Paint It Black!

[Sniper297]

Not the Rolling Stones song, the subs. Early war subs were all black, later they went to the standard haze gray, probably due to a university think tank study group committee full of landlubbers. I like the shape of the late war conning tower along with 40mm Bofors instead of the Oerlikons, but don't like the gray paint so I reskinned my Sargo.



Anybody like? Besides me, I mean. Darkened the black a bit more and gave her the number 88 because of that mirror thing, maybe I'll try the decal mod one of these days.

I think they figured out a black sub was way too easy to spot from the air in the daytime

your mod looks good

[maxswain]

Please share this black beauty! Please upload this skin if you would Good Sir. It's a must have and so few are uploaded in the downloads section.

[ETR3(SS)]

Black is a great color for submerged submarines as that is the color of choice today. However when most of your time is spent on the surface black becomes a terrible choice.

[Sniper297]

Yeah, quick googlegiggle shows they decided in WWII that even on the darkest night a black sub was more visible than a gray one. I just think it looks cool, next step is a skull and crossbones on the conning tower.

[Sniper297]

Kinda like this;



USS Buccaneer.

Just noticed the reskin request - couple problems, #1 I have assorted files hacked so a 1941 career start gives you the late war conning tower from the beginning, and these are only the skins for the late war Sargo class. The way the game screws the upgrades I'm not sure it would work without a lot of end user hacking.

The hull textures are in
\Silent Hunter 4 Wolves of the Pacific\Data\Submarine\NSS_Sargo
and assorted others depending on which type, for some reason the conning towers are in

\Silent Hunter 4 Wolves of the Pacific\Data\Textures\TNormal\tex

and

\Silent Hunter 4 Wolves of the Pacific\Data\Textures\TLowRes\tex

I never bothered with the low res since I assume those are for older monitors, I'll have to paint one rainbow colored to see if they're even used above 1280x1024.

Looking over the skins, the Sargo and Balao conning towers appear to be the exact same texture with a different name, so possibly this would be doable if the end user was willing to rename the files and drop them in as replacements.

Hmmm, looking at it now, the pattern for the Balao and sugar boats is exactly the same, only difference is the Balao is a slightly darker gray with more blue tint to it.

I'll see what I can do.

[aanker]

Nice Black mod.

From my reading & browsing, I'm pretty sure the numbers were not painted on during the war. However, one picture can blow this thinking... lol

Love the skull & bones decal too :)

Happy Hunting!

[Sniper297]

IIRC they offloaded all the normal handling gear (ropes cables fenders block&tackle dinghy whatever else was stored in the space under the cigarette deck) so it wouldn't come loose and float to the surface, painted out the hull numbers and over all the brass and bronze, and removed the ship's bell (sacrilege, but better safe than sorry). There were assorted dazzle schemes and shades of gray experimented with during the war, and of course the conning tower cut down to reduce the silhouette on the surface.

Looking over this complicated clutter, what I see is;

\Silent Hunter 4 Wolves of the Pacific\Data\Submarine
with assorted subfolders for each submarine type, with a T01.dds (early) and T02.dds (late) in each for the hull.

For the conning towers, all are in the same folders;

\Silent Hunter 4 Wolves of the Pacific\Data\Textures\TLowRes\tex
\Silent Hunter 4 Wolves of the Pacific\Data\Textures\TNormal\tex

Looking over the original system specs for SH4 they called for a 128mb video card as a minimum with 256mb recommended, so I seriously doubt anyone is running with an old enough video card to even require the low res textures.

All the hull files and all the tower files are exactly the same pattern, just with different shades and tints. So one texture fits all, if I upload something like;

hull black.dds
hull black rusty.dds
conning tower black.dds
conning tower black 88.dds
conning tower black pirate.dds

Along with a readme instructing the end user to rename the desired files and paste into the appropriate folders, that should work well enough. The computer clueless will have to pass it by or suck it up and learn basic kindergarten file management, this entire point&click generation needs that anyway. End result two hull choices and three conning tower choices.



Regular black on top, battered and weary below.

[Sniper297]

I've been reskinning for various train simulators the last 10 years, some model makers design to be easy to repaint, others never give it a thought mapping pixels here there hither and yon. These unholy hulls are the same way, I spent the whole day trying to figure out what maps where before I finally got the ballast tanks without making hatches, diving planes, and other assorted kibbles & bits the same texture. End result;



It was scheduled for drydock and repainting Dec 9, 1941, never made it there.

[aanker]

Looking good, now go find a drydock & scrape those barnacles off.

Building drydocks for his boats that badly needed attention was a high-priority when Lockwood first took command of the Asiatic fleet. He writes about this frustrating situation in painful detail.

Happy Hunting!