"SH3Gen" Campaign enhancement (version 0.6.0)

[GlobalExplorer]

Originally Posted by snwcrsh

Hi GlobalExplorer. Thanks again for the great work. I was wondering about something:

I have seen some cases where a convoy is marked on the ingame map but not the TatukGIS viewer. I wasn't able to investigate... but I would suppose this is about the reliability setting of the intelligence? i.e. marks on the ingame map that are not on TatukGIS are false reports? Just a thought.

If not, how come not all convoys can be seen in TatukGIS?

This is absolutely possible. Ideally the output would be the same in both environments, and the both use the same patrol data but it's handled in separate stages - there might be some differences in implementation.

I wouldn't worry too much about that. As you see the output in the game and in TatukGIS is almost identical, they do use the same data, it's possible there are some small differences.

Intelligence settings is an option to adjust the amount of information you want to see, reliability controls how correct the information that you see is.

[snwcrsh]

Yep I know. And I like that feature very much in your tool. I use the default values and it's great that it's not always correct -- otherwise it would be a plain cheat tool. This way, I have to think about my choice... do I head where this convoy is supposed to be? It will cost me 15% fuel.. but it could be wrong info....

Much better than patrol grids, anyway! But: This makes me worry, because if I can see on the TatukGIS that the convoy isnt there as it is in the ingame map... i might *know* already that this is false info....

so if this is so, i probably would rather avoid TatukGIS as it is too much of a god eye

[GlobalExplorer]

No, not like that. None of the info is invented or outright wrong. But it is near to impossible to tell the exact probability value of a piece of information.

The complete data is read from the campaign layer and then goes through several filters in which the program decides what to do with it. If a random value is under a certain threshold, if it's off certain spatial areas or it falls out of the time frame - the object is filtered out. It is a pretty complex process - much too complex as I found out later - but it works as I wanted it to.

The final problem is just to decide how to present the remaining objects and I guess it is here that some values go missing. The gml export and the process of writing into the savegame are completely different problems, and they were developed with more than a year in between.

[GlobalExplorer]

snwcrsh, if you are interested in TatukGIS and wargames you could have a look at this project:

http://www.shockwaveproductions.com/...t=8866&start=0

It is a TatukGIS map I started for the Battle of Britain. I hope to be able to provide more GIS data and exporters of this kind for wargames, as they come. I believe there's a lot of unused potential in this combination.

[snwcrsh]

Ahh, thanks GlobalExplorer, I am indeed interested. Tools that I dont understand on first glance always intrigued me and I usually follow up....

I met DW already and that's kinda weird. But I like it weirder, we will probably meet again.

Thanks for the link

[U49]

Originally Posted by GlobalExplorer

It's saturday and I release something today!

It is a snapshot of the a stand alone map generator:

Sh3Gen v0.9.0 beta

I'll have time for SH3 at the next weeekaned again.. (130h to wait )
and of course I will have a curious look at it

[treblesum81]

Hi, I'm a little curious if it would be possible to configure this program to append the war diary rather than completely overwrite it? It may be impossible due to game mechanics, but from my examination of the files in the save game folder, I don't think that is the case.

The reason I ask is because I like the quality of tasking that is delivered in game... depending on the settings, its not too much of a spoiler, but still delievers something more than "go here for 24hrs and then your on your own"... and as such, I'd like the ability to recieve periodic updates (I know this would still be initiated by me outside of the game environment... at least without some major changes to the addon... but it would be nice over the course of a long patrol to get an intel update without erasing everything thats transpired beforehand.

Any thoughts on this?

Thanks,
Greg

[Myxale]

I don't think that's possible, given the method how GEN handles the information and how it writes them into SH3.

The reall stopper here is SH3!
The GEN data has to be written on the layers of the save-game and the campaign layer...among others! Which is read on start.

There's no work-around there!

I really wish it would be possible! I'm using GEN since the beginning and it's a must have for solid SH3 Gaming!

[treblesum81]

Hmm, that does sound a little difficult, though, from what I can tell of the data files, it would be possible to append rather than overwrite with only a few added lines of code into the GEN program since most of the written data seems to be basically .txt files by a different name...

I wonder if anyone has ever thought to try some of this stuff using a decal or shell type program to get the missing functionality into the game. They are pretty common in simulations (when I play FS2004 alone I have at least 4 running on top of the game) because they use real time updating of game files along with some trickery to get the host program to accept the changes, and therefore allow for changes which would not normally be easy to display like real-time/real-world weather and outside of program communications. This all being said, I'm sure of two things.

1) Its gotta be possible to force a reload of SH3 data files without a game restart... I've not seen a single program ever where this wasn't possible through at least some method, no matter how complicated.

2) Finding out how to do it could take quite some time due to its complexity, which I think has been the major barrier to stopping this sort of developement. Though I will say that, considering the level of time and effort that have been put into many of the mods here, it should not be impossible to see in the future. Of course whether this proves never to happen because of the SH4 release, will have to be seen.

Just some thoughts,
Greg

[Herr Trigger]

F.A.O. Global Explorer,
Hi, I use SH3Gen nearly all the time and have found the Takugis viewer quite useful, what does interest me though is the map you use for your BoB campaign, it seems more Hi-res than the standard map supplied with the viewer. and as you have it incorporated into your viewer I was wondering if it was available as a download somewhere? It does look kinda sexy.

Thanks,

Herr Trigger.

[GlobalExplorer]

Originally Posted by Herr Trigger

F.A.O. Global Explorer,
Hi, I use SH3Gen nearly all the time and have found the Takugis viewer quite useful, what does interest me though is the map you use for your BoB campaign, it seems more Hi-res than the standard map supplied with the viewer. and as you have it incorporated into your viewer I was wondering if it was available as a download somewhere? It does look kinda sexy.

Thanks,

Herr Trigger.

You can download it here:

http://www.shockwaveproductions.com/...8866&highlight=

For the bob map I use a very detailed raster map, but it only covers the Bob TOW (Sh3gen uses vector shoreline data, and the coverage is global), there is also a non-conform projection in the Bob data, so for this and other reasons the two cannot be merged.

In case you play Battle of Britain II WoV yourself (I highly recommend that game), take note that my raster map is now incorporated into the BDG 2.07 patch, so you might as well download that and use the map in game (without the GIS features of course): http://www.shockwaveproductions.com/...pic.php?t=9303

@treblesum81: I had previously thought about making the updates persistent - so that Sh3Gen can interpret and connect updates - but this would have meant a lot of overhead and complexity and would have in the end confused many people, so I sticked with the much more robust approach of always repleacing the map update with a new one.

Another approach I have been thinking about would have been to build Sh3Gen on top of radio messages (i.e. radio messages are generated at the beginning of your patrol) and leave the War Diary altogether alone. this could have worked much better in many respects. Unfortunately it's now a bit too late to redo Sh3Gen but the lessons are learnt and hopefully there will be new sims we can work on in the future ..

Thanks for all suggestions, hopefully there will be a next project I could incorporate this in .. maybe.

[treblesum81]

You've got a good idea there actually... What if you were to give the option to either output the info to the war diary (intial intel recieved from BdU at patrol departure) or to out put them as messages that would be recieved a few mins after loading (from my understanding of the way radio messages work, that would only entail inserting them into the proper location of the messages_en.cfg... I think) which would simulate updated tasking or reciept of new intel?

Just a thought. This way you'd be able to add some improved functionality to this great mod without having to completely rewrite it. And from what I can tell adding this sort of thing would be fairly easy from a programming point of view as it wouldn't require all that much additional code. Though, I would think there is a way to make these sort of events happen in real time between the game and the mod.... hey, if the game can display dynamic data in real time through the manipulation of certain files, it should be possible for us to do it to, but I digress again....

Anyway, I guess let me know what you think of this idea. I really only press the issue because patrols can last for quite some time, and having the ability to get new and dynamic direction from BdU (SH3 GEN) would be a great improvement to the game environment.

Thanks,
Greg

[treblesum81]

Just had another thought...

What about the possibility of making use of the way that SH3 updates your in game map to place ship contact reports to place updated map info from Gen? I'm not sure if this is possible, but I know that it can be modified because of the sh3contacts mod.

Greg

[Tuddley3]

Hey GE, I have a question about the Tracking Room. I notice it says Icebergs in places where Icebergs don't exist. So I assume they represent something else. I am trying to explain the Tracking Room in my SH3 Gen thread at Ubi(Yes that thread is still alive ).

Thanks GE,
Tudd's

[GlobalExplorer]

Hey tuddley

Yes. They represent dolphins. Dolphins are more of a hack in that they were ommited from the original release and they do syntactically not conform the standard. A lot of them were coded in after I finished the bulk work on Sh3Gen, and to be honest, I never got round to fixing the problem (which could only be in the form of a hack in the Sh3Gen parser), and dont think I ever will.

There is an easy way to get rid of the problem. All output text strings can be found in files and the "iceberg" string can be found in:

Sh3Gen\Database\Dictionary\English\Map.names

or

Sh3Gen\Database\Dictionary\German\Map.names

if you are using german as output language.

If you now look for the line

<Name Key="Iceberg">Icebergs</Name>

and change it to (for example)

<Name Key="Iceberg">Environmental</Name>

it should not bother you any more.

There could also be a way to supress them altogether in Parameters.ini, but I don't remember now.