Best of all, these are REAL functional crewmembers ... not the "mannequin" crew objects that some mods have used. These crew account for real crew slots, can be assigned battlestations, fire deck gun, stand watch, suffer injuries etc.
So, in theory, you can have the crew of "Operation Petticoat" or "Das Boot" modded into the game! Or even Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio for that matter ... lol, maybe you like mushy romance.
A lot of work still needs to be done, and you will need to have adequate knowledge of Skwas' Silent 3d Editor, and how to edit the text .upc and .upcge files for submarines.
Basically, the reason why attempts to modify the crew didn't work was SH4 is very sensitive to any crew UV map/vertex changes. So editing the crew bodies like you edit ships produces an awful mess...if you use the existing heads and head textures. You need to import completely new heads/parts, with their own textures, and make the necessary additions to MARINE.dat and the crew 3d text files.
So far there are cons ... I have not found a way to get facial expressions and speech to work. the new heads/parts do not align perfectly to stock animations; there is some "ghosting" through the torso of heads for instance. But I believe this can be overcome. In a worst case scenario we can equip moving arms, legs, etc as accessories the same way the game incorporates guns and helmetsv- these "accessories" would take the place of the existing animations.
More details later, as I continue to research & confirm that this work is "mod-safe" with no game breaking bugs.
If this works I think it has a lot of potential! As chief modder for "Wolves of the Kaiser" I have access to lots of outside gamer opinions. One of the biggest complaints is the appearance of the crew. Unlike most of us, younger fans are not as willing to overlook Silent Hunter 3/Silent Hunter 4's elderly human models. Now, we may just be able to do something about it.
