Beautiful Reflections and water by accident

[Paajtor]

Looks neat...allthought I get nice relections in SH3 GWX too.
Not sure, if I see that many changes.

How about legal issues?
Like, using SH4 files to mod SH3...does it mean, that we all need to have SH4, to be on the safe side?

I wasn't planning that, for now.

[Stager00]

GWX produces pretty reflections....just not nearly as "reflective"....nor does the sky reflect so accurately. Within the game....theres a quite noticable difference.


Not sure about legal issues...as I have no intention to offer any downloads. Just simply to present a cosmetic change to get people snooping on what else is compatable. The reflections from SH4 are truely superior. Give it a shot.

[Spytrx]

I looks great, no doubt about it - though didn't the game crash after a while? I tried something similar a while back (experimenting with various dds) and though the game would accept the changes at the begining it would CtD within the first 15 minuted of gameplay...

[Stager00]

Havent had any crashes yet...but havent had much playing time yet either. Gonna experiment alot more this evening.

[Spytrx]

hmm, maybe it is possible after all to get those graphics going :hmm:


thanks for sharing - I am going to try to follow my previous avenue of thought as well, this time on a brand new install of SH3 (maybe there was a conflict with some left-over code)

[Reece]

This is a great find, I might have to re-install SHIV just to get the files needed, there should be no probs with UBI if we are only telling people with SHIV what to do!
Thanks, & keep experimenting.

[Hitman]

Sometimes the most important findings are done out of pure luck Thanks for taking your time to share

I'm moving the topic to the SH3 mods forum as it will be more appropiate there and more modders might see it.

[Spytrx]

Tried it again on a clean install of vanilla with 1.04b patch and it works fine now - all that needs to be explored is which files will work and which won't and what side effects all this has...


on the matter of incorporating it into a mod - that's a no-no. You can make one for yourself of course if you have both versions of the game, but you can't publish them (for now anyway) because of the ToS and Copyright issues...

[Reece]

all that needs to be explored is which files will work and which won't and what side effects all this has...

Thats great Spytrx, I assume you will let us know the relevent files to use after you've finished testing?
Thanks!

[Spytrx]

well, I can tell you that the damage textures won't work with SH3 right now that is what I am concentrating on at the moment since I really don't like any of the damage mods out there (and the one in SH4 looks so good)

[Bismarck]

Wow those screenshots look good. Will Silent Hunter ever cease to amaze me?

[Jimbuna]

Originally Posted by Bismarck

Wow those screenshots look good. Will Silent Hunter ever cease to amaze me?

Probably not

[ming]

Very nice! I wish someone could figure out how to make it so that you could see into the water like SHIV!

[johnno74]

Originally Posted by ming

Very nice! I wish someone could figure out how to make it so that you could see into the water like SHIV!

Hell yes, that would ROCK

I've done some investigations along these lines, and unfortunately don't think its possible. I'm sure the SH3 devs also toyed for transparent water and there must be some good reasons why its not done.

The engine kinda supports it, move the external cam to the shoreline and you can see a small amount of the seabed in close to the shore. The amount of seabed that is rendered when the camera is above the water is fixed to a set distance from the shore, and not a set depth. If you make the waves too big then you'll notice that waves receed out past this point and you get gaps where there is no water, and also no seabed.
For a fairly funky effect beach your sub - the seabed close to the shore is rendered where your sub is sitting, but portion of your sub that is underwater isn't rendered at all.

I'm willing to bet that the main reason for no transparent water is the game engine doesn't support volumetric fogging - that would mean different areas of the scene had different fogging levels - one fogging level for above the water, and a different fogging level for underwater. The fogging level is universal, and switches to above water/below water values depending on where the camera is.

That would mean if we somehow hacked in transparent water stuff underwater would fade into the distance at the same rate as stuff above water - you would be able to see someting on the seafloor just as clearly as if it were just below the surface..
So yeah, unfortunately its much more complicated than just making the surface of the water transparent, and the devs most likely realised this and hardcoded the engine to not render anything that is underwater (except for the fringes of the shoreline) when the cam is above the water.