New Graphic & Sound Mod for Aces of the Deep

[John Pancoast]

You've found some great discoveries hidden in AOD and made some great mods from them !

[RConch]

Would these enhancements work with CAoD as it does in AoD?

I ask this cause the file names are not identical.

[skin-nl]

Thanks Andreas for this great work

[Andreas86]

Originally Posted by skin-nl

Thanks Andreas for this great work

My pleasure, skin-nl!

@RConch: I should think not, as Command: AOD uses double the resolution of the original, and different palette files. So I guess it would look horrendous, if it worked at all. I don't think I want to convert the whole mod to CAOD, but if there are some individual screens or graphics you want I might be able to help.

I did try earlier to load Command:AOD graphics in dos AOD for fun, and surprisingly it works but everything is HUGE onscreen and goes beyond all borders.

[RConch]

I was afraid of that-so I have not "mucked" around with these wonderful enhancements.

Thank you for your response and wonderful work.

[Andreas86]

A little test of an external view I am working on, giving you some good video views a la "Das Boot", see video. It replaces the normal tower view, but gives you a nice outside view of the boat. At the moment I have found no 3d model crewmen to place on the blender model, so most likely there will be no crew in the final version. But for those who are used to the lonely original bridge view, this may not pose much of a problem

Rough first trial model, from low res blender export frames:



EDIT:

New version. Original blender 3d model is exported to 64 individual frames in 1600 x 1200 resolution. Then, using Gimp I found an intricate way of processing these down to very clean looking and sharp 320 x 200 frames. This way I avoided all ugly artifacts, unwanted black contours and transperancy pixels. Very time-consuming stuff, but worth it! It will look like this in AOD, only a tad darker:

[John Pancoast]

More amazing work, thanks !

[skin-nl]

Looks good Andreas

[Andreas86]

UPDATE 06.04.2022

New in version 1.5

-External camera view for the type VII!
-Small fix for the type XXI control room graphics.
-Sound and music mod is from now on joined with the graphic mod for convenience.
-New sound updates!

Download link:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HTK...ew?usp=sharing




The big news here is a new external camera view for Aces of the Deep! It replaces the normal bridge view, but gives you a nice outside view of the boat in 360 degrees. As source I have used the same excellent 3D model of the type VII as for the new bridge view, the 3D model made by Blendswap user "splatypi" years ago. At the moment I have found no 3D model crewmen to place on the blender model. But if anyone is willing to draw them in by hand on the 64 frames that make up the external view, please contact me on the subsim forum! Having a crew in this view would be great and I hope to be able to make that update in the future. However, for those who are used to the lonely original bridge view, the lack of people may not pose much of a problem. Making an external view of the u-boat in this quality was possible by exporting a 360 camera pan of the Blender model to 64 individual frames. The resolution for these were 1600 x 1200, which was then processed in various ways using GIMP and downscaled to the low resolution needed for AOD. These final frames are at most 320 x 91!! My main goal was to make these as clean, sharp, and high quality as possible. And by using high resolution source frames I gave myself room enough to work with the frames in order to get rid of unwanted ugly artifacts, as well as black contours in the low-res frames. But this was all extremely time consuming, and this is why I have taken good time on this. A lot of final hour cleanup and pixel editing was also needed to get the quality where I wanted it. But I feel the final result is good, and I hope that this will add to the playability and enjoyment of Aces of the Deep. You will find that the scale of the u-boat in this view relates well to the size of the targets when you get close to them. I hope to see some great screenshots from you in the future!

Second on the list is a small fix of the type XXI control room, specifically the engineer. When I put him in as part of my last update, I somehow missed that he was all askew in his appearance, kind of warped to the right. I have therefore done a little perspective correction on him so now he should look correct and natural. Sometimes you see yourself blind on the same images over and over again, and then after some time away from modding, problems suddenly become clear.

The sound and music mod is from now on part of this mod, and the title of the mod will reflect this. This is for convenience, to gather everything I have made under one roof. I personally feel the mods go hand in hand, and this way I don't have to maintain / update two archives and forum threads. Updates to the sound mod will be documented here. Following is the description of the sound mod from its original readme:

"This is a mod for Dynamix' Aces of the Deep which will change almost all sounds in the game. I have tried my best at making the game more immersive and realistic, and done a lot of work sourcing good samples, editing, layering, editing pitches, and mixing together the various speech and effect samples. At the same time I wanted to keep them clean and not colored by movie background music or very recognizeable long passages from popular movies. A few stock sounds are still used but I have either edited them or layered them with other sounds. The few sounds not changed are not included, like the ricochet and aircraft fly-by sound as I found they were good enough. I hope these new sounds will greatly enhance your experience of Aces of the Deep, and that the new depth charges will rattle your cage a bit!

Being a hobby musician as well as retro gaming fan, I have made an original new main theme for Aces of the Deep in my old DOS program "Sequencer Plus Gold". There are files included for SoundBlaster and Roland MT-32. You can easily use MT-32 in DOSBox X or DOSBox SVN-Daum, which I personally use. But be sure to choose MPU-401 in the AOTD sound setup and not MT-32. The main theme song in AOTD is called "Shell__l.hmp". Just place either of the music files in your "Sound" directory. If you don't like it just delete it and AOTD will look for the main theme on the CD as usual.

Thanks to John Pancoast for testing the mod, suggestions and sending me sound and music files, many of which I hope to include later!"

As a final goodie there is also now an update to the sound mod! The biggest one is that both surface and submerged engine sounds now have ocean noise in the background. This was possible by lengthening of the original mods engine samples, then layering them with the sound of waves crashing against the hull / underwater noise. These sounds had to be carefully looped and balanced. The result is the sonic impression of waves hitting the boat, and the frequency increases or decreases with engine speed! I have also made new speech samples for the firing of torpedoes, there are again two versions. One I have chosen as default and another one as alternative. You can exchange these at will by renaming them. They are both good and are in my ears more consistent with the rest of the sound mod.

Here is a small list of the new sound updates:

5GC.RAW = new "Los!" sample
5GC_ALT.RAW = alternative new "Los!" sample (rename to 5GC.RAW)
6GA.RAW = New "Ship Sighted" sample, less harsh
6GB.RAW = New "Aircraft sighted!" sample, less harsh
DSLENG.RAW = New diesel engine sound, with wave noises
ELECENG.RAW = Electric engines with submerged ocean noises

[John Pancoast]

This file has been uploaded here.

Well done Andreas86 !
Can a moderator please change the title of this thread to "New graphic and sound mod for Aces of the Deep!" ?

[Andreas86]

Another screen has been changed. As many other screens I thought the original newspaper after-action screen was very boring with just a wooden table background, so I went about modifying it. This was a tricky one because of the weird way the newspaper sequence uses the palette.

Now the person reading the paper is standing at a news kiosk in a period-correct german city street, taking in the latest reports from the war.

[John Pancoast]

Originally Posted by Andreas86

Another screen has been changed. As many other screens I thought the original newspaper after-action screen was very boring with just a wooden table background, so I went about modifying it. This was a tricky one because of the weird way the newspaper sequence uses the palette.

Now the person reading the paper is standing at a news kiosk in a period-correct german city street, taking in the latest reports from the war.

Another great idea !

[Andreas86]

Thanks John! It will be part of the next update. From now on, you will also be notified ingame when a new version is out.







Just kidding..

[John Pancoast]

Originally Posted by Andreas86

Thanks John! It will be part of the next update. From now on, you will also be notified ingame when a new version is out.







Just kidding..

I see you found the language.txt file.

[Andreas86]

Haha, yes!