SH3 Commander (current v2.7)

[Venatore]

This is his homepage. I have it as a favorite.

http://www.users.on.net/~jscones/software/products.html

[JScones]

Originally Posted by Boris

Hey JScones, If you roll back SH3 Commander every time after using it, how does that maintain th effects of things such as the combined skin pack. The skin pack only installs at certain dates, and if you start a patrol not near that date, the skins won't install. Or am I wrong?

Let's say the next patrol start date is 15 Feb 1942. When SH3 is launched via SH3Cmdr, it will copy everything found in every Date folder between 1 Sep 1939 and 15 Feb 1942. Thus it takes a "building block" approach, with newer files overwriting older files.

This makes tasks like changing ship skins quite easy. For example, let's say you wanted to change NKGN skins based on date. You may want early-war skins between 1939 and 1940, grey skins between and 1941 and 1942 and camo skins thereafter.

You'd set up the following SH3Cmdr folder structure...

\SH3 Commander\Date\19390901\data\NKGN\NKGN_T*.tga <these are your early skins which will ALWAYS get copied into SH3>

\SH3 Commander\Date\19410101\data\NKGN\NKGN_T*.tga <these are your grey skins, which will be copied into SH3 if the next patrol start date is 1 Jan 1941 or after, thus overwriting the early skins>

\SH3 Commander\Date\19430101\data\NKGN\NKGN_T*.tga <these are your late war camo skins, which will be copied into SH3 if the next patrol start date is 1 Jan 1943 or after, thus overwriting the grey skins>.

So if you had 15 of each type of skin, the early skins would get copied first, but then overwritten by the 15 grey skins and so on. If you only had say 14 grey skins, then one early skin would always remain as it would never be overwritten (and you may want to deliberately do this).

You're not limited to total changeover at any given date either - you can stagger change, by perhaps introducing some grey skins earlier and some later than 1 Jan 1941. Then players would stumble across convoys with both early and grey skins. More mix and variety.

The other good use is for reflecting historically accurate warship schemes. For example, the Bismarck. You can model her sea trials scheme up to 6 Mar 1941, then her Operation Rheinubung scheme up to 18 May 1941 and her final scheme used when she sailed into the Atlantic.

Rolling back will return all skins to "stock", but when you next run SH3Cmdr, the appropriate skins will be copied in again dependant on the new next patrol start date.

Hope this is clear.

[Boris]

Originally Posted by JScones

Let's say the next patrol start date is 15 Feb 1942. When SH3 is launched via SH3Cmdr, it will copy everything found in every Date folder between 1 Sep 1939 and 15 Feb 1942. Thus it takes a "building block" approach, with newer files overwriting older files.

This makes tasks like changing ship skins quite easy. For example, let's say you wanted to change NKGN skins based on date. You may want early-war skins between 1939 and 1940, grey skins between and 1941 and 1942 and camo skins thereafter.

You'd set up the following SH3Cmdr folder structure...

\SH3 Commander\Date\19390901\data\NKGN\NKGN_T*.tga <these are your early skins which will ALWAYS get copied into SH3>

\SH3 Commander\Date\19410101\data\NKGN\NKGN_T*.tga <these are your grey skins, which will be copied into SH3 if the next patrol start date is 1 Jan 1941 or after, thus overwriting the early skins>

\SH3 Commander\Date\19430101\data\NKGN\NKGN_T*.tga <these are your late war camo skins, which will be copied into SH3 if the next patrol start date is 1 Jan 1943 or after, thus overwriting the grey skins>.

So if you had 15 of each type of skin, the early skins would get copied first, but then overwritten by the 15 grey skins and so on. If you only had say 14 grey skins, then one early skin would always remain as it would never be overwritten (and you may want to deliberately do this).

You're not limited to total changeover at any given date either - you can stagger change, by perhaps introducing some grey skins earlier and some later than 1 Jan 1941. Then players would stumble across convoys with both early and grey skins. More mix and variety.

The other good use is for reflecting historically accurate warship schemes. For example, the Bismarck. You can model her sea trials scheme up to 6 Mar 1941, then her Operation Rheinubung scheme up to 18 May 1941 and her final scheme used when she sailed into the Atlantic.

Rolling back will return all skins to "stock", but when you next run SH3Cmdr, the appropriate skins will be copied in again dependant on the new next patrol start date.

Hope this is clear.

Thanks Jaesen, that's what I wanted to hear! Makes my work alot easier for me...

[bigboywooly]

Are you planning what I think you are Boris ?

[Boris]

Already in the works...

[bigboywooly]

Sweet
Nice one mate

Will keep you and Ichy busy
Not to mention Fubar

Crack on then

[danlisa]

:hmm: I think I know what you're up to:rotfl:

Needless to say, if this is done it will so

[panthercules]

Thanks for the new version - I've been going through an unscheduled PC rebuild/upgrade, so haven't been playing SH3 for a few days, but I managed to get things restored enough to finally get back to port from my Murmansk patrol and decided to go ahead and upgrade/prepare my SH3 install for the upcoming GWX release. So far so good - I rolled back SH3 Com.2.6, uninstalled it and installed 2.7, and everything seemed to go fine.

One odd thing I noticed however - when I created a new Personnel File for my current Kaleun everything seemed to be captured just fine except for the line that talks about the boats he has commanded. He actually started with a VIIB for 15 patrols, switched to a IXB in late 1941 for 5 patrols, and then switched to a VIIC for the last 3 patrols, but his personnel file only listed the original VIIB for all 23 patrols - I can't remember looking at that particular line before, but isn't it supposed to show each boat commanded, with the start date and number of patrols done in each? I changed the boat numbers from those randomly assigned when I switched boats, so maybe I messed up SH3Com's tracking function by doing that somehow? Any ideas on how I might fix that so it would report correctly on each boat my Kaleun has commanded? I love this personnel file feature but would like it to be as "historically accurate" as possible for my guy's career.

Also, in a previous thread about the captain's log feature in the game, there was some discussion about whether SH3Commander could be tweaked or configured somehow to recognize and include the personal log entries that can be added to the <saved game name>.clg files so that they show up in the in-game KTB screens but which don't currently show up in the personnel file generated by SH3 Commander. However, that discussion sort of petered out and I never saw an actual answer/solution for that. Does anybody know how SH3Commander decides what part of the data from the game's log files to flow into its personnel file and whether it could be made to pick up and repeat the other log entries from those game files (if the player has added them as noted in that previous thread)? Obviously a small point that's not "mainstream" for most SH3 Commander users, so I'm not surprised it didn't make it into 2.7 as an official feature, but I'm just wondering if it might be something that could be done for/by those of us who are "log junkies"

In any event, thanks so much for this great utility and for continuing to support us with these updates

[JScones]

Originally Posted by panthercules

...I changed the boat numbers from those randomly assigned when I switched boats, so maybe I messed up SH3Com's tracking function by doing that somehow?

Correct. SH3Cmdr tracks by U-boat number, which tended to stick to one boat for the duration.

Originally Posted by panthercules

Any ideas on how I might fix that so it would report correctly on each boat my Kaleun has commanded? I love this personnel file feature but would like it to be as "historically accurate" as possible for my guy's career.

Hehe, don't go assigning different boat types the same number

Unfortunately, there's no way to manually fix because of the reason above.

Originally Posted by panthercules

Also, in a previous thread about the captain's log feature in the game, there was some discussion about whether SH3Commander could be tweaked or configured somehow to recognize and include the personal log entries that can be added to the <saved game name>.clg files so that they show up in the in-game KTB screens but which don't currently show up in the personnel file generated by SH3 Commander. However, that discussion sort of petered out and I never saw an actual answer/solution for that. Does anybody know how SH3Commander decides what part of the data from the game's log files to flow into its personnel file and whether it could be made to pick up and repeat the other log entries from those game files (if the player has added them as noted in that previous thread)? Obviously a small point that's not "mainstream" for most SH3 Commander users, so I'm not surprised it didn't make it into 2.7 as an official feature, but I'm just wondering if it might be something that could be done for/by those of us who are "log junkies"

In any event, thanks so much for this great utility and for continuing to support us with these updates

I've built an expanded log feature which works nicely and I use it. But sorry, it will never be released for two reasons:

1. It is not up to my usual standard in that it is not as feature rich as I think it should be (I never got around to building the auto-filter function).

2. I suspect that it would be very popular, viz, very popular = many questions. Many questions = heavy support. Heavy support = tired and frustrated Jaesen.

But it wouldn't be hard for any programmer with even the most rudimentary of skills to develop a simple file editor with the ability to save the edited result as HTML or text (mine's less than 200 lines). Indeed, if someone was to take up the task and develop something I'd happily look at making SH3Cmdr compatible with its output (ie so that SH3Cmdr created Personnel Files reflect the expanded log contents). This would make it even easier for the programmer as all they would need to do is save the user edited result to a new text file and SH3Cmdr would do the formatting. Heck, I'd happily provide assistance as required. I just won't be the driver.

I simply don't have the energy to support another SH3 related tool.

[panthercules]

Originally Posted by JScones

Correct. SH3Cmdr tracks by U-boat number, which tended to stick to one boat for the duration. ...
Hehe, don't go assigning different boat types the same number

Unfortunately, there's no way to manually fix because of the reason above.

Can you tell me where SH3 Commander looks to get this boat number info for this purpose? I'm thinking I could go back and edit the relevant career/patrol log files to change my boat number to be different for each of the boat types he's had, but there are a lot of these log files over a 23 patrol career so it would help if I knew which ones SH3 Commander was using for this purpose.

Originally Posted by JScones

... it wouldn't be hard for any programmer with even the most rudimentary of skills to develop a simple file editor with the ability to save the edited result as HTML or text (mine's less than 200 lines). Indeed, if someone was to take up the task and develop something I'd happily look at making SH3Cmdr compatible with its output (ie so that SH3Cmdr created Personnel Files reflect the expanded log contents). This would make it even easier for the programmer as all they would need to do is save the user edited result to a new text file and SH3Cmdr would do the formatting. Heck, I'd happily provide assistance as required. I just won't be the driver.

I simply don't have the energy to support another SH3 related tool.

I can certainly understand that - unfortunately, I have never played around with programming file editors or anything else really (at least since my BASIC days, hehe), so I'd have no idea where to start here - the text I'm looking for SH3 Commander to pick up and put in the personnel file is already saved inside the game's saved game files (the <saved game name>.clg files), which I would think would be the same file that SH3 Commander would be getting the info from that it does put in the personnel file, but of course I could be wrong about that since I have no idea where SH3 Commander actually gets that info or whether maybe the game puts the info from the .clg file into some other file from which SH3 Commander gets it instead. Maybe some of the wizards around here who do understand the programming aspect of this could step forward and figure out some sort of tweak on SH3 Commander that would add this capability to the personnel file function?

[Faamecanic]

Originally Posted by JScones

SH3 Commander Release 2.7 is now available!

"Removed simulated fuel resupply strategy

So does this mean that there are NO MILK Cows with 2.7??? Or was this added by TGW 1.1a? I cant remember.

[bigboywooly]

The milk cows were added by GW not SH3commander
Not entirely sure what Jaeson meant by that line

[raymond6751]

Thanks, for the detailed reply. Please don't missread my comments as snide. I simply meant that the version I have is great and I hate to make changes unless needed. If it ain't broke, don't...you know.

I haven't noticed anything broken in your Commander 2.6 and will continue using it.

I was concerned, and perhaps misunderstood, that the new GWX would require it.

Like so many others, I value the Commander highly. It makes the experience more real.

[panthercules]

Originally Posted by bigboywooly

The milk cows were added by GW not SH3commander
Not entirely sure what Jaeson meant by that line

I'm not absolutely sure, but IIRC before the modders really got the milkcow idea working I thing Jaeson built into SH3 Commander some extended (unrealistically large) fuel/range capability for some of the u-boats (Type VIIs at least, I think) to simulate the ability to have stopped at some "assumed" (non-existent in game) supply ship/milkcow to refuel. I think all he was saying above is that now that the modders have gotten the milkcow thing working in their mods, there's no longer any real need for the "fake" milkcows -extra fuel/range - that he had built into SH3 Commander before, so he took it out.

[GT182]

To coin a phrase used by Billy Crystal... "Mavalous, simply mavalous!" Great work JS!!!