[WIP] Printable SH IV recognition manual

[Raven Morpheus]

Hello, me again...

I've been thinking about having a printable Recognition Manual (based on the stock game) so that I can flip through it whilst I'm playing rather than clicking through the in-game one.

I noticed that some people have done this in the past and released them, but none of the links I've come across are working.

I don't really want to spend £20 on a used copy of the SH IV collectors edition but that seemed to be the only option open to me if I wanted a SH IV RM booklet, until I started poking around in the files and realised I can make my own...

...so, I've started making my own in a booklet type format and I decided to make my RM capable of being printed on A5 sized paper/thin card.

There are 103 silhouettes in the stock game so if printed one on each side of each piece of paper/card that makes 52 sheets (51.5 rounded up) plus 1 or two for a cover of some sort. I'm am as yet undecided personally how I will approach binding this, I thought of making several separate RM's, one for each section on the in-game RM, i.e. 1 for Japanese warships, 1 for Merchants, 1 for British Warships etc. or I could just make one big one and have some dividing sheets, but however I do it I'll be buying some cheap A5 ring bound notepads and chucking the note paper so that I can use the ring binder. I'll use a hole punch to put holes along the left edge of the cards. That'll save on buying a fancy ring binding machine...


So far I've completed the Japanese Warships section (only took me a couple of hours to do) and this is a sample of the layout I've chosen, the white border is the extent of the A5 card, the blue bits around it are just where I used windows snipping tool to grab the picture, I left a blank margin around the artwork because I'm not sure my printer can do borderless printing and also I didn't want the ship image/text being right on the left edge as the left edge is where the binder will go -



As you can see it pretty much matches the in-game recognition manual, I find the information on the in-game recognition manual sufficient so I don't plan on putting any more info on the cards, although I can do if I choose to at a later date.

The images are from the game _sil.dds files, and the info is what's shown in-game so any errors are not mine.

Let me know what you think.

Also, as I'm using game files to make this (i.e. the artwork) are there any restrictions on me making a release of this?

If I release this RM it will be released as a set of .pdf files but I may also release a set of M$ Word .docx files so that people can adjust the size of the pictures to suit their printer.

I shall also in due course be making one for SH V in pretty much the same style as above as I'd like a hard copy RM booklet for that also.

[merc4ulfate]

How are you dealing with the fact that some mods add ships to the book?

[Raven Morpheus]

I'm not. The printed collectors edition manual (which is basically what I'm trying to replicate/emulate on the cheap) didn't include ships added by mods.

This is for the stock game only (with GFO, I'm not aware that adds any ships though).


If someone wants to send me a complete list of ALL the ships added by ALL mods along with their names and info and their _sil.dds files I can add them to this though, or if people wish to make their own cards to add to this I can supply a template in the form of a photoshop .psd file.


I just completed the cards for the merchants, took me a little longer than the Japanese ships (mostly due to locating the correct _sil.dds, they aren't as obviously named as the Japanese ships were) just need to arrange them in a PDF/M$ Word document ready for printing now.

The rest of the cards should be fairly easily done because the majority of the ships used by the other nations are already done, besides the warships, I've done about 50% of the ships already though.

And thinking about it my SH V version won't take as long either because many of the ships in SH V will already have been present in SH IV - so I might make this one big RM covering both SH IV and SH V, although I'll probably have to add metric measurements for SH V because I play in metric when in a U-Boat and in Imperial when playing SH IV as a US sub (I have my SH IV measurement options set to "Authentic"), will have to play with the format of the cards, perhaps just add the metric measurement alongside the imperial measurment...

I am not entirely sure how to bind 70 odds cards though (or the 50 or so just for the SH IV ships for that matter), the problem will be getting the holes right for the binder I'm pulling off a notepad, but that's an issue for my personal copy, not really related to supplying the files to anyone who wants this.

[Raven Morpheus]

For my personal hard copy of an RM, as said above, I plan on using a ring bound notebook and swapping out the paper for my printed cards.

So, in my hunt for one I came across this one which I think will be perfect as it looks like it has a nice hard pair of covers - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Derwent-Sket...+pad+landscape


But of course I still need some dividers for each section, like on the in-game RM, so I cobbled together this image from the artwork in the game, to print onto 1 side of one of the A5 sheets of card, to which I'll glue a little tab to the edge to make flipping easier, with the appropriate word on it (like Japan for the Japan section, probably with the same leather texture also), I may however change the brown leather to black so it matches the outside covers of the notebook -




Because the cards will be A5 sized I had to resize the artwork for the leather RM cover in photoshop as well as resizing but maintaining the shape of the flag and bar with the word on it. Turned out quite nicely though, just need to find a "flag" to use for the merchants, in-game they don't appear to have one on the RM.



I'll also be using "ivory" coloured card to print on so it should look nice and authentic.


I would offer to sell people a hard copy as per how mine will be, but I'm in the UK so shipping costs will likely be horrendous, and the materials for the hard copy will in fact set me back about £15. So nearly the cost of a used copy of the SH IV collectors edition, but my RM will likely end up covering both SH IV and SH V ships.

Probably going to use up quite a bit of ink on my printer doing this also, but the result will be worth it...

Have to stick to supplying you guys with the files so you can print your own I think.

[donna52522]

I believe someone already did this, but the filefront link seems to be broken.

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom//sho...d.php?t=129912

[Raven Morpheus]

I believe someone already did this, but the filefront link seems to be broken.

Seems to be only the IJN ships. And as you said, the links are dead (seems to be the case with all the printable RM's I've come across), which is precisely why I'm doing this, for myself as much as anything.

Filefront has a habit of deleting files that aren't used for a period of time, I will probably upload mine here if possible, or to somewhere that won't delete the files after a period of time.

Besides I'm doing all ships that are in the stock game (both SH IV and SH V), not just the IJN.