[WIP] Printable SH IV recognition manual

[aanker]

Originally Posted by Raven Morpheus

... Also what do you mean aanker when you say Ubisoft still owns the SSI graphics? Do you mean the artwork I've been using?

Yes - however what action they take is unknown other than I've heard they vigorously protect their intellectual property, (even SH1 - SHCE) and several years ago a mod or two of mine were deleted from the now defunct Filefront site - maybe because it appeared like I included some unmodified files in a BALAO clone? ....I forget what it was. Funny thing though, they were modified.

This is why I was thinking along the lines of using public domain ONI type graphics to create realistic looking pages/cards to print out and make into a booklet with information, complete with the mistakes, for the in-game warships & marus. That would appear more realistic for me anyway.

The time-frame when I made the SHCE printable ONI-208-J from screenshots from that game was around the time that the digital millennium copyright act was still fresh - and scary.... lol

Just to be clear, I don't care what anyone else does or creates, mostly just thinking 'out loud' and wanting to stay out of trouble. :)

Happy Hunting!

Edit: http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/show...86&postcount=6 Sailor Steve describes the difference.

[Raven Morpheus]

Ah I see what you mean now. The problem with using those public domain images is they only cover the Japanese ships, whereas I'm compiling my RM so it covers all the ships in the game (where they have a _sil.dds) and also in due course the ships in SH V.

I'm not too bothered by rumours of Ubisofts protection of their IP, I'll give full credit to them for their artwork in a readme, and they're unlikely to come after one small guy such as myself, I'm not going to make money from it, and it's no different really to mods for example like TDW UI which can change the UI in SH V to that of SH IV - you're circulating artwork/files from the game in such a mod in the same way I'll be circulating the artwork in a printable pdf file.

I doubt it would get to the stage if they did take action that I'd end up being sued or slapped with a large payment to make.

Publish and be damned I say.

Filefont or Gamefront as it is now is well known for removing files for no real reason by the way, they even do it if files aren't accessed within a specific time frame (they deleted loads of files I had on there for that reason) so I wouldn't worry that your files were removed from Filefont, but that's why I'll be using a different hosting site.

Still need to get to the stage I can put the PDF together though, I keep thinking I'm near to doing so, then something else comes up (like adding the Length info, or now recategorising the ships to ONI style categories, which I need a little assistance on)...


EDIT: So based on Sailor Steve's description there the Victory and Liberty Cargo ships would be Composite Cargo ships. Still leaves me wondering about the Troop Transport (I'm guessing Passenger would be the best category for that?), Submarine Tender (which comes under Merchants in the in-game RM) and Armed Merchant Cruiser (which is German) though.

[aanker]

A couple links that may be helpful

http://www.hnsa.org/doc/id/index.htm

http://www.coatneyhistory.com/drawings.htm

Troop ship sounds good to me in that category :)

Happy Hunting!

[Raven Morpheus]

Thanks I'll take a look through those.

Only a few things to do now and I should be able to put together the PDF.

I've got to finish adding the metric values for lenght, depth, and mast height, I've done the IJN ships just have the other 60 odd to do - it got rather boring, repetitive and depressing last night duplicating and altering the text for that!!

Then after that all I have to do is make cards for the ships added in SH V and I'm good to go. I'm hoping the majority of ships in SH V are from SH IV, I know Tribal/V&W DD's and Liberty/Victory cargo ships are present in both SH IV and SH V - hopefully I shouldn't have too may additional cards to make...



I'm wondering now whether to release in PDF format (which restricts people to using the order I've chosen for the PDF), or just simply as an archive file using 7zip with all the raw .jpg cards I've made, sorted in folders for the ONI style categorisation, so that people can print them (along with some section dividers I've made) in any order they wish?



One thing I have done, is where possible I've put the Japanese names of the ships on the cards where Ubisoft switched them out for generic names (such as Small Old Engine aft), credit goes to WernerSobe for that idea and his list of names (which helped greatly recently because they match the file names!), but I have added a couple that WernerSobe hadn't listed in the thread I found, that I believe after some google searching are correct.

Such as the Old Raked Bow Split Merchant could be the Nikkyu Maru, formerly the SS War Melody.

Based on the fact the files are in a folder called NKMSS_WarMelody, and both the .cfg file and _sil.dds are named NKMSS_WarMelody and according to records I've found the SS War Melody appears to have been taken over by the Japanese in '24 and ended up being called the Nikkyu Maru - http://www.wrecksite.eu/wreck.aspx?156862

Not sure if I should have gone with Ryuun Maru or Hakutatsu Maru though as they are slightly earlier names for the same ship (Ryuun Maru probably being the best of those two names for the timeframe of the game), although in the in-game museum it's listed as a British cargo ship so perhaps I should just have named it War Melody?




The silhouette doesn't seem to quite match but in the museum it looks a little like the pic above at similar angles, and it's the best I could do given the info I have - why would Ubisoft name the files War Melody if they weren't implying (or is it inferring?) that's what the ship is meant to be?


Example showing the the new name format of the cards, note I've left the in-game generic name but put it in parenthesis after the real name so that you can match it to the in-game RM if you use the "send mast height to TDC" function, you'll also note the AOB and Length text is now present -

[Raven Morpheus]

Still got the Length, Draft and Mast values in Metric to add to the cards for the merchant ships but I thought I'd take a break as I've just done everything else (except the IJN, which I did the other day) and start on putting the pdf together...

It's coming together nicely I think, here's a sample of the first 6 pages, note that if you print these as cards I'd recommend to print them as 1 page per side of each card (otherwise you'll have 111 cards instead of 56 cards). Ignore the blue around the pic, that's just where I used snipping tool to take the screengrab of the pdf in Foxit -




You'll note that I have a section divider as the first page, and the ships are ordered in alphabetical order (read left to right in this case where I've set the view of Foxit to display multiple pages in 2 columns), obviously if you print this out yourselves you can change the order and/or discard my section dividers.


Not 100% sure but I may not have left enough room on the left of each card for binding, holes may end up going through the silhouette and text, so I may still have to add a margin all around to compensate for that (only need one on the left but it won't maintain the shape/size of the original image if I put a margin only on the left).

[aanker]

Looking good.

A friend made a booklet out of my SHCE ONI 208J pages, professionally glued the binding rather than use holes, and sent me a video to show off the results, here's a screenshot:



Warships were by class, so were marus except there weren't as many in SH1.

Happy Hunting!

[Raven Morpheus]

Nice.

When I've printed and bound mine I'll post pics.