[FC]

There are too many consumers here...and not enough providers... too lazy to write except when complaining they 'want this' and 'when are we getting that'....

Exactly, no wonder that communism don't work when 10 people work and other 90 are just giving moral support.

[quote="rollnloop"]

-it works ! i like very much the delay between boat stopping and water flooding.

-it may be improved (if you have control): once the tail is up (30/45

[fabianfred]

Yes.....actually instead of a steady sink rate, a gradually increasing sink rate would probably be more realistic....slow at the beginning but getting faster as time goes by

[duffys tavern]

Thanx so much for this, much needed mod. So much better than what we had before.

[FC]

On this picture all ships are same, dry cargo carrier (Tramp), ship is not moded. For virtual cookie, what is new if ship is not changed?



FC

[VT-51_Razor]

The smoke is great FC!!

[fabianfred]

I like the ones on the left...the more smoke the merrier for me....

[cmirko]

fabianfred is right - smoke on the left looks great

S!

[FC]

I'm glade that you like smoke on the left, I'll leave that one as it is. But real improvement is a fact that you can have different smoke for same ship. It's just a matter of PC power how many variants can be included in game.

In fact you can have different smoke on every section of the ship. So theoretically you can have all 3 smoke types from screenshot in previous post on single ship.

I'll do the same for smoke from smokestacks. If somebody want to help me with new effects let me know.

FC

[JV69_BADA]

awaiting this new mod with...patience :wink:

[VT-51_Razor]

I wish I had a clue as to what you were doing FC. I'd love to help, or collaborate at least. You guys amaze me with your abilities to make things happen in this game. 8)

[Smeghead]

I cannot seem to be able to download this file
Is there another method of downloading this file?

[FC]

I cannot seem to be able to download this file
Is there another method of downloading this file?

What is the problem, you can't download from Rapidshare?

FC

I wish I had a clue as to what you were doing FC. I'd love to help, or collaborate at least.

For making new effects you don't need to know Java. Simplest way for making new smokes is to take Dry Cargo Ship and make mission with it. That one doesn't have guns and it can be destroyed with rockets, that's good for testing.

Smoke effects for ships are in filesSFS/Effects/smokes & filesSFS/Effects/materials. For testing effects you need to create new mod, let's say ShipEffects and than you need to copy extracted files from SFS to mod folder.

So you should have
Il2/Mods/ShipEffects/smokes & Il2/Mods/ShipEffects/Materials folders with all of the files in it.

As you should test effects with Dry Cargo Carrier you can delete all files from smokes folder except
SmokeShipMedium.eff and SmokeShipTiny.eff.

Smoke Ship Medium looks like this

Code:

[ClassInfo]
  ClassName TSmokeSpiralParams
  BasedOn   SmokeShipTiny.eff
[General]
  Size 20.0 60.0

In this file you should only change Size parameters. As you can see this file class for SmokeShipTiny.eff

Code:

[ClassInfo]
  ClassName TSmokeSpiralParams
[General]
  MatName ..\Materials\WhiteSmokeFar.mat
  Color0 0.10 0.05 0.05 0.8
  Color1 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.0
  nParticles 128
  FinishTime -1.0
  MaxR 30
  PhiN 4.0
  PsiN 2.0
  LiveTime 20.0
  TranspTransitionTime 1.0f
  EmitVelocity 1.0 2.5
  EmitFrq 2.5
  Wind 10.0
  Size 5.0 10.0
  GasResist 0.05
  VertAccel 10.0
  Rnd 0.5
  EmitTheta 0.0 30.0

This one is more complicated and I don't know what are all of the parameters but that's the beauty of modding, you can experiment and surprise everybody including yourself with final results. :lol:

In this file I was changing colors and format is RGB Alpha(Transparency) range is 0-1

Color0 0.10 0.05 0.05 0.8
Color1 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.0

I experimented with Gas Resistance and Vertical accel too but it's best to try everything.
In this file you can see that it calls for
WhiteSmokeFar.mat and that's why you need Materials folder too. Let's see how WhiteSmokeFar.mat looks.

Code:

[ClassInfo]
  ClassName TMaterial
  BasedOn   whitesmoke.mat
[Layer0]
  VisibleDistanceNear       0.0
  VisibleDistanceFar        3500.0
// eof

This file is simple and you can experiment with Distance here, I'm inclined to double the distance to get more natural look in game. In this file you can see that whitesmoke.mat is needed too. So let's look at that one also.

Code:

[ClassInfo]
  ClassName TMaterial
[General]
  tfDoubleSide              1
  tfShouldSort              1
  tfGameTimer               1
[Layer0]
  TextureName               SmokeA.tga
//  TextureName AlphaSmoke.txa
// SmokeA.tga
  PaletteName
  //WhiteFog.pal
  Frame                     0.0   // Float 0.0 - first, 1.0 - last
  VisibleDistanceNear       0.0   // Float 0.0 - near,  1.0 - far
  VisibleDistanceFar        2500.0   // Float 0.0 - near,  1.0 - far
  TextureCoordScale         0.0 0.0  1.0 1.0 // Uo   Vo   kU   kV
  ColorScale                1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0    // R G B A

  // Wrap Texture Flags (0/1)
  tfWrapX                   1
  tfWrapY                   1
  // Magnification / Minification (nearest on default)
  tfMinLinear               1
  tfMagLinear               1
  tfMipMap                  0
  /// BlendModes
  tfBlend                   1
  tfBlendAdd                0
  tfTestA                   1
  tfTranspBorder            1
  tfTestZ                   1
  tfNoWriteZ                1
  tfUpDateClear             0
  tfModulate                1
  tfNoTexture               0
  tfAnimatePalette          1
  tfAnimateSkippedFrames    0
  tfCompressMajorAlpha      1
  tfNoCompress16Bit         1

// eof

In this file only thing I would recommend for change is texture, I have painting skills of 2 year old child but there are some excellent artist in community who could make new smoke textures and in this file you can change which texture is going to be called although for test purpose it's best to leave texture name as it is and make new texture with appropriate name.

That's it and when new effect is finished copy all of the new files in separate folder and send them to me. This short tutorial is not only for Razor, anybody can try to make new effect and what Ship fans decide is the best will be included in new mod.

FC

[VT-51_Razor]

Thanks FC, I'll give it a try.

[nearmiss]

I was watching History channel awhile back about special munitons and their impact on the war.

It was especially interesting about the special flak munitions that were developed as the war progressed. These munitions had a type of proximity sense ability built into them. These types of munitions were especially important for ships, because getting hits on aircraft within a 3d area, coupled with the high speed of the aircraft made getting hits on aircraft especially dififcult otherwise.

These munitions were ships savers against Kamikaze. There was just no way large numbers of aircraft could have been stopped against ships without the ability of munitions to detonate within effective proximity of the attacking aircraft.

I don't know if such a thing could be modeled into the ships.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

As the war progressed American ships guns were being upgraded continuously. Watching the Battle 360 on History channel the Enterprise carrier's guns were upgraded with every trip to drydocks or for repair. The Enterprise almost became top heavy with guns before the war was over.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So, just like "THE SLOT" has 6 different times to depict changing landscape conditons and airbases over time I'm wondering if it wouldn't make sense to improve the weapons of the ships and have ships for different times of the war with enhanced weapons.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ships weren't undefeatable, especially with 500KG bombs, but aircraft guns didn't sink ships.
I know there are probably people that want gun sinkable destroyers, but that is a bit much. LOL

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Keep up the good work. I appreciate your ships, we really do need additional ships in this great sim.

[vanir]

Dude, only a Heavy Cruiser can stand up to several anti-armour aircraft guns (pretty much anything from a MK-101 or Vickers-S or bigger). Converted PT-gunboats and MGB's used to run around the Pacific and Mediterranean sinking destroyers and light cruisers every chance they got, with twin 20mm deck guns and half a dozen .50's.
Plus some 130 US warships were put in dry dock or sunk by kamikaze attacks alone, thousands of servicemen were killed. For morale reasons the event (particularly on the Okinawan approach) was terrifically downplayed by US officials. But I get what you're saying.

I've been hanging for the ship mod to become an executable AAA official mod (I can't get it going with manual editing every time I try...or else I stuff up all other mods installations).