[REL] SH4 - Flavored to Taste (Updated 12 Apr. 07)

[Sgian Dubh]

THank you, Ducimus!

[Ducimus]

One thousand aplogies!

I GOOFED! Well.. sorta

I discovered two problems with the SD radar. One was my fault, the other, isnt'.

The problem that was my fault.
I raised the min height too high. Im not sure if it was allowing planes to fly below your radar (quite literally), but i didnt need to raise it to 40 meters. Logic would dictate that judging by the rec manual one should. but this just isnt how things work out.

The problem that wasn't my fault.
The radar, (even before my min height goof) was/is totally unreliable. There are some adjustments i originaly didnt want to make, but after having lots of greif that only an airplane can give, with no warning other then "aircraft spotted" i decided that i needed to get more heavy handed in my apporach with this.

To that end, i changed my philosphy from "minimal tweaking, leaving most of waht the devs intended intact" to "time to just rethink this Mo'Fo into something else". So what i did was i took the view of the SD radar being nothing more then a Metox/Naxos Radar warning detector, only in in reverse - and just for planes. So i borrowed some settings from SH3's metox/naxos.


So here's what i changed.

- SD radar -> minheight from 6 to 12

Self explantiory i think. at 12 meters height a cruised around two different harbors and didnt detect anything on radar. (lowering it to 10 meters however would result in some radar detection against ground targets). I think its possible you may still get a ground target on occasion, but not very often. (all bets are off in stormy seas given how much ships can pitch and roll, both high and low in the waves)

- SD radar -> Surface from 100 to 0

What this, is the minimum surface that must be present for the radar to get a signal off of. If this number was 400, then a minimum of 400 units of surface area must be present to get signal to bounce off and give a return. 0 means, there is no surface area requirment

- SD Radar -> ProbInsideArc from 0.95 to 0

This is basically the part that gives the radar a sense of randomness, and probaly when combined with enviormental variables.. too random. By setting this to 0, you have reliablity. if theres a plane, in your radar you will be notified.

- SD Radar -> Precise range from 12,000 to 15,000
- SD Radar ->MaxRange from 55,560 to 23,000
- SD RadarLate ->MaxRange from 111,120 to 31,000

Radar has a precise range, and a max range. Meaning from 0 to 15,000 meters, the instant a plane is in that area your radar will pick him up. From 15,000 to 23,000 meters, you'll pick him up, but not right away. You may get a warning at 23,000 meters, you may get a warning at 18,000 meters. By 15,000 meters you WILL get warning.

Because i removed the randomness (or so i hope) from the SD radar, i felt compelled to lower the max range, and as you can tell, the max range on the radar was orginaly fairly large. 55,560 for early war, and 111,120 for late war. Not a big deal considering the random element involved.


so heres the file (also linked in the original post)
http://www.ducimus.net/sh4/release/SD_Radar_Fix.zip

You should be able to install it mid patrol without a probem. Now if it will take effect right away or not, i don't know. In SH3 it would, in SH4 im not sure.

[shad43]

In version 1F2 you say you've re-enabled the snorkel depth command and renamed it Radar Depth, and changed the depth from 15 to 12.2 I assume this is a command to take the sub to that depth, similar to periscope depth so that the sub is submerged but the radar mast is sticking out so it will function. Am I correct so far? If so how do I use it? I see no commands in game for this function. What am I missing here?

BTW
I like this mod alot, good work!

[Ducimus]

It's the semicolon key.

[shad43]

Thanks
was wondering why you dident add that to the help menu.

Sorry to bombard you with questions but Im trying to learn the file structure.

[quadraspleen]

This is awesome Ducimus, thanks. It's prompted a post from me, whcih is a rare event God bless you modders who don't sleep.

It might be just me, but after installing this, I now get CTD when using ext. cam to go underwater. Might this have something to do with the underwater viz fix and me trying to force settings with the card drivers? I don't want to uninstall it. It makes waiting for 1.x patches bearable

PC SPECS:

Intel Core2Duo 6700
4Gb DDR2-667 RAM
ABIT AW9D-MAX
2x250Gb SATA2 in RAID0
Vista Ultimate (yes, it works fine, thanks )
Nvidia 8800GTS 640Mb DDR3

[Harly]

please help me to get the captains bunk to find, after i instal this mod
it seems i have only one camera point in the command room

[PeriscopeDepth]

Hi Ducimus,

First patrol with latest version of your mod install. I think something's out of wack with the SD fix, I had an SD installed on my boat and the first warning I got of several (3) aircraft was visual contact. Not one radar call. Does the SJ need to be installed for the SD to work? IIRC, in stock the crew would still call out aircraft (and ships of course) with just SD. I have other mods installed, but yours is the only one that alters the sensor settings.

PD

[Ducimus]

Originally Posted by shad43

Thanks
was wondering why you dident add that to the help menu.
.

It was late, and for some reason i just assumed everyone knew the command from SH3.

Originally Posted by Harly

please help me to get the captains bunk to find, after i instal this mod
it seems i have only one camera point in the command room

There is no captains bunk in SH4. What you see in the files is leftover from SH3. You can use Shfit +F2 to look around the sub though. Works in the command room and the conning tower.

Originally Posted by quadraspleen

It might be just me, but after installing this, I now get CTD when using ext. cam to go underwater. Might this have something to do with the underwater viz fix and me trying to force settings with the card drivers?

Im thinking it's one of the two you mentioned. I havent been running any underwater fix, nor forcing any settings on my card drivers and havent had any crash's.

Originally Posted by PeriscopeDepth

First patrol with latest version of your mod install. I think something's out of wack with the SD fix, I had an SD installed on my boat and the first warning I got of several (3) aircraft was visual contact. Not one radar call.

Using this file?
http://www.ducimus.net/sh4/release/SD_Radar_Fix.zip

Or the one that was orginally packed in the mod that i goofed on?

[Ducimus]

Just FYI, i am following up on the SD radar again. I found a better way to test what im donig and im getting better results. I beleive ive found one problem with the height of the radar (it scales a bit differently then the SJ), and im trying to gauge its behavior. For example, i *think* the SD shuts off when you turn off the SJ radar. Im testing that now to be sure thats what im seeing (primarly by temporaraly nerfing the hell out of the SJ radar so the only radar results im getting are from the SD)

I'll have more info in a bit.

[Strikor]

Yeah, something is definitely off. I had both SD-I and normal SJ in my Gato class (June 1942) and was not getting aircraft contact reports. I then started a test campaign with just the SD-I and no SJ with the same results. Probably nothing you don't already know but I thought I'd throw it in just the same.

Oh, and this was with the SD fix you linked a few posts up.

[quadraspleen]

Originally Posted by Ducimus

Im thinking it's one of the two you mentioned. I havent been running any underwater fix, nor forcing any settings on my card drivers and havent had any crash's.

That's weird. My bad for thinking it was in your mod. I hadn't installed any underwater fix, then. How odd. I only installed your mod and the two you recommend using with it; straight back into the game, and bang. CTD when going underwater.

Probably one of the hard coded CTD's *cough*

[Ducimus]

Ok heres an update, i tink i gota handle on it now.

This bugger has defied all logic and reasoning.

I mean, ok. min height of 6 meters (stock). If you look at the rec manual, ships are alot higher then that. Putting two and two together, you figure,.. ok whats the average maximum ship height? Enter some abitrary figure, and you think problem solved.
That was my first attempt. WRONG.

What ive learned is that the min height variable on this radar is SUPER.. and i mean SUPER sensitive. If you enter 6 meters min height, your right back where you started. If you enter 9 meters min height, you get no contacts. So back it off to 8 meters and its as if it were the 6 meters min height. SOme ships you pick up, some you don't.

Ok.. so 6 is too low, and 8 it still works, but 9 it doesnt. So the figure lays in between 8 and 9 right? I make the min height 8.5... guess what.. radar doesnt work.

So this is my new working theory (IE,im guessing and pulling this out of my ass, its the only explantion i can come up with)


Im thinking theres a small incline of an unknown degree that radiates outward. (think in terms of geometric shapes) The farther you are away from the center of the radar transmission (your sub) the higher the space between that incline and the surface of the ocean. The min height etablish's itself from the top of that incline, not the surface of the ocean. So your blind spot at say, at 30,000 meters is going to be ALOT higher in altitude then say 15,000 meters. WHen your talking large distances, a single degree from the source, can make a huge difference when at the end of its path of travel.

In our case since were talking fairly long distances, were talking about a fractions of meters. 8 meters too low, 8.5 meters too high. So my next stab at this is 8.25 and ill go from there.

[Ducimus]

Ok. try the file again, and tell me what happends. You can enable it at sea, i just don't know if it will take effect right away or not.

http://www.ducimus.net/sh4/release/SD_Radar_Fix.zip

Same D/L link, just an updated file.

I was unable to totally remove surface contacts.

It came down to this.

Min height of 8.3025. I only detected half of the planes that were present, and what contacts i did get were MOSTLY intermittant.

Min height of 8.3 , i detected all of the planes present, and later on picked up a couple surface objects as well.

WIth a Min height of 8.35, it pretty much stopped working.

It's THAT sensitive.

[DDog]

Can you make another post for us technically challenged telling us which files to download and in what order to install... THANKS!!