Kapitan's Log

[Notewire]

Originally Posted by kylania

SH3 Gen writes to the SH3 log which is just a text file. So you could add all you want to it, but from out of game. There's no ability to add to that file from within the game that I'm aware of. Also writing to it during a patrol might be dangerous. SH3Gen requires you to make a save, run the edits, then reload the save.

Ah yes, that was what I thought - but I just . . cant .. find the dang file . .. I would LOVE to be able to add from out of game - if I could just find where . . .

Help!

[kylania]

My install it at home, but it's saved with a Save game. Under my docs/sh3/careers/patrol x/ then something like cpt.cfg or something similar? I'll check when I get home.

[panthercules]

Well, I found something interesting at least - the latest/current log file is in the My Documents\SH3\data\cfg\Careers\<name of kaleun>\<highest patrol number> folder and is called <name of latest saved game>.clg

As you will note from the following screenshot, it is possible to add entries to this log file (via notepad, for example) that will show up in game when you press the "k" key (see the last entry - it is the new one I made up while editing the file in Notepad outside the game - I didn't spend much time perfecting the German translation so I'm sure it's a bit off but it's close enough for my testing purposes):



I'm still experimenting with whether you can do this mid-patrol by alt-tabbing out and have it still show up in game during the same patrol/save cycle (I did this one before starting up the game), and I'm not sure if this screws up your tonnage totals or anything at the end of the patrol. I'm also not sure what the variables "type" and "categ" in the file really mean (other than if you change the "type=0" entry to "1" it doesn't show up in the game screen but if you leave it as "0" it does). Set forth below is the pasted text from the <name of latest saved game>.clg file I was using so you can see the format and how I just added the entry after the end of the text that was already in there (incrementing the "Log Entry" number by one over the last one that was already in the file):


[Log Entry 0]
Type=0
EntryText=Feindfahrt 22|U-55, 7. U-Flottille|Ausgelaufen: August 18, 1943, 02:37|Von: St. Nazaire|Befehle: In Planquadrat DH42 patrouillieren
Date=19430818
Time=237
Categ=0

[Log Entry 1]
Type=0
EntryText=Schiff versenkt!|Planquadrat CG 79|Truppentransporter, 8285 BRT
EntryTitle=August 26, 1943, 02:35
Date=19430826
Time=235
Categ=0

[Log Entry 2]
Type=0
EntryText=Schiff versenkt!|Planquadrat CG 79|Liberty, 7401 BRT
EntryTitle=August 26, 1943, 07:41
Date=19430826
Time=741
Categ=0

[Log Entry 3]
Type=0
EntryText=Schiff versenkt!|Planquadrat DH 37|Küstenschiff, 2421 BRT
EntryTitle=August 30, 1943, 16:05
Date=19430830
Time=1605
Categ=0

[Log Entry 4]
Type=0
EntryText=Großes feindliches Geleit hat gesichtet!|Planquadrat DH 37|Gezwungen Unterwasser durch Amerikanisch Zerstörer - kein Radar warnend signalisiert - Wasserbombenangriff hat für 2 Stunden geladen - kein Schaden an Unterseeboot
EntryTitle=August 31, 1943, 14:35
Date=19430831
Time=1435
Categ=0

Anyway, this sounds promising if it doesn't have any serious adverse side effects - I'll play around with it some more when I get a chance. In the meantime, maybe someone will find this useful

[kylania]

Yup, that's it the clg file. Problems I can see are 1) it's not there unless you save a game and 2) i don't know if you can update it WHILE in a game and 3) I really can't think of any in game method of adding to it.

[panthercules]

Yeah - I haven't had a chance to play around with it any more yet, but I did find out that the changes do carry over from one save to the next, at least if you don't sink anything else in between, so hopefully there's a chance of making these changes stick. Alt-tabbing works pretty well and stable on my PC at least, so if necessary I could at least switch over, make my entries, and then switch back to the game - just got to confirm whether it will pick up the changes in the game as they're made outside the game, or if you have to save/exit the game before the changes will show up.

[panthercules]

Well, interesting but of somewhat limited usefulness so far. I could not get the game to recognize/show any changes that I made to the file during the current game session (even when I saved the changes to the file in notepad while alt-tabbed out from the game). The only way I could get the changes to show up was to save/exit the game to the menu (using the same name and saving over my same saved game), and then saving the changes to the file in notepad. Then, when I reloaded that saved game, hitting the "k" key showed the updated log file changes.

I didn't get a chance to sink anything or do anything in game that would cause the game to create another log entry on its own, so I'm not sure what would happen in that case. However, I suspect that it would cause problems since the game would change the log file with that new entry, but the copy you had open in notepad wouldn't have the game's changes but would have your own different changes, and things would get screwed up when you saved down from notepad after saving/exiting the game - looks like you'd probably have to do some complicated copy/pasting from your notepad copy into the game's newly-saved copy in order to capture both the game's automatic entries and your own manual ones.

It might be better/easier just to keep a scratch file open in notepad into which you could just alt-tab out and enter your manual diary entries in the correct basic format, without trying to edit the real log file during the game, and then just copy/paste (and number accordingly) those manual entries into the game's real log file after you finish your gaming session and save/exit. You wouldn't get to see those entries in the log in game during the session in which you make them, but they'd at least be there for the next and all subsequent sessions. I'll have to test this on one of my trash campaigns so I can end my patrol and see what happens (i.e., if anything blows up) when SH3 Commander tries to deal with the altered log file to create personnel files or whatever it does with these logs after a patrol.

At least this indicates that there are some possibilities here. Hopefully, JScones or someone will be able to come up with an elegant way of making this work

[Notewire]

Panthercules, I am right where you are as of last night. I was able to make manual entries. I did learn that by using the | key it gives a line break, and I was able to finally alter my game log - but it only reads the file whne the game loads. Like you, I need to find out what will happen when the game adds a new entry. I think that will work out though - by using the line break I am able to enter all my information in one entry, so if the game adds another it should just add on. I was able to enter about a dozen lines of text into my Log Entry=0 that showed up as times and events.

The advantage is, every time I exit the game, when I restart - I can read what happened in my last play session with that particular U-Boat - by just looking at the log that sits on my weapons officers desk. Also, my information on each patrol will be saved with my career, so I can read them all from my Kaluen's desk back in Kiel. I think this is a big breakthrough, but I suppose we have yet to see how it interacts with computer log entries. If it doesn't work, I may just keep an alternate text file and rename after the patrol is complete.

Anyway, I had a screenshot all lined up to show my breakthrough, only to see you have beaten me to it - hopefully our combined efforts will yield something fruitful! I will let you know how it works when I sink something (which I didn't execute last night).

Regards and thanks,
Yarre Notewire.