Need advice on where to begin for custom mini-mod

[Fritz Klum]

Hello,


I am thinking of making a mod for SH4 that edits the German captain's room (the one at the base.) Rather than just a simple texture change however, I am wondering how difficult it would be to change the size of the Picture in the German captain's office to be the same size as the one in the US captain's office. I saw somebody made a mod that removes the German captain's office fan from the ceiling, so I know editing the actual image itself is possible.


However, I have never done anything like that before, and have no where to begin or what tool I should use to edit the file (though I suspect that the file is either "captainroom.dat," or "Captainroom.sim."


EDIT: It doesn't seem that either of those files would resize the picture



any help is appreciated. If I figure out how to do it, I will try to upload my mod to subsim for others to enjoy as well.

[XenonSurf]

The German Captain's Room, I don't know, but I know that the radio room for american subs was probably taken from it (radio room + captain's room), it's called 'Radio Room' in the game files, and is not part of the stock game except for the German subs. This room has been re-created for the american subs and it's part of the OTC mod for TMO 2.5 or OTC for RSRDC as far as I know. Other mods have then used and implemented it. Download this OTF mod and look at the files so to have an idea of which files are involved. Especially the 'Interiors' folder are relevant.


Or take a look here:
https://www.subsim.com/radioroom/sho...d.php?t=244691
Vickers03 has changed the radio/captain room with much larger interiors, so at least you will have a good idea of which files are involved.





XS

[propbeanie]

You will want to use Silent 3Ditor (aka: S3D, aka: S3Ditor), which is also available for download here on SubSim. Navigate into the Game / Data / Interior / CaptainRoomGE folder, and load the dat file into S3D. You will have to zoom in quite a bit, and might have to turn the camera and angle it differently to be able to "see" all of the parts in there. Click on the object drawing, or the plus signs (+) for nodes to display the various nodes below that in the structure, for selection. Copy a particular node's ID and open the sim file, and then "Search" on that node id number to find the "control" for it. Depending upon the node and object in the dat file, you might have to export the 3D artwork to change it, or delete it, or maybe import a different image file for texture or display or whatever you need / want to do. Just (of course) work on a backup, and make yourself a mini-mod to check your changes as you go. If you do anything like I do, I am really good at making the game CTD 12 times before I get one good change... lol

[Fritz Klum]

Well, I opened the files in s3d, and exported the 3d model of the picture from the US captain's room, and imported it into the German one, but then I was left with this:


SilentHunter4 6_1_2020 10_59_17 AM.jpg


What did I do wrong?

[propbeanie]

eh... you can't import it all-in-one... There are all sorts of "pieces" in there, and it looks like maybe you just exported the sub model from the desk?

[XenonSurf]

I don't understand how S3D is helpful here, if you want to change a tga file, it's already located in a game folder somewhere ready to open with Gimp or such or just replace it with another tga. So there is nothing to export from S3D. You can maybe change the data inside S3D for the tga dimension and save the file, or you can define and add a new tga, you then create a dedicated node and define the necessary node childs (right click on a node to define a sub-node).


Also a curiosity to avoid misunderstandings like mine above: What you call and show is not a 'captain's room', it's the 'port office'. Words matter.
It's in the game yeah, also in SH3, but AFAIK active skippers didn't have the luxury to have any 'room' or office...unless you are vice admiral or such


XS

[Fritz Klum]

Regardless of what its called, its looking like the best way to do it would simply be to replace the German office files with the American one, then retexture it to make it feel ''german.''


However, when I replace the files (CaptainRoom.dat, and CaptainRoom.sim) from the ''CaptainRoomGE'' folder with the ones from the "CaptainRoom" folder (the american one) I get a crash before it loads the room. any ideas why that might be?

[propbeanie]

Again, you really can't do that. There are "items" in the office that are linked to various "assets", such as pictures, or other areas of the game. Those links are in different places in the two offices, and they have different IDs. Also, if you try to use the US office twice in the game, without alteration, you will have a bevy if ID conflicts, and the game won't know where to go or what to load for you... If you look at another fellows mod of the German office, where he removed the ceiling fan, there was a series of nodes related to each other for that, and he deleted the "parent" of that series, but left its "parent" which might have been the "room", or maybe a "ceiling" node. Putting a fan in requires quite a bit more work. btw, both offices have a different way of showing the "exterior view" looking out the Window...