Ship Names Question
 

Way back in '06 when I first started planning the Ship Names mod for SH3 Commander, I also started organizing and cataloging Japanese names for SH4. Since JSCones has hinted that he might make it possible to do the same for SH4 I've decided to start making some plans. So I have some questions.

1. Does SH4 already give names? Dan told me it did when we talked in Houston two years ago. I've looked at the Roster files and I'm wondering if I have to wait for Jaesen to come up with something. I see that the warships mostly have names in the files, and I would like to know if anybody who has sunk some noticed whether they recieved names or not.

2. It is my understanding that it is a lot easier on the loading times to add ships in SH4. Is this true? I see various countries in the Rosters of SH4. Does adding new ships happen the same way it does in SH3, i.e. you must clone a model for each nation you want to add a ship to, or will putting the names in, say, Estonia's roster make it so only an Estonian ship will recieve that name?

If I've been unclear about anything please tell me, as I really want to get moving on this if it's at all possible.

1. SH4 does not give names. Like SH3, the names included in the cfg files are not utilized.

2. Loading times for SH4's museum are much shorter than SH3. Even better, no model cloning is necessary - you can allocate a unique paint scheme based on nationality and even time period. i am not 100% sure, but I think you can also assign names based on nationality, so that Generic Tanker X is named "Esso Mudville" on the US roster and "Nishizawa Maru" on the Japanese roster.

If you can allocate names based on time period, that would create some interesting possibilities - names could be struck on the date that the real vessel was lost.

I will be reinstalling SH4 to test some subs for my WWI mod, so I will let you know for sure in a day or two about ship names.

:rotfl2:

I should have realized you would alread have looked at all this! :D

Thanks for the answers. Too bad about the .cfg files. I was hoping that maybe... All I can do now is hope Jaesen actually gets the time and inclination to look at it.

I see that several of your ships have already been partially ported into SH4. I say "partially" because I don't think they have the sailors walking around the decks. Do they?

Adding names to sunk ships would be just great! Is there really no way at all?

Not unless somebody writes a program to do it, a la SH3 Commander.

I've been told that SH5 does it and does it well, but I can't look into it yet. Also, I'd like to do names for both sides of SH4, so the American skippers could see which ships they sank too.

Hey Steve. I could help, if you want... I just need some feedback from people who tried this before since I can't run SH4 until I'm back home. But I can code.

Editing the captain's log (SaveData.clg) text entries would get the text into the game, right? If yes, it's all about mapping real names to ship classes. Not sure about nationality info though and where this gets stored, if it gets stored at all.

I don't know how any of it works. Commander overwrites the stuff in SH3 with a program of its own. It doesn't put things into the game, it works outside it and creates the log after the patrol is done.

That's how my google maps tool works too. I looked into CareerTrack.upc and there seem to be some names assigned to ships:

Akita Maru, and 07_JP contains nationality info.

How is your ship name collection organized, Steve? Do you have names and time frames for each ship?

I could make this tool and use my historic accurate layouts for patrol reports that are already done.

Not exactly. For SH3 I have a list of every ship that sailed in the British convoy system, and a book that lists every merchant of any nation that was afloat or under construction in 1939. I take each ship from the list, find a picture if I can, and match it to an in-game model, so if you sink that model it will be assigned the name of a ship of similar size and appearance, or just size if I can't find a picture. I also have the tonnage, as I wish it was possible to do away with the randomizer and give each ship sunk the actual tonnage.

For SH4 I have the ONI ID Book with every Japanese merchant listed, so I can do those ships any time, since they are quite easy to find.

SH3 Commander now assignes a historic name to the ship, as well as what cargo it was carrying (randomized, as a ship might have been carrying any one of several cargoes when sunk) and how many crew were aboard and how many were killed.

As for time frames, I could find out exactly when each ship entered service, but I think an approximation based on the type of ship is close enough. Also if we can assign names to specific countries then those ships won't be available until that nation enters the war.

Maybe you can OCR the book to avoid manual editing.

I could also use some generic designations for unidentified vessels, such as Smoky Maru for coastal merchants.

I don't know how things worked in SH3 but I think I should also keep track of what names have been assigned and what ships were sunk so far so you don't end up sinking the same ship again. With a reset button provided for new campaigns.

Some updates:

1. The japanese merchant fleet (and also a lot of other countries) until 1939 is completely covered (as in all pages are available) in the free preview of

Yeah I know, but it was an opportunity to get thousands of ships in a matter of minutes/hours, with pics. I also know you put of lot of effort into this and I wanted to help.

I took a look at what files I have with me and the only way I see to name ships by nationality is to build a database out of the ship's roster files.

This means the tool will be used after the patrol is done, when you're in the commander's room.

Disadvantages: we lose the sinking position coordinates since these are messed up in the career log. The timestamps are also wrong which means I cannot correct the entries based on the patrol log.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

I apologize for overreacting. I do that sometimes.

That's probably best anyway. Some ship types are nation-specific, but for the most part the builders sold them to anyone with the money, which means one country might have a dozen of one type and another might have one, or none. Using the Rosters would mean that I could ensure that no ships are included for a country that didn't have any of that type.

That's the way SH3 Commander does it, and it's arguably more realistic since the captain doing the sinking might get information from survivors, and he might not. They usually didn't know for sure until after the fact, and sometimes not until after the war.

Cant' help there, as I have no clue. :sunny: