[WIP] Printable SH IV recognition manual

[Raven Morpheus]

Ah OK, not sure how to do that myself, I usually just mark position on the map, wait 3 minutes and mark again then use the compass to measure the distance, which gives me the speed in knots.

I'll add the length though as I can see now how that would be handy.

I finished doing all the cards for the SH IV ships this afternoon, so just text tweaking text on each card, some extra bits of info to add (like metric values for mast height and draft), and arranging them in a M$ Word document to convert to PDF format.

I would imagine adding the SH V ships won't take too long, just a matter of working out which ones I've already got from SH IV.

[Raven Morpheus]

OK I've finalised the format of the cards. By my count there is some 60 cards (not including a divider for each country/section) for the entire stock SH IV RM!! This will probably end up being a 100 card set by the time I add stock SH V ships!!

I've added a flag to the cards, as per the in-game RM, I've added length and AOB also. All info is currently as I see it in-game playing as the US with Authentic measurment on, so all lengths in feet for example.

I will eventually put them in Metric also, probably on a line underneath the Imperial values.


So far I've only added the Length info to the IJN cards, it will take longer to do the Merchants because they are not named how the files are named (so I'll have to match the _sil.dds file with the card I've made and then find the .cfg for that _sil.dds), then obviously I have the other countries to add the Length info to also (which won't take long because there's not that many, I made all the cards that aren't the IJN or Merchant in an hour or two this afternoon), and the AOB tags are only on two cards so far, I think I'll have to adjust the position of those on a card by card basis because I don't think a standard position will work with some of the silhouettes.

I'm also making the assumption that the third angle of silhouette is 20° because I don't know exactly what angle it's at.

Here's how the cards will look now (these are the raw .jpg images I'm generating, these are what will be going into the pdf/M$ Word document) -

[TorpX]

Originally Posted by Raven Morpheus

Ah OK, not sure how to do that myself, I usually just mark position on the map, wait 3 minutes and mark again then use the compass to measure the distance, which gives me the speed in knots.

I'll add the length though as I can see now how that would be handy.

For the most part, I do the same, but it is worthwhile to have another method, at times.

In the simplest case, you are timing the target ship as it crosses your periscope reticle in front of you, so you divide the length by the time, and multiply by a constant to convert from ft./sec. to knots.

I gave a full explanation of the "timing by wire" math in post 58:
http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=200846



About the angled target views, they appear to be about 45 degrees. This can be estimated by the fact that they look to be about 7/10th of full length, and sine 45 deg. is ~.71.

It is important to get the aspect of the ship views correct, as they can be a stumbling block if they are in error. I played SHCE for quite a while, having difficulty making good AoB estimates, before I finally realized the rec. manual was not accurate in this regard. I guess they "squeezed" the images at some point, without thinking about how this changes the aspect of the views.

[aanker]

I made a nice one for SHCE using screenshots from that ONI-208-J manual however Ubisoft still owns the SSI graphics so I didn't publicly release it.

There are scans of real ONI-208-J manuals on the internet which seem to be a match for so many of the SH4 Marus - and could be made into a 'super' - realistic booklet. :)

For example:
http://www.hnsa.org/doc/id/oni208j-japan-merchant-ships/index.htm
-
http://www.hnsa.org/doc/id/oni208j-japan-merchant-ships/front023.htm

http://www.hnsa.org/doc/id/oni208j-japan-merchant-ships/pg001.htm
...... etc, etc.

http://www.hnsa.org/doc/id/index.htm
...... etc, etc.

IOW, the ships added seem to meet the specs of their RW counterparts...

Happy Hunting!

[Raven Morpheus]

aanker has given me an idea...

I came across this thread by WernerSobe where he was reorganising the in-game RM so that it's more like how the ONI was ordered.

So, what I will do is put the cards I've created in the order as per that thread/the ONI in my hard copy version of the RM - it actually makes more sense to have it like that I think.

I may also add the real names of the ships alongside the names that are shown in-game for completeness.

Not sure how that's going to work with all the other ships included as well, especially the SH V ones, but I'll see how it goes, it will certainly cut down on the duplicate cards, because I've got about 3 or 4 versions of the Armed Trawler because the in-game RM lists it under 3 or 4 countries...

Also what do you mean aanker when you say Ubisoft still owns the SSI graphics? Do you mean the artwork I've been using?

[Raven Morpheus]

So, trying to recategorise some of the ships into ONI style categories and I've hit a bit of a bump in the road.

I've got some me4rchant ships that I don't know which category they fall into, because they're not Japanese Merchants from what I can tell.

The ships I'm having a problem with are -

Libery Cargo
Victory Cargo
Troop Transport


I don't know which of the following merchant categories to put them in -

Cargo Split
Cargo Composite
Passenger



How do I tell if a cargo ship is split or composite?


I'm also wondering what category to put the Flower Corvette into, because it's larger than a Patrol Craft and small than a Destroyer, the same for the British Black Swan Sloop, it's a Frigate. It seems silly to create a category just for 1 ship - would putting it in the Destroyer category (which I'll name Destroyers, Frigates and Corvettes) suffice?


And I have no idea what category to put the Armed Merchant Cruiser and Submarine Tender into - so I've categorised them under "Misc" for the moment!?


I'm thinking I'm going to have all sorts of problems like the above categorising the additional ships that SH V has...


Thanks in advance for any advice on this little wrinkle.

[Raven Morpheus]

Still got the Length, Draft and Mast values in Metric to add to the cards for the merchant ships but I thought I'd take a break as I've just done everything else (except the IJN, which I did the other day) and start on putting the pdf together...

It's coming together nicely I think, here's a sample of the first 6 pages, note that if you print these as cards I'd recommend to print them as 1 page per side of each card (otherwise you'll have 111 cards instead of 56 cards). Ignore the blue around the pic, that's just where I used snipping tool to take the screengrab of the pdf in Foxit -




You'll note that I have a section divider as the first page, and the ships are ordered in alphabetical order (read left to right in this case where I've set the view of Foxit to display multiple pages in 2 columns), obviously if you print this out yourselves you can change the order and/or discard my section dividers.


Not 100% sure but I may not have left enough room on the left of each card for binding, holes may end up going through the silhouette and text, so I may still have to add a margin all around to compensate for that (only need one on the left but it won't maintain the shape/size of the original image if I put a margin only on the left).

[aanker]

Looking good.

A friend made a booklet out of my SHCE ONI 208J pages, professionally glued the binding rather than use holes, and sent me a video to show off the results, here's a screenshot:



Warships were by class, so were marus except there weren't as many in SH1.

Happy Hunting!

[aanker]

Originally Posted by Raven Morpheus

... Also what do you mean aanker when you say Ubisoft still owns the SSI graphics? Do you mean the artwork I've been using?

Yes - however what action they take is unknown other than I've heard they vigorously protect their intellectual property, (even SH1 - SHCE) and several years ago a mod or two of mine were deleted from the now defunct Filefront site - maybe because it appeared like I included some unmodified files in a BALAO clone? ....I forget what it was. Funny thing though, they were modified.

This is why I was thinking along the lines of using public domain ONI type graphics to create realistic looking pages/cards to print out and make into a booklet with information, complete with the mistakes, for the in-game warships & marus. That would appear more realistic for me anyway.

The time-frame when I made the SHCE printable ONI-208-J from screenshots from that game was around the time that the digital millennium copyright act was still fresh - and scary.... lol

Just to be clear, I don't care what anyone else does or creates, mostly just thinking 'out loud' and wanting to stay out of trouble. :)

Happy Hunting!

Edit: http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/show...86&postcount=6 Sailor Steve describes the difference.

[Raven Morpheus]

Ah I see what you mean now. The problem with using those public domain images is they only cover the Japanese ships, whereas I'm compiling my RM so it covers all the ships in the game (where they have a _sil.dds) and also in due course the ships in SH V.

I'm not too bothered by rumours of Ubisofts protection of their IP, I'll give full credit to them for their artwork in a readme, and they're unlikely to come after one small guy such as myself, I'm not going to make money from it, and it's no different really to mods for example like TDW UI which can change the UI in SH V to that of SH IV - you're circulating artwork/files from the game in such a mod in the same way I'll be circulating the artwork in a printable pdf file.

I doubt it would get to the stage if they did take action that I'd end up being sued or slapped with a large payment to make.

Publish and be damned I say.

Filefont or Gamefront as it is now is well known for removing files for no real reason by the way, they even do it if files aren't accessed within a specific time frame (they deleted loads of files I had on there for that reason) so I wouldn't worry that your files were removed from Filefont, but that's why I'll be using a different hosting site.

Still need to get to the stage I can put the PDF together though, I keep thinking I'm near to doing so, then something else comes up (like adding the Length info, or now recategorising the ships to ONI style categories, which I need a little assistance on)...


EDIT: So based on Sailor Steve's description there the Victory and Liberty Cargo ships would be Composite Cargo ships. Still leaves me wondering about the Troop Transport (I'm guessing Passenger would be the best category for that?), Submarine Tender (which comes under Merchants in the in-game RM) and Armed Merchant Cruiser (which is German) though.

[aanker]

A couple links that may be helpful

http://www.hnsa.org/doc/id/index.htm

http://www.coatneyhistory.com/drawings.htm

Troop ship sounds good to me in that category :)

Happy Hunting!