble couldn't be added as well.

@dertien: Ummm . . . I have no idea what that means!

[Wolfehunter]

Originally Posted by Albrecht Von Hesse

I'm not sure. I like the idea, yes. But I've having a damn-all hard time trying to get the visible flash explosion to appear without that breaking the Bold link. If I figure out what's screwy there and get that to work I don't see why an expanding, slowly-vanishing shock wave bubble couldn't be added as well.

@dertien: Ummm . . . I have no idea what that means!

Well it was a cool idea.:hmm: Wheres RB when you need him hay.

[gimpy117]

i at least want the sound for sh4 but ill put it in both...

[danurve]

I am wondering about the use of BOLD.

If this is being used then which version of BOLD is modled?
And, does this change given the progress of time in the game or is it a fixed version?

[Graf Paper]

Originally Posted by msalama

But how about making a new bold .tga having an explosion followed by a bubble cloud, instead of messing about with the DC graphic file(s)? Just a thought, mind.

That's exactly the opposite of what I suggested, msalama.

My thought was, that since it is the depth charge that spawns the BOLD, changing the textures for the DC effects so the last few frames of the explosion gradually changed into a bubble cloud would make using the bubble effect of the BOLD unnecessary, thereby solving the problem of having both effects triggered together.

Altering the effects textures for the BOLD, by your reasoning, would replace the explosion effects of the depth charge but that would again mean altering the DC effects anyways.

Since the BOLD is spawned by the depth charge, it just seems to follow that you'd want the explosion to come with the depth charge and not with the BOLD.

danurve, you do raise a point here with your questions.

With Albrecht's Improved ASW mod adding larger and more powerful depth charges as the war progresses, would a stronger and more effective BOLD be needed to reflect the greater disturbances generated by the explosions?

What about hedgehogs? Does each shell spawn a BOLD or just a single one that is longer lasting and influences a larger sphere?

It will certainly be interesting to see what AvH has in store.

Originally Posted by Graf Paper

That's exactly the opposite of what I suggested, msalama.

My thought was, that since it is the depth charge that spawns the BOLD, changing the textures for the DC effects so the last few frames of the explosion gradually changed into a bubble cloud would make using the bubble effect of the BOLD unnecessary, thereby solving the problem of having both effects triggered together.

Altering the effects textures for the BOLD, by your reasoning, would replace the explosion effects of the depth charge but that would again mean altering the DC effects anyways.

Since the BOLD is spawned by the depth charge, it just seems to follow that you'd want the explosion to come with the depth charge and not with the BOLD.

danurve, you do raise a point here with your questions.

With Albrecht's Improved ASW mod adding larger and more powerful depth charges as the war progresses, would a stronger and more effective BOLD be needed to reflect the greater disturbances generated by the explosions?

What about hedgehogs? Does each shell spawn a BOLD or just a single one that is longer lasting and influences a larger sphere?

It will certainly be interesting to see what AvH has in store.

Ok, Lord only knows I'm new at this so I might be incorrect in some of my observations but, here goes . . .

The Bolds are hard-coded controlled just as the depth charges, torpedoes and hedgehogs, to name a few. Those controllers affect how each of the ammunition types act and function. For the Bolds, it controls how long they last, how 'big' the bubble cloud (sonar target) is and how it visually appears. From what I can see the particle it uses has a lifetime of 10 seconds. Normally that means the effect lasts until the generator is 'destroyed' or the particle effect ends. With a lifetime of 10 seconds that should mean the Bold cloud would only last 10 seconds.

Obviously it doesn't. So I can only conclude that the amun_Bold controller keeps regenerating the particle effect throughout the lifetime of the Bold. I haven't experimented with it (yet) but it seems to me that if I modified the bubble cloud to show, first, the visible depth charge explosion then, as time passes, having that fade as it is replaced with the bubble cloud . . . that that cycle would continually repeat throughout the lifetime of the Bold. (Wiser and more learned heads here might know better).

So I don't think I can change the textures or particles for the depth charge explosion/bubble cloud creation that way. Unfortunately, I've tried twelve different ways of spawning this effect by starting off with seeing the visible depth charge explosion then having that spawn a Bold. And they all do work . . .

. . . except that, in doing so, they seem to break the amun_Bold controller function. The bubble cloud only lasts approximately 10 seconds, which is (not-so-coincidentally, I'm sure) the lifetime of the particle effect itself.

I could probably mess around with the particle effect and make it last for minutes, but the problem is that it's not the particle effect that influences how escorts 'hear' the bubble cloud: it's the amun_Bold controller that does so. It's not enough to just have things look right . . . they have to act right, too.

As to the ASW mod, they don't add larger and/or more powerful depth charges. The British Mark VII heavy and the US Mark 9 'fast-sinker' depth charges were designed to sink faster, not explode harder. In fact, the Mark 9 contained less explosive, not more. However, because they were exploding much deeper (we do dive deep to evade, don't we? ) their shock was greater due to the increased pressure at those depths.

I'm not planning on having hedgehogs spawn a disruption bubble for several reasons. The reasons hedgehogs were so devastating were because if they didn't hit they didn't explode. And when they did hit . . . it usually only took one or two hits to cripple and sink a U-boat. They also contained one-fifth to one-sixth the amount of explosive that a standard DC did, which means they didn't create anywhere near as much a sound disruption. As well, hedgehogs were a 'look-ahead, throw-ahead' weapon: warships never lost sonar/sound contact when attacking. If they missed, they could still hear you. If they hit, well . . . they definitely knew where you were.

AvH

[msalama]

Hmmm...

A couple of suggestions - and yes, I've no SH3 modding knowledge whatsoever so if I'm being more of a hindrance than help here then please say so and I'll STFU straight away!

But anyway here goes while I'm still welcomed

1) How about making a wrapper of some kind that just runs the effects sequentially so that they're not actually connected to each other?

2) How about somehow introducing a small delay between the effects?

PS. Rgt Graf.