SH3 has come finally come full circle for me

[Ducimus]

I must say when i originally picked up SH3, i was impressed. It was the first Sub Sim i've played since The orginal Silent hunter. For some reason that game just didnt grab me like Aces of the Deep. It was too cut and dry, lacked atmosphere. However, almost immediatly when i started playing SH3, i found things which annoyed me for whatever reason. These annoyances are what led me to this forum.

Orginaly i did not consider myself a modder, but a user of mods. And like the stock Silent Hunter 3, I found some aspects of mods which were cool, and others which annoyed me. So began the long and winding road of tweaking your game. So to that end i'd have admit that 90% of the mod material i used was not my own, just a revision of someone elses. The strikve was to find the ideal settings which you, for whateve reason, thought were the best. And in that strive eventually you cross from mod user, to mod tweaker, to mod maker.

Over time you develop a fairly good idea of how many facets of the game work, and over time, i think it looses it's luster. For me now, it doesnt matter where i play SH3. Caribean, North atlantic, south atlantic, Indian ocean, the med, or even what boat, it doesnt matter to me anymore because the action is always the same. Find em, chase em, sink em in a German Uboat. So im at a point now where to me, it's all the same. In sum, im ready for a little break (although id be lying if i said i wasnt going to play SH3 at all), and im REALLY ready for SH4.

At any rate, i feel compelled to summerize my contributions to the SH3 community. Im not talking about other peoples stuff, just the stuff I did. I dont think anyone can truly claim that i can't talk about my own work. Some may accuse me of being eogtistical. To this i disagree. My contributions to the SH3 community have been few, and i feel minor by comparision to other works. I acknowledge this, my only cavet being im quite proud of what few orginal works i did do. Others may be angry at me for talking about what little i did, or just angry at me for just being me. To them all i can say is, don't blame me, blame your mouthpiece's amazing ablity to piss someone off enough to say to themselves," Ok thats it, ive had enough." This goes to both sides the supermod fence.

To conclude, the following is my meager contributions, im a bit burned out on alot of things, albiet im still addicted to sub simming. I wish i could say i quit, i feel like im hanging up the hat, I want to hang it up, but i know thats's a lie because id be back here sooner or later.

For now I bid thee adieu.

[Ducimus]

Cloak and dagger aside, here is the summation of what little orginal work i did, and how to do them. Feel free to use any of this as you see fit, all i ask is you cite your source.



Type XXI uboat recharging bug "fix"
I came up with the orginal concept, If you want to know the gist of it, heres the threads:

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=87168
http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=87140

Von Helsching has fine tuned it further i beleive and i would most certainly use his mod.



AI Hydrophones:
I'm not sure if i can claim this as a mod, but i beleive (and i could be mistaken) that i was the first one to experiment with this.
http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/show...=86629&page=16
(theres also a wealth of other info in that thread)

In a nutshell:

Originally Posted by Ducimus

Just To reiterate on my two favorite sim.cfg setings:

Here is my understanding of them. Lets imagine thse are knobs you can turn on a peice of equipment like a stereo.

Individually thats how they seem to work, when you start mixing them is when things get fuzzy. Hmmm first reaction to these setting was to change noise to 0.5 (correct,) and wave factor to 0.20 or 0.25 (maybe incorrect). Natural assumption since thats how they scale.

Noise factor has ALOT to do with how fast your moving your boat. Primary factors are Engine RPMS.

Wave factor has ALOT to do with how high are the waves and how high an object is.. (what object i dunno, probably the DD)


So heres my thought out loud.

Just how much of the subs noises do i want the DD's to hear, and just how far do i want them to hear it on a (clear/stormy) day?

[Ducimus]

Finally we come to what is arguably my best achievement. At first glance it seems hard, but once you understand it, its incredibly simple.


How to do New Flotilla's and Bases.
I've talked about them quite a bit in the past:
http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=87316
http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=89619
http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=93647

Ironiclly my orginal release of new base's arrangements appears as a file called "GPLAY_MONSUN_BOATS.zip" . You can find it on UBRS in the SH3/SKINS section of all places. How it got there i don't know, i've never uploaded anything to UBRS.


Anyway here's the gist. You cannot create an entirely new flotilla. At least i dont think you can, and ive poured over this for hours upon hours. I belelieve the number of flotilla openings (i call them slots) is hardcoded. To allow more flotila's, i think (not sure) that you'd have to totally rewrite the 1024_ini.file and that is simply out of the question and well beyond anyones ablity to mod. So You have 8 flotilla slots. They are occupied by:
1.) 1st
2.) 2nd
3.) 7th
4.) 10th
5.) 11th
6.) 12th
7.) 29th
8.) 33rd.
You can however, define what these flotilla openings are any way you see fit. I wont go into full concepts on how to best utlize and get the most use out of each flotilla slots, ill just tell you how to edit them.

Lets take the 3rd flotilla mod. You can find this in NYGM's documentation directory.

All the 3rd flotilla mod, is a rewrite of the 10th.
So heres a step by step process of how this is done:

Step 1:
Make sure the base you want to start your flotilla in exists in the LND layer. If it does not, place it. Preferbly where theres a harbor defined in the locations.cfg

Step 2:
Open the file sh3/data/menu/en_menu.txt
Using the find function, type in "10th". That will bring you to this line:

273=10th Flotilla was founded in......

Obviously, its the flotilla description. Change it to whatever you want the flolilla selection screen will say about your new flotilla.


Step 3:
Continuing with the find function of "10th" will bring you to this line:

905=10th Flotilla

This is assining the flotlla and ID handle number. This number is whats used by the flotilla.cfg when it calls upon this flotilla. The game recongizes the flotlla slot by this number. Chane it to read:

905=3rd Flotilla

Step 4:
Again continuing with the find function of "10th" will bring you to this line:

1103=10th

This is the number that you see on the select flotilla map when starting a career, change this to:

1103=3rd

Step 5:
Here we are going to define the base number that the rewritten flotilla will use. For simplicities sake, just search for "Kiel" in the EN_menu.cfg, After hiting "next" once, you should arrive at this block of code:

750=Kiel
751=Brest
752=Wilhelmshaven
753=Lorient
754=St. Nazaire
755=Bergen
756=Bordeaux
757=La Spezia
758=Toulon
759=Flensburg

Add this line to it after 759=:

760=La Rochelle

Remember, this base must exist by the EXACT NAME you list here in the LND layer.

Step 6:
Open the file sh3/data/cfg/flotilla.cfg and search for "10th".

That will bring you this like block:

Flotilla3=905
TO3=942
NbStartingDate3=3
NbDate3=3
Emblem3=data/Emblems/SubEmblems/Flotillas/10th flotilla.tga
NbBases3=1
Base3_0=753;Lorient
Date3_0_0=1942
Month3_0_0=2
Date3_0_1=1944
Month3_0_1=8
DeparturePointLong3_0=-399037.000000
DeparturePointLat3_0=5729694.000000
Heading3_0=135.000000
NbUboats3=1
Uboat3_0=2

Now this bears a moment of examination. See the two areas ive highlighted? Does that 905 look famillar? How about that 753? 905 is the ID number handler for the flotilla, and 753 is the base ID number handler that are defined (that you just redefined) in the EN_menu.cfg

Now note the italicied parts. It's the starting position, We'll get to that next step. For now, change:

Base3_0=753;Lorient

to read:

Base3_0=760;

Remember you just defined who and what this base is, in step 5.


Step 7.
Time to get those coordinates for the starting position.
Open sh3/data/campaign/campaigns/Campaign_LND.mis in WORDPAD.
Search for "La Rochelle". Make sure its a german naval base, and then copy the lat and long coords you find there straight into your flotlla.cfg in the appropriate place.

Congradulations, you have now moved the 10th flotilla to La Rochelle, and renamed it as the 3rd flotlla. (note, in the flotilla transfer menu in game, it will still be listed as the 10th, you'll have to edit the 1024_768.ini file for that, but it's not neccessary, and honsetly i woudlnt advise it)

But, where not done yet.

Step 8:
File sh3/data/menu/cfg/Flotillas.cfg

If you want to properly place the flotilla on the map in the flotilla selection screen, this is the Not so much fun file to play with. I wont go into too much detail here except its trail and error. Heres a basic example, ill use the 2nd flotilla which moves starts in wilhelmshave and moves to Lorient later on.:

[FLOT903]

]PosFlot0=839,410,200,20
PosBase0=884,409,200,18;Wilhelmshaven
PosBitmap0=863,410,17,17
PosSubm0=718,417,127,36

This is the entry for the first base.
PosFlot i think is the flotlla name
PosBase i think is the cirlcuar dot
PosBitMap the word flotilla
PosSubM is the sub icon.

The coordinates are a sort of grid that behaves like an XY grid. I could be mistaken on what does what where, it was sort of a trial and erorr thing and while ive adjusted flotlla locations on the slection screen before, its not something i documented very well.

PosFlot1=570,200,200,20
PosBase1=615,202,200,18;Lorient
PosBitmap1=595,202,17,17
PosSubm1=446,207,127,36

This is the second half of the 2nd flotllas icons. Note the numberic change from base 0 to base 1.


Step 9:
The rest of this is just sort of cleanup to make sure you got the flolilla dates correctly. I can't go into any major detail here without explaining how the flotilla.cfg file works. Instead ill give you a before and after blocks of code, highlighting changes youd be making about now and hopefully the picture will become clear for you:

BEFORE:

Flotilla3=905
TO3=942
NbStartingDate3=3
NbDate3=3
Emblem3=data/Emblems/SubEmblems/Flotillas/10th flotilla.tga
NbBases3=1
Base3_0=753;Lorient
Date3_0_0=1942
Month3_0_0=2
Date3_0_1=1944
Month3_0_1=8
DeparturePointLong3_0=-399037.000000
DeparturePointLat3_0=5729694.000000
Heading3_0=135.000000
NbUboats3=1
Uboat3_0=2

AFTER:

Flotilla3=905
TO3=942
NbStartingDate3=4
NbDate3=4
Emblem3=data/Emblems/SubEmblems/Flotillas/10th flotilla.tga
NbBases3=2
Base3_0=750;Kiel
Date3_0_0=1941
Month3_0_0=3
Date3_0_1=1941
Month3_0_1=9
DeparturePointLong3_0=1218743.000000
DeparturePointLat3_0=6521462.000000
Heading3_0=50.251987
Base3_1=760;La Rochelle
Date3_1_0=1941
Month3_1_0=10
Date3_1_1=1944
Month3_1_1=9
DeparturePointLong3_1=-141466.000000
DeparturePointLat3_1=5537980.000000
Heading3_1=270.000000
NbUboats3=2
Uboat3_0=1
uboat3_1=0

[Ducimus]

Last but not least we come some map work ive done. I don't claim to be any ace campaign writer, but i dabbled in it here or there and learned as i went. Both of these files are add ons to your existing campaing layer. You simply merge them into the campaign_RND.mis, and they become intergrated into your campaing game. These files are compatiable with Unified Campaign Vanilla, and GW11a. NYGM users will have to make some changes the NYGM/data/rooster/English.cfg (or German.cfg) or go through the files and remove all generic entires.

The instructions for NYGM users and how to merge the files are outlined in this thread:
http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=99422

The file additions themselves.

The Caribean.

http://www.ducimus.net/sh3/Carribean_2.zip


The other is a bit i did in the indian ocean:

You can grab that file here:
http://www.ducimus.net/sh3/indian_convoys_3.7z

[danlisa]

Don't go, you have a wealth of information that many people find useful.

Water under the bridge and all that.

[Corsair]

I have played every sub game since Silent Service, and in the end they were all about find them, chase them, sink them... In SHIV you will probably end doing the same job in a US sub instead of a german one. I usually make pauses between my patrols while the sub is refitted and go fly some prop sim or F4 for a couple of weeks or sometimes more until I have the feeling I need my fix.

[AVGWarhawk]

Yeah man, you can't play everyday ( or you can if want). I usually take a week of between patrols then one day I just want to escape the screwed up world we live in so I just disappear for half the day in a U-boat.

[GT182]

Ducimus, you've done a good job. I've been unable to play SHIII for 2 weeks now and I'm getting antsey. So I'll wager you will be back before too long. Besides, we be looking for more mods from you soon. SHIII has become the "drug" of choice for us all and you're no different. LOL

So... see you soon for your fix.

[Hartmann]

I don´t play every day, usually one time at week or two weeks.

i have a lot of games and simulators so i´m busy with other things.

is a good way to evade the combat fatigue.

Ducimus

Did i hurt your feelings some how? Well am sorry if i am, sometimes just because my English is far for perfect i can`t explaine myself corectlly .

[THE_MASK]

Thanks for the mods , have a break , go on a holiday , enjoy christmas , be back on board for SH4 sailor .

[irish1958]

Ducimus,
All life is a variation of find them chase them and then do something to them.
Thanks for the mods and the instructions.
Take a couple of weeks off and come back here to keep us in line.

[_Seth_]

@ Ducimus: You are an icon of this site, loosing you would be like loosing a shipmate or another brother in arms... Good to hear that you will be back sooner or later, but its sad anyway (Take a nice Christmas break, drink beer and eat, and you will soon be back to "your old self", mate!)..... your work has been really excellent, and i know that your future work will also be. You are a real contributor, no doubt, and a lot of folks appreciate your efforts.... Know this: you will always be welcome here on subsim, and i dont think anyone could disagree on that! If so, they have to answer to me..

[irish1958]

Hay Sober,
You look a lot like me. I guess my father wasn't such a good boy when he was stationed in Australia.

[Pants]

Originally Posted by irish1958

Hay Sober,
You look a lot like me. I guess my father wasn't such a good boy when he was stationed in Australia.

Waves "Hello" another long lost brother