[REL] Real Fleet Boat

[Beery]

Originally Posted by jmjohnson36

OH I was not saying you copied me, that was not my intent...what I was trying to say, is that there are so many mods flying out there that people are bound to come to the same idea and create the same thing....I made several carriers the first the Akagi...the first japanese ship mod about 2 months ago...thats been posted...and some else came to the same idea...and was going to do it till they saw mine and emailed me...

I think there may be a misunderstanding going on here. As I understand it (and I'm guessing here) your Akagi is a fully functional ship with its own folder in Data\Sea and with config files, textures, perhaps even a 3D model, plus its own ID book page, etc. My mod doesn't include ship models like your Akagi. RFB only adds ship names (names only, no models, skins or ID book pages). Where a ship class doesn't exist I'm simply bunging in names under an existing class of ship that looks most like it. I'm trying to keep RFB as bare-bones as possible so unlike RUb I'm not going to include any ship models, graphics files or sound files if I can possibly avoid it. Those things can always be added on top of RFB, but RFB itself is only aimed at creating realistic career results by modifying data files. I found that when I was making RUb I got bogged down in creating graphics files like the improved Bismarck graphics, then came all the extra ship models and hi-def skins, which were great, but since the average player (myself included) can't tell the difference between a battleship and a cruiser there was a lot of work that I was including for very minor payoff - for example I never once saw the Bismarck in a career, so all the Photoshop work I did on her was pretty much a waste. So I decided that for SH4 I'd concentrate on fixing the historical-accuracy and mechanical-realism stuff that matters to me and leave all the bells and whistles to others.

It's not that I don't care about the other stuff - on the contrary I love it - it's just that it's too easy for me to get drawn into a 16-hour day, six-month long project only to see it be co-opted, then marginalized and even denounced by folks who can most charitably be described as having a predatory attitude to modding. I'm just not going to devote the time only to have that happen again. Besides, now I have a four year-old daughter to take care of and my four year-old requires a lot more attention than she did when she was a two-year-old (when I was assembling RUb). Plus there have been some personal issues in the past weeks that have been taking a toll (as I mentioned earlier in the thread). So, instead of doing a huge intensive mod project I've decided to put out a simple mod in a few weeks of part-time work that does only what I need it to do to appeal to the realism junkies (folks like me) out there. This time, once the devs stop patching the game RFB will be done with - in fact it's pretty much done now - just a few more tweaks to go.

The other thing I found with RUb was that I couldn't stop tweaking long enough to play the actual game. This time I plan to stay focused, get the mod finished and then leave it and play. Besides, I think players will like to have a solid supermod out there that they can rely on NOT to be undergoing constant change for the sake of it.

Finally, one of my goals is to retain the spirit and scope of the original game. When I assemble a supermod I'm not interested in creating a monster mod that changes the game beyond all recognition. Apart from the fact that I don't have time for that, I don't see the point. SH4 has enough in it to keep players happy - I don't think it needs to become the submarine simulation equivalent of WWII Online in order to give players a fun experience. I want my mod to be an ultra-realistic simulation experience, but I also want it to look like SH4.