[WIP] The Offical Post of The Surface Warfare Super-Mod

[polyfiller]

Darkfish - many thanks for the hood. Smoke screen looks good. Guess we would need to make it "law low" to be effective.

All - first an apology - the file I uploaded last night had an error - turns out I make a complete arse of combing the ships into the mod folder and this caused issues with the Kent Cruiser (no turrets). and .. second ... a new upload is on it's way up tonight ... with the HMS Rodney completed

I also started to make, what I believe, are some fixes to the Ops Monsoon guns.dat - to make crew members apear for the deck guns (mainly UK deck guns like the 4.7 inch). Only done a couple so far.

BTW .... is anyone capable / able to create correct sillouettes for the ships (the ones that appear at the top of the damage screen) ?

[DarkFish]

Originally Posted by polyfiller

BTW .... is anyone capable / able to create correct sillouettes for the ships (the ones that appear at the top of the damage screen) ?

about the silhouettes, I used to copy the ship_sil.dds. But recently I started doing it in a different way, making textured silhouettes. To demonstrate this I've made two screenshots of the damage screen. Compare this one from the Kent CA

with this one from the V&W DD

Personally I like the second one much better. (and yes I know I still have to add the deck guns) I could do this for all ships if you want me to.

[Regio Sommergibile]

Looks great Darkfish

Personally a much greater graphic impact

[polyfiller]

Darkfish - agree - second one looks much better.If it doesn't take too long, would be great if you could do for all. I did try sortin out the Bismark once - and no matter whatI did, the game insisted onpicking up the Graf Spee Silloutte.

Oh and many thanks for the Hood - havenowplaced working turret nodes and tested. Also found I needed to change main.cfg to allow more turrets on a human controlled unit... until I did this any turrets above 19 did not show.

Just finished the Revenge Class BB.

Started on the Renown.

[Regio Sommergibile]

Originally Posted by polyfiller

Just finished the Revenge Class BB.

Started on the Renown.

Beautiful words...

[ivank]

Wow what a surge in production from you guys, work was going slow and then bam! it speeds up!!! Great Job! my hat goes off to you guys!

I tested the HMS Warspite, HMS Hood, HMS Rodney, the Kent class, North Carolina class, and the Iowa class; let me just say they are amazing!!

Here are some notes on the allied ships I took:
Kent class: Amazing damage model, faired great against 2 anchored DDs, Took a mortal blow from shore batteries, sank 1 kongo class BC with torpedos, torpedo laucnher damage model was great!!!! Two hits from shore guns, knocked out port luanchers!

HMS Warspite: needs a better 3d model, VonDos is amazing for SH3 but this is SH4 and some changes need to be made; better superstructure, better turrets, and better hull lines. Other than that the skin needs to be re-done. The damage model was good, minor damge from shore guns, sank 2 cargos, 1 dd, 1cl, lost to yamato, after 3hrs of battle(i dont know if that is real or not)

HMS Hood: Lost to Yamato in 1 hr, no shore batteries around. but as for the 3d model and skin the same as the Warspite.

Rodney: same as Warspite(3D model and skin) 2hrs with kongo, ise and fuso class bbs, sank Ise, damaged fuso.

Iowa and North Cal: great damage model! needs some small 3d model changes and some skin work.

Other than that the allied ships were amazing!!!! Great work!!!!

I have just completed part of the Axis naval bases, trying to find out if there are more naval bases than just in Poland, Norway, France and Germany.

[blackhorsecav]

Will the supermod allow opposing task forces to combat each other with gunfire and planes?

[Regio Sommergibile]

I'd like to know if AI ships will be using torpedoes and if Destroyers will attack with them in formations

[iambecomelife]

Originally Posted by polyfiller

Sledge - one drawback if the game thinks you are submerged is that the deck watch / deck guns / aa guns won't work !

But is this really a drawback? As soon as the deck guns/AA guns were removed from their screens an Allied ship would realize it was dealing with a raider. IIRC, during "Sydney's" last battle the "Kormoran" did not open fire with its deck guns until after it had launched its torpedoes (something that can still be done when submerged). "Submerging" your ship/using fake ID's should be a way to sneak up & get close to enemy ships or to escape from a vessel with superior armament. In either case, deck gun usage isn't really necessary. I say keep looking into it!

[tomhugill]

Yeah thats what i was getting at iabl but no one seemed to listen

[polyfiller]

Folks - Renown class finished.

Ivan - agree - some of the converted SH3 models could do with cleaning up. I reckon a re-texturing plus bump map would do wonders.

Been playing with ship physics again ... and sorted out some better ship wakes.

Also note : I have NOT yet damage modelled the Iowa or North Carolina ... I didn't see them on the list for the first release so I didn't start them yet.

Glad you liked the torp damage - took ages to figure out. Have you run into the fatal magazine hits yet (try the warspite).

[DarkFish]

I have redone the silhouettes of the Admiral Scheer, Kent, KGV, North Carolina, Iowa and Yamato. I've sent you all a PM containing the link to them. It's a fairly easy work taking about 20 minutes a ship.
For the other ships, if they are going to be retextured there's no use making the silhouettes now.

But polyfiller, are you sure you mean specular maps and not AO map?
look in this thread by skwasjer, personally I think the AO map makes a much bigger difference than the specular map. Besides, some ships like the Hood already seem to have a specular map (in their alpha channel).

Anyway, they must be retextured in some way, anything's better than the SH3 textures they've got now.

[polyfiller]

Darkfish - many thanks. Not 100% sure how to make sure the game displays them ... but I'll give it a go. Reason I got confused how to do it is my testing with the Bismark - delete all files out of menu\submarineclasses relating to bismark and graff spee and it STILL displayed the graf spee instead of the Bismark. Very strange.

As for improving textures - yes you're probably right... I'm not a texture expert. I am real confused at what the texture files in the subs folder do v the textures included in the .dat (the embedded images) ... I think the embedded images provide the textures for the converted SH3 ships. As for SH4 ... I'm guessing the texture definition in the .dat (where it says external texture) tells the game to pick up the texture sin the subs folder .... but the filenames never match ? So how does it work ??

From what I read, the bump maps also look like the help add detail.

Reason Hood looks better is that I figured out if I used the SH3 render controller in the .DAT, you can use the specular map. I hadn't learnt this when I did the warspite. I'll go and change it to see if it looks better. Also can't remember which controller is in use for all the German ships... again if the SH3 controller allows the original (SH3) specular to be used ... I'll enable it for now ... we'll just have to remember to switch back to SH4 controller if we do go for bump maps.

Oh ... another update .... just completed Southampton Class cruiser

[Regio Sommergibile]

Progress percentage ??

[Sledgehammer427]

ballpark 25% it really depends on the campaign work done by Ivank