[REL] Merchant Fleet Mod for Silent Hunter 3

[melnibonian]

IBL is there any reason why some flags on the hulls are backwards? It is not a show stopper obviously but I was just wondering if there is a specific reason why you designed them like that.

I'm thinking of installing the Skin Packs into SH3 Commander so they'll load by themselves at the appropriate dates

Steve if you manage to do that I am interested. I thought about it as well but I am not 100% sure on how to do it. Any help you can offer will be most appreciated.

Top quality ships IBL. I haven't managed to sink any yet but I hope that will change soon

[iambecomelife]

Originally Posted by melnibonian

IBL is there any reason why some flags on the hulls are backwards? It is not a show stopper obviously but I was just wondering if there is a specific reason why you designed them like that.



Steve if you manage to do that I am interested. I thought about it as well but I am not 100% sure on how to do it. Any help you can offer will be most appreciated.

Top quality ships IBL. I haven't managed to sink any yet but I hope that will change soon

Mostly due to texturing limitations - it's not my strongest skill. Right before the mod was released I finally designed some symmetrical ship hulls from scratch, but using them would have delayed the mod by many months.

Also, some hull flags were in fact backwards - I think that painting neutrality marks was left up to the individual ship masters, and this was an occasional error (see the pic of the "Comol Rico" below - stripes should be "trailing" astern, not pointing to her bow).

These improved merchant hulls will be included in Wolves of the Kaiser (if I get it done!)

[melnibonian]

Thanks for the quick reply.

I must say we've been waiting for years for your mod but it was worthy in the end.

[HW3]

I'm thinking of installing the Skin Packs into SH3 Commander so they'll load by themselves at the appropriate dates.

I did that. If there wasn't a date folder to match the skin file date, I made one for it. One thing I did notice was in skin pack 1, MFM-v3-US+UK_skins19400601, the folder was empty.

[Ruzbasan]

I tried installing the mod many different ways and like most of the posts above, I got CTD's everytime. It appears as though only a lucky one or two have been able to to get the mod to work.

Could it be that the MFM is simply too much data for SHIII to handle?

IABL,
Could you make a zip file that shows screenshots of each of the ships in the mod with their file names?

Then we could choose a very limited number of ships that we like the most from the mod and only install them, possibly preventing CTD's?

It would make installing and using the mod much, much easier.

[pickinthebanjo]

Well I guess I've had enough of this, Hell with it i'll live without the mod. Maybe in future releases it will be much more stable

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by melnibonian

Steve if you manage to do that I am interested. I thought about it as well but I am not 100% sure on how to do it. Any help you can offer will be most appreciated.

It's very simple actually. You just look in Commander's 'Date' folder. There are already many different functions applied there, some for date-based history updates, some for the War Radio mod that puts them in the Gramophone.

Just Change the title of each skins folder so it reads exactly like one of the folders already in 'Date', and it should install it on that date all by itself. Or you can take the Data folder of each one out and put it inside one of the folders with a date on it that's closest.

For instance, copy the Data folder inside MFM-v3-US+UK_Skins19390901 and paste in inside Commander's Date/19390901 folder. When it says there's already a Data folder and asks if you want to overwrite it, click 'Yes'.

When you come to MFM-v3-US+UK_Skins19400601, you'll see that there isn't a 'Date' folder in Commander with that label. Just make one, and paste the Data folder from that one into the one you just made.

For the first one, MFM-v3-Neutral-Skins-1940, copy and paste the Data folder into Commander's 19400101.

And you're done!

[Sailor Steve]

Oh, and I just got another surprise. Figuring I still had nothing to lose I uninstalled 3.2 and tried 3.0.

AND IT WORKED TOO!!!

Now I just have to spend a lot of time re-installing all the mods I like. Some of them don't work with JSGME and have to be installed manually.

Actually my next test will be to do a manual install of MFM 3.0 and see it it works. I like to have mods I know are working installed permanently, to keep the clutter down.

I'll keep y'all posted.

[melnibonian]

Thanks Steve.

[Reece]

@ Wreford-Brown, Just got it finished, unpacked it, no corruptions!
Thanks for hosting. And thanks iambecomelife!
Edit:
Well I tried and as I thought not enough memory, the first CTD error had the ModName=ntdll.dll
and the second attempt:
ModName=kernel.dll
I will just have to split the file down to smaller sizes and keep trying till I get it to go!

I notice that some of Ricks rec manual sil tga files have the same ship names, are these the same ship design or totally different?

[denis_469]

What about soviet ships?

[Fubar2Niner]

@denis_469

Funny you should ask that, I just picked one up in a small four ship convoy, on my way to send her to the bottom as I type

Best regards.

Fubar2Niner

[iambecomelife]

I'm glad to see some people have it working; I will continue testing the rest of this weekend to improve compatibility - especially with GWX 3.0. Sorry that some people have been disappointed.

I will have illustrations of all ships available in an improved PDF recognition manual (I released one about 2 years ago, but there have been many changes since then).

Originally Posted by denis_469

What about soviet ships?

There are several soviet ships included, mostly freighters. You will encounter them at random, based on spawn rates of generic cargo ships.

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by Reece

I notice that some of Ricks rec manual sil tga files have the same ship names, are these the same ship design or totally different?

Same. Rick's manual was designed to replace all the pictures with ones that look like they were drawn rather than photographed. He took IABL's Rec Manual pictures from an early version and converted them.

[Reece]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

Same. Rick's manual was designed to replace all the pictures with ones that look like they were drawn rather than photographed. He took IABL's Rec Manual pictures from an early version and converted them.

Just looking at the first one the AK01A they look quite a bit different, in the game which would be closer to how it actually is? with the huge number of ships will it be easily identified? Mind you if you get it wrong SH3 by default will put the correct one in the captains log. Edit: Just noticed the height is way different! the cfg has height at Mast=22.5 so Ricks is correct.