little help for a newbie plz thx.

[jiduthie]

Alright so I just bought this game recently and I think its amazing. I downloaded Aces of the Deep off an abandonware site and upon finding that people were still making these kinds of games I just had to see what it would look like in 3D.

I've also found this site and the community manual quite helpful and I'm sure they have at least delayed my first sunken submarine.

I have a question though, according to the timeline on the community manual, the 2nd flotilla should show up in '39 and others, such as the ones in Lorient and Brest, should appear in 1940. However, after starting two careers at the earliest possible date, one of which is currently in early '41 and the other february 1940, I have yet two see any transfer options to other flotillas other than the first and the seventh.

It was kind of my goal, however historically unrealistic, to take a career from 1939 all the way to the end of the war, experiencing all the different boats and a few different flotillas along the way.

Am I missing something here or is there a bug I've stumbled onto? I should mention that the two careers were started on two seperate machines and thus two separate installations of SH3, and that also I'm using the downloaded version of the game.

[Heibges]

Are you playing "stock" SH3? The Flots aren't quite historical.

There are many mods that fix this if you want.

RealUBoat
Tonnage War
GWX

[jiduthie]

Yeah, stock up to 1.4.

I was looking at the GWX mod with some interest but I only have a gig of Ram and my video card shares 128mb, plus I run vista which eats up a good chunk of RAM, so I dont' quite meet the system requirements as stated in the GWX manual. I'd like to try it but the other problem is that I only get two activations from direct2drive for the game so if the modded game doesn't run as well as I'd like, reinstalling SH3 to remove the mod isn't an option, unless I'm mistaken.


Is there a way I could install GWX while backing up the original game files so that I could replace them without reinstalling if the game became too choppy? Or is there another mod that might be less resource intensive that would solve my problem?

[KeptinCranky]

you could probably run gwx (although the graphics card is worrysome)
a reinstall removes the mod. no worries

edit missed the direct2drive thing, am unfamiliar with the concept but I'm guessing you don't want to do a reinstall

[jiduthie]

Thats right. Every time I install the game I'm required to activate it using a key code. They only allow two activations and I've used them both so unless I can email them or something to get another one provided I explain to them the situation, reinstallation is something I'd like to avoide. Perhaps someone with more experience with direct2drive can tell me whether or not this is possible?

Just to give some background I run an amd 2.2 ghz machine with a gig of ram and that shared 128mb geforce 6150 video card, which supposedly "virtualizes" up to 256mb, a claim which seems dubious to me despite a lack of any real knowledge on the subject. According to the utility packaged with SH3 the only recommended requirement I miss is RAM and only by about 100 mb. Currently I experience some slowdown when a torpedo hits a boat especially if everything on deck starts exploding (but not enough to bother me at all) and some when running at high time compression(1024x and sometimes even 512x) near a home port (But again by the time I'm close enough for that to start happening running at 256 speed really isn't a big deal, the speed at which I get close enough to dock is more hampered by spotting a friendly boat every fifteen seconds which reverts the compression back down to 8x.) Other than those issues the game runs without so much as a hiccup.

So I guess my question, other than wondering about direct2drive's policy and some thoughts on how well my machine would handle GWX, is if I copied all the game files to a separate folder, would I be able to replace the modded game files with the copied original files if I wished to uninstall GWX or would that lead to a flash of blue light followed by alot of pain?

I'll repost under the modding folder to see if I can't catch anyone there. Please forgive me if its a giant breach of etiquette.

[Heibges]

Yeah, stock up to 1.4.

I was looking at the GWX mod with some interest but I only have a gig of Ram and my video card shares 128mb, plus I run vista which eats up a good chunk of RAM, so I dont' quite meet the system requirements as stated in the GWX manual. I'd like to try it but the other problem is that I only get two activations from direct2drive for the game so if the modded game doesn't run as well as I'd like, reinstalling SH3 to remove the mod isn't an option, unless I'm mistaken.


Is there a way I could install GWX while backing up the original game files so that I could replace them without reinstalling if the game became too choppy? Or is there another mod that might be less resource intensive that would solve my problem?

RealUboat and Not Your Grandmothers Tonnage War are much less resource intensive than GWX.

[johnno74]

Welcome aboard jiduthie :up:

I have a geforce 7300 gs on my machine at home which is pretty low end. I got the same slowdowns you describe when a torpedo hit, mainly if it was close -or I was looking at the explosion through the binocs (BOOM... oooh pretty :cool: )
At other times my framerate is ok.

Anyway, I installed GWX, and I didn't notice much more slowdown. I do have 2gb of ram tho. IMHO GWX taxes your system more than stock mainly because of the ram requirements rather than the additional graphics. Having said that, 1gb of ram should be ok, as long as you shut everything down first you should be ok. I wouldn't bother going overboard and shutting down tons of services and stuff like some people do, if you look at how much ram they are using its not a lot. Just shut down all open windows, and also stuff like MSN messenger from your tray

I'd suggest looking up out some benchmarks for my card on the web and see how that compares to benchmarks for yours.

With the direct2drive thing, I suggest makeing another copy of SH3 on your hard disk - just copy the entire "SilentHunterIII" directory, its probably in program files unless direct2drive does something different (I don't know much about it)

Open the copy of SH3 you've made, and try and run SH3.exe. If it starts and runs normally, then there is your solution - just install GWX onto that copy, not the main one.

This should work - When I got this laptop I just copied the SH3 folder from my desktop over, and it ran fine - I never actually ran the installer...

If all else fails, I found my copy of SH3 in a bargain bin at the local shop for $25.
Cheers
J

[jiduthie]

Great, I'll give that a shot. Thanks Johnno.

[johnno74]

Great, I'll give that a shot. Thanks Johnno.

No probs. Let us know how you go. You won't regret it, GWX turns SH3 from a great game into an awesome game.