[REL] FOTRS Ultimate Project

[Rockin Robbins]

Originally Posted by s7rikeback

Oh dear,..

Our game devs were not the sharpest pencils in the box....and of course Ubi gets a big chunk of the blame for unrealistically tight schedules and their drink coaster model of game releases.

It occurs to me that Steam is the only company which maintains its games after release. Why has Counterstrike Global Offensive, released in August 2012, been a top on-line tournament game for five years? Why does it support teams of professional players all over the world?

It's because Steam continuously maintains the game, in a rolling release method, tweaking errors, establishing balance, publishing new maps, new weapons. Every time you start the game you download updates, one of which I received last week on a FIVE YEAR OLD GAME!!!

Counterstike GO supports both Valve and third party tournament organizations. Originally limited to only $250,000 in prize money, now they award more than a million dollars for a major tournament. What do you think that signals for how much income CS GO generates for Valve and those third party tournament sponsors?

Steam has had similar success with the same treatment of other games. Releasing a franchise to let it die of neglect is just criminal. "Hell, release the disks! Fire everybody! Close the shop. It's over." That's why I don't buy Ubi games any more. NONE of them, including SH5. They're done. Stick a fork in 'em.



That's what success looks like. 5 year old game. One million dollars awarded. The tournament was run at a PROFIT to the Professional Gaming League. Ubi is a pathetic failure.

PS. Oh. This was just a regional qualifier, not the main tournament.

[Larrywb57]

The date is September 29th 1942. My submarine is the USS Plunger, SS-179, porpoise class submarine which is based out of Midway Island. My location is longitude 141° 46' E, latitude is 36°0' N. Weather is overcast clouds with light rain, heavy fog with wind speed of 15 meters per second from a direction of 16°. The crew is at battle stations with the radar reporting two contacts at a bearing of 63°, range is 12,000 yards. Sonar has confirmed bearing of 63° and contacts are merchant, moving slow, closing! Torpedoes are set with depth five feet, offset angle at 0, low speed, exploder at contact and doors are open. Now here is my problem. I can't set the range to the target using the Range Dial linked to the Attack Data Tool. I also can't use the stadimeter. So I setup for a 90° attack. Fired two torpedoes as the ship crossed the aiming point. My question is: how can the range be input to TDC like will sonar?

[propbeanie]

Larry, do you mean with the radar, set the range?... in other words, "target" with the radar?...

[KaleunMarco]

Originally Posted by propbeanie

We probably have something gone whacky around there... maybe one of those errant TaskForces that cdrsubron7 kept finding that was just over the horizon, hard to say... I'll look through things also, but you're after the 44a layer files... - but to be certain, you were off the Eastern coast of Shikoku / Kyushu (Bungo Suido)? - and you went toward Honshu to avoid at first? It might also be a "conflict" between the new 44a_Jap_HarborTraffic file, and the whole-game Jap_HarborTraffic file, which torpedobait help us find out about a couple of weeks ago... Myoko Harbor is a mess until the next update... I'm trying now to get a fix completed, but if it looks like I'll miss the next update, we'll do a "Kile the Jap_HarborTraffic File!" temporary fix, and leave the real fix for the next round...

Das ist richtig, mein herr! - we haven't figured out what prize we'll give out for that, but it'll be ~good~...

i understand what you saying. thank you for confirming what i was thinking. and thank you for giving this your attention.

i have already killed both US and Japanese Harbor Traffic before starting the career. (i do not need THAT much realism). I think the issue is somewhere in the 44a_Jap_Troop_Convoy file but I CANNOT FIND ANYTHING AMISS. GAH!!!!!(end of rant)
i need a clue, a hint, a whisper of something.......

[s7rikeback]

Originally Posted by Rockin Robbins

Our game devs were not the sharpest pencils in the box....and of course Ubi gets a big chunk of the blame for unrealistically tight schedules and their drink coaster model of game releases.

It occurs to me that Steam is the only company which maintains its games after release. Why has Counterstrike Global Offensive, released in August 2012, been a top on-line tournament game for five years? Why does it support teams of professional players all over the world?

It's because Steam continuously maintains the game, in a rolling release method, tweaking errors, establishing balance, publishing new maps, new weapons. Every time you start the game you download updates, one of which I received last week on a FIVE YEAR OLD GAME!!!

Counterstike GO supports both Valve and third party tournament organizations. Originally limited to only $250,000 in prize money, now they award more than a million dollars for a major tournament. What do you think that signals for how much income CS GO generates for Valve and those third party tournament sponsors?

Steam has had similar success with the same treatment of other games. Releasing a franchise to let it die of neglect is just criminal. "Hell, release the disks! Fire everybody! Close the shop. It's over." That's why I don't buy Ubi games any more. NONE of them, including SH5. They're done. Stick a fork in 'em.



That's what success looks like. 5 year old game. One million dollars awarded. The tournament was run at a PROFIT to the Professional Gaming League. Ubi is a pathetic failure.

PS. Oh. This was just a regional qualifier, not the main tournament.

UBIsoft gets away with this one RR, The master himself let it slip through his own hands...

This unit is not in SH4 Stock.

[propbeanie]

Originally Posted by mark bonamer

i understand what you saying. thank you for confirming what i was thinking. and thank you for giving this your attention.

i have already killed both US and Japanese Harbor Traffic before starting the career. (i do not need THAT much realism). I think the issue is somewhere in the 44a_Jap_Troop_Convoy file but I CANNOT FIND ANYTHING AMISS. GAH!!!!!(end of rant)
i need a clue, a hint, a whisper of something.......

I'm in the process of doing a couple of scenarios to see what I can find. Using the Mission Editors "tape player" function didn't show a thing. But then, it only displays what ~I~ load, not what the game might be loading... We may well have a TaskForce group from a 1943 layer that got stuck in nah-nah land and is still running around out there. The 44a layer starts on June 1, 1944, so this was only 34 days later... Hopefully by this time tomorrow, I might find something... not that I want to... but we do gotta find what happened.

[propbeanie]

Originally Posted by mark bonamer

another FOTRS .63 feature....
July 4, 1944, approx 135-25 E 32 N
i just successfully attacked and evaded a task force when a troop ship convoy shows up, traveling approx course 225. i am evading NW (approx 310). everything sloooooows doooown. SH4 actually CTD...twice.

on the third try, i evaded way-north (nautical term) before RTB-Midway. the whole way east the most TC i could use was 128. SH4 acted as it did before LAA and GameBoost, etc. it was really weird.

trying to make it back to Midway after a very successful patrol.

what should i look for in the convoy.mis file?

Alright, insomnia (FotRSU??), so I ran the ME a few more times, since running the game hasn't gotten my anything of interest. Here's a Google Maps representation of near-as-I-could-get-it, after about 2 dozen clicks:




... and here's the game:



between about waypoints 6 & 7 of that Task Force 105 you see highlighted is the approximate area. The Task Force came through there on July 4 just about every time I ran the ME player. The Troop Convoys were more erratic, and I never have had one come out near there on the 4th yet. However, on the 3rd at about 12N, TC103 and 112 drove through each other. TC103 is 4 DD and 1 Liner. 112 has 4 DD, 2 Liner and a Supply ship. The TF105 as you can see, can vary quite a bit. TC111 also came close, and might be the one, but there is also the TC102, that the two times I've seen it run close to then, it's taking a "short-cut" that does a beeline from just outside of Tokyo south and west, mostly west, and would pass a quite bit North of the location. However, it's normal route would put it right into there, and if doing the zig-zag routing instead of the "beeline" shortcut, it may well be the one you saw. It has one Liner and 2 DD. The thing of it is, almost every Troop Convoy in the 44a layer passes through that area... only the one TaskForce though. The next closest are quite a bit South of the location... Then we could get into all the other traffic, and if you went North and West to get away, you go into a couple more TC routes, and a few Convoys... I don't think you're close enough to be having the Jap_HarborTraffic generate though. How big is your Save data (in megabytes) folder?

[KaleunMarco]

Originally Posted by propbeanie

Alright, insomnia (FotRSU??), so I ran the ME a few more times, since running the game hasn't gotten my anything of interest. Here's a Google Maps representation of near-as-I-could-get-it, after about 2 dozen clicks:

... and here's the game:

between about waypoints 6 & 7 of that Task Force 105 you see highlighted is the approximate area. The Task Force came through there on July 4 just about every time I ran the ME player. The Troop Convoys were more erratic, and I never have had one come out near there on the 4th yet. However, on the 3rd at about 12N, TC103 and 112 drove through each other. TC103 is 4 DD and 1 Liner. 112 has 4 DD, 2 Liner and a Supply ship. The TF105 as you can see, can vary quite a bit. TC111 also came close, and might be the one, but there is also the TC102, that the two times I've seen it run close to then, it's taking a "short-cut" that does a beeline from just outside of Tokyo south and west, mostly west, and would pass a quite bit North of the location. However, it's normal route would put it right into there, and if doing the zig-zag routing instead of the "beeline" shortcut, it may well be the one you saw. It has one Liner and 2 DD. The thing of it is, almost every Troop Convoy in the 44a layer passes through that area... only the one TaskForce though. The next closest are quite a bit South of the location... Then we could get into all the other traffic, and if you went North and West to get away, you go into a couple more TC routes, and a few Convoys... I don't think you're close enough to be having the Jap_HarborTraffic generate though. How big is your Save data (in megabytes) folder?

ok. allright. this is a start. let me dig into this after work and see what i can see. THANK YOU.

i have never used/experimented with ME. not sure why...just haven't.
what did you open in ME...a save file? the 44a_Convoy file? something else?

[propbeanie]

You start with using the File, Open, and choose the first file, such as 44a_Jap_CoastalTraffic.mis. The next files you use the File, Merge, and choose the next file in the list, such as 44a_Jap_Convoys.mis. You just go on down the list of files of 44a until you're finished, which in this case is seven files all told. Now, the "Merge" choice will bring up a little dialog box ("Merge Confirmation") that asks you if you want to "Mark merged data as saveable" with a little tick box and then "OK" and "Cancel" buttons. Be sure the tick box is empty, and hit the OK button. You will get that for each file. If you happen to have that box ticked, it then will merge the files together as one, and you'll have a big mess.

Once you have all the files you want loaded together, set the "Time Filter Date" in the top area, below the "Help" menu choice. You can choose year and month only (and it is a finicky control). So I set the time frame to "1944 07". Click somewhere on the map, else the last box you touch there stays "active" and will change on you. Off to the right of that date is a little red "+" circle, and a grey "-" circle. Those increment and decrement the Time Acceleration, and the "TimeAcc 1x" to the right of that, changes as you push those buttons. You can set that to at least 1024 or whatever before you "Play" the ME. If you've got to get close to the end of the month, and don't need to "see" anything on the way, push it up to something like 65536. It goes ~FAST~ though... 4096 will get you to the Fourth of July quickly enough, and is still almost too fast to "see" much of a Groups traveling.

After you've got that all set, press the Play button ">" and away you go. Use the "II" pause button to stop things where they are at the time. The Stop button, which is the filled in square, stops and rewinds in one fell swoop, and will ruin what you're looking at. You'll notice that there is no "Rewind" button, which if you miss something, you'll have to Stop and Play again. Off to the right side, above the misspelled "Tools Pannel" is the date and time, where you see the "YYYY-MM-DD HH-MM" format.

So, zoom in to where you want to see the action, and hit play. Control the speed with those buttons, and Pause anytime you see something interesting. Unfortunately, you cannot "see" the RGG, other than the green circle that represents them moving about. There also is no way to ID them, other than to trace their "line" back to where they started, take a screen shot, and then try to find them after you hit stop. If you zoom in all the way, it's still just a green circle. However, the scripted Groups, you can zoom in and see all the ships, follow them along, even if they're routed across dry land or into other groups, they'll keep going along like nothing's wrong, because they're just a script running right now. But if you see that, you could then make yourself a mission, and place yourself near that spot, and see what happens. It's usually quite different than what the ME played out. Just bear in mind that the "spawn rate" of a group does influence the way things play out, and you may or may not see "interaction" between groups when in a mission file, due to one or more of the groups seen in the ME Play might not spawn to show up, which is what I've had happen every time I've tried it for this.

Usually speaking, when there is a big slowdown like you experienced, there is a mass of vessels somewhere nearby, like what was seen at Miyoko Bay the other day, with the burning, exploding hulks of ships littered the hillsides and waterways. Or like Truk was doing a few months ago, where there were at least two Convoys and three TaskForces all in the one area and in each other's ways. The computer can't handle all the calculations necessary for all the collision detection going on, much less track all the damage incurred, which ships need fire and smoke, which are exploding, which ones occupy the same space and have "merged" themselves together. That's a lot of calculating to do when it gets busy. Now that I'm thinking about it, the "128x Time Compression" that you got is a clue also. Let me look into that and see what influences that, if there is a setting for that. If not, then it was just the level your computer could handle...

[Larrywb57]

Originally Posted by propbeanie

Larry, do you mean with the radar, set the range?... in other words, "target" with the radar?...

Hey PB,
At the sonar station, one can send the range and bearing to the TDC. But at the radar, that can't be done. So once the range and bearing in known, one could go to a periscope station or TBT and manually enter the information, click send to TDC button. But one can only increase range up to 1241 yards by moving the inner ring of the attack data tool. I'm not sure if that is the correct name, so I included a picture. In other mods, one could move the ring as long as the PK wasn't on. Hope this clarify some on my earlier post.
Larry

[propbeanie]

I thought that was what you were getting at. I'm not very good at manual targeting, unless I'm within that "magical" 1200 yard area, and I quite trying to hit things further out than that after having a much higher "miss" rate than "hit" rate, even on a 90 shot, so we'll leave explanations to Rockin Robbins and CapnScurvy for their perspectives. I do know that the 1241 is the max, but it might be thought of like an "infinity" setting also, although, for me, not so...

[KaleunMarco]

Originally Posted by propbeanie

You start with using the File, Open, and choose the first file, such as 44a_Jap_CoastalTraffic.mis. The next files you use the File, Merge, and choose the next file in the list, such as 44a_Jap_Convoys.mis. You just go on down the list of files of 44a until you're finished, which in this case is seven files all told. Now, the "Merge" choice will bring up a little dialog box ("Merge Confirmation") that asks you if you want to "Mark merged data as saveable" with a little tick box and then "OK" and "Cancel" buttons. Be sure the tick box is empty, and hit the OK button. You will get that for each file. If you happen to have that box ticked, it then will merge the files together as one, and you'll have a big mess.

Once you have all the files you want loaded together, set the "Time Filter Date" in the top area, below the "Help" menu choice. You can choose year and month only (and it is a finicky control). So I set the time frame to "1944 07". Click somewhere on the map, else the last box you touch there stays "active" and will change on you. Off to the right of that date is a little red "+" circle, and a grey "-" circle. Those increment and decrement the Time Acceleration, and the "TimeAcc 1x" to the right of that, changes as you push those buttons. You can set that to at least 1024 or whatever before you "Play" the ME. If you've got to get close to the end of the month, and don't need to "see" anything on the way, push it up to something like 65536. It goes ~FAST~ though... 4096 will get you to the Fourth of July quickly enough, and is still almost too fast to "see" much of a Groups traveling.

After you've got that all set, press the Play button ">" and away you go. Use the "II" pause button to stop things where they are at the time. The Stop button, which is the filled in square, stops and rewinds in one fell swoop, and will ruin what you're looking at. You'll notice that there is no "Rewind" button, which if you miss something, you'll have to Stop and Play again. Off to the right side, above the misspelled "Tools Pannel" is the date and time, where you see the "YYYY-MM-DD HH-MM" format.

So, zoom in to where you want to see the action, and hit play. Control the speed with those buttons, and Pause anytime you see something interesting. Unfortunately, you cannot "see" the RGG, other than the green circle that represents them moving about. There also is no way to ID them, other than to trace their "line" back to where they started, take a screen shot, and then try to find them after you hit stop. If you zoom in all the way, it's still just a green circle. However, the scripted Groups, you can zoom in and see all the ships, follow them along, even if they're routed across dry land or into other groups, they'll keep going along like nothing's wrong, because they're just a script running right now. But if you see that, you could then make yourself a mission, and place yourself near that spot, and see what happens. It's usually quite different than what the ME played out. Just bear in mind that the "spawn rate" of a group does influence the way things play out, and you may or may not see "interaction" between groups when in a mission file, due to one or more of the groups seen in the ME Play might not spawn to show up, which is what I've had happen every time I've tried it for this.

Usually speaking, when there is a big slowdown like you experienced, there is a mass of vessels somewhere nearby, like what was seen at Miyoko Bay the other day, with the burning, exploding hulks of ships littered the hillsides and waterways. Or like Truk was doing a few months ago, where there were at least two Convoys and three TaskForces all in the one area and in each other's ways. The computer can't handle all the calculations necessary for all the collision detection going on, much less track all the damage incurred, which ships need fire and smoke, which are exploding, which ones occupy the same space and have "merged" themselves together. That's a lot of calculating to do when it gets busy. Now that I'm thinking about it, the "128x Time Compression" that you got is a clue also. Let me look into that and see what influences that, if there is a setting for that. If not, then it was just the level your computer could handle...

the description is way-cool.
i had no idea.........
i was looking at files one at a time. BEEP! no points for me this round.
you have given me more tools.
let me finish the day at work and then dig into this.
thank you.

[propbeanie]

I may have discovered a contributing factor to what you encountered there mark bonamer. I'm not going to say it's the complete problem, because you weren't close to any shores from your description, but if you did get within the 20 km range of the Jap_HarborTraffic layer running at that time, which would mean about approximately 30km off shore for you, then the game trying to spawn some of the extra units may have brought the system down in performance. I had split the Jap_HarborTraffic.mis file into the six layers of most of the rest of the game, in an attempt to minimize the big file's impact by the time that late 1943 came along, and just about everybody would notice a "lag" when getting close to certain areas. What happens in the original file is that RGG spawn on top of themselves many times through the game, some RGG that move had no termination, and after a few years of that, there would be hundreds of some of the same groups. Osaka bay could turn into a parking lot. Players might experience crashes, there were groups of dozens of DD and / or CL vessels roaming about certain areas... The split idea I think is still a good one. However, I made mistakes in what was released, and on about a dozen or so RGG each layer, they're just as bad as they are in stock... other than there are now 6 times as many vessels by the time the 44b layer loads (six files now instead of one). Not cool. While what CapnScurvy is doing might still take a while, for me to fix this fully will take a few weeks, so I'm finishing off an add-in for Rockin Robbins to put onto a simmer in the mixing pot when it comes time, and we'll temporarily eliminate the layers, and go back to what it was before it got trashed by me...

This is not to say that there isn't something else going on in your game, because going that far with only 128x TC indicates there is something else going on also...

[KaleunMarco]

Originally Posted by mark bonamer

the description is way-cool.
i had no idea.........
i was looking at files one at a time. BEEP! no points for me this round.
you have given me more tools.
let me finish the day at work and then dig into this.
thank you.

pb,

ME is a neat tool but merging TF, Troops, Merchies, etc=TMI.

so....the Troop file gave some error messages upon opening: Class=NPL_Hap not found.


Indeed, there are ships with that class in the file however that class appears in the Roster Folder as well as the Sea Folder so i do not know why there is an error. however that is fixable. i will just delete the Class line in the 44a.mis file and SH can give me any ship in that class...it doesn't matter to me...they are all sinkable.

Despite TMI, i believe that Troop Convoy 102 is the culprit. oddly enough 102 also has some Class=NPL_Hap ships. so i think i will edit that before the next patrol and see if the error re-occurs.

m

[propbeanie]

Before you go editing your files, let's see what s7rikeback has to say about that NPL_Hap. Seems to me that there was something about that bad boy, but we'll double-check, because it won't be only that particular listing in TC102, but it is populated throughout the game... Now, just to be certain where we are here, which version of the mod do you have again, and do you happen to remember the date of the download? That looms large. I'll go back and look through the thread here...

Well, I can't find it real quick, but at the top of the page, back a little bit, is this
http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/show...77#post2501977

Where RR reports that v0.63 was back up, after another "fix"... I don't remember if the Hap was involved in that or not...