Weather control - Page 2

Stiebler · 12-13-07, 06:57 AM

@Rubini:
Thanks for your kind thoughts, and I shall be interested to read of your results with the weather when available.

@SubType Zero:
Thanks also for your input. The variables that you mentioned have cropped up before, but no one seems to have done anything with them - until recently (see below). If you search for 'Randomwindspeed*' (don't forget the asterisk) in SubSim, you get just four hits, not counting this thread. Of these four hits, two are recent ones for SH4.

This is what Ref said in January 2007 (concerning file scene.dat):

Quote:

RandomWind (Random wind parameters)
--ChangeTimeMin (The minimum time after which the random wind changes)
--ChangeTimeMax (The maximum time after which the random wind changes)
--RandomWindSpeedMax (The maximum intensity of the random wind)
--RandomWindSpeedVariationSpeed (The speed of intensity change for random wind)
--RandomWindHeadingVariationSpeed (The speed of heading change for random wind)
DropsNumber (Total number of rain drops)
FallSpeed (Rain drop fall speed)
RainIntensityChangeSpeed (The speed of change for rain intensity)
MinSize (Rain drop minimum size)
MaxSize (Rain drop maximum size)
HeadColor (The color of the start of the drop)
HeadAlpha (The alpha of the start of the drop)
TailColor (The color of the end of the drop)
TailAlpha (The alpha of the end of the drop)

The only use that seems to have been made of these parameters was in November 2007 for SH4, by LeoVampire, and he emphasised that he had tested them only briefly:

Quote:

There are several node's that control the weather but the higher the time compression used the less the game read's and uses the base setting's.

Wind:

windheadingchangespeed= 0.01 0.03
windspeedchangespeed= 0.01 0.03

Random Wind and rain:

Changetimemin= 3 2 this is the key to weather changes
Changetimemax= 5 5 this is the key to weather changes
Randomwindspeedmax= 0.01 0.05
Randomwindspeedvariationspeed= 0.005 0.009
randomwindheadingspeedvariation= 0.005 0.009
rainintensitychangespeed= 0.01 0.009 I did this because the rain was changing too often.

Original value's are in white and my changes are in Green [Stiebler: second values are green, 1st values are white in original.]

As you can see I changed everything but the max main time. When I did the weather started to change every few hour's not day's so I left that alone.

If you feel like having a go changing these variables, then these two pieces of wisdom will help a lot.

It is easy for anyone to change parameters in scene.dat with TimeTraveler's Mini Tweaker or his SH3FileAnalyzer. I recommend the latter, because it is not sensitive to file size (someone else might have changed the file size). By coincidence, I posted a copy of TimeTraveler's SH3FileAnalyzer in connection with another thread, at this address:

http://files.filefront.com/SH3FileAn.../fileinfo.html

But don't forget, because of the random nature of weather changes, you've got to do a lot of repeat testing of each changed setting to smooth out random fluctuations. And don't forget to make back-ups of original files *before* you change them!

Stiebler.

Wolfehunter · 12-13-07, 11:15 AM

Thanks Stiebler for your input. I didn't know that time compression stunted the weather. That could also explain the long rainy storm sessions.

Did GWX 2.0 work on weather? I downloaded SH3 weather 1.5 but I don't know if it will work with GWX 2.0?

Tomi_099 · 12-14-07, 05:48 AM

Oh Good gave me a Snow ,Snow , Snow !!! , or have somebody Snow ? ???
Or if I must make everything same!!!

Stiebler · 12-14-07, 07:21 AM

Out of curiosity, I've tried three long patrols in a IXC U-boat using NYGM's campaign files with *stock weather* and small changes made as suggested by LeoVampire (see my earlier post).

I made the following small changes to scene.dat:

Windheadingchangespeed 0.03 (was 0.01)
Windspeedchangespeed 0.03 (was 0.01)
Changetimemin 2.0 (was 3.0)
Randomwindspeedvariation 0.007 (was 0.005)
Randomwindheadingspeedvariation 0.007 (was 0.005)

These settings were a disaster. Wind levels rose from the initial 5 m/s to 15 m/s, and then stuck there for one whole patrol at 13-15 m/s. It seems that the Windheadingchangespeed and Windspeedchangespeed settings need to be lowered (not increased) if the wind is to change more frequently.

So I abandoned the first two changes, and raised the Rainintensity change speed a little.

Now I have the following changes ONLY:

Changetimemin 2.0 (was 3.0)
Randomwindspeedvariation 0.007 (was 0.005)
Randomwindheadingspeedvariation 0.007 (was 0.005)
Rainintensitychangespeed 0.013 (was 0.010)

In two long patrols at tc=1024, these weather changes look really good - no long spells of bad weather, and fairly frequent minor changes. I'm going to stick with these values for a while.

If anyone else wishes to try these values, please share experiences in this thread. But remember - they are random changes. You must complete a long patrol for your results to have any meaning.

One last thing - I just cannot believe Leovampire's assertion in the SH4 thread (quoted above) that weather is dependent on time compression. Even at tc 4096, the game gets updated every 10 minutes or so. Weather changes take at least several hours even to be considered. The devs would have needed to make some pretty eccentric programming to introduce an effect dependent on time compression. Or does anyone else know better?

Stiebler.

U49 · 12-14-07, 12:38 PM

@stiebler
Some great research you did, Sir

Subject · 12-14-07, 01:43 PM

:hmm: this is interesting... since this thread http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?p=679647, I have included weatherreporting duties into my patrols. Weather is checked and written down at least 6 times a day. And every change is reported when it occurs.

With the latest testsettings on this 5th patrol the whole, entire first week we had a constant wind of 7m/s, but then on the eigth day it dramatically rose to 8m/s

Now we are going into week three and no further change yet...

Didn't know you can make changed in .MIS files midpatrol! Thought SH3 would crash then... but that will make changing a lot easier, as I until now only changed setting between patrols.

Once completed I'll report my observations, but so far I can't draw a final conclusion. I guess the random factor is playing it's part?

Day 24... into the mist

Thanks for the feeadback, Stiebler. Looks promising!

Happy hunting!

Wolfehunter · 12-14-07, 02:03 PM

I tried something dangerous or at I think it was risky... I'm using SH3weather 1.5 while playing in a game. Funny thing is I put random weather right and this is what happens.
The good,
I'm playing GWX2.0 so heavy weather mega rains for days I love the effect but it would be nice to see the sun. So I've change the settings while in the game. It was cool the weather slowly changed in a few minutes. Sun came out over the clouds and the wind died down. 3 days later heavy winds hit and still sunny with some clouds. 5 day before I was heading home Its was starting to rain. Funny thing was it was working good. Almost real.

Problems,
I couldn't shake off the heavy rain and wind sounds the whole game. It modifed the Campaign files... I don't know what effects it will do with untill I start a new patrol later. I will know if it breaks any of the files. I hope not..:hmm:

Other than that it works flawless. I will update you later with the after effect results.

Subtype Zero · 12-15-07, 02:10 AM

Thanks for your input, Stiebler! I've also been playing around with some of the values in scene.dat (after first finally figuring out how to use Timetraveller's Tweakfile--the hex locations of some of the variables in scene.dat have changed--grrr).

This file is difficult to get a handle on! Like you said, the values seem to be counter-intuitive; when you think you are increasing a value, you may actually be decreasing the liklihood of some event occurring! I seem to have had the opposite problem that you had--instead of days of endless rain, I had a complete patrol with no rain whatsoever.

I am going to try a patrol with the following values and see how they work:

ChangeTimeMin 2 (was 3)
RainIntensityChangeSpeed .005 (was .01)
WindSpeedChangeSpeed .0075 (was .01)
RandomWindSpeedVariationSpeed .0075 (was .005)

I'm not bothering with the windheading variables, as they do not seem to have any effect on gameplay. (Although as I type this, I wonder if these values might interact with the other values in unpredictable ways? :hmm:Hmmm). Do you have any opinion on what RandomWindSpeedMax does? Its original setting is .01, but I have not tried changing its value yet.

I agree with you about TC not having any effect on weather changes. In my testing, the weather actually changes on a fairly predictable schedule. You just don't know which variable may change at a given time.

@Subject
Yeah, changing the .mis files can be done mid-patrol. And, I believe the .mis files interact with the settings in scene.dat as well!

12-15-07, 08:59 AM

I am amazed at the level of modding expertise hovering around these sub games. Of course there are the old greats who revamped SH2. But I see more and more newbies and the collective modding power is truly amazing. A great deal of activity is revolving around fixes that were perhaps fixed in 2005 and 2006, and I note old hands informing the newbies that such and such was already done. There really should be created a written volume file that would list all the old mods, changes etc., so that newbies don't re-invent the wheel. And by this I don't mean just a sticky thread of old postings. I mean something like a document with at least an index. I recall in the old DOOM 16 bit days , of 1993-94 (Doom hit the shelves in Dec 93) that many tricks were discovered to make the game better that by 1995 actually appeared in a thick book - a how to - for building Dome wads. The book was like 3 inches thick. It had many of my inventions (but not all. *note*) in it, and was packed with all kinds of ideas. But let's face it - SH3 modding is far advanced from 16 bit DOOM. One could make a two volume set how to book on these Ubi sub games.

I was thinking last night, if 1000 SH3 lovers could pool $250 per person, say by having Subsim collect it for us, perhaps $250,000 bucks (actually we should use Eruos)could induce the Devs to do some real things for us. Say for example, moving more of the hardwired data into data files that we could mod with. Perhaps fixing up many of the old troubles and also adding in things like real AI u-boats, torpedo firing torpedo boats, Japanese, and American subs and so forth.

As some know I created V-Mod, where Germany wins the war, because I am not all that much into historical reenactment. So one of my own dreams was to create an alternate reality SH3. All this weather talk has got my juices going. There was this old 1950s sci-fi book where aliens raised a sunken US WWII sub and reconstitued its crew using alien technology, so that the sub could fight for them on an alien planet completely covered with ocean. The Aliens who raised the sub had little expertise fighting under water (silly I know) but its something I wish I could mod.

*note*

Some of my old DOOM inventions: 1. standard oneway attack window - I believe I was first to build it. 2. BFG-only attack window. 3. A zombie machine that - if a player stepped into it - would turn a player for one level into a zombie (completely dead, but walking) so that monsters would ignore him. 4. a clone machine that when you stepped onto it that would create more copies of player 1. 5. a room created from a box turned wrong-side-out that would create a vast (I mean vast) area that would use almost no memory compared to creating a normal room (a good thing in the 4 meg memory and 386 and 486 days), 6. a special gate to BOZO space (basic game grid) where weapons took on strange properties and where players could go off the grid one direction and loop back to the opposite side of the map. 7. real double sided glass (something no one else did and had not done by 1999). 8. poison gas system that would slowly kill all players on a level. 9. A floor screen that would allow you to see what was going on in another room (was able to switch on or off). 10. a foot pad activated exploding barrel teleporting device that would teleport exploding barrels to various areas of a level. 11. a Zero room where you could run around killing monsters while they could not detect you. 12. 'Invisible force' poles that would block the monster sight across the line between two poles. 13. An alien making machine - where a pig beast demon would enter it and be changed into a blue uniformed alien gray.

Letum · 12-15-07, 09:10 AM

Whats the feasibility of making a program that's runs when SH3 is running and changes
the weather whilst the game is running?

Stiebler · 12-15-07, 09:30 AM

@Subtype Zero:

I don't know whether changing wind direction, or the rate at which it changes, has any effect on wind speeds or its rate of change.

However, since the effort to make the extra change for wind direction is absolutely trivial, why not remove the possibility (however remote) that it might have an effect? It will take 30 seconds to make the change compared with, what?, perhaps three hours of testing.

@Letum:
To make a program that runs in the background making weather changes while SH3 is running?
This question has been raised in other contexts before. The chance is zilch, because, although technically feasible, it would be incredibly complicated. In the special case of modifying the scene.dat file (or the campaign files), it would also serve no purpose since the data has *already* been put into memory. And who knows where?, which could only be discovered by reverse engineering the program code. Not only does the difficulty of this make the mind boggle, but a condition of purchase of SH3 was that you would not reverse-engineer the program!

@Waveskipper:
If you can find 1,000 SubSim forum members who will contribute $250 per person for *any* cause, you can raise the campaign funds for my putative attempt to run for next US president.

General:
I've just completed a very long patrol in an IXd2 from Bordeaux to U 488 (tanker) to Cape Town, to 'Brake' (tanker) and all the way back again with the settings for scene.dat from my last post. The weather settings appear again to be very good. There remains no evidence for a 'wrap-around' of effects (ie wind speed jumping from 15 m/s to 0 m/s), but large jumps are commonplace (eg 15 m/s to 7 m/s), which is nearly as good.

Stiebler.

Letum · 12-15-07, 12:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Stiebler

@Letum:
To make a program that runs in the background making weather changes while SH3 is running?
This question has been raised in other contexts before. The chance is zilch, because, although technically feasible, it would be incredibly complicated. In the special case of modifying the scene.dat file (or the campaign files), it would also serve no purpose since the data has *already* been put into memory. And who knows where?, which could only be discovered by reverse engineering the program code. Not only does the difficulty of this make the mind boggle, but a condition of purchase of SH3 was that you would not reverse-engineer the program!

From other posts I am under the impression that changeing the scene.dat file whilst
ingame does effect the weather and so it can't be imprinted into the games memory
at first load.
Are you sure this is incorrect?

If it is, then I can easily make a program that edits the scene.dat file in real time.

12-15-07, 02:31 PM

To intercept a program while running requires one most important thing!
You must be able to read and understand Assembly Language!!
If you can't do that?
No program out there will help you.
Then you must be able to write an intercept program.
That can be done in nearly any Programming language.
C++ being preferred.
I don't know for sure where Ubi stands at this time
on doing this.
I suspect, that if it means more sales of SH3 with no investment
on thier part?
If it was a small scale job, they'd let it ride.
Start doing it large scale and releaseing tech info?
Probably hear from the Suits!!!

Subtype Zero · 12-15-07, 04:24 PM

@Cpt. Letum:

I have not had any problems changing the contents of the .mis files in the middle of a patrol, but I have not altered the scene.dat file in the middle of a patrol. The .mis files are simple text changes, whereas changing scene.dat involves moving bunches of bits and bytes around--much more of a risky proposition.

12-15-07, 04:33 PM

Altering the scene.dat, or any dat while the game is running is useless.
All files are loaded into memory at run time.
They can only be affected during run time by a program that reaches into
those memory areas and changes things.
Files such as the random and scripted files only load what's in rendering range
to a certain extend, so we can change them on the fly.

12-13-07, 11:15 AM	#17
Wolfehunter Crusty Capt. Join Date: Sep 2007 Posts: 2,752 Downloads: 40 Uploads: 25	Thanks Stiebler for your input. I didn't know that time compression stunted the weather. That could also explain the long rainy storm sessions. Did GWX 2.0 work on weather? I downloaded SH3 weather 1.5 but I don't know if it will work with GWX 2.0? __________________

12-14-07, 05:48 AM	#18
Tomi_099 The Old Man Join Date: May 2007 Location: München / Germany Posts: 1,486 Downloads: 426 Uploads: 0	Gave me a Snow ,Snow , Snow !!! Oh Good gave me a Snow ,Snow , Snow !!! , or have somebody Snow ? ??? Or if I must make everything same!!!

12-14-07, 07:21 AM	#19
Stiebler Fuel Supplier Join Date: Oct 2005 Location: London, UK Posts: 1,237 Downloads: 29 Uploads: 4	New parameters for scene.dat Out of curiosity, I've tried three long patrols in a IXC U-boat using NYGM's campaign files with stock weather and small changes made as suggested by LeoVampire (see my earlier post). I made the following small changes to scene.dat: Windheadingchangespeed 0.03 (was 0.01) Windspeedchangespeed 0.03 (was 0.01) Changetimemin 2.0 (was 3.0) Randomwindspeedvariation 0.007 (was 0.005) Randomwindheadingspeedvariation 0.007 (was 0.005) These settings were a disaster. Wind levels rose from the initial 5 m/s to 15 m/s, and then stuck there for one whole patrol at 13-15 m/s. It seems that the Windheadingchangespeed and Windspeedchangespeed settings need to be lowered (not increased) if the wind is to change more frequently. So I abandoned the first two changes, and raised the Rainintensity change speed a little. Now I have the following changes ONLY: Changetimemin 2.0 (was 3.0) Randomwindspeedvariation 0.007 (was 0.005) Randomwindheadingspeedvariation 0.007 (was 0.005) Rainintensitychangespeed 0.013 (was 0.010) In two long patrols at tc=1024, these weather changes look really good - no long spells of bad weather, and fairly frequent minor changes. I'm going to stick with these values for a while. If anyone else wishes to try these values, please share experiences in this thread. But remember - they are random changes. You must complete a long patrol for your results to have any meaning. One last thing - I just cannot believe Leovampire's assertion in the SH4 thread (quoted above) that weather is dependent on time compression. Even at tc 4096, the game gets updated every 10 minutes or so. Weather changes take at least several hours even to be considered. The devs would have needed to make some pretty eccentric programming to introduce an effect dependent on time compression. Or does anyone else know better? Stiebler. __________________ NYGM Tonnage War Mod - More than a mod: it's an experience!

12-14-07, 12:38 PM	#20
U49 Grey Wolf Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: D/Niedersachsen Posts: 777 Downloads: 0 Uploads: 0	@stiebler Some great research you did, Sir __________________ SH3 battle capability upgrades: GWX2.0, JSGME2.0, SH3Commander 2.7, SH3Gen 0.8.2, TorpDamageMod 2.0, OLC GUI 1.1.5 Awaiting combat readiness for GWX2.0: SH4 effetcs for SH3, SH3Weather 1.5 Following development of: www.subwolves.com Realism: 90%

12-14-07, 01:43 PM	#21
Subject Sparky Join Date: Mar 2007 Posts: 158 Downloads: 0 Uploads: 0	:hmm: this is interesting... since this thread http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?p=679647, I have included weatherreporting duties into my patrols. Weather is checked and written down at least 6 times a day. And every change is reported when it occurs. With the latest testsettings on this 5th patrol the whole, entire first week we had a constant wind of 7m/s, but then on the eigth day it dramatically rose to 8m/s Now we are going into week three and no further change yet... Didn't know you can make changed in .MIS files midpatrol! Thought SH3 would crash then... but that will make changing a lot easier, as I until now only changed setting between patrols. Once completed I'll report my observations, but so far I can't draw a final conclusion. I guess the random factor is playing it's part? Day 24... into the mist Thanks for the feeadback, Stiebler. Looks promising! Happy hunting! __________________

12-14-07, 02:03 PM	#22
Wolfehunter Crusty Capt. Join Date: Sep 2007 Posts: 2,752 Downloads: 40 Uploads: 25	I tried something dangerous or at I think it was risky... I'm using SH3weather 1.5 while playing in a game. Funny thing is I put random weather right and this is what happens. The good, I'm playing GWX2.0 so heavy weather mega rains for days I love the effect but it would be nice to see the sun. So I've change the settings while in the game. It was cool the weather slowly changed in a few minutes. Sun came out over the clouds and the wind died down. 3 days later heavy winds hit and still sunny with some clouds. 5 day before I was heading home Its was starting to rain. Funny thing was it was working good. Almost real. Problems, I couldn't shake off the heavy rain and wind sounds the whole game. It modifed the Campaign files... I don't know what effects it will do with untill I start a new patrol later. I will know if it breaks any of the files. I hope not..:hmm: Other than that it works flawless. I will update you later with the after effect results. __________________

12-15-07, 02:10 AM	#23
Subtype Zero Lieutenant Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: 19,998 Leagues under the sea Posts: 262 Downloads: 7 Uploads: 0	Thanks for your input, Stiebler! I've also been playing around with some of the values in scene.dat (after first finally figuring out how to use Timetraveller's Tweakfile--the hex locations of some of the variables in scene.dat have changed--grrr). This file is difficult to get a handle on! Like you said, the values seem to be counter-intuitive; when you think you are increasing a value, you may actually be decreasing the liklihood of some event occurring! I seem to have had the opposite problem that you had--instead of days of endless rain, I had a complete patrol with no rain whatsoever. I am going to try a patrol with the following values and see how they work: ChangeTimeMin 2 (was 3) RainIntensityChangeSpeed .005 (was .01) WindSpeedChangeSpeed .0075 (was .01) RandomWindSpeedVariationSpeed .0075 (was .005) I'm not bothering with the windheading variables, as they do not seem to have any effect on gameplay. (Although as I type this, I wonder if these values might interact with the other values in unpredictable ways? :hmm:Hmmm). Do you have any opinion on what RandomWindSpeedMax does? Its original setting is .01, but I have not tried changing its value yet. I agree with you about TC not having any effect on weather changes. In my testing, the weather actually changes on a fairly predictable schedule. You just don't know which variable may change at a given time. @Subject Yeah, changing the .mis files can be done mid-patrol. And, I believe the .mis files interact with the settings in scene.dat as well! __________________

12-15-07, 08:59 AM	#24
Wave Skipper Stowaway Posts: n/a Downloads: Uploads:	Having returned to SH3 I am amazed I am amazed at the level of modding expertise hovering around these sub games. Of course there are the old greats who revamped SH2. But I see more and more newbies and the collective modding power is truly amazing. A great deal of activity is revolving around fixes that were perhaps fixed in 2005 and 2006, and I note old hands informing the newbies that such and such was already done. There really should be created a written volume file that would list all the old mods, changes etc., so that newbies don't re-invent the wheel. And by this I don't mean just a sticky thread of old postings. I mean something like a document with at least an index. I recall in the old DOOM 16 bit days , of 1993-94 (Doom hit the shelves in Dec 93) that many tricks were discovered to make the game better that by 1995 actually appeared in a thick book - a how to - for building Dome wads. The book was like 3 inches thick. It had many of my inventions (but not all. note) in it, and was packed with all kinds of ideas. But let's face it - SH3 modding is far advanced from 16 bit DOOM. One could make a two volume set how to book on these Ubi sub games. I was thinking last night, if 1000 SH3 lovers could pool $250 per person, say by having Subsim collect it for us, perhaps $250,000 bucks (actually we should use Eruos)could induce the Devs to do some real things for us. Say for example, moving more of the hardwired data into data files that we could mod with. Perhaps fixing up many of the old troubles and also adding in things like real AI u-boats, torpedo firing torpedo boats, Japanese, and American subs and so forth. As some know I created V-Mod, where Germany wins the war, because I am not all that much into historical reenactment. So one of my own dreams was to create an alternate reality SH3. All this weather talk has got my juices going. There was this old 1950s sci-fi book where aliens raised a sunken US WWII sub and reconstitued its crew using alien technology, so that the sub could fight for them on an alien planet completely covered with ocean. The Aliens who raised the sub had little expertise fighting under water (silly I know) but its something I wish I could mod. note Some of my old DOOM inventions: 1. standard oneway attack window - I believe I was first to build it. 2. BFG-only attack window. 3. A zombie machine that - if a player stepped into it - would turn a player for one level into a zombie (completely dead, but walking) so that monsters would ignore him. 4. a clone machine that when you stepped onto it that would create more copies of player 1. 5. a room created from a box turned wrong-side-out that would create a vast (I mean vast) area that would use almost no memory compared to creating a normal room (a good thing in the 4 meg memory and 386 and 486 days), 6. a special gate to BOZO space (basic game grid) where weapons took on strange properties and where players could go off the grid one direction and loop back to the opposite side of the map. 7. real double sided glass (something no one else did and had not done by 1999). 8. poison gas system that would slowly kill all players on a level. 9. A floor screen that would allow you to see what was going on in another room (was able to switch on or off). 10. a foot pad activated exploding barrel teleporting device that would teleport exploding barrels to various areas of a level. 11. a Zero room where you could run around killing monsters while they could not detect you. 12. 'Invisible force' poles that would block the monster sight across the line between two poles. 13. An alien making machine - where a pig beast demon would enter it and be changed into a blue uniformed alien gray. Last edited by Wave Skipper; 12-15-07 at 09:21 AM.

12-15-07, 09:10 AM	#25
Letum Navy Seal Join Date: Feb 2005 Location: York - UK Posts: 6,079 Downloads: 43 Uploads: 0	Whats the feasibility of making a program that's runs when SH3 is running and changes the weather whilst the game is running? __________________

12-15-07, 09:30 AM	#26
Stiebler Fuel Supplier Join Date: Oct 2005 Location: London, UK Posts: 1,237 Downloads: 29 Uploads: 4	@Subtype Zero: I don't know whether changing wind direction, or the rate at which it changes, has any effect on wind speeds or its rate of change. However, since the effort to make the extra change for wind direction is absolutely trivial, why not remove the possibility (however remote) that it might have an effect? It will take 30 seconds to make the change compared with, what?, perhaps three hours of testing. @Letum: To make a program that runs in the background making weather changes while SH3 is running? This question has been raised in other contexts before. The chance is zilch, because, although technically feasible, it would be incredibly complicated. In the special case of modifying the scene.dat file (or the campaign files), it would also serve no purpose since the data has already been put into memory. And who knows where?, which could only be discovered by reverse engineering the program code. Not only does the difficulty of this make the mind boggle, but a condition of purchase of SH3 was that you would not reverse-engineer the program! @Waveskipper: If you can find 1,000 SubSim forum members who will contribute $250 per person for any cause, you can raise the campaign funds for my putative attempt to run for next US president. General: I've just completed a very long patrol in an IXd2 from Bordeaux to U 488 (tanker) to Cape Town, to 'Brake' (tanker) and all the way back again with the settings for scene.dat from my last post. The weather settings appear again to be very good. There remains no evidence for a 'wrap-around' of effects (ie wind speed jumping from 15 m/s to 0 m/s), but large jumps are commonplace (eg 15 m/s to 7 m/s), which is nearly as good. Stiebler. __________________ NYGM Tonnage War Mod - More than a mod: it's an experience!

12-15-07, 02:31 PM	#28
Madox58 Stowaway Posts: n/a Downloads: Uploads:	To intercept a program while running requires one most important thing! You must be able to read and understand Assembly Language!! If you can't do that? No program out there will help you. Then you must be able to write an intercept program. That can be done in nearly any Programming language. C++ being preferred. I don't know for sure where Ubi stands at this time on doing this. I suspect, that if it means more sales of SH3 with no investment on thier part? If it was a small scale job, they'd let it ride. Start doing it large scale and releaseing tech info? Probably hear from the Suits!!!

12-15-07, 04:24 PM	#29
Subtype Zero Lieutenant Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: 19,998 Leagues under the sea Posts: 262 Downloads: 7 Uploads: 0	@Cpt. Letum: I have not had any problems changing the contents of the .mis files in the middle of a patrol, but I have not altered the scene.dat file in the middle of a patrol. The .mis files are simple text changes, whereas changing scene.dat involves moving bunches of bits and bytes around--much more of a risky proposition. __________________

12-15-07, 04:33 PM	#30
Madox58 Stowaway Posts: n/a Downloads: Uploads:	Altering the scene.dat, or any dat while the game is running is useless. All files are loaded into memory at run time. They can only be affected during run time by a program that reaches into those memory areas and changes things. Files such as the random and scripted files only load what's in rendering range to a certain extend, so we can change them on the fly.