Modding the Gunsights--GO file extension

[nodlew]

I can rarely get through a mission without the gunner's primary sight getting damaged. This is less of a problem now for me in the Russian tanks with the periscopes since I now typically use those as my gun sight and they almost never get damaged, but on the German tanks it remains a problem. Since I have no idea how to tweak the probability that one thing or another will be damaged, I thought I could mod the "damage" textures for the German sights and make them somewhat easier to see through, so I wouldn't have to quit mission after mission in frustration with damaged gun sights. True to form, it turns out there is a stumbling block. The sights are not in any image format I've ever heard of. Google has hardly heard of it. GraphOn--.GO file format. Anyone know where to find some software to view and edit this type of file, or convert it?

[Kyth]

Hi Nodlew,

As far as I know, the 'go' files are the 3D models used in-game. The textures are 'dds' files. I'm not sure which dds is for the damaged sights. There are a ton of them!

Now, I have a bit of good news

Remember the armor-map tga files?

It seems that the gunners' vision ports are badly under-armored for the PzIII and PzIV (these are the ones I have checked out so far). Same goes for the main-gun barrels.

If your problem is with the Pz III and Pz IV you could try my new armor maps, below:
http://www.4shared.com/file/UszK11Cx/NewArmorMaps.html

They haven't been tested for long, so consider them as 'betas'.

To be fair, I'll also be looking through the Soviet tanks. The main guns for the T-34 and KV-1 are also a little too prone to damage, if I recall correctly. 
 

[frinik]

Kyth you are increadible Man! You gave the M|G34 fiix, then figured out what the lines for shells were in the tehc_cfg and now this! Kudos! Any idea where the damage file for the tank guns is? I am trying to address my own gripe( the broken or shattered sights bother me but less).In particular the Panther( is it because of the sloping armour thta deflects the shots onto the gun?)'s gun gets damaged almost 40% of the times I play it! Grateful if you can find it  to let me know

Cheers

[Kyth]

Hi Frinik,

I'm positive that any damage is linked to the 3D model itself. Armored protection / resistance to damage is determined by the armor specs in the tech_cfg file and the armor_map.
For instance, the Panther's armor map, used as a 'skin' for the 3D model:



By the way, the main gun above seems okay, with the armor equivalent to 23mm.
I don't have any specs about the real-life thing; do you think that's a reasonable value?

[frinik]

  MMMMMM Kyth that's interesting although frankly I thought there would have been some kind of nubmer. coefficient, or fraction in either the common resolution file or the tech_cfg that indicates the probabilities or odds the gun is going to be damaged or out out of action.

I don't know how thick the KwK42 L70 actually was but I recall reading that it weighs upwards of 900 kilos. But there's definitely something wrong with the German guns damage quotient. I played a trial shooting mission on the Izum map with the Panther shooting at JS2s 1500 to 2500 metres. away. A JS shot at me and the shot landed about 10 feet ahead of me in a huge geyser of dirt.Gun disabled. Totally puzzled I scrapped the mission and checked the hits.No hits!!!! NO red or yellow arrow  and the gun looked perfect.I could see the crater about 15 feet from my tank.Strated the trial mission again.3 out of 5 times the same thing happened again either shots hitting the side of my Panther or landing nearby and disabling my bloody gun.It has happened to me with Panzer IVs, IIIs, Tiger I and II and Stug but very, very seldom when playing the Soviet tanks. This really ruins otherwise good, exciting missions.
What I propose to do is not eliminate it altogether that's d be spoiling the realism but certainly reducing it by 70%.


In this game I mam positive the armor map files alone don't determine the odd or incidence of damage ,tank on fire, broken sights , or gun disabled there's got to be some kind of code or fraction which actually translate a hit into resulting damage.

The thing is WHERE TO FIND IT....

Thanks for help Kyth!

[Stig]

This smells like the problem is the level of component-level damage (or lack of same, perhaps). Perhaps the sight is tied to some larger object, like the entire gun, or the entire turret, and doesn't have its own small "hit box" somewhere in the turret itself.

Q: Does the object editor allow you to see the various components (like engine, turret, crew members, radios and gear, etc.) with their "hit boxes" displayed? And if so, are the various objects discernible from one other (e.g., a way to tell which colored box corresponds to which object)?

That's where to look. If the gunsight (and the back up periscope) is a separate object, then perhaps its hit box can either be scaled to make it physically harder to impact... or it can be "up-armored" some to make it more resilient to battle damage.

Then, following that.... how do we determine how hardy that particular piece of equipment should be? I don't recall ever reading anything like a combat report where damage to the gunsight was ever mentioned... which is not to say it never happened, certainly.

However, this kind of reminds me of a bit of subtle IL-2 bias, where a hit to the cockpit of a German aircraft seemed to knock the Revi gunsight askew with alarming frequency, while it almost never happened on other country's aircraft. 

[frinik]

  I agree with you Stig! Sounds to me also like subtle bias.The same way the T34 versus Tiger sim or example was skewed so the T34 would be much tougher than it really was and the Tiger made weaker so the game would be balanced

I read battle reports and gun damage was proportinally insignificant.Yes it did happen actually often the result of accidents( tank falling into a tank trap or hole or the gun accidentally hitting a tree or obstacle while the turret was turning or sloppy manoeuvring) rathe thna actual battle damage.Guns do get worn out and need to be changed after a given number of shots have been fired.But actual hits on a gun resulting in damage certainly with much less frequency than in SF...

That being said I will refrain from tinkering with the ME because I did it once and it took me a lot of time to fix it afterwards....

Well I hope that the forum administrators will answer me eventually.

Cheers

[Kyth]

This smells like the problem is the level of component-level damage (or lack of same, perhaps). Perhaps the sight is tied to some larger object, like the entire gun, or the entire turret, and doesn't have its own small "hit box" somewhere in the turret itself.

Q: Does the object editor allow you to see the various components (like engine, turret, crew members, radios and gear, etc.) with their "hit boxes" displayed? And if so, are the various objects discernible from one other (e.g., a way to tell which colored box corresponds to which object)?

Hi Stig,

The object editor doesn't show the various 'hit boxes', but it does clue you in on their existence. They're the invisible fragments (chunks) labelled as "p_****".

For instance, the 'p_driver' fragment, signifies the tank driver's position. Any major damage caused there would likely incapacitate the virtual driver. Also, if you happen to be 'occupying' the driver's seat, it would mean game over...

[nodlew]

Ah, so people know more about the gun/gun sight damage issue than was apparent. Good.

As far as I know, the 'go' files are the 3D models used in-game. The textures are 'dds' files. I'm not sure which dds is for the damaged sights.

I searched and searched for a .dds gun sight file. I could not find one. I looked in SPM 1.5 Beta, knowing that the tiger I and II sights would have to be in there and should be easy to identify--no gun sight dds file that I could find. Finally I looked in the tech cfg files, and found the only files related to gun sights that I have yet identified--the .go files. I looked on Google, and it appeared to me that the .go files were not 3d, but rather another image format equivalent to bmp, or dds, so I looked for software that could view and or edit these files--with no luck.

I need to pore over these posts more carefully before I'll feel qualified to comment further, and I think I'll do that when I have more energy. It's 2am (the thrill is gone...sitting here waiting...the gun's still warm...Name that tune) and I just consumed an entire chicken (dead of course, a live one would have feathers all over it and would put up too much of a fight).

[boomshekah]

Hi all.
I dont know how to change the propability of gunsight damage, but i found the textures responsible for the effect.
I tried to modify them to look better, but couldnt come up with anything pretty so i disabled the effect altogether:

http://rapidshare.com/files/428102157/gunsight_fix.rar

You can find the textures in the tex_pack1.datapack file. The original textures are 256*256 but you can make them bigger
if you want to add some detail (i tried with 1024*1024 and it worked).
Hope this helps:)

[Stig]

@boom...

Can you be clearer on what you posted there? I'm not sure I'm 'getting' you...

What I *think* I understand is...

You found a graphic file that corresponds to what displays when gunsight damage is registered in the game....
You didn't get it looking the way you wanted...
So, although you're offering a "damaged sight" graphic file, you reverted your own back to the original.


Another question...
If you discovered which file displays when there's gunsight damage... why not simply copy that file, rename it to be the damaged sight and use it to "eliminate" the effect altogether? (in other words, the 'damaged' sight graphic is the same as the working one....

[boomshekah]

The original files are just black and white images with an alpha channel that are blended over your gunsight
whenever your sight is damaged.
I tried to modify them to make the effect less annoying but didnt like the results so i ended up just making them black
which disables the effect altogether. Well the effect is still there, you just wont see it;)
The files i uploaded are just black textures with a black alpha, so ingame they are completely transparent hence no more cracked sights:)

[nodlew]

boomshekah,

Thanks for the info and the fix. I've downloaded it and will check it out. I agree with you that given the frequency of damage, no gun sight damage is a more realistic situation than the one we have currently--and definitely more fun.

What program do you use to open that datapack file? A hex editor I assume. Which one?

[boomshekah]

There are two programs i use. You can find them here:

http://www.tanksim.tk/off/wfdownloads-viewcat.cid-16.htm

With the "Steel Fury unlock resource editor patch" you can browse and extract the contents of .datapack files.
It also lets you delete files within the datapack and it does so without much warning so dont forget to backup
your original files;)
The "Tool for extract sources from Steel Fury" is a commandline tool and also lets you extract files from the datapack files.

[nodlew]

Thanks a bunch, Boomshekah.

These sound like must-have programs for this game.

Hmmm, can't access the link. Tanksim goes down like every five minutes, so maybe I'll be able to access it later.

[Stig]

Kyth wrote:

The object editor doesn't show the various 'hit boxes', but it does clue you in on their existence. They're the invisible fragments (chunks) labelled as "p_****".

Do we know how these "chunks" are described in the files? I would imagine there'd be both a "world" location and dimensions, as well as other information on how well armored they are. That might be what we might need to edit to reduce damageability. I'm not so sure that making the sights invulnerable is the absolutely right solution (although certainly preferable to them being "the first thing to go" when the turret's hit)

Also, I wonder at the utility of the object editor if it doesn't display hit boxes... how is it possible to create vehicles without this kind of visual information?

[Kyth]

Hi Stig,

The object editor doesn't display the dimensions and coordinates, as far as I know 

As for creation of new vehicles, they have to be created using 3D modelling program, then imported into the .go format.

Some details (incomplete) are provided in the sticky:
http://graviteam.com/forum/index.php?topic=60.0

In short, there's not a great deal of editing possible with the Object Editor 
It is basically there to check whether the vehicles / objects can be seen in-game.

By the way, in case you're wondering, there doesn't seem to be any way to export the 3D models back to .3ds or .x format for some real editing.   

[nodlew]

I'm not so sure that making the sights invulnerable is the absolutely right solution

I agree. Not having the possibility of the sights being damaged decreases the variety and potential realism of the game. It would be better to have a small chance of the sights being damaged as the result of a direct hit on that area of the tank--even a direct hit by small arms fire. But I have to say, I'm enjoying the fix by Boomshekah. I played a mission in the King Tiger and finished it and didn't know my sights were damaged until I checked the statistics at the end. Without the fix, I never would have finished that mission. If the sights were damaged in a realistic way, I would take it in stride and try to work around it and find a way to complete missions despite the damage. But the way things stand, I consider it a bug, unrealistic and a just a giant pain in the ass.

I wonder if the SPM 1.5 team is at all aware of these discussions--they might agree on some points and incorporate some changes into the final release.

It's been hours and the Tanksim link is still down. Can those programs be found anywhere else, Boomshekah?

[boomshekah]

Thats odd, the link i posted works for me. Anyway, i uploaded them to rapidshare:

http://rapidshare.com/files/428464347/datapackTools.rar

[Stig]

nodlew wrote:

If the sights were damaged in a realistic way, I would take it in stride and try to work around it and find a way to complete missions despite the damage.

...and that would be going to the periscope view for a backup, correct?

See, I'm learning all kinds of stuff from you guys and haven't really even gotten back into this sim yet!