Still standing?

[GlowwormGuy]

because we were all getting new ships and planes from Betasom, you, Serge, etc. Well I'll send them along, they're not too big individually but there's a lot. Even got a 'new plane' repaint Avro Lancaster.

Well I'll try sending the first lot tomorrow or on the weekend.

Thanks,
Mountbatten

[GlowwormGuy]

By the way... hehehe... any NEW stuff that came along since I left? New warships or even just new repaints? For DC I mean...

Mountbatten

[horsa]

I'm not quite sure what time period you are talking about but there was this
http://www.subsim.com/phpBB/viewtopi...=polish#304768
..... although I don't think it was ever made available as a download.

The Kriegsmarine Mod also contained various remoddelled ships (by Serg) and many repaints.

http://www.subsim.com/phpBB/viewtopi...smarine#303455

[GlowwormGuy]

Unfortunately something in it crashed my system - another reason I quit for a long while... Well it's okay. I'll just upload what I did while I was on a modding streak and perhaps the diehards will find some good use for it.

Cheers all!
Mountbatten

[GlowwormGuy]

Hi Horsa,

Hope it didn't flood your mailbox. These are most of my recent work. There are a few w/c I don't consider finished for some reason or another, usually because I can't change the guns or funnels or add this or that like the other guys can but these repaints are pretty much done. Feel free to post them (though I did offer the Italian units to Betasom first so perhaps you could work out some sort of agreement with them about posting) but the rest, feel free to share.

One thing that just ticks me off is I do like DC a heck of a lot! Its a game that I find myself coming back to, even if its in the vain hope that someday I'll be able to captain the HMS Agincourt at Jutland or the USS Olympia at Manila Bay.

Enjoy,
Mountbatten

[horsa]

4 packets received

I do like DC a heck of a lot! Its a game that I find myself coming back to

Yep, I know what you mean. Its only inches away from being a good surface warfare platform ......... but I keep coming up against the twin pillars of frustration
1.code access to extend a few features ( like incresed fade in distance and critical hits )
2. needing a JRF converter to introduce new models .

hope that someday I'll be able to captain the HMS Agincourt at Jutland

You can do that of course, but your ship won't look like the Agincourt ... it will look like the QE or Royal Sovereign

[CBDR]

Horsa, Gloworm,

If we had code access, I don't see why we couldn't take DC back as far as the age of sail. It's all basic physics, none of which is classified or too difficult to understand. I personally know some folks who would love to simulate US Civil War era ironclads and modify the DC terrain to simulate the Mississippi River.

As for me, I would like to refight The Battle of Hampton Roads (March, 1862) with USS Congress and USS Cumberland underway, instead of being target practice for CSS Virginia. The two 100 Lb cannon on Cumberland really did have the capability of defeating Virginia, and underway she might have avoided being rammed.

To really model this correctly requires a much more accurate simulation in the vast differences in fire control capability. DC models ALL ships as having the latest in WW II era fire control technology (radars, computers, stable verticals, continuous aim, etc.). To model USS Olympia at Manilia Bay means restricting the player to local control at the gun mounts (i.e., F9) - no director, no computer, just pure local control at the gun mount. HMS Agincourt had a director system (F8), but determination of the horizontal plane still relied on visual means (no good if the horizon is obscured), the fire control computer was very basic and the gunners had to follow gun orders by manual means, which experience showed could work for about the first 30 minutes of an engagement, but accuracy rapidly dropped off due to crew fatigue.

Let's keep pushing UbiSoft to release the source code!

[GlowwormGuy]

Originally Posted by horsa

4 packets received

Yep, I know what you mean. Its only inches away from being a good surface warfare platform ......... but I keep coming up against the twin pillars of frustration
1.code access to extend a few features ( like incresed fade in distance and critical hits )
2. needing a JRF converter to introduce new models .

You can do that of course, but your ship won't look like the Agincourt ... it will look like the QE or Royal Sovereign

And that's just it - it DOESN'T have to look like QE or RS but for the blasted JRF converter schtick. I'm basically a painter/texturer and I can paint it to look like a duck but if it's got four legs and meows no one's going to be fooled. Sigh...

And yeah, it's almost there and that's what bugs the heck out of me. They could have supported us more, gave us a few more modding tools and a patch that fixed even those bloody basic things - very frickin basic things like making SOUND GENERAL QUARTERS actually do something, fixing sub/ship resupply, launchable carrier aircraft. I say basic here because other games are doing all that and more. It doesn't have to be difficult. For General Quarters simply make all ships operate at reduced efficiency, particularly their guns (since you got watches coming off and on and some guys are tired and others are catching up on their sleep) unless you sound it - but if you keep it on for more than a few hours the tension and fatigue hits you and you incur penalties as well. Very simple yet terribly realistic. Launchable carrier aircraft? Just make the darn things appear where you have a carrier - oh and it would have been nice for them to have included even a SIMPLE AI dogfight routine.

This game is simple enough to play, learn and mod (by mod I mean basic stuff like messing with ship udfs and stuff) and with a modicum of support it could have been the Combat Flight Simulator of the seas. I've not bought SH2 because I don't want to be suckered into buying something that promises and doesn't deliver.

Sorry for the rant... sigh... it's just so frustrating because it's so darn close. Like you can almost touch it but you can't.

Enjoy the mods (and if things pick up here who knows, there might be more coming - can anyone say HMS Ulysses?)
Mountbatten

[GlowwormGuy]

Originally Posted by CBDR

Horsa, Gloworm,

If we had code access, I don't see why we couldn't take DC back as far as the age of sail. It's all basic physics, none of which is classified or too difficult to understand. I personally know some folks who would love to simulate US Civil War era ironclads and modify the DC terrain to simulate the Mississippi River.

As for me, I would like to refight The Battle of Hampton Roads (March, 1862) with USS Congress and USS Cumberland underway, instead of being target practice for CSS Virginia. The two 100 Lb cannon on Cumberland really did have the capability of defeating Virginia, and underway she might have avoided being rammed.

To really model this correctly requires a much more accurate simulation in the vast differences in fire control capability. DC models ALL ships as having the latest in WW II era fire control technology (radars, computers, stable verticals, continuous aim, etc.). To model USS Olympia at Manilia Bay means restricting the player to local control at the gun mounts (i.e., F9) - no director, no computer, just pure local control at the gun mount. HMS Agincourt had a director system (F8), but determination of the horizontal plane still relied on visual means (no good if the horizon is obscured), the fire control computer was very basic and the gunners had to follow gun orders by manual means, which experience showed could work for about the first 30 minutes of an engagement, but accuracy rapidly dropped off due to crew fatigue.

Let's keep pushing UbiSoft to release the source code!

A weird little mod I made a while back was transforming the Flower class corvette into the Peruvian Ironclad HUASCAR w/c fought against the British royal navy (four iron frigates) squadron and apparently won and was, in the process, subjected to a very early torpedo attack! The possibilities are bloody endless... I don't see why the famous Hampton Roads or a Franco-British hypothetical clash (I've tried other stuff like that - my War Plan Red scenario w/c pits the hypothetical G3 battlecruiser against the AMerican Battlecruiser Lexington. By the way, the Brooklyn, with some heavy modding can be a G3 - or a German cruiser!)

Even simple, bloody simple things are tantalizingly out of reach. I need a late war British DD w/c could easily be converted out of the Battle class (give it some rear turrets!) and, like I said, the Brooklyn is a good basis for a Koln/Konigsberg type cruiser. And then there are things that are just wrong or not well done (the Duguay Trouin looks more like the Hood than its historic counterpart and the De Ruyter is dog ugly - when the real thing wasn't that bad!

http://www.warship.get.net.pl/Holand..._Ruyter_10.jpg

Apparently the original de Ruyter looked very similar to the Graf Spee! Dutch naval architecture closely followed German styles.) that it frustrates you not to be able to do anything about it.

Ah now I know what happened to the De Ruyter - they followed the original builder's configuration:

http://www.warship.get.net.pl/Holand...er_draw_01.gif

But the impression I get from looking at the photos is the superstructure wasn't so fat and ugly, but leaner and meaner and gave her a 'German pocket battleship' sort of look.

One problem with Hampton Roads though, aside from the source code is the game does not model inland rivers - which really bloody sucks. Come on people, the Thames, the Yangtze, the James, the Hudson, the Seine, the Rhine - they're all navigable some even by cruisers or battleships! Whats up with that (whats up is the game world is actually some 5-10% smaller than the real world. I found that out when making a Vaagso raid scenario. The 'real world' channel was blocked off!)

Heck if they could sell modding tools (particularly one that lets us do new ships) they could make a pretty penny.

Again sorry for my rant... so many cool things just out of grasp - Monitor vs Merrimac, Warrior vs Gloire, Farragut at Mobile Bay, Yalu River 1894, Manila Bay, Tsushima, the Emden, Jutland...

Mountbatten

[horsa]

I sympathise with all of this guys but the problems are there.

Here's another two . Even with source code you need coders and you need modellers.

[GlowwormGuy]

Well perhaps someone who knows how will miraculously take interest sometime... y'never know. So I'll just keep chugging away with new textures and camos...

Another one coming your way Horsa - Capetown class repaint based on the Exeter mod.

Mountbatten

[CBDR]

Roger That, Horsa.

That being said, I have to draw on my experiences withthe Battle of Britain / Mig Alley Development Group. They did a fantastic job of improving the Battle of Britain game.

I got a copy of the source code (overwhelming, to be honest) and, despite my inexperience with C++ code, I could reverse engineer the models they were using for simulating the engines and propellers. Having a mechanical engineering degree helps! I even found some fundamental errors in how rolling moments due to aileron deflection as well as drag due to flap deflection were calculated.

That being said, you are quite correct in that we would need coders who can translate a physical model into code the game would recognize.

[TLAM Strike]

Me just thinking out loud here but I would love to see a PA type mod of SHII and DC simulating the early Cold War up till the Cuban Missile Crisis. Zulus and Whiskeys and Guppies, even the British, it would be sweet! The default PA interface could be used, but a new one for the Russians would need to be implemented. Heck I’d even help out with sub models, I got a half finished Zulu and a Northern Sail Guppy that could be used…

[GlowwormGuy]

If someone could do the models (and I was using the ingame ones to stand in) I don't see why you can't do the following (I did, for a lark):

The Sinking of the General Belgrano - the models are all there! Brooklyn, Sumner, just use one of those US Subs for the Conqueror.

The Gulf of Tonkin Incident - again the models are there and they could with some modification, work.

The attack on the Elath - I've been experimenting with ship and air launched 'missiles' (okay they're torpedoes really) but with some tweaking it could happen.

A post WW2 Cold War naval battle might be interesting (particularly if you situate it in the days before missiles) - might be cool to see the Iowas face off against the 'Sverdlov cruiser threat'.

See, that's what just gets me. The darn thing has SO MUCH potential!

Again Horsa, please feel free (in otherwords please do) post the mods. I'd hate to see all those hours of work go to waste. (just sent the Capetown, check your mail).

Mountbatten

[horsa]

despite my inexperience with C++ code, I could reverse engineer the models they were using for simulating the engines and propellers

That's worth knowing about

Heck I’d even help out with sub models

and so is that