Deadly searchlights

[Cezbor]

Hi everyone,
I have to confess I don't know what to do. I've experienced that problem many times before but now it became really anoying. Everytime ships activate their searchlights (more than 4 ships) and I'm in periscope view or in external view I experience fatal FPS drop, and if I'm not fast enough to press F2 or any key which takes me inside my boat, it ends with CTD.
More horrible, after CTD all my saves made in last patrol are seemed to be in some way corrupted and they don't load anymore (those saves were not overwritten before). I've lost already third patrol (one by one) in this particular way and almost everytime in the end of patrol (25) after sunk a respectful tonnage:damn: .....:damn: . I'm afraid I don't have enough strenght to try it for the fourth time:nope: .

My questions are:hmm: :
- may editing searchlights help in this case?,
- if so, what specific parameters and values in searchlights zone and sim files have to be edited ?,
- could it help to overwrite those files by stock SH3 files ? ("the problem " was noticed after GWX 2.0 implementation),
- is there any clue for recovering my inpatrol saves ?

Thank you in advance for any help.:yep:

[Contact]

I don't think the problem u have is the reason of searchlights. My advice to you: reinstall the game completely clean, try single missions with attacks on convoy at night and see what happens.

If you think reinstall is not necessary you might be wrong.

Once I was getting CTD's while gramaphone was switching from one track to another, and simlply reinstalled whole SH3 from scratch, BUT it did not solved the problem. So I had to reinstall OS completely to be able to play again smoothly..

So I came up with the conclusion that some of my recently installed additional cyrilic fonts probably were causing CTDs, since after reinstall of OS I haven't installed them on purpose to see am I right to guess where the snake lies :)

[Cezbor]

(...) If you think reinstall is not necessary you might be wrong (...).

Well, it may be necessary, but up to now, I think "the snake" is hidden in my graphic card settings (fatal FPS drop) so I'll try to ajust some of them one day. But I love my high res ingame graphic (with full settings on) so first I thought I would try different aproach:ping: . Maybe reducing some searchlight effects parameters will improve FPS to degree it won't couse CTD:hmm: without necessity to abandon current VC settings. So reinstall is the last option to be cosidered at this stage. As I remember searchligts were improved by member of GWX team. So ..... it can be "improve" once again. All I need is a a ray of hope (in form of a good advice):yep: .
CTD problem was popular at the forum last month, so I red all posts very carefuly.
I do have some clues to solve my problem, but as I mentioned before maybe different aproach is more suitable:hmm: .

Thank you for quick response Contact:up:

[Madox58]

(...) If you think reinstall is not necessary you might be wrong (...).

Well, it may be necessary, but up to now, I think "the snake" is hidden in my graphic card settings (fatal FPS drop) so I'll try to ajust some of them one day. But I love my high res ingame graphic (with full settings on) so first I thought I would try different aproach:ping: . Maybe reducing some searchlight effects parameters will improve FPS to degree it won't couse CTD:hmm: without necessity to abandon current VC settings. So reinstall is the last option to be cosidered at this stage. As I remember searchligts were improved by member of GWX team. So ..... it can be "improve" once again. All I need is a a ray of hope (in form of a good advice):yep: .
CTD problem was popular at the forum last month, so I red all posts very carefuly.
I do have some clues to solve my problem, but as I mentioned before maybe different aproach is more suitable:hmm: .

Thank you for quick response Contact:up:

There were only 2 changes to the searchlites.
None of which are being used in your situation.
1. was the addition of proper leigh lites.
which only aircraft have.
2. was the Air Raid Siren which ships don't use in GWX.

And the K-Ship has it's own Spot light not called from the search lite files.
If the lites are causeing CTDs?
There are other issues that are the main problem.

[h.sie]

i had drastic frame rate stuttering, too, only during nights with many enemy searchlights on. but i had no CTD. framerate sank from 70fps to 5fps for some seconds.

athlon X2 6000+ / 4G RAM / ATI HD3870 / WinXP 32bit

tried newer drivers, omega drivers, newer DirectX, reinstalled my XP - nothing helped.

then I tested the same game situation (savegame) on vista 64 bit (although i don't like vista).

the result: no frame rate issues anymore!!! but until now i do not know the reason for that. perhaps slightly different drivers for 64 bit or a different implementation of directX for 64bit vista? but the game runs well now.

my tip, if nothing else helps: try vista 64.

[Cezbor]

(...) If you think reinstall is not necessary you might be wrong (...).

Well, it may be necessary, but up to now, I think "the snake" is hidden in my graphic card settings (fatal FPS drop) so I'll try to ajust some of them one day. But I love my high res ingame graphic (with full settings on) so first I thought I would try different aproach:ping: . Maybe reducing some searchlight effects parameters will improve FPS to degree it won't couse CTD:hmm: without necessity to abandon current VC settings. So reinstall is the last option to be cosidered at this stage. As I remember searchligts were improved by member of GWX team. So ..... it can be "improve" once again. All I need is a a ray of hope (in form of a good advice):yep: .
CTD problem was popular at the forum last month, so I red all posts very carefuly.
I do have some clues to solve my problem, but as I mentioned before maybe different aproach is more suitable:hmm: .

Thank you for quick response Contact:up:

There were only 2 changes to the searchlites.
None of which are being used in your situation.
1. was the addition of proper leigh lites.
which only aircraft have.
2. was the Air Raid Siren which ships don't use in GWX.

And the K-Ship has it's own Spot light not called from the search lite files.
If the lites are causeing CTDs?
There are other issues that are the main problem.


So, ..... it seems like a video card problem after all. That means no space for "improvement" - from software point of view:-? . What a pity.....:roll: . Bye, bye beautiful ingame graphics :rotfl: .......:rotfl:

Thank you for guiding light privateer:up: