[Shigawire]

[Regio Sommergibile]

Knowing Ubisoft they wil never release it...some friends of mine are still waiting for the Raven Shield SDK...i wish i'm wrong

[Sailor Steve]

If we only went by what we 'know' of UBIsoft, SHIII would have sold exactly NO copies. After all, SHII was as buggy as a game can get, and they only released one patch, and it didn't do nearly enough.

On the other hand, they've already shown a huge dedication to SHIII, with three patches released in the first two months and an apparent willingness to listen to all the complaints and try to fix them. Sure, there are disagreements as to how good some of the fixes are, but it looks like they want to get this one right, no matter how long it takes.

[Regio Sommergibile]

I think they are really working only for a SH4 for the pacific theater using the community help to create the game they haven't created alone.
I know i'm everything but friendly, but i know ubisoft by Raven Shield and the work they done with it...like releasing pathces that only corrected bugs introduced by the previus patch...
Last thing then we come back to work: many patches in short times don't signify dedication of the software house to the game, only a bad product.

[Uncle_Salty]

This is an opening for one of you great mod makers out their to give the game a milk cow or some other supply ship, and maybe even a few more targets like new merchant ships. These would enrich the game experiance tenfold in my opinion.

[iambecomelife]

I'm not too sure; it almost seems as though the developers are a bit concerned about modders preempting them, especially with regards to a Pacific mod. The difficulty we've had with creating entirely new units has been pretty extraordinary. Someone mentioned earlier that the modability of a game is sometimes suppressed deliberately in order to keep the original designer's methods secret. Something similar to "Pacific Aces" for Silent Hunter III would almost certainly conflict with the plans Ubisoft has for future releases. They may have realized this beforehand and taken action to keep the code from being too intuitive for most modders.

[grunf]

[The Avon Lady]

This looks llike the right place to post this and maybe catch the attention of one of the devs.

Mods are a great thing but there's a big catch: they often modify/replace product installation files. This leads to messy problems like patching problems, restore mistakes (if the player made a backup to begin with) and irreconcilable conflicts between mods.

Coming from the Operation Flashpoint player community, the devs there have long ago inserted a solution to these issues through the introduction of mod folders.

Mod folders are separate folders containing modded files that would override the equivalent original game files.

If wanted, each mod could have its own mod folder. That is, more than one mod folder can exist. You would specify these mod folder names in a switch on the SH3 shortcut's command line.

This would allow SH3's installed folders and files to remain untouched, thereby not interfering with the core game nor with update patch installations.

This method allows the player to start up SH3 with no mods at all or with a combination of one or more mods, whatever the player's preference.

Thanks for your time!

[Regio Sommergibile]

It's very simple...if bUBI wanted to help the community creating a better game using MODS should use this solution...but they didn't
They haven't already released the SDK ! why ? because they want to sell their pacific expansion...i understand they are a company and they produce to gain money, but there are different ways to do this.
and i think that the Operation flashpoint is the more friendable ever.....

sorry for my english

[Heinz_Knokke]

First I have to say that I've been modding games since several years now Flight simulator since FS5 and Operation Flashpoint. So at least I know what it means modding for a game, and the amount of work and dedication it represent.

I would be ready to start working on new ships for SHIII.
But I don't believe that handling the mods like the devs are doing for IL-2 is the way to go.
Mod making community for IL-2 is nearly inexistant (except skinner) for several reason:

Providing models to the dev team and waiting for "a possible" inclusion in the game is very unlikely to attract modders. Peoples doing mods like to include new content to the games themselves. They don't like to have a dev team deciding if the work is good enough or not for inclusion in the game.
Also, the dev team is very unlikely to have much time to spend correcting the models and adapting the models to make them work in the game. As a result, it would be the same as IL-2 where the modders are waiting for month before they receive an input on their work. This means that a lot of them having a model completed and not knowing if and when it will be included in the game, are losing interest.
From experience with modding for others games, I can say that only a few peoples would be able to create 3D models of quality at the start. They'll improve very quickly tough, and will start to make great models after a few try. If the dev team as the final word on what will be made functional in the game, these peoples will not even start making mods.

The way to go is like the Flight Simulator modding community, or better still, like the Operation Flashpoint community.
Everyone is able to include is own work in the game by the way of tools to convert the 3D models to make them work inside the game. Every wannabe develloper is able to learn, and the quality stuff appears very quickly. The dev team doesn't need to convert anything, as the process of making the 3D models working in game is handled by the modders themselves.
Some peoples are objecting to this because they say that a lot of crappy models are made if the devellopers are not taking part in the process of including the models in the game. But this is not a valid objection. If one think that the mod is crap, one doesn't need to download it. That's as simple as that.
The fact that everyone is able to include is own content in the game is a great strength, as it is encouraging for the modders: the pleasure to see our own work in the game, no matter how crappy it is, is an encouragement to strive harder and to make things better.

For me, there is no question what is the better solution of the two:

Have a look at Il-2 modding community, and have a look at FS or Flashpoint community:
Only a handful of new planes in IL-2 when there are hundreds in FS; Flashpoint had only two armies moddeled in it, now almost every armies of the world are included in the game.

The devs handling the conversion and inclusion in the game means that the SHIII modding community will never reach the expansion of FS or Flashpoint. There is only one good point (and a small one) in this process of conversion made by the dev team only: it would be less likely to have issues in MP where the players doe not have the same mods/ships installed, and so the game is no longer compatible. But this issue is of little consequence, as can be seen in the case of Flashpoint: peoples are understanding this, and the compatible/not compatible problems are of no concern for the majority of the players.

So the only thing that SHIII needs to have a big dedicated community creating new game content for the game is:
A 3d model exemple from the game, ready to be included (to serve as a reference of how it should be modelled)
A tool to convert the 3D models so that they're working with the game engine once properly modeled/configured.
A commented description of the configuration files needed to help the modders to understand the inner mechanic of the game.

For now, I wouldn't start to work on anything for SHIII, as we have no idea of what are the requirement for the game. (how many LOD ? How the game is handling damage to the boats? etc...) We need at least a 3D model for the game to serve as reference of what we should do.

If the dev are interested on 3D party models, they should at least give us the tools/means of starting to work.

[SciFi25]

I am thinking maybe we need a modified Southampton class cruiser model for the Royal Navy aka the Edinburgh class light cruiser HMS Belfast. The Belfast itself was a very notable ship during WW2 participating in the sinking of the Scharnhorst amongst other things and is now a museum ship anchored on the Thames in London by Tower Bridge.

Mmmmm, maybe I will try to create a nice model for that!! Though don't hold your breath I am not very good at it!

[Seacondor]

I have a list of Gmax ship models I have made for CFS3 that with a little work could easy be adjusted and improved for this sim.
I can get them exported to a Max file these days.

Country class cruiser Suffolk ,Norfolk
Upholder (British Sub)
Italian torpedo boat destroyer
Scharnhorst
Gneisenau
Tboot T18
German torpedo boat Jaguar
German Minesweeper
German destoryer type 36a
German cruiser Koln
Ark Royal
Lutsow
Blue Bell flower class corvette
Hunt Class

[Seacondor]

removed

[Jace11]

nice, how many polys is that?

if you go to the start of this thread, you get the detail limits for whatever you want to send the dev team. 25000 polys for a destroyer I think.

[Seacondor]

The Hunt is 11765
Jaguar is 8936
Sharnhorst is 25841
Norfolk is 6769 (This is an early model for me needs much reworking to bring it up to standard.

Z37 is 15927