I may release some items to people willing to help with aspects of the mod.
Thanks for the compliments; be advised - items like the human figures & particle effects are always being optimized.
Last night I did a "stress test" with many human figures on the merchant ship and was very happy with the results - great frame rates. Apparently we can have a large number of detailed sailors on each ship. This can be further optimized using the minimum render dimension controllers (thus, no sailors at distances where you could barely see them anyway - great way to improve frame rates even more).
This leads me to another topic....working lifeboats. This sub-project is going well - Davit model has been created and skinned (based on plans of the Wellin Davits used on RMS Titanic). Next? Animate lifeboat launch sequences that can go well or go haywire, depending on the skill of a ship's crew. Some animations will show successful launches - others will end badly for the sailors.
Some unfortunate news about the water....it has been impossible to resolve the "jello water" / deformed wave bug from Silent Hunter 4. For those who don't know, the wave patterns get ruined at time compression over about 32x.
The only way to solve the bug is to keep the wind speed/wave state constant.
My solution will be to have two versions of water... 2-3 foot waves that do not change, and standard, changing water+weather for players who play at low time compression (or don't mind the distorted water).
Forgot to mention - additional upcoming projects include final details for the UB-I and U-139 subs... the dwarf and the giant.
Work still humming along on the WWI news messages (I write them in the break room at work - that way I can make progress on the mod even when my desktop is not accessible.)
Good news about the tonnage entries for the U-Boat aces - Years 1914 to 1916 are 100% complete, and 1917 is about 90% complete. Hard to believe that a few weeks ago I was struggling to finish 1914.