help with fixing the shokaku sinking charactoristics - Page 2

06-18-08, 11:14 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arclight

Cool, and sorry for before. When someone yells "fire" I run off for an extinguisher without knowing where to bring it; I tend to get ahead of myself.

I've been firing lots of fish at her, and basically anything hitting midship or further aft but still forward of the screws will sink her in 1 hit. Under the right conditions she'll even withstand 2 hits (above screws + the bow). I can post a list of my findings if you want.

I increased the Armorlevel and hitpoints like you did, but I set them to Yamato levels (96 armor, 1500 hp); hits that normally sink it in 1 shot tend not to anymore. Took me 3 hits last try: 1 hit on the first mast aft from center, and she lived! Second went in the bow, but didn't blow a hole, presumably because of higher armor level. Bow still sank a bit though. Third went far aft and finished her of. Think you can leave the armorlevels alone, just increase hitpoints so she can take more hits.

Also tried messing with the "SH3ZonesCtrl" stuff; you'll see "sphere's" and "boxes" listed there. I think they represent the compartments of the ship, and changing there individual armorlevel settings seemed to influence the ships sinking times.

Guess you need a 3d editor to see where those zones are actually located. There's also a "type" listing that lists a number. In zones.cfg there's an index where you can look up what type of area those numbers represent (I think). For instance, the first box, "box 0", is type 113 which would translate to "KeelBB" according to that index. "box 1" is type 188, "BBFuelBunkers" in the index, etc.

I'll pick this up tomorrow, 5 am by now...

yes thanks for helping, i was sticking to the auto target rather than trying different hit locations because i figured it was the best way to get constantly repeatable results. 1 meter left or right could or could not open different compartments that change results. the strange thing is if you look at the other fleet carriers the stock damage levels are all set the same (1 has a 50 hit point difference) so why they are acting so different is very strange.

as for the "boxes" i was afraid to mess with those things because i know nothing about what they are and how or if i could tell what any changes might do.

Arclight · 06-18-08, 01:40 PM

Well, I don't know what the "sphere" entries are for, but the "boxes" can be traced with the index (zones.cfg) to compartments and parts on the ship; screws, rudder, engineroom, fuelbunker, etc. In S3 editor they usually show an armorlevel of -1 ("-1 means it has armor of general category."). Further down in "zones.cfg" you'll find the actual properties of the zones / compartments, listing stuff such as HitPoints for that zone, yet another ArmorLevel listing, and FloodingTime. By comparing the NSM zones.cfg to the original, I noticed this is actually where you'll find the biggest changes. Still, even with NSM, it isn't that difficult to send a Shokaku type to the bottom with a single shot.

There's also a remarkable difference between the 3 CV types;

http://i268.photobucket.com/albums/j...iryuscreen.jpg
http://i268.photobucket.com/albums/j...aihoscreen.jpg
http://i268.photobucket.com/albums/j...kakuscreen.jpg

I think you'll notice Taiho has the most entries, followed by Hiryu and then Shokaku with only 2 "SH3ZonesCtrl" entries. :hmm:

The last "SH3ZonesCtrl" for all 3 is rather similar, with 40+ "box" sub-entries, made up out of fuelbunkers, ammobunkers, enginerooms, keels, etc.

Her's the thing;

http://i268.photobucket.com/albums/j...e/Hiryubox.jpg
http://i268.photobucket.com/albums/j...e/Taihobox.jpg

Hiryu, like in that example, has a "box" sub-entrie for most of the "SH3ZonesCtrl" entries. These boxes, according to the index, are masts, srews, rudder, etc. Not actually parts of the hull, but parts of the ship attached to the hull. Taiho, on the other hand is missing these single "box" entries for masts and such. Shokaku... well, she has only 2 "SH3ZonesCtrl" entries, the first one not containing any "boxes", and the second is the 40+ "boxes" one with the hullparts (enginerooms and such).

To me it seems Hiryu is the only ship with "complete" entries, followed by Taiho and then Shokaku. Quess what the order of vulnerability is in my tests? Hiryu shrugs of the first hit like nothing happened, Taiho shows it noticed getting hit and Shokaku... goes down like a brick.

Maybe Ubi never got around to actually finishing the Shokaku model (among others, apparently), which would explain this strange behaviour. :hmm:

Gonna see if I can blow of some screws; if it works for Hiryu (which has 4 screw "box" listings) but not the others (which don't have any such listings), I think we can say for certain that the actual 3d model could do with some more zones.

Is your head hurting? Mine is.

Ow, and as long long as you make backups of anything you mess with and keep them safe, you can mess all you want. And a reinstall of stock SH4 shouldn't be much trouble if something goes wrong anyway.

Arclight · 06-18-08, 02:42 PM

Well there's your problem.:rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl:
Guess what?

Taiho;
http://i268.photobucket.com/albums/j...aihobefore.jpg
http://i268.photobucket.com/albums/j...Taihoafter.jpg
Shokaku;
http://i268.photobucket.com/albums/j...kakubefore.jpg
http://i268.photobucket.com/albums/j...okakuafter.jpg
Hiryu;
http://i268.photobucket.com/albums/j...iryubefore.jpg
http://i268.photobucket.com/albums/j...Hiryuafter.jpg
I think I'm gonna send my copy to Ubi with a note attached asking them to please finish it. :rotfl:

I have a "friend" that has a copy of a very expensive piece of 3d graphics software, maybe I can use it to finish the models. (and send the bill to Ubi! :rotfl: )

I'll see what can be accomplished with the entries that are actually there, maybe we can still improve the way Shokaku behaves, but with such a crippled model it's never going to be perfect. I suggest you do the same, I'll report any findings back here. If we put both our findings together we might come up with a solution, and maybe some other guys can pitch in who have some more experience with this stuff.

We can definitly conclude the game was never finished, but as far as I know that's pretty well known already.

06-18-08, 03:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arclight

Well there's your problem.:rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl:

well my eyes glazed over as soon as we started talking about spheres and boxes and zones lol.

are you saying the shokaku has missing zones and thats why it "floats like a brick"?

Arclight · 06-18-08, 03:48 PM

Yeah, that's what it looks like to me, it seems to be nowhere near complete, would certainly explain a lot. The best example is in my previous post; the before and after shots.

Only carrier that seems to have a complete list is the Hiryu, which is also the only one where you can blast off the screws. The other 2 don't react to damage the way you'lld expect them to, with Shokaku as the clearest example overall.

I've got nothing on my schedule till next tuesday, gonna look into it some more and see if we can work something out. Just starting to learn myself, so bear with me.

06-18-08, 08:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arclight

Yeah, that's what it looks like to me, it seems to be nowhere near complete, would certainly explain a lot. The best example is in my previous post; the before and after shots.

Only carrier that seems to have a complete list is the Hiryu, which is also the only one where you can blast off the screws. The other 2 don't react to damage the way you'lld expect them to, with Shokaku as the clearest example overall.

I've got nothing on my schedule till next tuesday, gonna look into it some more and see if we can work something out. Just starting to learn myself, so bear with me.

no rush, i am just very interested in figuring this thing out because i think it could help fix a game flaw that connects to other things as well.

so do you think its the main zones file is where the key to fixing it will be? and if so will fixing it fix more than just the shokaku alone?

the reason i ask is the heavy cruiser maya will go decks awash like a submarine every time after only one torpedo then need 3 more additional torps to sink which is more than i would expect it to take but still not out of line, but the decks being awash after only one is not indicative of a ship that could take 2 more torpedos without sinking and need a forth to finish it off so i would imagine it has missing compartments too.

Arclight · 06-19-08, 12:12 PM

Well, not necessarily missing compartments as missing funtioning parts, like destructible screws and masts getting blown of. I'm shifting my attention to the "spheres" at the moment, haven't got a clue what those do yet. The compartments ("boxes") are all there, at least for engine rooms and bunkers and such. "boxes" seem to be for special effects, with their own separate attributes. From zones.cfg;

[BBEngineRoom]
Category=Engines Room
Multiplier=5.0 (damage multiplier? Could explain why it sinks at engine room hit)
Flotability=0.5
HitPoints=100
Destructible=No
Armor Level=-1
Critic Flotation=0.3
Critical=Yes (chance of destroying ship in 1 go)
Critical Chance=0.05 (that chance in %)
FloodingTime=120
CargoType=None
Crash Depth=30 (depth at wich compartment is destroyed)

Problem is, if you change this stuff, you change all warships.

You don't always hit one of the "boxes", so I guess that's where the "spheres" come in. Shokaku has 22 of these "spheres", compared to ~130 for Hiryu, which again seems to indicate something is missing.

I'm struggling, but I think I'm making progress.

And no, fixing Shokaku does just that. New zones would have to be introduced for every ship that seems to be missing them.

06-19-08, 03:30 PM

The Spheres are what 'take' the hits.
If you have a box with no spheres?
You'll get no hit.
That's why DC's sometimes pass through a Sub's hull!!
It misses the sphere's!!
Each box should be filled with spheres of different sizes and placements
so to fill the box as best as possible.
that way you get the 'hit'.

Anvart · 06-19-08, 03:50 PM

Spheres for collisions ...
For correct collisions, spheres should repeat precisely of ship figure and superstructure and masts too ...

06-19-08, 04:06 PM

Exactumundo!!

Anvart · 06-19-08, 04:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by privateer

Exactumundo!!

do not understand ...

06-19-08, 04:17 PM

òî÷íî

Arclight · 06-20-08, 05:12 PM

I finally figured that "spheres for collision" part out as well. Was just about to write here when I read it.

Thanks for the info, I'm hitting a brick wall at the moment. Weird thing is that I set all spheres to 0 radius but collision detection still works fine?!

So boxes determine special properties for specific parts of the ship and spheres are for collision?

Web; like I said, hitting a brick wall. Those zones don't seem to effect "flotability properties", so to say. Tried giving Shokaku "unique" parts, like an engine room only used by her that didn't multiplie damage, still sank like a brick. Came to the conclusion she's not sinking because of no HP left, but due to instability, which means it will go down no matter how many HP you give it.

Opened up ship's 3d model (basically skin, or hull), as well as the 3d damage model (what you see inside when you blow a hole). Can't make sense of it, I'm not a 3d modeler. Short of recreating NSM (change everything to rebalance) I wouldn't know what to do. I have no idea what determines the ships CG and the way she floats.

On the positive side; I think that, with some more practice, it should be possible to get screws and masts destructible like they should be. Even that would be an improvement IMO.

I really hope more poeple will give some input, I'm not about to give up but I don't have a clue what to try anymore.

06-20-08, 07:53 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arclight

I finally figured that "spheres for collision" part out as well. Was just about to write here when I read it.

Thanks for the info, I'm hitting a brick wall at the moment. Weird thing is that I set all spheres to 0 radius but collision detection still works fine?!

So boxes determine special properties for specific parts of the ship and spheres are for collision?

Web; like I said, hitting a brick wall. Those zones don't seem to effect "flotability properties", so to say. Tried giving Shokaku "unique" parts, like an engine room only used by her that didn't multiplie damage, still sank like a brick. Came to the conclusion she's not sinking because of no HP left, but due to instability, which means it will go down no matter how many HP you give it.

Opened up ship's 3d model (basically skin, or hull), as well as the 3d damage model (what you see inside when you blow a hole). Can't make sense of it, I'm not a 3d modeler. Short of recreating NSM (change everything to rebalance) I wouldn't know what to do. I have no idea what determines the ships CG and the way she floats.

On the positive side; I think that, with some more practice, it should be possible to get screws and masts destructible like they should be. Even that would be an improvement IMO.

I really hope more poeple will give some input, I'm not about to give up but I don't have a clue what to try anymore.

at least you understand it better than i do.

here's a dumb question, if like you said the zones are shared by all ships and just coded for each ship, could you just copy all the stuff from a working version ship and recode it?

what i was thinking is could another ship be used as a guide or blueprint to finish the unfinished shokaku file?

06-20-08, 08:01 PM

or what about this as a fix?

i forget which one but you said only one of the carriers looked to have a complete model so could that ship be copied and just replace the skin with the shokaku textures files? could that in effect replace the shokaku and work? or is there a lot more to cloning a ship than just swapping texture files?

06-18-08, 01:40 PM	#17
Arclight Navy Seal Join Date: Jun 2008 Location: Land of windmills, tulips, wooden shoes and cheese. Lots of cheese. Posts: 8,467 Downloads: 53 Uploads: 10	Well, I don't know what the "sphere" entries are for, but the "boxes" can be traced with the index (zones.cfg) to compartments and parts on the ship; screws, rudder, engineroom, fuelbunker, etc. In S3 editor they usually show an armorlevel of -1 ("-1 means it has armor of general category."). Further down in "zones.cfg" you'll find the actual properties of the zones / compartments, listing stuff such as HitPoints for that zone, yet another ArmorLevel listing, and FloodingTime. By comparing the NSM zones.cfg to the original, I noticed this is actually where you'll find the biggest changes. Still, even with NSM, it isn't that difficult to send a Shokaku type to the bottom with a single shot. There's also a remarkable difference between the 3 CV types; http://i268.photobucket.com/albums/j...iryuscreen.jpg http://i268.photobucket.com/albums/j...aihoscreen.jpg http://i268.photobucket.com/albums/j...kakuscreen.jpg I think you'll notice Taiho has the most entries, followed by Hiryu and then Shokaku with only 2 "SH3ZonesCtrl" entries. :hmm: The last "SH3ZonesCtrl" for all 3 is rather similar, with 40+ "box" sub-entries, made up out of fuelbunkers, ammobunkers, enginerooms, keels, etc. Her's the thing; http://i268.photobucket.com/albums/j...e/Hiryubox.jpg http://i268.photobucket.com/albums/j...e/Taihobox.jpg Hiryu, like in that example, has a "box" sub-entrie for most of the "SH3ZonesCtrl" entries. These boxes, according to the index, are masts, srews, rudder, etc. Not actually parts of the hull, but parts of the ship attached to the hull. Taiho, on the other hand is missing these single "box" entries for masts and such. Shokaku... well, she has only 2 "SH3ZonesCtrl" entries, the first one not containing any "boxes", and the second is the 40+ "boxes" one with the hullparts (enginerooms and such). To me it seems Hiryu is the only ship with "complete" entries, followed by Taiho and then Shokaku. Quess what the order of vulnerability is in my tests? Hiryu shrugs of the first hit like nothing happened, Taiho shows it noticed getting hit and Shokaku... goes down like a brick. Maybe Ubi never got around to actually finishing the Shokaku model (among others, apparently), which would explain this strange behaviour. :hmm: Gonna see if I can blow of some screws; if it works for Hiryu (which has 4 screw "box" listings) but not the others (which don't have any such listings), I think we can say for certain that the actual 3d model could do with some more zones. Is your head hurting? Mine is. Ow, and as long long as you make backups of anything you mess with and keep them safe, you can mess all you want. And a reinstall of stock SH4 shouldn't be much trouble if something goes wrong anyway. __________________ Contritium praecedit superbia.

06-18-08, 02:42 PM	#18
Arclight Navy Seal Join Date: Jun 2008 Location: Land of windmills, tulips, wooden shoes and cheese. Lots of cheese. Posts: 8,467 Downloads: 53 Uploads: 10	Well there's your problem.:rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: Guess what? Taiho; http://i268.photobucket.com/albums/j...aihobefore.jpg http://i268.photobucket.com/albums/j...Taihoafter.jpg Shokaku; http://i268.photobucket.com/albums/j...kakubefore.jpg http://i268.photobucket.com/albums/j...okakuafter.jpg Hiryu; http://i268.photobucket.com/albums/j...iryubefore.jpg http://i268.photobucket.com/albums/j...Hiryuafter.jpg I think I'm gonna send my copy to Ubi with a note attached asking them to please finish it. :rotfl: I have a "friend" that has a copy of a very expensive piece of 3d graphics software, maybe I can use it to finish the models. (and send the bill to Ubi! :rotfl: ) I'll see what can be accomplished with the entries that are actually there, maybe we can still improve the way Shokaku behaves, but with such a crippled model it's never going to be perfect. I suggest you do the same, I'll report any findings back here. If we put both our findings together we might come up with a solution, and maybe some other guys can pitch in who have some more experience with this stuff. We can definitly conclude the game was never finished, but as far as I know that's pretty well known already. __________________ Contritium praecedit superbia.

06-18-08, 03:48 PM	#20
Arclight Navy Seal Join Date: Jun 2008 Location: Land of windmills, tulips, wooden shoes and cheese. Lots of cheese. Posts: 8,467 Downloads: 53 Uploads: 10	Yeah, that's what it looks like to me, it seems to be nowhere near complete, would certainly explain a lot. The best example is in my previous post; the before and after shots. Only carrier that seems to have a complete list is the Hiryu, which is also the only one where you can blast off the screws. The other 2 don't react to damage the way you'lld expect them to, with Shokaku as the clearest example overall. I've got nothing on my schedule till next tuesday, gonna look into it some more and see if we can work something out. Just starting to learn myself, so bear with me. __________________ Contritium praecedit superbia.

06-19-08, 12:12 PM	#22
Arclight Navy Seal Join Date: Jun 2008 Location: Land of windmills, tulips, wooden shoes and cheese. Lots of cheese. Posts: 8,467 Downloads: 53 Uploads: 10	Well, not necessarily missing compartments as missing funtioning parts, like destructible screws and masts getting blown of. I'm shifting my attention to the "spheres" at the moment, haven't got a clue what those do yet. The compartments ("boxes") are all there, at least for engine rooms and bunkers and such. "boxes" seem to be for special effects, with their own separate attributes. From zones.cfg; [BBEngineRoom] Category=Engines Room Multiplier=5.0 (damage multiplier? Could explain why it sinks at engine room hit) Flotability=0.5 HitPoints=100 Destructible=No Armor Level=-1 Critic Flotation=0.3 Critical=Yes (chance of destroying ship in 1 go) Critical Chance=0.05 (that chance in %) FloodingTime=120 CargoType=None Crash Depth=30 (depth at wich compartment is destroyed) Problem is, if you change this stuff, you change all warships. You don't always hit one of the "boxes", so I guess that's where the "spheres" come in. Shokaku has 22 of these "spheres", compared to ~130 for Hiryu, which again seems to indicate something is missing. I'm struggling, but I think I'm making progress. And no, fixing Shokaku does just that. New zones would have to be introduced for every ship that seems to be missing them. __________________ Contritium praecedit superbia.

06-19-08, 03:50 PM	#24
Anvart Admiral Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: Russia ® Posts: 2,492 Downloads: 122 Uploads: 1	Spheres for collisions ... For correct collisions, spheres should repeat precisely of ship figure and superstructure and masts too ... __________________ Alex ® Moses said: "Don't create yourself an idol"... Last edited by Anvart; 06-22-08 at 12:56 AM.

06-19-08, 03:30 PM	#23
Madox58 Stowaway Posts: n/a Downloads: Uploads:	The Spheres are what 'take' the hits. If you have a box with no spheres? You'll get no hit. That's why DC's sometimes pass through a Sub's hull!! It misses the sphere's!! Each box should be filled with spheres of different sizes and placements so to fill the box as best as possible. that way you get the 'hit'.

06-19-08, 04:06 PM	#25
Madox58 Stowaway Posts: n/a Downloads: Uploads:	Exactumundo!!

06-19-08, 04:17 PM	#27
Madox58 Stowaway Posts: n/a Downloads: Uploads:	òî÷íî

06-20-08, 05:12 PM	#28
Arclight Navy Seal Join Date: Jun 2008 Location: Land of windmills, tulips, wooden shoes and cheese. Lots of cheese. Posts: 8,467 Downloads: 53 Uploads: 10	I finally figured that "spheres for collision" part out as well. Was just about to write here when I read it. Thanks for the info, I'm hitting a brick wall at the moment. Weird thing is that I set all spheres to 0 radius but collision detection still works fine?! So boxes determine special properties for specific parts of the ship and spheres are for collision? Web; like I said, hitting a brick wall. Those zones don't seem to effect "flotability properties", so to say. Tried giving Shokaku "unique" parts, like an engine room only used by her that didn't multiplie damage, still sank like a brick. Came to the conclusion she's not sinking because of no HP left, but due to instability, which means it will go down no matter how many HP you give it. Opened up ship's 3d model (basically skin, or hull), as well as the 3d damage model (what you see inside when you blow a hole). Can't make sense of it, I'm not a 3d modeler. Short of recreating NSM (change everything to rebalance) I wouldn't know what to do. I have no idea what determines the ships CG and the way she floats. On the positive side; I think that, with some more practice, it should be possible to get screws and masts destructible like they should be. Even that would be an improvement IMO. I really hope more poeple will give some input, I'm not about to give up but I don't have a clue what to try anymore. __________________ Contritium praecedit superbia.

06-20-08, 08:01 PM	#30
Webster Stowaway Posts: n/a Downloads: Uploads:	or what about this as a fix? i forget which one but you said only one of the carriers looked to have a complete model so could that ship be copied and just replace the skin with the shokaku textures files? could that in effect replace the shokaku and work? or is there a lot more to cloning a ship than just swapping texture files?