[REQ] Radio Broadcasts

[ryuzu]

So digging a bit in SH4 the radio broadcast possibilities look interesting.

To summarise there are two ways of playing modded sound; the gramophone (just like SHIII) and the new radio set.

The radio is already stocked by Ubi surprisingly, but the way it works you may never know about it

It seems the radio is designed such that it will play files at specified times/dates - just like real radio you have to have your set switched on and tuned in! Given that the broadcasts are only a few seconds long, unless you know it's coming the chances of having the radio on at that time are slim!

The data is just a set of text files and ogg (and some wave) files. Each radio station is set up in a text file. A quite cool thing is that the radio stations have dates so you could have one station in Manila initially English language, being shutdown and replaced by a Japanese one Plus the stations can be given a specified frequency so you can have a US, Japanese, Australian, Chinese station etc There appears to be a coordinate system possibly coupled with a range parameter - if so (and if that works) it would be v. cool to only get transmissions when in range of the transmitter. (As a side note, I suppose you could incorporate this into missions - special forces transmissions at certain times etc)

So here's the requests

1) Obviously, news clips at the right times (perhaps repeated each hour for a day since they can easily be missed), and some stock radio music to fill in the gaps.

As I see it, a US Sub will have its own English language records, so the radio may as well be foreign (Japanese, Chinese etc) music and speech, while other English language stations may be just speech broadcasts (with minimal music to fill in the gaps).

2) The problem with the radio system as it stands is knowing when a broadcast is on. As it is you'd need to leave the radio on all the time to hear them... There are a couple of possiblities here 1) Use a text file - this is what I did, just read the config file to see the dates for broadcast and made sure I was there and tuned in 2) Set the the broadcasts like the real thing so that they occur at the same time each day (or week if that's too much news!) 3) Provide a little window in game which provides a list of broadcast times & dates.

I've had a bit of a dig, one problem is easy access to Japanese music and speech broadcasts from that period. Probably need a Japanese speaker/reader to assist with that process....

r.

[tedhealy]

Yes, Japanese broadcasts will be hard to come by. I would suggest that how often something gets broadcasts is determined by it's length.

If you have a news bulletin that in real life ran on march 12, 1943, and it's 18 seconds long, I'd say run it maybe two or three times a day starting on the 12th for the next seven to ten days.

If you've got something significantly longer, then maybe run it less. Like only once a day for next three to five days. Just my thoughts but something like that would have to be tested in game to see if repeating them like that is too much or not enough. I guess it also sort of depends on how many broadcasts we can get.

Here's a link that has links to lots of radio material.

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=107195

EDIT

Ok, looking at how the files are set up it doesn't look like we determine for how long something runs. It just lists the start day, time, radio station folder, and file name. If we wanted something to repeat I guess we'd have to manually re-enter that event in as many times as we wanted it to repeat.

[tedhealy]

Anyone looking into the radio ini's?


[CHANNEL]
Name=Washington
Folder=Washington
Freq=22
Antenna=01.01.1930-01.01.2000:44.16,-35.10:100000

First 3 lines seem self-explanatory, but what about the last one?

1st part seems to be the date of operation for the station - january 1930 to january 2000. What about the last part though 44.16,-35.10:1000000? Any ideas?

I'm going to guess that part of it is the location of the broadcast and possibly the 10000 is the power of the station. Or at least I'm hoping that's part of it so we could have local radio stations with low power that you'll only pick up when you get near them.

[NoLine]

Antenna=01.01.1930(startdate)-01.01.2000(enddate):44.16,-35.10(position in world):100000(strenght or range)

me thinks

cheers
NoLine

[ryuzu]

Originally Posted by NoLine

Antenna=01.01.1930(startdate)-01.01.2000(enddate):44.16,-35.10(position in world):100000(strenght or range)

me thinks

cheers
NoLine

That would be my guess too. I created another station easily enough, but getting it to play anything (even a cut and paste of the Washington data) didn't work. I think it will work, just need to dig a bit more.

Update to my first as well, it looks like the news on the radio plays well after the event time - in fact I suspect it either will continue playing until the next event (i.e. anytime you turn on the radio the same thing will be playing until the next event is triggered) or there is some other place where the devs defined how long to play an event clip...

r.

[tedhealy]

I've got a ton of radio broadcasts and I'm trying to put some together as a test for dec 7th and 8th 1941.

I've run into a few issues. Some files are 30 minutes long or longer. Now some people may want to sail out of pearl in real time on dec 7th/8th, but I don't (that is I'm assuming we can leave Pearl on the 7th or 8th). I've got enough 30 minute files to go from 1400 to midnight in real time on the 7th.

For now, I'm ignoring those files and concentrating on files between 10 seconds and a few minutes. I need to get a better idea of how the radio is handled if there are quite a few files in the queue and you use time compression.

Another issue, I've got a small number of radio programs like the Jack Benny show that are 15 to 30 minutes long. Some have news flashes that give away the date, some don't. I'm thinking that adding a second radio station on a different frequency called "Entertainment" or some such name to denote it will just be old time radio stuff might be a nice idea. If we could get a good number of them, you could tune into the entertainment frequency and hear only those shows and play them at set times. Like rerun the same Jack Benny show every Sunday night at 1900 for a month or more. Rerun a different show every Monday night at 1900 for the same period of time. I guess it depends on how many files we have for often and for how many months they need to get repeated.

...or something like that...I'm just sort of rambling on ideas.

EDIT: Unfortunately, Dec. 8th looks like the first day you can be in a boat for a quick mission, and Dec. 10 (maybe 9th too) is the first day you can get in a boat in the career. It's a shame because there are tons of audio files for the 7th and 8th.