[REL] Merchant Fleet Mod for Silent Hunter 3

[Damo]

Installed...

Museum loaded first time, after 6-7 minutes, scrolled through all ships in American roster, no problemo. Adding skins to SH3Commander now, then I'm really gonna tempt fate by trying to load my existing career. Expecting a crash. Although I just transferred to Lorient so maybe the lack of the Wilhelmshaven harbor mod being loaded into render will give me the required headroom.

To be continued...

[Hans Witteman]

Hi Iambecomelife,

Since the beginning i am a big fan of your work and i am here to request permission from you sir to integrated your fantastic mod into U-BOOTTYPIIA_HAHD

Best regards Hans

[Vermin]

Success

Being a cretin I was not using the 4G patch - just the 3G switch.

Of course to apply the 4G patch I had to get rid of starforce and reinstall everything with the 5 replacement files first...

Now - Sweet!

Thanks for your help everyone!

BTW - I assume the "4G patch" just adds the /awarelargeraddress switch?

[Damo]

Originally Posted by Vermin

BTW - I assume the "4G patch" just adds the /awarelargeraddress switch?

Pretty much yeh, the 2 combined seem to be just enough to squeeze the additional resources needed to run a reasonable heavy modded SH3 because....

I'm on patrol now with the full MFM and skins!!!

And this is on an existing career too so I didn't have to start over which is great. On the first load it got to the 'Not so long ago...' screen and crashed but it gave sh3.exe as the culprit and not Kernel.dll (the memory gremlin) so I thought maybe just a hiccup. I restarted Gamebooster again, manually checked Task Manager for anything that could be shut down which only yielded Punkbuster, no idea if that's a memory drain but it seems to run constant, and reset my windows theme to Windows Classic as I know that fancy themes draw memory. Without restarting the PC I tried to load the career again and it worked.

Not sure if it would work while I'm based in Wilhelmshaven due to the extra resources of that mod so that will be something to test at a later date, I'm just glad to be able to continue my career. If I have any issues with any ships I encounter I'll let you know but as they all loaded fine in Museum I don't foresee any issues with the models.

[Vermin]

Just left willhelmshaven - via the new locks got to watch the trains and trucks moving etc... very nice - everything "seems" stable!

Regards

Vermin

[Walruss]

Hi guys,

Running Full MFM with gwx 3 and sh3 commander... In my past two patrols since i installed the mod, I've noticed that any MFM ship I sink gets no detail in the SH3 commander logs... just it's tonnage, no name no cargo no casualty report...


Any fix for this?

[frau kaleun]

Real ship data in Commander is taken from the 'Ship Names.cfg' file, which assigns names and data according to the ship class. Some of the classes added to the game by the MFM (those with class names ending in 'X') aren't represented in the Ship Names file yet.

It's my understanding that Sailor Steve wasn't adding data for them because the 'X' ships are (in theory) supposed to be neutral and wouldn't get sunk anyway, but in practice some of those supposed neutrals actually turn up on the rosters of belligerent nations to make things more interesting for the player.

We were discussing this in the most recent thread for the Ship Names "add on," at least a couple of us are working on personal changes to the Ship Names file to account for all those sinkable neutrals.

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=179806

[Robin40]

Originally Posted by Walruss

Hi guys,

Running Full MFM with gwx 3 and sh3 commander... In my past two patrols since i installed the mod, I've noticed that any MFM ship I sink gets no detail in the SH3 commander logs... just it's tonnage, no name no cargo no casualty report...


Any fix for this?

I use MFM Interim Beta and MFMBetaEnglishNames with no problem, also with neutral ships if you are so ugly to sink them

[frau kaleun]

Originally Posted by Robin40

I use MFM Interim Beta and MFMBetaEnglishNames with no problem, also with neutral ships if you are so ugly to sink them

The EnglishNames.cfg only controls the display name for each class of ship when they appear in the game. In order for Commander to provide a real ship's name and cargo/crew data in your patrol logs after a patrol is completed, the ship's class needs a list of names assigned to it in Commander's ShipNames.cfg file. Two different files, two different functions.

Also IIRC the MFM Interim Beta mod contains no neutral ship classes at all, only IABL's American and British ship classes. Those are already accounted for in the ShipNames.cfg file so the issue of missing names/data in the patrol logs shouldn't occur with that mod.

[Robin40]

Originally Posted by frau kaleun

The EnglishNames.cfg only controls the display name for each class of ship when they appear in the game. In order for Commander to provide a real ship's name and cargo/crew data in your patrol logs after a patrol is completed, the ship's class needs a list of names assigned to it in Commander's ShipNames.cfg file. Two different files, two different functions.

Also IIRC the MFM Interim Beta mod contains no neutral ship classes at all, only IABL's American and British ship classes. Those are already accounted for in the ShipNames.cfg file so the issue of missing names/data in the patrol logs shouldn't occur with that mod.

That's right...so I use MFMInterimBeta

[frau kaleun]

Originally Posted by Robin40

That's right...so I use MFMInterimBeta

Then you would not have the issue that Walruss has noticed, so I'm not sure what your point is.

If he wants to "resolve" the missing ship data issue by switching to the Interim Beta version, that's his choice - but if his system can handle the full MFM mod and he wants the extra ships in it, the fact that Interim Beta doesn't present the same issue isn't really much of a solution.

The solution is to make the necessary changes to the ShipNames.cfg file in Commander.

[Robin40]

Originally Posted by frau kaleun

Then you would not have the issue that Walruss has noticed, so I'm not sure what your point is.

If he wants to "resolve" the missing ship data issue by switching to the Interim Beta version, that's his choice - but if his system can handle the full MFM mod and he wants the extra ships in it, the fact that Interim Beta doesn't present the same issue isn't really much of a solution.

The solution is to make the necessary changes to the ShipNames.cfg file in Commander.

I agree...but in the meanwhile I like to use the Beta with all news in SH3Commander

[Walruss]

So, do I copy a file from MFM called shipsnames.cfg from my sh3 directory somewhere to my SH3Commader directory somewhere?

[frau kaleun]

Nope, the real ship names function only works in Commander, it's not part of the MFM (or any other mod) and works independently of any mods you've added to the game itself.

First off, make sure that you have checked "Use real ship names" in Commander's options. If you haven't selected that option, Commander won't give you real ship data for anything at all.

When you finish a patrol, also make sure you open Commander and update the Personnel file for your kaleun. Do not skip this step! It's what triggers Commander to "consult" the Ship Names file and add the real data to your patrol log.

Now if you open the folder on your hard drive where Commander was installed and look in the Cfg subfolder, you'll see a file called "Ship Names.cfg" in there. That's the file that contains all the real ship names and crew/cargo data.

If you open the Ship Names file and scroll down, you'll see that where the ship names are listed, they are divided by class: AK03A, M01B, etc. The classes listed here correspond to classes of ships in the game (you'll find folders for all of the classes in your game in the game's data\Sea folder, or you can see a list of them by opening up the EnglishNames.cfg file in that same folder). The version of the file that was current at the time of Commander's release is installed as part of Commander, but Sailor Steve updates it with more data every so often. Watch the Mods Workshop forum, he always posts a link when he does this so you can go download the newest version. (The new version is for January 2011 and that's the thread I linked to in my previous reply).

Some "classes" in the Ship Names file, like [GenericMerchantsAndTankers], are "catchall" lists for several different classes that appear in the game. Those classes will have been mapped to that list by the CLASSMAP that appears near the top of the Ship Names file.

If there is no list of names for a particular class, and that class hasn't been mapped to an existing list in the CLASSMAP, Commander can't give it a real name and data in your patrol logs because it consults the file and doesn't see any info there for that class. Usually this is okay because the Ship Names file covers just about everything you would normally sink in the game.

The issue with the MFM currently is that it adds a ton of new classes to the game, some of which - the "neutral" ships - aren't represented in the Ship Names file in Commander. There's just no data there for those classes, so Commander can't give them a real name or list the cargo even if you follow all the right steps and it gives you that info for the other ships you sink.

The "neutral" ship classes in the MFM are the ones whose class name ends with 'X': M02X, T18X, etc. My understanding is that Steve didn't add data for those classes to the Ship Names file because they were (in theory) neutral and therefore you wouldn't be sinking them anyway. But the way the MFM works is, it adds some of those "neutral" classes to the shipping Rosters for countries you are at war with, like America and Britain, as well as to the Rosters for neutral countries. So when they appear in the game they might be neutral or they might be enemy ships and you have to make a decision based on observation about whether or not to attack them.

Steve couldn't have known that since he hasn't been able to run the game with the MFM installed on his existing computer, so I don't think it ever occurred to him that some of the supposedly neutral ships it adds would be legitimate targets and get sunk and then need names and data from the Ship Names file.

The only way to get real ship names and data for those 'X' class ships from the MFM is to add data to the Ship Names file for them, or map them to existing lists in the current file. That's kind of what we were discussing in that other thread.

[Sailor Steve]

Back up in post #531 Walruss said he wasn't getting details from any MFM sinking, not just the 'X' neutrals.

I don't know why that would be, and of course I can't check it.

As for naming the 'X' ships, the real reason I haven't is the sheer volume of the work involved. If it was possible to have ships for each country I would gladly do that, as I already have every single ship catalogued that way. But that can't be done in SH3 without bringing it to a standstill.

I personally don't like the 'X' idea, simply because which countries are neutral changes several times early in the war, and the only ones that are consistently neutral until a set date are the Americas, and they are classified as neutrals by the game anyway. If one programmer could make SH4 give ships names I'd make the switch without a second thought. Until then I keep doing it for SH3C mainly because I'm cataloguing them all anyway, and SH3 is the only way I can publish the work.