TMO + RSRD

[Armistead]

TMO and RSRD work together fine. and both work great with numerous other mods. For the most part mods are just values.

TMO and RSRD have different campaigns. I don't think TMO in the beginning messed much with a campaign, thus why lurker probably decided to give us a realistic campaign, something the game lacked. so it was something lurker and Duc supported each other on.. Later TMO did a lot more campaign work, both are different and offer you different options of play. RSRD give you historical accuracy, while TMO is about half historical, half random.

As far as the paths any group takes in in mod, it will remain the same for that group, the difference is lurkers groups are almost always historical, so it will always be the same makeup and spawn the same time, it usually spawns once and despawns once....TMO uses more percentages, meaning he can set parameters for that group to spawn over and over and use further percentage values to change the make up of the group and it will spawn over and over on a set time, say every 48 hours. You can also set percentages that a group may not spawn at all when spawn times come. What this does is spawn a different group makeup each time the group spawns, so it's not the same each time it spawns.. but waypoints are set for the group and don't change, so it will still follow the same path, the difference is because of percentages used, it won't be the same group or come through at the exact same time. This is the quick way to to make traffic, you create one group, one set of waypoints, but use numerous percentages to change platforms, times spawned, etc.... and respawn it over and over, whereas most of lurkers groups are independent one time groups. You can use something called loops that take you down a different path, also using percentages, but you have to reconnect it back to a previous waypoint, TMO uses some.

Now one fun thing about TMO traffic is the zag pattern, With RSRD the course doesn't zig zag, except for course changes, with TMO, he zags about every 10 nms, so you often have to deal with constant course changes during an attack.

Yes, with RSRD the same stuff will show at the same time at the same place, so if you learn it, you can always find it, however, he has 1000's of historical groups, so it'll take you a few years figuring it all out, but yes, if you mark times and locations, you can always find it there. One can only imagine the hours of work it took to make a historical mod where you can basically relive WW2 if you choose to do so.

RR usually contends if you mod of change a mod it trashes the intent of the mod....certainly, some have and some mods are incompatible, so it's good to understand them and talk to others and see what they like. The thing is no modder can make everyone happy, thus 100's of numerous other mods pop up with each persons views on how a certain aspect should be....the fact that some want to argue what should come first as a name is rather silly.. Most accept supermods as the mod they are working with, because the supermod changes about every aspect and is the first mod loaded in order. Simply, you load RSRD first, then TMO, you have no RSRD, if you load TMO first, then RSRD, you have 90% TMO and the campaign changes of RSRD. , thus RSRD for TMO or any other supermod lurker adjusted it to.....

[james_nix]

I'm not discounting RSRD, it's an amazing piece of work and lurker_hlb3 is a legend of which the SHIV community should be forever grateful, and I enjoy it for some playthroughs.

But I tend to enjoy a more "Hollywood" type of play. I want supply missions and insert commandos missions, even if they aren't historically accurate, just to break up the monotony. I customize my sub with exterior markings and interior posters so I am very much into creating my own narrative, instead of following the patrol logs of an actual sub, because after a while it becomes a bit stale for me.

Then again, some people enjoy 100 percent historical (sometimes I do too) and nothing is wrong with that. Everyone is different.

[Rockin Robbins]

Originally Posted by Armistead

Now one fun thing about TMO traffic is the zag pattern, With RSRD the course doesn't zig zag, except for course changes, with TMO, he zags about every 10 nms, so you often have to deal with constant course changes during an attack.

That was something that bugged Lurker a lot, as he really wanted those zigs in his mod too. But when you are controlling what they do by scripting, each zig is another instruction in the .mis file. It just collapses under its own weight as it becomes more complex. Imagine having to script each zig in a 1000 mile trip from one port to another. Now multiply that by 1000 (conservatively) missions for the war. At the time we had 32-bit Windows almost exclusively so 3.2 GB was a rock hard ceiling. Stuff broke.

Since Ducimus reasoned that to a sub commander there was no knowledge of shipping routes beyond a vague impression, and no idea of warship routing at all, to them encounters were random. The sub went where COMSUBPAC sent it and encountered whatever was there. Now out of Pearl, commanders had a little more freedom than subs did out of Australia but they weren't just out there skylarking wherever they wanted.

From that point of view random encounters are much more realistic. However, even though we know that sending ships where they actually went in the war does not make them behave correctly it's hard to resist the question "what if I were sitting offshore with a sub full of torpedoes when the Tokyo Express decided to land troops on Guadalcanal?" To do that you need something like RSRDC.

But if you really like TMO and you know that when you load up RSRDC you aren't playing TMO any more it's a deal with the devil. Heads they win, tails you lose. The choices you'd like to make are unavailable.

Maybe I'll start work on some plugin AI mods to see what's possible. I already have universally compatible (by MY definition of compatible) plotting mods and keyboard input mods. I'm considering a new plotting mod, where there is a single silhouette for all ships that would point in the correct direction with no velocity vector or ID/course/speed info either. It would be halfway between the stock plotting system and the TMO plotting system. Could be a winner. More choices are good and players should be able to make those choices, not the modders.

The funny thing is that at the Silent Hunter Modding forum we used to wonder what Webster was thinking and why. Some of the things that were said weren't too nice. And it turns out that Webster was the right thinker all the time. There is a place for the single purpose one aspect mod. If they are carefully made you can roll your own supermod. Then the choices are in the players' power, not to be arbitrarily compelled by the modders.

There's no reason that in order to get ships going where they went in the war you have to lose Duci's evil airplanes, other than the capricious choices of modders. That should change.

It would be nice to disassemble several of the mod packages into their constituent elements to make them available as separate mods. But so long as the modders are still around, out of respect for the rights of those modders I think it wouldn't be right to do so. I guess RSRDC just went from fair game into a gray area.

[Armistead]

Originally Posted by james_nix

I'm not discounting RSRD, it's an amazing piece of work and lurker_hlb3 is a legend of which the SHIV community should be forever grateful, and I enjoy it for some playthroughs.

But I tend to enjoy a more "Hollywood" type of play. I want supply missions and insert commandos missions, even if they aren't historically accurate, just to break up the monotony. I customize my sub with exterior markings and interior posters so I am very much into creating my own narrative, instead of following the patrol logs of an actual sub, because after a while it becomes a bit stale for me.

Then again, some people enjoy 100 percent historical (sometimes I do too) and nothing is wrong with that. Everyone is different.

I butchered RSRD to make it how I wanted, It's still the same, I just added much more to it that's random, made harbors and ports damn near death if you risk going in, etc... There's actually a lot you could do to make the game very Hollywood for difficulty. One thing lacking in the special missions in most mods is stirring up a hornet's nest doing what you have to do, which isn't that hard, just time consuming.

[Armistead]

Originally Posted by Rockin Robbins

That was something that bugged Lurker a lot, as he really wanted those zigs in his mod too. But when you are controlling what they do by scripting, each zig is another instruction in the .mis file. It just collapses under its own weight as it becomes more complex. Imagine having to script each zig in a 1000 mile trip from one port to another. Now multiply that by 1000 (conservatively) missions for the war. At the time we had 32-bit Windows almost exclusively so 3.2 GB was a rock hard ceiling. Stuff broke.

Since Ducimus reasoned that to a sub commander there was no knowledge of shipping routes beyond a vague impression, and no idea of warship routing at all, to them encounters were random. The sub went where COMSUBPAC sent it and encountered whatever was there. Now out of Pearl, commanders had a little more freedom than subs did out of Australia but they weren't just out there skylarking wherever they wanted.

From that point of view random encounters are much more realistic. However, even though we know that sending ships where they actually went in the war does not make them behave correctly it's hard to resist the question "what if I were sitting offshore with a sub full of torpedoes when the Tokyo Express decided to land troops on Guadalcanal?" To do that you need something like RSRDC.

But if you really like TMO and you know that when you load up RSRDC you aren't playing TMO any more it's a deal with the devil. Heads they win, tails you lose. The choices you'd like to make are unavailable.

Maybe I'll start work on some plugin AI mods to see what's possible. I already have universally compatible (by MY definition of compatible) plotting mods and keyboard input mods. I'm considering a new plotting mod, where there is a single silhouette for all ships that would point in the correct direction with no velocity vector or ID/course/speed info either. It would be halfway between the stock plotting system and the TMO plotting system. Could be a winner. More choices are good and players should be able to make those choices, not the modders.

The funny thing is that at the Silent Hunter Modding forum we used to wonder what Webster was thinking and why. Some of the things that were said weren't too nice. And it turns out that Webster was the right thinker all the time. There is a place for the single purpose one aspect mod. If they are carefully made you can roll your own supermod. Then the choices are in the players' power, not to be arbitrarily compelled by the modders.

There's no reason that in order to get ships going where they went in the war you have to lose Duci's evil airplanes, other than the capricious choices of modders. That should change.

It would be nice to disassemble several of the mod packages into their constituent elements to make them available as separate mods. But so long as the modders are still around, out of respect for the rights of those modders I think it wouldn't be right to do so. I guess RSRDC just went from fair game into a gray area.

I think Duci somewhat toned down his planes in his more recent versions, but I stopped playing for a few years and been awhile since I played TMO alone, but think it was more the env changes of water transparency if he did. I actually like some of Travs ideas with plans, having one just track you way high until others come in. Only issue I have is the long contact times they hunt you, hell in places near many airbases, they'll keep you down all day if you are found out.

No mod makes everyone happy, but the past bickering over mods, who did what, don't do this, etc...just as you mentioned Webster being terribly raked over the coals, I found silly. To me it should be about making the game better for anyone and in the end no one has rights to the files, it's just respect to give credit, but it often turned into just a pissing contest of egos, very silly.

I use TMO and RSRD, admitting I've butchered RSRD to my own liking for more excitement and I use a much harder AI than even TMO, but even now I can probably sink 100K tons per patrol. The game at it's core , correct realism just can't be obtained, but still a great game.

[TorpX]

I've always used RSRDC in campaign play, and consider it an excellent mod. I note that it has been downloaded thousands of times; that, in itself, says something about lurker's work.

One should also note that nobody has released an 'ACME - improved historical' campaign mod. I guess that is due to either the sufficiency of RSRDC, or the enormous amount of work required to do one.

[As an aside, RR says lurker nerfed aircraft, but I've been killed by aircraft bombs more than once, below periscope depth in RFB+RSRDC, so I don't really know what he's talking about.]





These are some of the things I like about lurker's RSRDC:

There are new ships, and new aircraft, too.

Shipping goes from port to port in a rational fashion. Ships are encountered where one would expect ships to be. I haven't played the stock game in any significant degree, but I have no reason to think the Ubisoft stock campaign is worthwhile.

There is not a crazy over-abundance of targets. You have to work a little for your tonnage. I consider this very desirable.

[Newinger]

Thanks a lot for all the additional insights.

So, if I understand you correctly, both TMO alone and TMO+RSRDC offer stable and consistent gameplay and it's a matter of taste in the end. I guess we have a similar situation like in some of the strategy games by Paradox Interactive (like Europa Universalis series:

On the one hand players who prefer a campaign based on as many accurate historical data as possible, even if this can lead to very similar events if you play the same situation more than one time. That would be a RSRDC-enhanced mod.

On the other hand players who prefer a campaign giving an accurate historical feeling and a more varied (less boring when repeated) gameplay. That would be pure TMO.

I guess both approaches are valid and which one I should take just depends on what I like. I think what just facilitated my decision is the information that convoys don't zig-zag in RSRDC. I understand the reasons you explained, but this takes away a lot of the challenge for me. So it's TMO then for me. Thanks, guys!

[Rockin Robbins]

Yes, when you actually start working toward it as a goal, "reality" becomes a very slippery concept.

Then you come to the Achilles Heel of my idea of swappable plugins into a fairly generic over-mod. Both Ducimus and the RFB Team ran up against hardwired game restraints that made what you see NOT what you get. Interactions between settings that should have no relation to each other lead to some comical results at times.

We had targets in the fog that we could plainly see but the periscope wouldn't stay locked on them for more than five seconds. Initially calling that a feature, the process became so tedious in practice that the outcry made for a major RFB reconfiguration. In order for depth charges to have historical results, they had to be made so harmless that they could drop onto your deck, explode and you were almost perfectly safe. They had to be strengthened again.

It seems like the hardwiring of the game is specifically for enforcing the law of unintended consequences: for every consequence you purposely achieve there are at least two unintended consequences. One of them is bad.

A perfect example was Ducimus' struggle with environmental mods. Not happy with stock environment, he experimented with every environmental mod out there. But those environmental mods influenced the way sub sensors and enemy AI interplayed--badly! Finally, he nerfed one of the major environmental mods and tweaked it enough that he was happy with the balance between sub sensors and enemy AI.

But the first thing people tend to do, to this day, is say "the TMO environment sucks. I don't like the sky color. The waves are wrong and the wrong color. Yada yada." And they have a point. But what you see is not what the game mechanism sees. There is a reason TMO's environment looks the way it does and that is the result of hundreds of hours of testing every combination of environmental mods out there.

It's a shame that what the environment looks like influences enemy AI and sub sensors at all, but that's hard-wired. It's just like when you put three torpedoes into a merchie, take the camera and look. There's not a hole in it! But the merchie fills with water and sinks or just explodes in a ball of fire anyway. What you see is not what the game mechanism sees.

Ducimus called it eye candy. And his guiding principle was that gameplay must trump eye candy every time. Eye candy was tolerable only if it had no effect on gameplay. I agree with his conclusion.

If you're fighting the sub you're detecting a plane and diving. You aren't looking whether that's a Zero Sen with a torpedo (bad! bad!). You don't care if it's a weaponized seagull, you're under water and not looking at it anyway. It's a plane and planes are mostly dangerous. That's all that matters. Destroyers have hard-coded indestructible bows. IRL you send a torpedo at an oncoming DD, hit him in the nose and the front half of the ship is blown off. In SH4 the mostly undamaged DD runs over you and drops Christmas presents on you. There hasn't been a fix for that.

So reality is a slippery concept. I can't say Lurker's version of sub sensor/enemy AI is better or worse than Ducimus' or the RFB Team's or the stock game. I can say it's different and it should be clear to the casual player that when he loads up RSRDC he's no longer playing TMO or RFB or stock. It's truth in advertising. Nothing more and nothing less. Players deserve to know. And I believe they should have as much control as we can give them.

[Newinger]

Originally Posted by Rockin Robbins

A perfect example was Ducimus' struggle with environmental mods. Not happy with stock environment, he experimented with every environmental mod out there. But those environmental mods influenced the way sub sensors and enemy AI interplayed--badly! Finally, he nerfed one of the major environmental mods and tweaked it enough that he was happy with the balance between sub sensors and enemy AI.

But the first thing people tend to do, to this day, is say "the TMO environment sucks. I don't like the sky color. The waves are wrong and the wrong color. Yada yada." And they have a point. But what you see is not what the game mechanism sees. There is a reason TMO's environment looks the way it does and that is the result of hundreds of hours of testing every combination of environmental mods out there.

At the moment I have installed TMO and on top Improved Stock Environment v2 (because v3 does not work and gives lots of fog) + the 2 submods for color and clouds. It LOOKS very beautiful and to be honest I dislike TMO's default look, too.

Now when I look into the ISE folder, I see that it alters shaders for clouds and filters, EnvColors*.dat and SkyColors*.dat, and the scene.dat.

I suspect that scene.dat is very central also for TMO's changes, isn't it? So if I use ISE, do I contradict TMO's settings for sensors and AI (or any other important settings balanced in TMO)? Or are these imortant gameplays aspects part of other files (which then would not be affected by ISE)?


Edit: Answer to myself: Read the whole ISE release thread, and it seems ISE 3 is compatible with TMO (because it uses TMO's scene.dat as starting point), and his colors submod, too, but not the clouds & wakes submod, because that submod uses the default scene.dat as starting point. What a pity And to make it worse, even though ISE 3 is said to be compatible in the TMO version, it has fog issues. So... I guess I can only use the color submod of ISE, but nothing more.

[Rockin Robbins]

It's a tragedy of the game that setting for all manner of unrelated settings are held within overarching settings files. It really puts us in a straitjacket sometimes.

short answer is, for any large mod, that any changes made to the environment by a mod, will change how the sensors and AI function because how well or poorly the AI works is very dependent on the environmental conditions it is operating in, so keep that in mind when contemplating the mods you add.

its always best to use a large mod like RFB or TMO by itself with no other mods and then if you want to add things from other mods, its best to do this by manually changing that base mods files and not overlapping a lot of file changes, or it can cause the game to be changed in ways you didn't expect or understand. often other mods will and should be using the stock game files to mod and so other changes not related to that mod may have been made to that same file by the super mod and so the file is replaced and those changes get undone by the ad-on mod.

this is one reason when I did GFO, I left out a lot of changes I would have liked to have made, but then if I had, it would be harder, and in some cases, not possible to add mods on top of it.

TMO, FOTRS, and RFB had their own visions and went for "the complete package" mods and so their intent was not to have other mods needed or added on top of their mods. this means there are few files in the game that were not altered and by default it means adding mods to them cannot avoid changing the core vision of what the creator intended his mod to be like.

I wish lurker had limited his mod to just the campaign layers, and if he had, maybe it would be much more mod friendly and be better able to mix with other mods without altering mods like TMO.

that said, lurker had his own vision of how the game should be, so he did things his way with that in mind. this doesn't mean it was a bad approach, it just makes it harder for those who want to "blend" it with other mods and it is one of the main reasons I never liked it personally because of its uncompatibility issues rather then the mod itself.

another detraction of it for me was, it was too historically accurate which made it way to predictable and unrealistic as well. RSRDC went for historical accuracy and was truly successful at that goal in a very impressive way but then that same historical accuracy took all the randomness out of the game for me and it became a very boring cheat where I always knew what I would find and when I would find it there.

say what you wil about how unrealistic the stock game is compared to in terms of being historically accurate, it did recreate the random feel of being in command of a sub during ww2 and all the realism of not knowing what to expect and the fun of unexpected discovery, learning, and never knowing what will happen. in that regard, the stock game recreates a more realistic "feel" then an instant replay of known history that a mod like RSRDC gives those who like and use the mod.

there is no right way or wrong way to mod. there are ways to limit the scope of mods so they are much more mod friendly and adaptable with other mods but its all in the eye of the beholder as to what someone likes.

[james_nix]

Originally Posted by Newinger

At the moment I have installed TMO and on top Improved Stock Environment v2 (because v3 does not work and gives lots of fog) + the 2 submods for color and clouds. It LOOKS very beautiful and to be honest I dislike TMO's default look, too.

Now when I look into the ISE folder, I see that it alters shaders for clouds and filters, EnvColors*.dat and SkyColors*.dat, and the scene.dat.

I suspect that scene.dat is very central also for TMO's changes, isn't it? So if I use ISE, do I contradict TMO's settings for sensors and AI (or any other important settings balanced in TMO)? Or are these imortant gameplays aspects part of other files (which then would not be affected by ISE)?


Edit: Answer to myself: Read the whole ISE release thread, and it seems ISE 3 is compatible with TMO (because it uses TMO's scene.dat as starting point), and his colors submod, too, but not the clouds & wakes submod, because that submod uses the default scene.dat as starting point. What a pity And to make it worse, even though ISE 3 is said to be compatible in the TMO version, it has fog issues. So... I guess I can only use the color submod of ISE, but nothing more.

What I do is use sweetfx or reshade. http://reshade.me/ It looks complicated at first but really easy once you read up on the tutorials on the internet.

It changes and improves the visual graphics, without altering the game. Basically it adds graphics on top of the game, not inside it, if that makes any sense.

It really breaths new life into the old SH4 engine without screwing up a mods environment and sensors. You just have to keep trying presets until you find one that is right for you.

[Rockin Robbins]

Originally Posted by james_nix

What I do is use sweetfx or reshade. http://reshade.me/ It looks complicated at first but really easy once you read up on the tutorials on the internet.

It changes and improves the visual graphics, without altering the game. Basically it adds graphics on top of the game, not inside it, if that makes any sense.

It really breaths new life into the old SH4 engine without screwing up a mods environment and sensors. You just have to keep trying presets until you find one that is right for you.

Now THAT's a great idea. Let the sensors see what they want to see that makes the game play really well and then fix the visuals outside the game itself! Sounds really nice!

[Armistead]

Originally Posted by Newinger

At the moment I have installed TMO and on top Improved Stock Environment v2 (because v3 does not work and gives lots of fog) + the 2 submods for color and clouds. It LOOKS very beautiful and to be honest I dislike TMO's default look, too.

Now when I look into the ISE folder, I see that it alters shaders for clouds and filters, EnvColors*.dat and SkyColors*.dat, and the scene.dat.

I suspect that scene.dat is very central also for TMO's changes, isn't it? So if I use ISE, do I contradict TMO's settings for sensors and AI (or any other important settings balanced in TMO)? Or are these imortant gameplays aspects part of other files (which then would not be affected by ISE)?


Edit: Answer to myself: Read the whole ISE release thread, and it seems ISE 3 is compatible with TMO (because it uses TMO's scene.dat as starting point), and his colors submod, too, but not the clouds & wakes submod, because that submod uses the default scene.dat as starting point. What a pity And to make it worse, even though ISE 3 is said to be compatible in the TMO version, it has fog issues. So... I guess I can only use the color submod of ISE, but nothing more.

I don't use ISE, but yes, changing the env can effect sensors, but for the most part if colors are in the same tone during the day, it doesn't, most impact is night. I did the night files different, darker colors, but more light values for the moon, so the moon controls how bright nights appear. The one thing I hated about TMO env is being able to clearly see ships my crew couldn't see, imo, the visuals don't match to the env. plus the enemy seemed to have way better visuals spotting before your crew spotted it. The light values are very sensitive in the env file related to the AI { sun values are moon values for night angles in the files} so I found that a much better approach. Just keep in mind, some env mods only adjust env files, some touch a lot of files, but even changes to the env weather files has impact on sensor visuals, however, you probably won't notice it,unless people go drastic in some way, except at night.

[Bilge_Rat]

just wanted to make a comment on RSRDC. Personally, RSRDC is the only campaign mod I have used in SH4, first RFB+RSRDC and for the past few years TMO+RSRDC.

RSRDC is not good or bad or better or worse than stock, TMO, etc, it is really a question of how you want to play the game. SH4 is basically just SP, so a player is just competing against himself, so you can really play the game as you wish.

-you want to play random and lots of ships? play stock

-you want to play random and fewer ships? play TMO

-you want to play semi-historical traffic? play RSRDC

sure you can "game" RSRDC, just like you can sneak into harbours, but what is the point? it is like cheating at Golf.

I play RSRDC, but I follow my assigned missions, I don't go out of my way to be at a particular spot just because I know a battle happened there at such and such a date, I don't sneak into harbours. I play as a sub skipper would at that point in the war without the benefit of hindsight.

Played that way, it is very immersive, ships are hard to find, even if you know where the shipping lanes are, radio messages rarely give actionable leads. In 4 TMO+RSRDC patrols (100% realism), I have sunk a total of 3 ships (all singles); I have been sunk twice, once by depth charges, once by a minefield; I have had 2 fast TFs roar by at night, one going into the Inland sea, the other into Truk while I could do little more that stand by and monitor their passing on sonar; I have been held down and depth charged 4-5 other times and survived; but never, ever spotted a convoy.

Now finally in my current campaign, for the first time, I am tracking a convoy...that one is not getting away...

At the end of the day, it is just a question of what you want to get from the game...