Mod-Idea for ingame loading screens

[JCWolf]

Sugestion -

If you keep the info in the letter type of paper like in your first
screen it would look much better !

Thought I love the work mate the first screen with the paper letter
is absolute and beautifull!:hmm:

[mic1184]

Originally Posted by jcwolf

Sugestion -

If you keep the info in the letter type of paper like in your first
screen it would look much better !

i've experimented a lot and can use the "attached Reich document" style only with quite short texts. the layout you see in the sample will be applied for the more substantial texts. there will be a mix of about 3 -4 different styles, maybe only the two you see as im not satisfied with the others yet.

as to the background pictures, im not sure whether to use different ones. so far i havent planned to use another than the shown.

thanks for your positive feedback. im working hard and have about 40 intro screens with historical facts so far. if that keeps going so well, you'll find hundreds in the first release ;-)

[melnibonian]

It's a very good and really clever idea. I would suggest to have all four options in the intro screens (Data, Facts, Hints etc). As it is suggested before if you use SH3Cmdr you can set up the files in the random folder so that you have no repetitions (well not loads of them at least).

[Dau-U-42]

Hi! I'm new to SHIII and just joined here to get to know this game it's mods etc.

And this is a brilliant idea! There are a few things I'd like to point out: First of all you should consider the length of the text displayed. It should be long enough so that reading it would last approximately the whole loading time. Another thing is the background. Are you going to leave it like that (in-game screenshots)? It would be extremely cool to use real photographs of the era, perhaps so there would be different sets of photos for every loading screen, matching it's text.

[mic1184]

Originally Posted by Dau-U-42

Hi! I'm new to SHIII and just joined here to get to know this game it's mods etc.

And this is a brilliant idea! There are a few things I'd like to point out: First of all you should consider the length of the text displayed. It should be long enough so that reading it would last approximately the whole loading time. Another thing is the background. Are you going to leave it like that (in-game screenshots)? It would be extremely cool to use real photographs of the era, perhaps so there would be different sets of photos for every loading screen, matching it's text.

hi and welcome to the forum and thanks for your interest. of course you're right with all of your arguments, but im sorry to have to compromise:

1. of course it would be nice to adapt the text length perfectly to the loading time, but unfortunately this is impossible, as loading time varies a really GREAT range depending on which mods you installed and on your hardware configuration. also the texts should be comfortably readible, so text length will be very compact. I'm trying to pack as much information into as short text as possible.

2. real photographs are usually black&white and (mostly) of poor quality. good ones are quite hard to find. you're (of course) free to pm me with your wonderful photographs if you have them ;-)

3. even if i had such many different high quality background pictures as to completely customize them to the text displayed, it would be a whole lot of work, as good page layout is more time-consuming than you'd think.
where do i put text, boxes, additional pictures, symbols, logos etc in the picture. what can be covered, where should transparency be applied. does it look overloaded if i put xy to z... its more complex than just putting anything together by the first impression.
that is why i choose to employ only one single background picture so far. if i get others which i instantly fall i love with i will of course rethink it... again you're all free to pm me with your stuff ;-)

one other factor is quantity. i need really LOTS of different texts for this mod to become interesting for longer than 2 weeks. right now i got about 40 together, each of them carefully chosen, researched, composed, edited and layouted. these 40 screens were a good 2 days work (with 4 hours per day maybe), 1/2 of it simply doing the layout.

i think i need at least 80 - 100 each for game loading screen and career mission loading screen and maybe 30 - 50 for the single mission loading and 20 - 40 of the museum loading screen. so about 250 different screens. with only one layout that'd be a remaining 21 hours of pure work, with an average of 3 hrs per day thats 7 days to go to the first release... doesnt sound much, but i have a girlfriend, got university, a job, family, friends and an unfinished gwx career. so its going to be rather 2 - 3 weeks.

if i then added too much layouting time, it would become 4 - 6 weeks for one (good) layout per 40 screens. and 4 - 6 weeks of regularly work might become the death of a good modding idea.

as i wish not to compromise quality OR quantity of the texts, i will not put much more efforts in a variety of layouts.

duh, i guess this is a 'welcome to the modder's life'

[Dau-U-42]

You've got some really reasonable points there and I agree with you about everyone of them. I unfortunately can't supply you with any photos or knowledge of U-boats. I am however willing to assist you by giving tips and my thoughts on your work as much as everyone else is. By no means do not take any extra pressure for your already busy life.

I'd like to know what are your topics for the screens going to be like. You've already shown an example of a U-boat commander. Do you need suggestions for new topics? 250 screens are a lot. You could consider writing about the phases of the U-boat warfare ('Happy Time', Operation Drumbeat...), technologies that changed the naval warfare (sonar, hydrophone, hedgehogs...), famous U-boat battles (Scapa Flow...). The possibilities are endless. What topics have you already used?

[JCWolf]

I have to make you realise something!


This is no doubt a good idea and I'm sure it will
be a great screen Mod, but remember something...

As much files you had into SHIII commander as long
it will take to load, so if the iseu was from the begining
the time for loading the Mod, here you will have the SHIII
commander loading what 100 or more Graphic files that
no doubt can be small in Kbs or Mbs but toghether it will become
a huge amount of data that the SH3Commander will have to load,

I have some Mods that use the Randomisation feature of the SH3 Com.
and I know what I'm saying....

So if the isue was loading times , I guess it would be better to decrease
the number of screens or other wise you'll be 15 or 20 minutes in low end PC's
wayting for the SH3 Com. to load...:hmm:


Just a sugestion and warning from a Fellow SSimer

[mic1184]

You've got some really reasonable points there and I agree with you about everyone of them. I unfortunately can't supply you with any photos or knowledge of U-boats. I am however willing to assist you by giving tips and my thoughts on your work as much as everyone else is. By no means do not take any extra pressure for your already busy life.

I'd like to know what are your topics for the screens going to be like. You've already shown an example of a U-boat commander. Do you need suggestions for new topics? 250 screens are a lot. You could consider writing about the phases of the U-boat warfare ('Happy Time', Operation Drumbeat...), technologies that changed the naval warfare (sonar, hydrophone, hedgehogs...), famous U-boat battles (Scapa Flow...). The possibilities are endless. What topics have you already used?

thanks for your tips. 250 screens really sounds much, but believe me, it isnt hard to fill. i have been systematically creating those screens, beginning with the "aces of the deeps" (10 famous u-boat commanders + dönitz), short descriptions and stories about the flotillas (makes another ~ 10 screens), went over to some of the most interesting convoy battles (like OB-293 where U47 was lost), now i've started with specials like the german Grid system, captured u-boats, wolfpack system, etc.

next things are descriptions about the u-boats (types and revisions, II's, VII's, IX's, mine layers, milkcows, walther-boats, electro-boats), maybe the compartments with pictures (the diesel-room, torpedo rooms, etc), then the torpedoes (including the special torpedoes, the "torpedo crisis" etc), maybe ordnance like mines, magnetic mines, sub nets etc, then - as you suggested - the detection technics like hydrophone and sonar types, ASDIC, radar (and how it changed u-boat warfare), etc. i like the ideas of the periods also. you've made good suggestions thanks. keep them coming. ;-)

i think im gonna abandon the gameplay tips, as they dont seem to be popular from the polls and also they're the hardest part for myself.

I have to make you realise something!


This is no doubt a good idea and I'm sure it will
be a great screen Mod, but remember something...

As much files you had into SHIII commander as long
it will take to load, so if the iseu was from the begining
the time for loading the Mod, here you will have the SHIII
commander loading what 100 or more Graphic files that
no doubt can be small in Kbs or Mbs but toghether it will become
a huge amount of data that the SH3Commander will have to load,

I have some Mods that use the Randomisation feature of the SH3 Com.
and I know what I'm saying....

So if the isue was loading times , I guess it would be better to decrease
the number of screens or other wise you'll be 15 or 20 minutes in low end PC's
wayting for the SH3 Com. to load...:hmm:

hmm, i know a bit what you're saying. since i installed the GWX skin pack, SH3 commander takes about 5 minutes to just copy them at every game start. the 'date' folder in SH3 Cmdr directory is 1.6 GB big.

now unfortunately, each single screen is 3 MB, due to the TGA file format. that will make 600 - 800 additional MBs for SH3 cmdr dir.

i didnt worry so much about it so far, because i thought SH3 Cmdr must only copy 4 TGAs per start (intro, career mission load, singe mission load and museum load). i will have to test how long it really takes, i havent done that so far.
but you've pointed out a serious problem. i hope this isnt going to ruin the idea of this mod, because im not going to accept such long loading times (the loading times of the game itself are long enough), and i think not many will.

*dang* im off to test this...

[mic1184]

i was just integrating the mod at its current state into SH3 cmdr, and realized the following problem:

only 'sets' of files can be randomized, so i must put fixed combinations of intro.tga, map.tga, museum.tga and singlemissions.tga into the randomized ##-folders. this would mean that with one specific Intro-screen there would always be the same mission loading screen. this really isnt a good solution.

is there any possibility of randomizing the files independently from each other? im not sure how to handle this, but im thinking about ways to enable this mod without SH3 commander, maybe with a .bat file, like i've seen sometime here in the forum...

any ideas?

[Dau-U-42]

Originally Posted by mic1184

i was just integrating the mod at its current state into SH3 cmdr, and realized the following problem:

only 'sets' of files can be randomized, so i must put fixed combinations of intro.tga, map.tga, museum.tga and singlemissions.tga into the randomized ##-folders. this would mean that with one specific Intro-screen there would always be the same mission loading screen. this really isnt a good solution.

is there any possibility of randomizing the files independently from each other? im not sure how to handle this, but im thinking about ways to enable this mod without SH3 commander, maybe with a .bat file, like i've seen sometime here in the forum...

any ideas?

I did some maths to see how many sets you'd have to make depending on how random it should be:

1) If you wanted to make it totally random, you'd have to make many sets of screens. If you had only 125 different screens to choose from and want to have 4 of them (the intro, map, museum and mission) chosen randomly so that all the four are different, there will be 9 691 375 different combinations and therefor as many different sets. Thats only with 125 screens to choose from, the calculation tool I'm using does not allow too big numbers :p. A total randomization would be obviously impossible to make.

2) So, you must alter the nuber of the screens (the 250 you're planning to make) or the set and level of randomizing (all the 4 different screens in a set to be random). If for example only 1, the intro screen, would change while the remaining 3 would be always the same and there would be 125 screens to choose from, there would be obviously a total of 125 different sets.

3) Make the mission screen randomize too (you'll have 2 screens to choose from 125) and it jumps to 7 750 different combinations aka sets.

4) If you wanted all the 4 to be random and had just 10 different screens to choose from, there would be 260 different sets.

Read about 'combination without repetition'. Also play around with this. Change the n to be the total number of screens to choose from and the k to be how many to choose.

Tomorrow I might present ideas on the topics and such.

[mic1184]

thanks for your efforts and the maths Dau-U-42, but your hypothetic approach to face the SH3 Cmdr randomization problem is impossible.

i am still experimenting with SH3 cmdr, but right now i think the only clean and proper method for the randomization is to utilize an external code, may it be a simple DOS batch script, or a small c++ prog. this will keep the additional loading time very short (only the time for 4x 3MB copying) and it will ensure compatibility with ANY possible SH3 installation (no matter whether using SH3 Cmdr or whatever)

still open for suggestions though

[JCWolf]

Originally Posted by mic1184

i was just integrating the mod at its current state into SH3 cmdr, and realized the following problem:

only 'sets' of files can be randomized, so i must put fixed combinations of intro.tga, map.tga, museum.tga and singlemissions.tga into the randomized ##-folders. this would mean that with one specific Intro-screen there would always be the same mission loading screen. this really isnt a good solution.

is there any possibility of randomizing the files independently from each other? im not sure how to handle this, but im thinking about ways to enable this mod without SH3 commander, maybe with a .bat file, like i've seen sometime here in the forum...

any ideas?

As far as I know no ther is not!

But JSCones can defenetly give you more imput on that,
the thing is each folder inside the SH3Com Date folder represents a
year and month so what you will had inside that folder will show
up during that month and year, I think you can make more folders
representing more months, but then again that will increase
a lot the loading times, for each file you had each time increasing you
will nitice on the SH3Com loading....

So you can easely make one loading screen for each month in one
year but then you would have a huge amount of graphic data to
load on the SH3Com and attached to that the rest of the years until 45!


We are talking here of what 500 / 600 Mbs of Mod to load!

[mic1184]

okay after some testing i've tried both a batch script (http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=104019 thanks to eric weber)
and a self written c++ code, and it both took about a second for the job to perfectly complete. works nice.

using a modified/new .exe file for this mod would be quite an elegant solution, but because of the danger of this file format (someone could easily recode it, add malicious code and distribute it as a mirror to this mod) i think i will release the mod with the batch file.

greetz

[Dau-U-42]

I' glad you solved the problem. If you still need the texts to be done, here's an idea: why not make the writing and brainstorming a community project! You choose a topic and everyone willing to contribute tells you what they know about it and perhaps help you writing it. This could be done through the forums or perhaps a wiki. Using this method should give you more time on the graphics.

[mic1184]

well the idea of community work was the core of the idea, but i dont wish to make this stuff public, because no one would want the mod if he knew all the texts to come. thats why i would prefer to receive the stuff via PM.


little update on the work:

1. work going fine with the historical facts for the intro
2. made up a concept mission loading screen (see the updated post #1 for sample) to come along with quotes
3. looking for someone to assist me with selecting good texts. photoshop or equivalent (+minor skills with it^^) required. if you're interested, please pm me.
4. looking desperately for good and famous quotes from u-boat men or relating u-boats
5. to any GWX crew member. if there is something like an official GWX logo or something, and if you guys allowed me to make a GWX version of this mod (i.e. placing the GWX logo somewhere where it looks fancy on the screens), would be nice if you let me have it.

greetz mic