[REL] FOTRS Ultimate Project

[cdrsubron7]

Hey, boss. As per your request I have renamed my single missions. I will explain so there are no questions I hope. You requested that FOTRSU, my name, and a numeral be used for describing the mission. Here's what I've come up with.

FOTRSU - our mod

C7 - myself

KB - Kido Butai missions

SM - Single Mission

AL - Aleutians Islands missions

Now to list my missions. I should note that I've not labeled my missions yet until what I've come up with meets with your approval.

1. FOTRSUC7SM01_Appari Bound
2. FOTRSUC7SM02_IJN Oil
3. FOTRSUC7SM03_Maximum Effort
4. FOTRSUC7SM04_Northward Bound
5. FOTRSUC7SM05_Rabaul
6. FOTRSUC7SM06_Ryukaku Run

1. FOTRSUC7KB01_Bungo Suido
2. FOTRSUC7KB02_Happenstance
3. FOTRSUC7KB03_Heading To Palau
4. FOTRSUC7KB04_Indian Ocean Foray
5. FOTRSUC7KB05_Joining Up
6. FOTRSUC7KB06_Leaving Palau
7. FOTRSUC7KB07_On The Move
8. FOTRSUC7KB08_Staring Bay
9. FOTRSUC7KB09_Wake

1. FOTRSUC7AL01_Aleutians Gauntlet

Please let me know what you think of this boss. Once I get your approval I'll rename the missions and upload them to the storage area.

[CapnScurvy]

Originally Posted by propbeanie

(In the Museum) If you're using the "All" menu, the next "ship" that loads after that is "Submarine" and "Type IX-D2". When I choose that "Submarine" menu item, I will get the water displaying, which then starts to "move", like there should be a ship or boat there, but the boat never displays, the water freezes, and the computer does the all-too-familiar CTD.

When the subs are displayed in the Museum (German or American), there always seems to be a little hesitation before the screen is rendered. I'm always thinking...... this is going to crash my system, but it pulls through.

The sub is displayed under water. So, you'll never see it surfaced. Try to keep the camera straight, and move forward. The sub will be seen at periscope depth. FOTRS removes the orange icon that floats above the sub with the stock game.....so there is no help in finding the sub when viewing one in the Museum.

I thought the German subs displayed correctly in the Museum...... I'll check again. Wouldn't surprise me if there isn't something wrong with the German subs in the Museum, RSRDC has the same issue.

===================

From Rockin Robbins:

Turning off the radar doesn't help getting out of port without downshifting to 1x every couple of seconds because turning radar off leaves SD radar fully functioning. This is a must fix! You must be able to turn off the radar to get out of a port with heavy friendly CAP.

I don't think we can "turn off" the SD radar. It's "on" as long as we're surfaced, or have the SD Antenna above water level. No command in the game will turn it off.

Sonar reports long range contacts while on the surface at 13 knots. If it's adjustable, sonar contacts should be available only at medium range when under six or eight knots. Otherwise sonar should not work. Some mods have just set sonar to work below 40'.

There are some variables that should produce different results for the hydrophones, we can monkey around with them to see what results we get. I'm not a fan of using the American sonar/hydrophone like a German. The U.S. had the "ball" type of sonar/hydrophone receivers on the bottom of the hull for a reason.....its not to have the system only work at 40 feet below the surface.

Button works well to raise/lower SD antenna. Sure would be nice to have a keyboard command!

What keyboard layout are you using again? Oh, TMOkeys.

Apparently not the one in the Ultimate beta. If you were, the "T" key will toggle the SD Antenna.

When you press the report contact button in the radar panel you just get a "no radio messages received." I suspect no contact is reported either. I didn't even know you could report anything but visual sightings. Is this button inappropriate on the radar panel?

Straight FOTRS there.

If the "Report Contact" button is linked to "Radio Messages", I'm guessing its an error on FOTRS.

Yes, you can have reports on contacts other than visual. Hydrophone/Sonar can give you a "running" relative bearing of a contact if you ask it to. That would be the "N" key on the Ultimate keyboard layout.

The game doesn't offer the same ability for radar. Which points out the general flaw of the radar being the bastard stepchild of the developers. They screwed up the radar so much by not having an "off" for the SD; no way of sending radar contacts to the TDC/Position Keeper; they couldn't even put lines on the PPI screen to tell what range a contact was, or have the A-Scope even come close to having a "spike" accurately placed on their range scale. The German radar digital readout for range is always in Meters, not feet or yards.....even if the game is set to use the Imperial unit of measurements!! They screwed the pooch with the radar.....we're lucky to have it modded to work at all.

[propbeanie]

Originally Posted by CapnScurvy

When the subs are displayed in the Museum (German or American), there always seems to be a little hesitation before the screen is rendered. I'm always thinking...... this is going to crash my system, but it pulls through.

The sub is displayed under water. So, you'll never see it surfaced ...

Yeah, I don't get to try to zoom in at all, just the CTD. I'll try the US subs tomorrow, and post back. It's probably just this poor mini-beast of mine can't keep up with technology...

.

Originally Posted by CapnScurvy

... The game doesn't offer the same ability for radar. Which points out the general flaw of the radar being the bastard stepchild of the developers. They screwed up the radar so much by not having an "off" for the SD; no way of sending radar contacts to the TDC/Position Keeper; they couldn't even put lines on the PPI screen to tell what range a contact was, or have the A-Scope even come close to having a "spike" accurately placed on their range scale. The German radar digital readout for range is always in Meters, not feet or yards.....even if the game is set to use the Imperial unit of measurements!! They screwed the pooch with the radar.....we're lucky to have it modded to work at all.

Now, SH1 had it, didn't they? Or am I thinking of II or III? where you could send bearing and range from radar to the TBT?... I was looking for that again the other day, and I do remember doing it recently, but I did play SH1 (still a good time) and also some DC (frustrating)... So I'm probably remembering targeting in one of them with the radar. The "fix" for the radar, is to just use an "S" boat, and never upgrade the system...

btw, I did make it to Surabaya and got the tanks topped off, and replaced the three, count 'em - THREE torps that I used...


Let me tell ya, it ain't easy to sink stuff, if you can't find it... radar would have been nice... Problem with Surabaya, is the Japanese fleet is just to the North, so I'm gonna have to skee-daddle quick like, and go get me some capital targets in the shallows... Scary stuff for a submersible boat, when you ain't got nuttin' much to submerse in... Oh, if you're wondering, this grab is from the Core 2 Duo E4400, with an AGP ATI AIW ancient relic that Indiana Jones brought back from the Mountains of Peru after an expedition... All the settings are turned all the way down, so things are a bit "flat", and you can see the "stair-step" in the curved surfaces. But still, very nice ka-blooey boom, and good color, and water reflections. There is an early morning mist still hanging about that's never quite burned-off. This is like almost 7 hours (game time, thankfully) after first sighting. It's *hard* to catch stuff in an S boat...
.

[Rockin Robbins]

Originally Posted by cdrsubron7

Hey, boss. As per your request I have renamed my single missions. I will explain so there are no questions I hope. You requested that FOTRSU, my name, and a numeral be used for describing the mission. Here's what I've come up with.

FOTRSU - our mod

C7 - myself

KB - Kido Butai missions

SM - Single Mission

AL - Aleutians Islands missions

Now to list my missions. I should note that I've not labeled my missions yet until what I've come up with meets with your approval.

1. FOTRSUC7SM01_Appari Bound
2. FOTRSUC7SM02_IJN Oil
3. FOTRSUC7SM03_Maximum Effort
4. FOTRSUC7SM04_Northward Bound
5. FOTRSUC7SM05_Rabaul
6. FOTRSUC7SM06_Ryukaku Run

1. FOTRSUC7KB01_Bungo Suido
2. FOTRSUC7KB02_Happenstance
3. FOTRSUC7KB03_Heading To Palau
4. FOTRSUC7KB04_Indian Ocean Foray
5. FOTRSUC7KB05_Joining Up
6. FOTRSUC7KB06_Leaving Palau
7. FOTRSUC7KB07_On The Move
8. FOTRSUC7KB08_Staring Bay
9. FOTRSUC7KB09_Wake

1. FOTRSUC7AL01_Aleutians Gauntlet

Please let me know what you think of this boss. Once I get your approval I'll rename the missions and upload them to the storage area.

Perfect! Now nobody can confuse these missions with any others. I'm sure people with other mod configurations will try the missions and they won't work the same way for them. Now they will know why and that will lead them to FOTRS Ultimate!

You could rename Appari Bound to Spam in a Can.

[Rockin Robbins]

Originally Posted by CapnScurvy

From Rockin Robbins:


I don't think we can "turn off" the SD radar. It's "on" as long as we're surfaced, or have the SD Antenna above water level. No command in the game will turn it off.

Bubble text, mouseover text, whatever, says "turns both radars on and off." If that's not true we should edit the text that displays to reflect.

Originally Posted by CapnScurvy

There are some variables that should produce different results for the hydrophones, we can monkey around with them to see what results we get. I'm not a fan of using the American sonar/hydrophone like a German. The U.S. had the "ball" type of sonar/hydrophone receivers on the bottom of the hull for a reason.....its not to have the system only work at 40 feet below the surface.

That's absolutely true that the supersonic sonar worked while on the surface. But just like radio waves, the higher frequency you work with the greater effects reflections, refraction and obstacles have with hearing. Yes, sonar stations were manned while on the surface and contacts were expected to be made. But because of the effects I mentioned, no long range contacts would be made, ever. Ideally, the solution would be to limit sonar detection range while on the surface to a much lesser distance.

Interestingly, pinging also happened from the knuckle sonars under the keel. That means they could ping targets to obtain range, even while surfaced, something the game hasn't let us do in any configurations so far.

All this is rendered meaningless in a boat with SJ radar, as any information from the radar is magnitudes more precise than that obtained from sonar.

Originally Posted by CapnScurvy

What keyboard layout are you using again? Oh, TMOkeys.

Apparently not the one in the Ultimate beta. If you were, the "T" key will toggle the SD Antenna.

Well, a edit to TMOKeys is called for but I think I'll toss it and check out the FOTRS Ultimate keyboard instead.

Originally Posted by CapnScurvy

Straight FOTRS there.

If the "Report Contact" button is linked to "Radio Messages", I'm guessing its an error on FOTRS.

Yes, you can have reports on contacts other than visual. Hydrophone/Sonar can give you a "running" relative bearing of a contact if you ask it to. That would be the "N" key on the Ultimate keyboard layout.

The game doesn't offer the same ability for radar.

If the game doesn't have the ability, then the "report contacts" button on the radar button bar (last one on the right) just needs to be removed as a ridiculous joke. Here I thought the FOTRS guys might have discovered something important. Instead they were only wasting our time!

[propbeanie]

I think that "Report Contact" is a short-cut to the Captain's Log function of the same name, so it's basically a phone-home function for a surfaced boat.

I've encountered something different. As per cdrsubron7's suggestion, I downloaded, looked at, and installed "Webster's Better Air Patrols for v1.4 and v1.5", and at first blush, looks compatible. I've read through the file, and can see no reason for my crew's behavior, but two times now, I've gotten a "Ship spotted" from the look-outs, while running Ahead Standard on the surface, while in TC (1024?? 512??) on my way to the patrol zone, and these two times, the computer has NOT dropped out of TC, and I do NOT get a cursor on the map, with map updates enabled. Never had one, that I saw prior to installation. Can one of you more knowledgeable than me with mods, look at the "AirStrike.cfg" file in his Data/CFG folder, and see if I'm missing something? I see no reason for the behavior because of the Webster mod, but I've never had this behavior before, anywhere... There is also a "Jap_AirCover.mis" file in the Campaign folder, but it looks like all it does is spawn the flyboy units from about 21 different airfield locations thoughout the game.

Also, there aren't any US subs in the Museum, only "-----" in the listing. Same with the Japansese fleet. The Indian's Frigate Black-Swan Class and Netherland's Flower-Corvette both appear to have issues with their skins - if you haven't already found those - and if I click on the "Bomber" listing under Germany's Museum listing, which is the next after "Submarine", my computer crashes. I was trying to go backwards through the list, and that didn't work... I'm wondering if it's the subs, or the ships, or the destroyer with the bad skin, or just my computer, but the computer does act like there's either a memory leak, or something is over-writing program data outside the bounds of a memory allocation, if that makes sense... The CTD after trying to access the first submarine is easy to deal with. But the endless loop I ended up in with trying to access the "Bomber" segment was quite a bit tougher to get out of. I almost had to push the power button, but Task Manager finally got it. There was a TM "Report the proglem" dialog that was behind the Silent Hunter window, which made the dialog inaccessible. I still haven't been on the "big" beast downstairs to see how it does...

[Rockin Robbins]

I believe that all reports of excessive air patrols are due to the time warpage of time compression. I can produce patrol reports where we certainly wouldn't tolerate the frequency of air contacts and the real crews would love to have had access to Webster's "Better" Air Patrols. Specifically, Dick O'Kane was so badgered by radar equipped air patrols at one point that he cruised to another stalking area because he felt more like the hunted than the hunter. We can do the same thing to get out from under recurrent airplane paths.

Also, my cruise yesterday clearly showed (I have screenshots at home) that airplane paths have nothing to do with the presence of the submarine (unless you've been spotted, then it has EVERYTHING to do with the presence of the sub). Paths never perfectly overflew my submarine and in a couple of instances never got within 5 miles and I could have stayed on the surface without being spotted most of the time.

I submerged every time when planes were spotted on radar, went to periscope depth and raised the SD antenna to watch the plane go by to measure closest approach. At no time was the SD antenna ever spotted. No plane came within a mile of the sub.

In the core mod I'm in favor of keeping air traffic the same as FOTRS. We'll offer mods to have more realistic air bases and plane ranges. That should fix any issues remaining. And for those who want to we can easily have a plugin mod which reduces air traffic to negligible levels.

[propbeanie]

OK, on "The Beast", all 8 meg of ram, 3 multi-terabyte drives, ATI Radeon HD 4450 card, etc., at least four times the computer of "The Mini-Beast", and it has trouble with the "Museum" also, only worse in some regards... For one thing, it a bigger computer, and I couldn't get the Museum to load. I've turned the graphics all the way down in SH4, and it still wouldn't load, and would crash as it went to display the Iowa... hmmm. So I killed some processes in Windows, and lo and behold, it loaded and ran. Pretty good too... It even played the moving water for the German IX-D2 submarine... that is, until I went to go underwater and look at it...

So while a resource hog apparently, the Museum does appear to function, just not real efficient with the computer. When I got one of the lock-ups, I looked at the processes in Task Manager, and the Silent Hunter 4 process shows having a 1,649,860kilebyte footprint in memory, so it's not hitting the 2G line when it's freezing on my computer, but it may well be hitting the "restricted" area of the Windows OS resources. I dunno... more muscle needed?...

[CapnScurvy]

Originally Posted by RR

Bubble text, mouseover text, whatever, says "turns both radars on and off." If that's not true we should edit the text that displays to reflect.

Well, it is true in a sense. It turns off both SJ radar units (A-scope and PPI). The stock game never gave the SD anything more than the Nav Map to display a plane (which FOTRS removes the icon from the higher zoomed views......but not the panned out views). Nothing turns off the SD except having the antenna below the surface. I can make the text state differently.

Interestingly, pinging also happened from the knuckle sonars under the keel. That means they could ping targets to obtain range, even while surfaced, something the game hasn't let us do in any configurations so far.

I thought we could ping while surfaced?? I must be dreaming.

If the game doesn't have the ability, then the "report contacts" button on the radar button bar (last one on the right) just needs to be removed as a ridiculous joke. Here I thought the FOTRS guys might have discovered something important. Instead they were only wasting our time!

I'll look at the button, if there's no other function that relates to radar......which I'm pretty sure there isn't....I'll remove the button.

[cdrsubron7]

Originally Posted by Rockin Robbins

Perfect! Now nobody can confuse these missions with any others. I'm sure people with other mod configurations will try the missions and they won't work the same way for them. Now they will know why and that will lead them to FOTRS Ultimate!

You could rename Appari Bound to Spam in a Can.

OK, I'll make the changes this weekend and upload the renamed missions to the storage area this weekend. Then you can include them in the next beta version.

As for renaming Aparri Bound, I'd might consider Davy Jones Locker.

You think Aparri Bound is tough wait till you try Aleutians Gauntlet.

[propbeanie]

Originally Posted by cdrsubron7

... You think Aparri Bound is tough wait till you try Aleutians Gauntlet.

Oh ~boy~!... Another sugar boat adventure!

[propbeanie]

Originally Posted by Rockin Robbins

I believe that all reports of excessive air patrols are due to the time warpage of time compression ... In the core mod I'm in favor of keeping air traffic the same as FOTRS. We'll offer mods to have more realistic air bases and plane ranges. That should fix any issues remaining. And for those who want to we can easily have a plugin mod which reduces air traffic to negligible levels.

I concur with keeping it the way it is, which is cool. I just wanna see a higher target-to-airplane contact ratio... I will have to give that keeping the antennae above the surface a go, and watch closer where the planes go, so long as I don't encounter any TMO super-eagle-eye pilots with bombs that drop right on the deck... I've been erring on the side of over-caution in the campaigns, and going deep if they get within about an 8 mile circle, remembering the days of past with TMO, just so I can stay alive early, in order to get a better boat with better gear... I would like to see a mod that puts the old map contacts back in, along with the airplane icon. Maybe I'll look into the difficulty of what that would be for a noob modder... I've already found out that the audio stuff ain't nearly as easy as I was hoping... trying to "balance" stuff in the game gets to be a bother, when you don't have an easily accessible test bed and situation, and have to load the whole game and a mission of some form...

Have you had a chance to look at Webster's airplane patrol "fix" - anyone? Maybe he's amenable to it's inclusion as part of an AI degradation / enhancement? It's rather obvious (I think, but I'm not fer-sure fer-certain) what he does, and it could be turned down or up, as the case may be. My mind's eye says it should be compatible. His lifeboat mod seems to work fine also, only getting into the sim files of Sea/CMD_small_boat, /NLifeboat_01, and NLifeboat_02.

I'm gonna guess it's up to the "author" of a mod to determine if their mod is compatible with another mod?... I was gonna mention something else, but can't remember... dadgummitt... I'm just gonna have to go try and sink me something - besides my own boat near Aparri...

[Rockin Robbins]

Originally Posted by CapnScurvy

The stock game never gave the SD anything more than the Nav Map to display a plane (which FOTRS removes the icon from the higher zoomed views......but not the panned out views).

I think you mentioned that before! I agree that making the only representation of the planes that we have vanish when the magnification is too high is more like RFB Team foolishness with ships doing the same thing. The radar isn't right, but the fix isn't to remove ALL information from the radar and not detect planes if your magnification is too high.

Just removing the .dds files from the airplanes in the FOTRS Ultimate mod will let the game's stock scheme work again.

[cdrsubron7]

Originally Posted by propbeanie

Oh ~boy~!... Another sugar boat adventure!

Not this time, pb. I think the sub will be a Gar class sub. There will be sugar boats in two of the five Aleutians Islands missions though.

[cdrsubron7]

Hey, boss. Has anything been done with the mission files from v2.0?. I'm going to play with this weekend and see what they bring to the table. I'm seem to remember something Maddy said about doing a complete rework of the v2.0 files. Anyway, I'm going to look at them and see if they are worth using in FOTRSU.

One other thing I should mention is that after talking with Florida Sailor I've got a good handle on what to do with the different levels of AI for the game. I will put together the five different levels you mentioned and upload to the storage area.