no smoking in FOTRS

[DaveR]

so I had been wondering why enemy ships seem to avoid me, meaning turn away, or attack me, turn at me, even at 80 feet down. then discovered smoke on the water behind me, even when under water. I found it started roughly center of ship then drifted away. seen this effect when I attacked a target with the gun. multiple burning pieces(?) would fall off and drift off; or a burning bush would be centered over where a ship had sunk. any idea of what is happening here?

[KaleunMarco]

Originally Posted by DaveR

so I had been wondering why enemy ships seem to avoid me, meaning turn away, or attack me, turn at me, even at 80 feet down. then discovered smoke on the water behind me, even when under water. I found it started roughly center of ship then drifted away. seen this effect when I attacked a target with the gun. multiple burning pieces(?) would fall off and drift off; or a burning bush would be centered over where a ship had sunk. any idea of what is happening here?

lol. yes, we've seen that before and no, it will not affect the enemy detecting you.
i have encountered the same thing but i cannot find the post where it was explained.
i have also experienced flame-spouts near an attack-area...they just sit there burning. i thought they were following me but it was just de-hydration from a long patrol.


seriously, there is nothing you can do about and it wont hurt you. so, enjoy and ignore.


gook luck.

[propbeanie]

There is a litany of things that can cause the "Smoke On The Water" syndrome, besides too much Deep Purple. If you have an unmodded game, the main problem causer is "shelling-out" to Windows. In other words, you <Alt><Tab> or some other keypress and go to the desktop to consult your detailed map of the harbor, then go back in to the game. Not good. The game is an old single-core, exclusive process, 32-bit app, and has a "hook" into certain aspects of Windows, such as the audio stream or the video stream, which gets changed when you shell-out. You might notice that night and day no longer match the clock, or that your crew is suffocating for an unusual build-up of carbon-dioxide in the surfaced sub, etc etc. Save the game, exit the game. Re-start the game, and reload the scenario. Hopefully that "fixes" it. (my suspicion)

Another of the biggies is not activating the mod properly. If you have a clean install of SH4, run JSGME and let it make the MODS folder. Then run the "Tasks - Generate snapshot of game files", which will help you when you go to change mods later. Then make sure the Save folder for the game is emptied. It defaults to "C:\Users \UserName \Documents \SH4". Delete the "SH4" folder and everything under it. Activate the mod. Run the game. It will create a new SH4 folder for you. You will have to re-set your screen resolution and other gameplay settings.

[DaveR]

well that's to bad; hoping the smoke on the water would answer what 'i' am seeing.

first mission was to marshal islands. encountered patrolling enemy destroyers and Australian freighters, (which had heading track to MI). nothing was too odd, but a lot of the destroyers would head my direction. i would go deep, 0 speed and silent running; they would pass by. after time spent in area, headed to wake island; arriving day after it fell. half way there, ran into another freighter at night, bright moon, it also seemed on track to midway. approached it under water, raising scope at 1K yards. thought the flag was French; (red-white-blue bars). went back on course, but stayed underwater; (got distracted looking at something else). after several minutes, sonar man sang out contact 120', closing. closing? scope showed coming straight at me. dived to 80 feet and freighter came close; then tracked it, seemingly, freighter went back on track for MI. what the crap was that? couple of days at wake; and nothing. no activity. so went back to Marshals'. between the islands, ran into another freighter, this time, flagged rising sun. it was night, but moon shining so still approached underwater. i normally use sonar to get into firing position. i do not use the scope until firing, maybe sometimes for AoB check; then just pop the surface, until i can see the target, then less than 5-10 seconds, then down, that's my standard procedure. at the last second it turned into me, did snap shot and missed. it was a small freighter and appeared to not have any big guns. so surfaced and stood off from it, then sunk it with deck gun. this is where i saw the burning bushes that would float out from the target. didn't see or run into anything else, finally ran low on fuel and returned to MI.

next mission took me off southern japan. here i managed to sink 6 ships. understand, all of them came to me, i did not have to intercept them. other ships that were picked up, would turn to run away. on one, i surfaced to give chase and he had three big guns. tried several end-arounds, but always moved off before was in position. one interesting encounter; the contact, to the south east of my position, called out as slow speed, closing. pointed just ahead of them and ran at full speed. picked up smoke on the horizon and then another smoke trail. picked up masts, then funnel of leader and dove to periscope and set standard speed. after a few minutes, it became apparent they were heading east at 5 knots. made sense, their track was pointing at a port. after several minutes, sonar announced the target, he was following, went to mid speed. odd, so i followed every minute. unchanging direction. peek with periscope verified he was coming straight at me. turned ninety across his track and went to full speed. after couple of minutes, and still no direction change. again peeked with scope; yup, still face on. so turned into him, a went to 1/3, waiting for him and another close up sinking. tracked him couple of minutes, when direction change and sonar man was saying no longer closing. huh? turning? next couple of call outs, direction doesn't change again and call out was moving away. did a peek with scope; yup, looking at his stern. during this time 'i' had looked at what the other contact was doing. small changes showed roughly south. an attack to let the other get away? meanwhile, tracking showed first target is changing again. peeking at him showed turning west. tracking him, it went, moving away - neutral - closing. sonar plot showed moving west. this time thou, didn't appear charging again, but still closing and sunk him 1k yards. by this time, second contact was no longer on sonar. surfaced and went SSW at full speed. never found him, (i think), because i ran into 2 more, heading north. similar scenario occurred, but it was night and sunk both. one time, got visual call. but contact didn't show up on sonar, me or the sonar man. looked like an oiler. but just kept avoiding me, so gave up chasing it.

was down to 3 torps, also low on fuel; i moved west, towards those ports. decided i would sweep west then south-east untill fuel forced to MI or PH. mid morning a called out sonar contact; warship south, mid speed, closing. with tbd, looked that direction and sure enough, 'smoke on the horizon', (miss that visual call). wait, holy .... to left was another smoke trail and next to it, a very large one. smoke trail showed heading east. but, with the other contact, the direction was un-changing. so again dove to 100 feet, 0 speed and silent running. contact went from mid speed to slow, the direction, again was un-changing and always closing (search pattern?). after about half hour, finally got high speed, moving away call; figured trying to catch up with daddy. but, was waiting until it left max sonar range. meanwhile, while watching it leave, another contact appeared.

surfacing, closed until got smoke on the horizon. guessed, after watching, that they were moving north. went to 80 feet and closed at full speed, then it was called out closing at mid speed. slowed and watched for i while. appeared they were closing and went to periscope depth. finally was pinging them; (yes, one can ping, anytime, but i don't, because, although this might be a game, that is very unrealistic.) was closing on track at 10 knots when, around 3K, plot was not on track. quick ping and yup, turning away. did a quick peek and verified it. this start a real two hour chase, including an attempted end around. didn't mater, always running away. I had saved when i went to 80 feet, sooooo re-loaded and this time, started using long range sonar. would plot leaders' movements, which sometimes, i was either getting really bad ping or started picking up the other guy. this was a couple of start overs. they would always start moving away as i approached; sometimes at short range, sometimes farther away. the plot in the thumbnail is the last one i did. by now, i new they headed north, then turn west, again, seemed to align with the ports. i just moved to a point that was south of the track line. contact, moved north, then turn west and stayed on track. i was moving NE closing to track line when they turned into me; first time they did that. i turned towards them, then turned southernly. that's when they started to turn west again. i turned back into them and started my firing setup. fired last forward torp at 1500 yards. start down, flank and hard to port; figured the other one would be barreling down. got off a ping on him, 250 yards 110'. didn't here him go over head. back to periscope, can i get a spread off with last two torps in rear. no, 3K yards and looking at stern. on one of the replays' did a long range 'contact's range&bearing' and got a CTD. only one so far to occurred.

satisfied; what do i do now. gave up. as i wrote this offline; deleted saved files, download .81 and start a new. yes i have laa enabled, only mod and even went into win10 and raised sh4 priority to a higher setting. with .80, sometimes win10 would abort loading the game; bumping the priority seemed to cure that.

so off the coast of japan, 100 miles NE of Tokyo, got a report of 'ship, NNW, med', pop up on the nav map. there was no radio report of this. i thought this was being blocked from occurring? hmmm, sonar contact.

I played RSB 10 years ago. enjoyed it. work got in the way. now retired. back at it. bought a new machine and vive system. it would be interesting to see sh4 in VR. sight is not as good as it was. it would be helpful if gage could be larger, especially the watch.....

always thought this is the best forum on the net.

[propbeanie]

That does sound like a slightly messed-up mod install. Be sure and delete the Save game folder before you play the new FotRSUv0.81 activation. Dont' try to play old Saves. They are not compatible with past versions...

[DaveR]

I did prop'. I went thru all the steps, but didn't re-install. i'll try that; because it is still happening. I watched this one closely. it 'seemed' when I stopped, it 'seemed' to go back to original track. when I started moving towards it, it would move away. never, raised the scope, til later.


also, sound man became useless. never called out a contact. would only give contact description when I pinged it, then forget it. once range fell below 5nm even that stopped. would only say 'no sound contacts'. sonar was also rather inaccurate, more than normal. at one time, when things got real odd, raised the scope, bearing for visual was 305, sonar was 275. what? (it was a tanker)


while doing an end around, was in rough waters and occasionally chief would call 'current depth 20 feet'...

[merc4ulfate]

Originally Posted by DaveR

so I had been wondering why enemy ships seem to avoid me, meaning turn away, or attack me, turn at me, even at 80 feet down. then discovered smoke on the water behind me, even when under water. I found it started roughly center of ship then drifted away. seen this effect when I attacked a target with the gun. multiple burning pieces(?) would fall off and drift off; or a burning bush would be centered over where a ship had sunk. any idea of what is happening here?

The Deep Purple is strong with this one.

[DaveR]

here is what I found. some more hints of problems. I re-install sh4. deleting all saved files first. when I went to load .81, it just went real fast. corrupted files? how? used back up of the files. samething. re-down loaded and it installed. when I start the game, loading was fairly smooth; where before, there was a hesitation and at one time would abort. got into the game and sonar man was very active. couldn't shut him up. then made contact. turned out to be two freighters. closed and no reaction. set up shot. put two in first one, one dud, one explosion; and it sunk shortly. one explosion and a miss in the other. this one kept moving. this is when the sonar man, once again, clammed up; immediately after the ship sunk. and to my surprise, when scanning for the wounded one, there was another ship in the area. just out of ping range. it was very late so turned in.

when I loaded the game this morning, the hesitation in loading was back. the sonar man was still quiet. chased down the wounded one. and once again sonar ranges were all over the place. when I did scope peek and tried a sonar ranging, 'it' would repeat the range that was all ready in the TDC. fired two and missed at 1800 yards. everything seemed to be working great until that ship sunk. (when the ship exploded and sunk, I wasn't wearing earphones; but heard the explosion and then another noise that, well, was different [another bang, clang, idk])…


never left the game until saved...

just tired of this

but still

[propbeanie]

There is something amiss in your system. For SH4 to play properly, you want to match your video display to Windows first, ie: 1280x1024 LCD display ("Native") of mine is using the Windows "1280x1024 (recommended)" resolution setting in the "Screen Resolution" of Control Panel. The SH4 game is also set to that same resolution. When installing SH4, do not install it in a "Program Files" folder, Windows will trash mod activations there. Use your own folder. When installing SH4, also install the DirectX v9.0c that comes with the game. You don't need any of the other stuff with it. After installing the game, I make certain the files aren't write-protected, and then I used 7zip to make myself an archive file of the inside of the "Silent Hunter 4 Wolves of the Pacific" folder. That's my backup for when things go wrong with mods (which they do). I can also make a new folder, name it what I want, and unzip the archive in there to create another version of the game. I make certain the game files are write-protected, and I use MultiSH4 to make a new Save folder for that new copy. That way, I won't cross-contaminate the copies of the game I already have. I will then run JSGME and use "Tasks - Generate a snap shot of game files" before applying a mod to the new game copy. If I happen to "update" a modded SH4 copy with a new version of the mod, I will deactivate the old mod, empty the Save folder for that copy, then activate the new mod. Gamplay settings, screen resolution and the like don't keep, but that's the price of modding. One last thing to look for is the Large Address Aware. You may have run it on the file and looked like it "took", but it might not have. Again, make sure it is not write-protected. Run LAA again, and use the "Intermediate" mode, and check the two columns for "True" and "False".

Something is interfering with your game being able to properly display. Something is trashing a portion of the view near your submarine. It might be in the save folder. it might be in the game folder, and it might be in the use of a big mod, but LAA did not "take" correctly. Just remember that it is an old, fickle game. But it sure is fun...

[DaveR]

really giving up. loaded current mission and sonar quit working; meaning it wouldn't manually rotate.

I followed propbeanie's instructions. in game I was able to setup two intercepts and execute an attack. but, in both cases, the wound ships kept mounting ramming attacks. not that they wouldn't do this, but never raised the scope til was ready to attack. and it was night. so how would they know where I was going.


might try tmo later. see if acts the same.
good hunting.

[propbeanie]

If you're using the "Stock" game, the Gato has issues with the mouse-controlled rotation, but CapnScurvy made a mod for that:

Gato Sonar Bearing Fix_Stock

Be sure and read the ReadMe info.

If the AI in the stock game seems a bit "strong", and you've noodled with mods before, you might have trouble with the Save folder contaminating your game folder, causing you issues. Delete the "C:\Users \UserName \Documents \SH4" folder and its contents. You will have to re-set all your gameplay options and screen settings (you'll also lose all game progress), but you'll (hopefully) be rid of the weirdness - unless the game folder itself is "infected"...