Out of curiosity...why does everyone think a patch will fix the issues?

[XanderF]

After all, this isn't the first subsim this developer has released.

Sh3 was released in a 'similarly' unfinished state (I think we can all agree that with a 200mb patch out on-or-near release day, the game was sent to the gold masters 'not quite done cooking')

That was 2 years ago, now, and we've only received 4 patches (total) for it, including (of course), the "release day patch" (game release date of 03/15/2005, v11 patch 03/17/2005).

In all those patches, we never received any correction to the issues:
- FSAA doesn't work with the in-game "bloom" enhancements turned on (to be fair, they are trivial effects. Makes the sun, moon, and lights look more realistic...but that's about it. Still, it was the only post-processing the game did.)
- Resolution 'officially' locked at 1024x768 (yes, there is a hack to get around that)

It's odd that those same two problems that never got fixed in Sh3 YEARS after the fact people seem to pin so much hope on being fixed in Sh4. (I mean, really, this should be a clue. 2 years into Sh3, no more patches, they still aren't fixed. Here comes Sh4...and they STILL aren't fixed. I'm guessing...call me crazy...they just won't be)

Now, I know these aren't the only 'big issues' with Sh4, but, for comparison's sake, a trip in the wayback machine is in order. Here are the release notes for the 4 Sh3 patches, so you can see the kind of things that are feasable to fix in a patch:

Sh3 v1.1 (http://www.gamespot.com/pages/gamespace/download.php?pid=919601&sid=6120605&mode=)
Sh3 v1.2 (http://www.gamespot.com/pages/gamespace/download.php?pid=919601&sid=6121677&mode=)
Sh3 v1.3 (http://www.gamespot.com/pages/gamespace/download.php?pid=919601&sid=6124095&mode=)
Sh3 v1.4 (http://www.gamespot.com/pages/gamespace/download.php?pid=919601&sid=6128010&mode=)
A prodigious list, to be sure! But, I think we can see some trends for what patches Sh4 will offer:
- New ships and aircraft
- Campaign and mission improvements and changes
- AI and scripting improvements
- Interface bugs fixed
- No significant changes to the 3d engine

[Narwhal]

totally (sadly) right bro I find SH IV so depressing.... oh so sad....

[Capt.LoneRanger]

- FSAA doesn't work with the in-game "bloom" enhancements turned on (to be fair, they are trivial effects. Makes the sun, moon, and lights look more realistic...but that's about it. Still, it was the only post-processing the game did.)

I also doubt this will be fixed by a patch, as it is a hardware-problem of pre 8xxx nVidia-Cards. Unless the patch orders you an 8800 or an ATI card or adds software FSAA, which would be quite stupid, I doubt it will change anything.

Other than that, if you think SH3 is great and the patch didn't help the bugs, why do you find it that good? Because of the mods? Well, then you should be happy to have SHIV, as it is the same community and they will do similar threads for sure.;)

[elanaiba]

- FSAA doesn't work with the in-game "bloom" enhancements turned on (to be fair, they are trivial effects. Makes the sun, moon, and lights look more realistic...but that's about it. Still, it was the only post-processing the game did.)
I also doubt this will be fixed by a patch, as it is a hardware-problem of pre 8xxx nVidia-Cards.

Don't bet your money on it.

[Misfit138]

Long time lurker reporting in!

But yeah, This is exactly what I've been thinking about SHIV. I really don't think they are going to fix things like AA or resolution. By the time they say that there will be no patches anymore, the game itself has still quite a few bugs left. Sorry for being so pessimistic but what they did with SHIII is a great example.

I haven't got the sim yet and probable never going to get it. It all depends on IF they fix the bugs. SHIII has still some bugs left which the devs could have easily fixed and I'm pretty certain they will do the same with this one...

Hope I'm wrong

[Safe-Keeper]

Welcome in, lurker.

I agree with the topic starter: The patches won't solve half of the game's problems. Of course, I'm eagerly waiting for Ubi to prove me wrong on this one;).

[DJSatane]

Out of curiosity I expected to play the game without crashes to desktop when using as simple thing as stadimeter, or having chronometer that works. Now I expect some of the critical crashes fixed and as simple and important thing as a chronometer to actually work in a sub sim through this patch.

I can only hope....

[P_Funk]

Out of curiosity I expected to play the game without crashes to desktop when using as simple thing as stadimeter, or having chronometer that works. Now I expect some of the critical crashes fixed and as simple and important thing as a chronometer to actually work in a sub sim through this patch.

I can only hope....
I think I read that you need to close the recog manual when using the stadimeter.

[RedHammer]

Yeah closing the rec manual works for some people, but not me. To me the game looks great exept theese bugs:

Stadimeter ctd.

Dud torpedoes (Still on when turned off.)

Crew members falling dead on the spot and dissapears just before the water reaches them.

Crew member rescue boats simply spawning 50 yards away from the burning ship.

No damage happening to my ship.

heck if they could just fix the first one, and get better resolution and that Bloom stuff in I`m happy..

S!

RH

[elanaiba]

Dud torpedoes (Still on when turned off.)

Crew member rescue boats simply spawning 50 yards away from the burning ship.



These are not bugs. The Dud torpedoes should still happen with the option off, but at a much reduced rate. It was the same in SH3.

[DragonRR1]

I have very similar concerns to Xander but here's my view for what it's worth:

The Devs argument with SH3 having a fixed resolution, or one of them anyway, was that SH3 wasn't exactly speedy on a fast PC and time compession mode would be awful. In essense and IMO they didn't want to spend the time doing a fix because the felt that overall most people wouldn't actually use it. I remember being quite frustrated at the time about this but like many others grudgingly accepted their answer.

UBI/Devs said very specifically that you would NOT have the fixed resolution issue with SH4. It is a tenuous argument indeed that it doesn't have the fixed resolution problem because the 2D area is in high resolution. This is not in the "spirit" of the promises made.

With SH4 I am 99% sure that the Devs have deliberatley limited the 3D view areas to a lower resolution. The question is why? Well I suspect that in testing they still had FPS issues on older PCs and they thought they would use a quick and dirty fix for the time being. Whilst it is probably true that the 3D engine is a revamped SH3 engine and therefore may have te same resolution issue, we also know, and so do the devs, that the SH3 engine is perfectly capable of running at high resolution because Kegetys provide a modified D3D dll to force it higher.

My overall view is that they CAN fix the issue if they choose to. The community appears to be making quite a big fuss about the problem AND UBI have to accept that any argument about SH4 fullfilling the "no fixed res" promise doesn't stand up to scrutiny at this time. The current settings do not push my PC at all and although I have an 8800GTX I don't have the fastest everything (which I did when SH3 came out).

Overall I think there is more chance that there will be a resolution fix than not.

Of course the above hasn't stopped me from leaving a message on Kegetys website asking if he can fix SH4 too!

[cherbert]

I agree that a fix this time round is more likely.

The backlash is far greater - there are disgruntled people all over the forums in different threads both here and on the offical forums.

Once the game get out to the masses the number of visitors to both forums will increase massively.

If UBI don't fix this issue they may as well kiss goodbye to the franchise as they will have killed it dead.

Who owned the rights to Silent Service? Just wondered why we never got a SS3?!?

[It762]

i dont know that super high resultion is not doing much of a change or? i think my system could handle it but why.....

[Rickenbacker]

The resolution change only seems to affect the interface, not the actual game graphics.

And I don't know of any game that gives you both bloom effects (or HDR in Source games) and FSAA at the same time. Hopefully the next generation of graphics cards will give us that.

[DragonRR1]

I have two main reasons why I *think* high res. isn't much of a change:

1. We know that SH3 was fixed by Kegetys who intercepted D3D calls from SH3 requesting 1024x768 and forced the set resolution instead.
2. From my own limited experience and the opinion of a games programmer friend the multiple res route involves, probably, rendering to a back buffer before rendering to screen which they then force to render at a lower resolution than the 2D bitmaps.

Basically I *think* there are some hard coded values for 1024x768 within the .exe file or somewhere else making the 3D area ignore the actual resolution set.

[Seeadler]

Who owned the rights to Silent Service? Just wondered why we never got a SS3?!?
as far as I know, Sid Meier of Firaxis
http://www.firaxis.com/company/bios.php?bioid=56

[XanderF]

Other than that, if you think SH3 is great and the patch didn't help the bugs, why do you find it that good? Because of the mods? Well, then you should be happy to have SHIV, as it is the same community and they will do similar threads for sure.

Well, no SH3 is "great" because both the bugs I mentioned (lack of FSAA "out of the box" and lack of resolution changes) have 'hacks' that can get around them.

My concerns with Sh4 would be that the 'res hack' will be difficult to do, as the game IS changing resolution, it's just the 3d 'world' that isn't. That's rather different from Sh3 where it didn't change at all, so the Direct3d driver could be over-ridden to increase the res of the entire scene.

Additionally, enabling FSAA in Sh3 at the cost of the 'post processing effects' (bloom)...make the sun, moon, and lights look a little more dull than they should (unrealistically dull in the case of the sun, certainly), but it wasn't a show stopper. Sh4 looks like a COMPLETELY different game with 'post-processing effects' on or of. For Sh3, it was nice. For Sh4, these are a MAJOR FEATURE. (IE., even if they give us the option to TRULY disable these effects to get FSAA...I'm afraid we'd be giving up too much of the game improvements for it to be a realistic trade)

The resolution change only seems to affect the interface, not the actual game graphics.

And I don't know of any game that gives you both bloom effects (or HDR in Source games) and FSAA at the same time. Hopefully the next generation of graphics cards will give us that.

Well, first off, 'bloom' and 'HDR' are not related in any way. 'Bloom' creates an increase of light around light sources (look at the sun in SH3 for an example), and has been used in games for YEARS with no issues by any video cards. Except in SH3, but I think it may not be true 'bloom' (they call it 'software anti-aliasing' in the game manual - but that's just a nonsense term. Doesn't actually have any meaning, and it CERTAINLY isn't what is happening.)

'HDR' expands the dynamic range of colors available. It doesn't make a 'glow' spot, but it makes the bright colors 'brighter' and dark colors 'darker' in relation to each other. There are several different kinds of HDR - Integer-based (in the "Half-Life 2" games, "Dark Messiah", "Day of Defeat", etc), and floating point-based ("Oblivion", "Far Cry", etc). One is obviously substantially more accurate than the other, and can do things like HDR that persists through a translucent window in the game world, or HDR effects on reflected surfaces, etc.

Pretty much any video card that can do Int-HDR can anti-alias it. I'm aware of no cards that cannot. FP16-HDR is another matter. Only nVidia 8-series (or newer) or ATI X1K-series (or newer) cards can anti-alias FP16-HDR.

Finally, we have Sh4's problem - same problem as with 'Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter' and 'Rainbow 6: Vegas'...post processing. Essentially, anti-aliasing is a post-processing effect as it is, although not a "blur filter". With FSAA, the polygon edges of the 3d objects are found and blended into the background to 'soften' the edge (remove the 'sawtooth' jagged edge). In all 3 of these cases, this 'post processing' is preventing the FSAA from being an option (it's not HDR that is the limitation, or you'd be correct and GeForce 8-series or Radeon X1K-series cards WOULD be able to handle it).

I'd point you to these two posts in this thread on SH3 to highlight the differences FSAA makes:
http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/show...1&postcount=64
http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/show...3&postcount=66