Kapitan's Log

[Notewire]

First, I hope this post and it's courteous replies do nothing to slow down the launching of GWX or NYGM2.2.

Does anybody know how (or where) to manually enter text into the Log? I don't need a fancy way to do it in game, but I would be happy to take notes during patrol and type them in between patrols if I could see them in the log later in the patrol - and indeed in future reads of my old patrol logs.

I use SH3 Gen, and I know this writes a good deal of information into the log - I was just wondering if you could add to that manually.

For an illustrative example, I take notes when I do an attack, and would love to log, during or after I save, something like

"0753 - sighted lone C3 Cargo looking vessel, bearing 253, distance 8500m
0830 - turned to 11 deg north to track vessel out of sight, expected to be in position by 1230.
1230 - submerged 500 meters from anticipated C3 path, waiting
1320 - hydrophone reports C3 turning to west, will resume chase at 14 knts, 225 deg."

Just looking for a way to manually enter that, either in or out of game.

Thanks for the help if anybody knows how.

Highest Regards,
Yarre Notewire,
U-9

[panthercules]

Check out this thread for one possibility that the remarkable JScones is contemplating doing for us regarding such a patrol log:

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/show...084#post303084


Can't wait - I've been wanting something like this since the game came out

[kylania]

I use Excel for this currently, but can't wait for JScones' log reader.

[Dowly]

I have a template I made for my personal logs. I use photshop to make the notes.

Here´s a example:

[Notewire]

I also use hand written notes on a produced template.

JS Scones Idea looks great, and will be a welcome addition.

However, what I was really hoping to get after is how to input the information into the Patrol Log, that sits on my Navigators desk when I am on patrol - if information is able to be inputted there - it will be saved with my Campaign - it will be visible when I view my old patrol logs from my desk back in Kiel - and it will be visible when I review my career with SH3 Commander (I think). I know SH3 Gen alters the patrol log - I just was wondering if anybody had cracked the code on how to input into the in-game Patrol Log. I always thought it was a bit hokey that the Cpts Log just notes Departure and sinkings, and no other events - and would LOVE to input them manually.

Plus, it would keep my wife from asking what all those random - Patrol Log piles are on the dresser.

If anybody knows how to do this, please let me know, thanks!!

Regards,
Yarre Notewire

[kylania]

Originally Posted by Dowly

I have a template I made for my personal logs. I use photshop to make the notes.

Here´s a example:

Care to share the PSD and font for that perhaps Dowly? It looks great!!

Originally Posted by Notewire

I know SH3 Gen alters the patrol log

SH3 Gen writes to the SH3 log which is just a text file. So you could add all you want to it, but from out of game. There's no ability to add to that file from within the game that I'm aware of. Also writing to it during a patrol might be dangerous. SH3Gen requires you to make a save, run the edits, then reload the save.

[Notewire]

Originally Posted by kylania

SH3 Gen writes to the SH3 log which is just a text file. So you could add all you want to it, but from out of game. There's no ability to add to that file from within the game that I'm aware of. Also writing to it during a patrol might be dangerous. SH3Gen requires you to make a save, run the edits, then reload the save.

Ah yes, that was what I thought - but I just . . cant .. find the dang file . .. I would LOVE to be able to add from out of game - if I could just find where . . .

Help!

[kylania]

My install it at home, but it's saved with a Save game. Under my docs/sh3/careers/patrol x/ then something like cpt.cfg or something similar? I'll check when I get home.

[panthercules]

Well, I found something interesting at least - the latest/current log file is in the My Documents\SH3\data\cfg\Careers\<name of kaleun>\<highest patrol number> folder and is called <name of latest saved game>.clg

As you will note from the following screenshot, it is possible to add entries to this log file (via notepad, for example) that will show up in game when you press the "k" key (see the last entry - it is the new one I made up while editing the file in Notepad outside the game - I didn't spend much time perfecting the German translation so I'm sure it's a bit off but it's close enough for my testing purposes):



I'm still experimenting with whether you can do this mid-patrol by alt-tabbing out and have it still show up in game during the same patrol/save cycle (I did this one before starting up the game), and I'm not sure if this screws up your tonnage totals or anything at the end of the patrol. I'm also not sure what the variables "type" and "categ" in the file really mean (other than if you change the "type=0" entry to "1" it doesn't show up in the game screen but if you leave it as "0" it does). Set forth below is the pasted text from the <name of latest saved game>.clg file I was using so you can see the format and how I just added the entry after the end of the text that was already in there (incrementing the "Log Entry" number by one over the last one that was already in the file):


[Log Entry 0]
Type=0
EntryText=Feindfahrt 22|U-55, 7. U-Flottille|Ausgelaufen: August 18, 1943, 02:37|Von: St. Nazaire|Befehle: In Planquadrat DH42 patrouillieren
Date=19430818
Time=237
Categ=0

[Log Entry 1]
Type=0
EntryText=Schiff versenkt!|Planquadrat CG 79|Truppentransporter, 8285 BRT
EntryTitle=August 26, 1943, 02:35
Date=19430826
Time=235
Categ=0

[Log Entry 2]
Type=0
EntryText=Schiff versenkt!|Planquadrat CG 79|Liberty, 7401 BRT
EntryTitle=August 26, 1943, 07:41
Date=19430826
Time=741
Categ=0

[Log Entry 3]
Type=0
EntryText=Schiff versenkt!|Planquadrat DH 37|Küstenschiff, 2421 BRT
EntryTitle=August 30, 1943, 16:05
Date=19430830
Time=1605
Categ=0

[Log Entry 4]
Type=0
EntryText=Großes feindliches Geleit hat gesichtet!|Planquadrat DH 37|Gezwungen Unterwasser durch Amerikanisch Zerstörer - kein Radar warnend signalisiert - Wasserbombenangriff hat für 2 Stunden geladen - kein Schaden an Unterseeboot
EntryTitle=August 31, 1943, 14:35
Date=19430831
Time=1435
Categ=0

Anyway, this sounds promising if it doesn't have any serious adverse side effects - I'll play around with it some more when I get a chance. In the meantime, maybe someone will find this useful

[kylania]

Yup, that's it the clg file. Problems I can see are 1) it's not there unless you save a game and 2) i don't know if you can update it WHILE in a game and 3) I really can't think of any in game method of adding to it.

[panthercules]

Yeah - I haven't had a chance to play around with it any more yet, but I did find out that the changes do carry over from one save to the next, at least if you don't sink anything else in between, so hopefully there's a chance of making these changes stick. Alt-tabbing works pretty well and stable on my PC at least, so if necessary I could at least switch over, make my entries, and then switch back to the game - just got to confirm whether it will pick up the changes in the game as they're made outside the game, or if you have to save/exit the game before the changes will show up.

[panthercules]

Well, interesting but of somewhat limited usefulness so far. I could not get the game to recognize/show any changes that I made to the file during the current game session (even when I saved the changes to the file in notepad while alt-tabbed out from the game). The only way I could get the changes to show up was to save/exit the game to the menu (using the same name and saving over my same saved game), and then saving the changes to the file in notepad. Then, when I reloaded that saved game, hitting the "k" key showed the updated log file changes.

I didn't get a chance to sink anything or do anything in game that would cause the game to create another log entry on its own, so I'm not sure what would happen in that case. However, I suspect that it would cause problems since the game would change the log file with that new entry, but the copy you had open in notepad wouldn't have the game's changes but would have your own different changes, and things would get screwed up when you saved down from notepad after saving/exiting the game - looks like you'd probably have to do some complicated copy/pasting from your notepad copy into the game's newly-saved copy in order to capture both the game's automatic entries and your own manual ones.

It might be better/easier just to keep a scratch file open in notepad into which you could just alt-tab out and enter your manual diary entries in the correct basic format, without trying to edit the real log file during the game, and then just copy/paste (and number accordingly) those manual entries into the game's real log file after you finish your gaming session and save/exit. You wouldn't get to see those entries in the log in game during the session in which you make them, but they'd at least be there for the next and all subsequent sessions. I'll have to test this on one of my trash campaigns so I can end my patrol and see what happens (i.e., if anything blows up) when SH3 Commander tries to deal with the altered log file to create personnel files or whatever it does with these logs after a patrol.

At least this indicates that there are some possibilities here. Hopefully, JScones or someone will be able to come up with an elegant way of making this work

[Notewire]

Panthercules, I am right where you are as of last night. I was able to make manual entries. I did learn that by using the | key it gives a line break, and I was able to finally alter my game log - but it only reads the file whne the game loads. Like you, I need to find out what will happen when the game adds a new entry. I think that will work out though - by using the line break I am able to enter all my information in one entry, so if the game adds another it should just add on. I was able to enter about a dozen lines of text into my Log Entry=0 that showed up as times and events.

The advantage is, every time I exit the game, when I restart - I can read what happened in my last play session with that particular U-Boat - by just looking at the log that sits on my weapons officers desk. Also, my information on each patrol will be saved with my career, so I can read them all from my Kaluen's desk back in Kiel. I think this is a big breakthrough, but I suppose we have yet to see how it interacts with computer log entries. If it doesn't work, I may just keep an alternate text file and rename after the patrol is complete.

Anyway, I had a screenshot all lined up to show my breakthrough, only to see you have beaten me to it - hopefully our combined efforts will yield something fruitful! I will let you know how it works when I sink something (which I didn't execute last night).

Regards and thanks,
Yarre Notewire.

[KeldorKatarn]

Just my two cents...

having to write your hand-written notes into the log file AFTER every patrol outside the game isn't really that unrealistic *g* since the commander's log hand to be typed off to machine writing after every patrol in real life too since the commander's log was of course in hand writing and the archived logs had to be in machine writing.

OLt zS Werner mentions that he was the poor fella who had to type off the log when he was still a cadet after his first patrol.

[panthercules]

@ Notewire - interesting idea about basically putting all your manual notes into one long initial entry but still have each sub-entry marked with date/time - that way this same initial entry could just be updated/lengthened after each session (rather than having to tack individual new entries onto the end of the log or intersperse them into the game's own entries), and it would always be followed by the "official"/game entries of the actual sinkings, which presumably the game wouldn't have any problems with appending as new sinkings occurred. Sort of like a 2-section log - one for the kaleun's private notes and one for the "official" record of sinkings. Will have to play around with that idea further tonight.

@ KeldorKatarn - true - alt-tabbing out to keep notes during play would be sort of like retiring to the captain's desk to make the log entries, and doing a little pasting into the saved file after the end of the play session could be like the transcription of the notes into the official log book. This wouldn't be that different from the IL-2 Stab experience I was trying to mimic, since you always did that after returning from the missions and left the game anyway. Of course, that cool program drew from the game data to give you a head start with some of the mission history and info and stuff that was really neat, so I still wish JScones or someone could come up with something a little more elegant and automated/integrated than where we're headed here, but for now at least I'm still pretty encouraged about the possibilities of this manual approach.