[REL] Real Medals v1.01

[leovampire]

and in the right place in the box for both the crew and men.

[billko]

Originally Posted by vindex

Anyone know if this is compatible with 1.3?

I used this on 1.2 and liked it. I realize the medals in the case are wrong but they look good on the crew roster and the way medals were awarded made sense.

Vindex:

I am living proof that Realmedals v 1.01 works with SH4 v 1.3, with the usual caveats that go with it: i.e., the 3D medals don't display the correct graphics. I truly believe the order fullmetaledges has is the correct one (or at least closer) because, even though I'd only received a CMOH and a Purple Heart with this mod, the saved game output file agrees with what Realmedals awarded me. Left in its stock order, the output file was different on several occasions, the most infamous one related to Captain Cox's thread where they were complaining that they should've gotten a Purple Heart for destroying the sub but got a Distinguished Service Medal instead. (Well, it *does* distinguish you!:rotfl: ) Anyway, looking in the saved game output file, you actually *do* get awarded the Purple Heart! But in the game, of course, it says you have the Distinguished Service Medal.

Bill

[GSpector]

Any chance we could see these Medal images that you decided to use?

[Lt commander lare]

hi this looks great can you release one for stock i would be greatful if you could


lt commander lare

The mod has already been posted online in the download section. If the medals are NOT correct and you feel should be switched (CMOH, SevMed), let me know and I will fix it real quick.

Also, if the crewmembers ones are to be different or same as captains, I would appreciate feedback to confirm if these are of official military award issue.


Can somebody help me with the wireframes.. anybody a gfx artist and care to help me out? Need somebody w/ exp in modeling too. Shouldnt take but a few moments of your time.

[GSpector]

Latency,

I do enjoy working with Graphics but the only time I dealt with wire-frame was when I was using CADD Software many years ago. I'm not sure why you would need wire-frames to work with 2D images. Currently I use NeoPaint for Bitmaps (raster work) and Corel Draw 14 (Vectored work). What are you using?

I will say that the Medals do look very nice, though the colors are a bit dark but so much better that most Sims.

As for one question you had, I'm not sure I fully understand. Other than the legion of Merit (which has several levels but is not in the Sim), all other Medals for each Branch of Service are available to all Service Members in their Branch, regardless of Rank.

Originally Posted by GSpector

Latency,

I do enjoy working with Graphics but the only time I dealt with wire-frame was when I was using CADD Software many years ago. I'm not sure why you would need wire-frames to work with 2D images. Currently I use NeoPaint for Bitmaps (raster work) and Corel Draw 14 (Vectored work). What are you using?

Shall we use some modern pro-tools? After-all, it is the 21st century and arn't most gfx nowdays 3D in retrospect?
The new medals need remodeled. SH4 has used SH3's medals and wireframes and therefore do not match all of the new medals of which I posted. More importantly, the new textures do NOT sync up. So, once again... if you know GAD and are not a rookie, I could use a few moments of somebody's time who knows how to re-texture and make a few quick tweeks to the wireframes on select medals to get this complete. 5/6 being displayed.. is not bad.. and if I had the actual mesh for the 6/6 .. to test .. yah.. okay. Goes without saying what software is needed to do the work.. and well.. good luck with that software you had listed above.

Originally Posted by GSpector

I will say that the Medals do look very nice, though the colors are a bit dark but so much better that most Sims.

Um, you do realize I put this on gloss/pure black background for a reason? Did you read my tutorial in how I explained why I did it this way for representational purposes? You do know why it is displayed in this fashion.. yes? Seriously, regardless of the background it looks better because it is the only medals mod out there that is actually correct. You can always pump up the gamma on your display if it is too dark for you. It might look dark because of the background, but as mentioned before, there are professional representation reasons why it is displayed in this manor for screenshot purposes... in the game it is perfect (with no respect to lighting angle.. of course. | I think I choose to use 0 degree angle TD for consistency... and noted for an art director to be the final judge).

Originally Posted by GSpector

As for one question you had, I'm not sure I fully understand. Other than the legion of Merit (which has several levels but is not in the Sim), all other Medals for each Branch of Service are available to all Service Members in their Branch, regardless of Rank.

Can you clarify your question a bit please? There are something on the order of 5/7 used medals in-game. Even though I have support for the additional 2x, I have taken it upon myself to use the ones which were to actually be issued which made sense to the game as issued by the game itself.

Again, I have had this mod posted for over 6 months and requested feedback regarding the proper issue of these medals by USA/Ger conventions, and thus far NOBODY has given any feedback stating misuse otherwise, so I assumed my mod was correct in its original design as posted.

Originally Posted by GSpector

Other than the legion of Merit (which has several levels but is not in the Sim)

Legion of Merit.. ? Levels not in the Sim? Again, 5/7 medals are supported in SH4, and the remaining ones can not be added without modification to the .exe itself which would be extremely difficult to incorporate without full-source code of the game.

Medals are issued according to the normal default game rules which are contained in the .exe itself. The .exe has not been altered in any way, since I did not want to undergo additional hours to reverse engineer and fix whatever I thought should be fixed based on how I wanted the code to be written from a developers perspective. In fact, the whole mod itself is an aesthetic mod and has nothing to do with whatever the hell the original .exe does as long as the end result equates to what is supposed to be as what one might call 'the status quo'.

Rather, I altered the representation of what needs to be displayed and issued the naming conventions to what needed to be. The mod name itself clearly explains what it does and what was done. If you have trouble figuring out why I did what I did, read the tutorial I posted for what it was I interpreted as doing what I needed to do based upon how the orig. game designers did what they did. It is clearly obvious to me that a quick hack was done by UBI in-house developers as an add-on to SH3 in its original design in prep for SH4. OBVIOUS AS HELL without a questionable doubt or there wouldn't have been a need for a mod fix. For the record, I still get replies from people spending over a month on trying to do what I had done in less than 1 week... why re-invent the wheel yo? Use my medals fix or step up to the plate and send me email stating its flaws.

Hi there

If you still care, as I think it's been a while since you've released it, but I saw your work on fixing the medal images/assignments. I was never satisfied with the ones included in TMO as the image quality of the medals was pretty low.

Here's my thoughts:

If I am reading it correctly, the CMOH is replaced by the APCM (at least for the TMO version). In my game I rearranged the ordering of the medals to try to better reflect a realistic awarding. According to what I read (wikipedia, and the previous discussions on the forums), the APCM was awarded to anybody who served in the theatre, so really IMO it should be the first medal to be gained. Next would be the Navy Commendation Medal I guess because it is listed as being "lower" than the bronze star. So then after the NCM I have the Bronze Star Medal, then Silver Star, then the highest medal being the Navy Cross. This seems to be the correct "historical" order where each medal is one step more prestigious than the last, the only medal being more prestigious than the Navy Cross being the CMOH. Everything I can tell points to the Purple Heart being a special condition medal in the game and not really in "rank" with the other ones, but awarded based on injury/damage/death in the game- and it seems to work properly as is in the game.

I made the change by reassigning the ID= and MedalDisplayName= values to correct the order, assuming that the stock game was displaying correctly the original medals. So the CMOH becomes the Navy Cross, NAvy cross becomes the Silver star, etc. and on down. That way even though you may win the "bronze star" in the game, because all the medals are offset then you will actually be awarded the Navy Commendation medal, etc.

HAven't had a chance to fully test that the awarding is working correct, but I hacked a saved career file to "award" myself the various medals and everything was showing up consistently. The crew medals are also showing consistently as well.

A small technical note regaring the large medal pictures (when you click on the medals box in the office). On my system they were showing up distorted on my screen (looked like they were stretched horizontally, or squished vertically). I think it is because you were using the stock zone settings for the entries in menu_1024_768.ini but your new graphics did not match the aspect ratio of the original entries. The stock graphics were using something like 256x432 px but yours were all 200x416, meaning they got stretched a little. The easy fix is to change the "display" type from 2 (linear stretch) to 1 (centered) which will put the image at native size in the center of the defined zone. Then you get significantly crisper (because of 1:1 pixel reproduction) and correct aspect medals. The hard fix would be to fix the graphic file you made such that each medal would have its "cutout" zone be the standard 256x432 pixels and would map better using the stock zone settings, the advantage here is if you could get good source material you could make the medal graphic larger. But as it is, just changing the display= type to 1 will fix the scaling issue and give a very nice looking graphic in the game.

The last "issue" is that the awards in the 3D medal box still don't show correctly. In my legit career, I have earned the APCM twice (lowest medal rank) and when I open the medal box it has a purple heart sitting in the upper left corner. I am not sure what controls this, but in the long run the CaptainsRoom.dat file needs to be recompiled anyways with different 3D models of the medals to match the TMO replacements. But for me it's good enough as is. BTW, if you DL and install the Latency mod for TMO you will not get the medals to show in the 3D medal box because the TMO mod includes a new Captainsroom.dat file which has cut out the 3D medals in it (because they did not work properly). You will have to remove that file from the TMO mod and let the stock one remain so that you can get the 3D medals to show.

Norman