Have you ever experienced the save game bug?

[Captain Nemo]

As this is a fairly hot topic at the moment, I thought it would be interesting to find out how many on the forum have had this bug.

Thanks for voting.

Nemo

[kiwi_2005]

Once. When the game just came out to be exact about 3months into the game i lost my whole career. I never had the bug again although now i dont play SH3 everynight like i use too.

[mcf1]

Never had that bug

[ichso]

Two or three times at all perhaps.

So I'm at the very low end of the occasionally-fraction ;)

[Voyd]

I don't even save anymore...followed all of the tips and tricks, and about 65% of the time, I get a botched save (days worth of lost gameplay). I just leave SH3 loaded until I finish my patrol. I have a fairly decent system, so I am able to multi task.

Happy Hunting,

Voyd

[Hylarion]

Lost my career once already (it's still my first :-?).
I used the trick posted by I don't remember who (add an x to the career's name in My Documents/SH3/Career folder) and it worked... Kaleun Karl-Heinz Voghel rose back from oblivion...

[Jimbuna]

Lost my career once already (it's still my first :-?).
I used the trick posted by I don't remember who (add an x to the career's name in My Documents/SH3/Career folder) and it worked... Kaleun Karl-Heinz Voghel rose back from oblivion...

Something I've posted on numerous occasions ;)


Two or three times at all perhaps.

So I'm at the very low end of the occasionally-fraction

Ditto http://img522.imageshack.us/img522/9708/piratebf4.gif (http://imageshack.us)

[Graf Paper]

I have yet to suffer the dreaded "save game bug" and I count my blessings for every time it hasn't reared its ugly head.

The following info was dredged up from a dusty corner of my brain, so I cannot vouch 100% for its veracity:

In another thread, I was just telling Brag that I vaguely recall SH3 doesn't play nice with some anti-virus programs' resident background monitoring and this can cause CTDs and corrupted saves due to the AV prog having to override every read/write access to check and make sure it's not a virus trying to infect your system.

That includes when SH3 writes a saved game to the hard drive because the game insists that it has total control of the system.

So try shutting down your anti-virus while playing SH3 and see if that helps. You might have to use Window's Task Manager to kill the AV resident monitor completely. Sometimes the core executables are still running in memory despite clicking on the icon in the System Tray and selecting "Close" or "Exit" or whatever.

[predavolk]

Lost my career due to deleting Player, and have had 3 or so failed saves.

[difool2]

Someone needs to define what the bug is, exactly...

If they are referring to the one where saving when submerged causes all sorts of problems upon reloading (incl. CTDs and uncontrollable crash dives), nope, never seen that either despite a now 11-patrol career in an XXI, with every single save at 15-19m.

[Keelbuster]

50% of my saves crash the game to desktop upon loading. I'm suspicious of the 'save and exit' command. Yet, sometimes it works.... I make three saves (in different places - i.e., travel a bit, then save again) on the surface with no one nearby before quiting. It is _annoying_.

[papa_smurf]

Only had it happen to me once. (So far...........)

[Captain Nemo]

Someone needs to define what the bug is, exactly...

If they are referring to the one where saving when submerged causes all sorts of problems upon reloading (incl. CTDs and uncontrollable crash dives), nope, never seen that either despite a now 11-patrol career in an XXI, with every single save at 15-19m.

I would define it as saved games that fail to reload successfully. But I think the uncontrollable crash dive has been attributed to a weather mod so perhaps this shouldn't be included.

Nemo

[Sigurd]

I've had the bug happen a few times, but its a rare occurance. When it does get buggy, I usually am able to restore the "In Dock after Mission" save and it'll work again. I've only had two bad bugs. One borked my career (which was nice, as I needed to update to GWX 2.0 anyway), the other one was more of an annoyance (when I loaded, my U-Boat was kilometers away from where I saved, and it was beached).

It would be less of an annoyance if SH3 didnt take so long to load though.

[Kaleu. Jochen Mohr]

yes, a lot of times.... even had to start 3 careers from scratch :shifty:

[tmdgm]

Lost my career once already (it's still my first :-?).
I used the trick posted by I don't remember who (add an x to the career's name in My Documents/SH3/Career folder) and it worked... Kaleun Karl-Heinz Voghel rose back from oblivion...

Wait, what is this? Never heard of it. Add an x to the folder name or file name?

[Hylarion]

Lost my career once already (it's still my first :-?).
I used the trick posted by I don't remember who (add an x to the career's name in My Documents/SH3/Career folder) and it worked... Kaleun Karl-Heinz Voghel rose back from oblivion...
Wait, what is this? Never heard of it. Add an x to the folder name or file name?

As jimbuna reminded me earlier on this post, look at this:
http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showpost.php?p=793082&postcount=13

Should do the trick.

Hylarion.

[TS13]

It's only happened to me once, when I saved (surfaced) near a convoy (within 30 km of it). Fortunately, the "in dock after mission" save worked, and so I didn't lose my career.

Since that happened, I changed the way I save while shadowing a convoy. I make sure I am at leat 40km away from it when I save (if I cannot lock on any ship with the "L" key, then it's safe).

[Adriatico]

Lost my career few times...
I used the trick posted by "wolf-pack" (add an x to the career's name in My Documents/SH3/Career folder) and it worked...
:up:

[danlisa]

Never.

Unless the failure of my career loading was user created.;)

[Jimbuna]

LOL :lol:

[SmokinTep]

Luckily I have never encountered this...............:up:

[Brag]

It should be called the Balz Bug :damn:

[Avatar]

I have had this happen to me 3 times, in the less than a year time I've been playing.
Once I did a save then a few moments later I did save and exit and there was a crash the next time I loaded the game.
I have never saved under water and sometimes I save close, within 30km, to a convoy and havent experienced any crashes. It just rarely occurs.

[Danelov]

Yes, sometimes , that´s like dud torpedos(maybe explode, maybe not) or a torpedo hit in the small tanker(Maybe sink, maybe not).I muss confess, when the saved game is in the reload process, I am a little nervous, sometimes, reload the saved game is like the lottery.

[Brag]

I found that the last game save was not listed in Chronological order. I was in port before mission on played on 31 March and the at sea save was listed as on 29 March.

So it seems like the game saves into the wrong place and that causes the crash.

[GuntherHerman]

Happen to me fairly often. :( hen it does, I don't lose the career, though. I just have to end the patrol before the crash happens. Cuts me out of renown for that patrol, but better than having to start all over...

[CptGrayWolf]

Yup sometimes. Had ships disappear from convoys and just recently CTD when trying to load a career. I never could get that career back. :damn:
Then again my SHIII is modded, so maybe I have no right to complain. But I know people usuing a clean stock 1.4b also have problems. So who's to blame? :nope:

[Blue_Ninja63]

Only once and it happened using GWX 2.0. I saved right after I sank a vessel so now I just move on for a couple of hours in TC so I'm far enough away from the location then save. No problems since.

[marees62]

So far I guess I've been lucky. Haven't lost any gamesto that bug. I've even saved while submerged and didn't have any problems. Just a bit of screen shake at first, but no uncontrolled dives. Here's hoping I don't run into it. I'd be slightly p-o'd if it did happen.

[CptGrayWolf]

Hey marees62, salut montreal! :up:

[marees62]

Salut CaptGreyWolf...Go HABS GO!!!:rock:

[Blue_Ninja63]

Oh Ya!! Go Canadiens:up:

[predavolk]

****, it just happened to me! After spending hours in stormy weather, taking on convoys, tracking lone merchants by sonar, I ended up making a save within 50km of a coast and a boat. I don't know for sure, but I'm pretty confident that's what killed it. The saves after it so far are corrupted, I'm working my way back to a safe save. It just really sucks to lose 4 hours of play and 25K of hard earned tonnage. :down: :damn:

It's a testament to the fun of this game that I don't take it's CD out, cover it with ebola, and mail it to the developers! Even more than that, I actually want to go back and play it some more! :o

[Blue_Ninja63]

****, it just happened to me! After spending hours in stormy weather, taking on convoys, tracking lone merchants by sonar, I ended up making a save within 50km of a coast and a boat. I don't know for sure, but I'm pretty confident that's what killed it.

If you are using GWX 2.0 that is definitely what happened. I read in the GWX 2.0 manual that you cannot save a game within 50km of a ship or near a location where you just sunk a vessel as I found out from my own experience.

[Captain Nemo]

****, it just happened to me! After spending hours in stormy weather, taking on convoys, tracking lone merchants by sonar, I ended up making a save within 50km of a coast and a boat. I don't know for sure, but I'm pretty confident that's what killed it.

If you are using GWX 2.0 that is definitely what happened. I read in the GWX 2.0 manual that you cannot save a game within 50km of a ship or near a location where you just sunk a vessel as I found out from my own experience.

If I'm not mistaken this is not GWX specific. This advice is also applicable to stock SH3. Having said that, I have saved close to ships and the coast, surfaced and submerged without problems, just lucky I suppose.

Nemo

[HunterICX]

Lucky I have never experienced this bug.

HunterICX

[Blue_Ninja63]

****, it just happened to me! After spending hours in stormy weather, taking on convoys, tracking lone merchants by sonar, I ended up making a save within 50km of a coast and a boat. I don't know for sure, but I'm pretty confident that's what killed it.
If you are using GWX 2.0 that is definitely what happened. I read in the GWX 2.0 manual that you cannot save a game within 50km of a ship or near a location where you just sunk a vessel as I found out from my own experience.
If I'm not mistaken this is not GWX specific. This advice is also applicable to stock SH3. Having said that, I have saved close to ships and the coast, surfaced and submerged without problems, just lucky I suppose.

Nemo

Thanks for the info, I didn't realize it was a stock issue as well as I never had a problem saving when I played stock way back when.

[Jimbuna]

****, it just happened to me! After spending hours in stormy weather, taking on convoys, tracking lone merchants by sonar, I ended up making a save within 50km of a coast and a boat. I don't know for sure, but I'm pretty confident that's what killed it.
If you are using GWX 2.0 that is definitely what happened. I read in the GWX 2.0 manual that you cannot save a game within 50km of a ship or near a location where you just sunk a vessel as I found out from my own experience.
If I'm not mistaken this is not GWX specific. This advice is also applicable to stock SH3. Having said that, I have saved close to ships and the coast, surfaced and submerged without problems, just lucky I suppose.

Nemo

Thanks for the info, I didn't realize it was a stock issue as well as I never had a problem saving when I played stock way back when.

At best it can be called an interrmittent fault, but the risks are clearly there http://img522.imageshack.us/img522/9708/piratebf4.gif (http://imageshack.us)

[predavolk]

Yes, I've saved close to ships and not lost anything before. I think it's safe to say it's a somewhat random fault that is related to being close to ships and/or the shore. It isn't a perfect correlation, but I'll take it from others' experiences and my own that it is somewhat correlated. What is for certain, is that it's annoying as hell. :-?

Oh well, back to the sinking grounds...

[trongey]

I've had a few save-game crashes. I always save on the surface at TC1. If there were ships nearby I wasn't aware of them. I haven't had any crashes since I cut back on the number of processes I was killing with FS Autostart.

Tony

AMD Sempron 2800+
2x512mb generic pc3200 dual channel
GeForce 6200 128mb
WinXP SP2
D2D version of SHIII loaded on SATA drive; v1.4 with GWX2

[CptGrayWolf]

I think it's a bloody shame that in 2005 I paid for a game that might not save properly...anyways.

[msalama]

Aye, has happened to me occasionally too. This is what I did the last time:

The .isf and .sav files (in [driveletter]:\Documents and Settings\XXX\My Documents\SH3\data\cfg\Careers\YYY\[patrolnumber]) are the ones that seem to go bad when a save goes belly up. So what one wants to do then is to replace those with files from an earlier save, and then after the patrol edit the .cfg files in the main career directory to get the tonnage and renown correct! Tedious c**p, I know, but this I've found at least lets you continue in a pinch...

[predavolk]

Aye, has happened to me occasionally too. This is what I did the last time:

The .isf and .sav files (in [driveletter]:\Documents and Settings\XXX\My Documents\SH3\data\cfg\Careers\YYY\[patrolnumber]) are the ones that seem to go bad when a save goes belly up. So what one wants to do then is to replace those with files from an earlier save, and then after the patrol edit the .cfg files in the main career directory to get the tonnage and renown correct! Tedious c**p, I know, but this I've found at least lets you continue in a pinch...

Thanks for sharing that work-around. I'm curious what other people do after the crash. Personally, I go back to a previous save that I'm confident about. It means losing the boats that I sank, which is frustrating, but I can always sink more, right? I'll just chalk the other ones that got away to "training" missions that I'm remembering.:-? I'm just disappointed that I'm losing some, IMO, really skilled kills against lone or convoy merchants, made by sonar tracking, then surface attacks, in 3 days of absolutely awful weather. Those are so satisfying that it's hard to let them go. Oh well.

[STEED]

NEVER.........:p

Kiss my ass. ;)

[Antiacus]

Just had my first non-submerged save error.

I was shelling a small tanker at about 700m. He was all aflame when i saved yet the crew hadn't called out "she's going down" yet.

Upon loading i go about 2-3 minutes until the screen goes black and CTD's.

I've tried using time compression, steaming away from the tanker, everything and it still crashes.

I guess i'll try hitting escape and "docking" (i don't like to do this, but this is an excusable exception). Then hopefully when i start my next patrol all will go okay.

I just wish i knew what i did wrong so i don't repeat it.

[subvers4]

I have never experienced, yet, the save problem, though I have only been playing for a couple of months. I have read about this problem on here, and have so far managed to avoid it. The rules i try to follow are.
1. Never save when submerged.
2. Never save when involved in action.
3. I always try to avoid saving when in sight of land, especially ports.
I tend to always try to save before going into action, just in case I get called away, or I don't have time to see it through, ( time can really fly when the adrenaline is pumping :rock:, and you can easily forget you have to get up for work in the morning ! ). So far this has always worked for me, on GWX 1.03, I am just starting a new career in GWX 2, hopefully my luck with this will stay with me .