[HELP] Game saves are FUBAR

[jerm138]

2nd patrol started off great. 2 kills while transiting to station, 2 more once I got there.

I go to load the game up today, and right after the black screen that says "Find em, chase em, sink em!" I get a crash to desktop.

I restarted SH4 was able to load up other saves, just not my latest one.
Tried many times and gave up, decided to load my previous save which was 2 kills ago.

So, I'm playing along and I get a contact and save the game (I'm still a noob) just in case. Torpedoes missed, so I figured I'd reload the last save to see what I did wrong. Game loads up, but suddenly it's nighttime (it was daylight when I saved), contact is gone, and so are all my markings on the plot. Also, one of my crew says "torpedo launched" 4 times, even though all my tubes are still full. I've never had this problem before today, and haven't installed any addons in over a week.

What gives?

Is there some sort of technique to saving at the right time, or pitfalls to avoid? Here are some factors I thought might screw up the save process (I'm not basing this on anything other than looking for something out of the ordinary):

-Silent Running on
-Torpedoes in the water at time of save
-Contact too close at time of save

I'm not too worried about it right now since I'm still in "learning mode", but I'm not going to be able to get into a career if the game won't save properly.

Thanks in advance for the help.

BTW, I'm using v1.5 with TMO 1.9 and RSRD. No other addons. WinXP SP3.

[WarlordATF]

Did you mod anything after making that save? I have noticed that when i hear an unusual sound effect (For me its usually the whoosh of a torp launch) after loading its usually because i have tweaked something or im too close to a port when i saved.

Also,This could just be me being paranoid, but whenever i make a save i give the game a minute or so until the hard drive stops chattering before i click resume or exit.

[karamazovnew]

This happened to me too a LOT. Day turns into night, contacts disappear and so on. However it is rare and hasn't happened once in an entire campaign. I saved repeatedly with eels in the water and never had problems. It is best to not save when ships are around. One of the more common problems is that when you load, they automatically spot you, even at 200 feet below. At least be thankful you don't get corrupted saves like we do in SH3.

[Buddahaid]

The past wisdom has been to only save when surfaced and no contacts are present so I usually save after an attack and after contact has been broken. All my saves have been good so far.

[ETR3(SS)]

Another thing I do to fight this problem is I have multiple saves. Usually about 2 or 3. Don't know if this helps or not but I haven't had anymore corrupt saves after following the basics and adding my own rule.

[G2B]

Ran into this problem recently. Did a rampage through a large convoy, saved game prior to engaging enemy, no visual but sound contacts all around rough weather with medium fog. Headed back to base saved prior to entering, not sure if I wanted to end patrol or resupply. Fired up the next night FUBAR CTD on save prior to entering base :damn: Reload to before engaging enemy, just as somebody yelled all stop went load game and tried the prior to base one and it worked :woot: .


Not sure if this will help but worth a try :D

[jerm138]

Thanks for the tips, everyone.

I tried what you said, G2B, but no luck. CTD again. I had high hopes for that one.

Oh well... I'll just restart the patrol from scratch, being careful of when I save, and keep a few different saves so that I don't get set back so far if it happens again.

[jerm138]

Whoah... after that last post, my avatar changed to A-Ganger.

I guess I'll skip the shower tonight.

And tomorrow...

[magic452]

You may want to rethink that in a week or so. :doh:

Magic

[Segwin]

I've been getting the BSOD while trying to load a saved game. The stop code points to a hardware problem but all hardware is OK. Some saves are OK & some are not - nothing I can point to as a suspect.

TMO 1.9
RSRD
RSRD Patch
EAX Sound

[Wilcke]

You can get a corrupted save game. I have corrupted some save games through modding and inadvertantly loading mods.

However through the past years and three independant installs I have yet to corrupt a saved game in any type of situation, in combat, underwater, being hunted by escorts. I have found SH4 to be very resilient in this regard. I make it a point to have a very clean install, minimize loading and unloading of mods, avoid mod soup like an STD and every thing runs smooth as silk.

Happy Hunting!

[G2B]

It was a roll of the dice I guess, perhaps one of those fluke glitches that may allow some FUBAR saves to work :doh:

@ jerm
BTW The heads backing up again after the crew had chili, could ya look into it :timeout:


:D:D:D

[jerm138]

BTW The heads backing up again after the crew had chili, could ya look into it

One of the funniest things I've ever heard on the boat:

It was sliders day or chili day or something... so the san tanks were getting full and everyone was in the head. An A-ganger came in the head and in his deep southern drawl yelled out "y'all better pinch it off 'cause I'm pressurizing the sh!##er in about 42 seconds!!"

Of course, I also have the obligatory stories about drunk sailors walking past the warning sign that says "sanitary tanks pressurized - Head Secured" and then blowing sanitaries into their face when they went to flush. It's usually funny, but one guy ended up going to the hospital in Yokosuka.

[G2B]

Ouch..... Yeah it's usually funny till someone loses something. But I would hate to explain to the Doc how that got stuck in his nose :har:

[jerm138]

it wasn't the nose that got him the trip to the hospital...

it was the stuff under his eyelids

[jerm138]

AAAAAAAAGHHH!!!

It's doing it again :damn:

I re-started my 2nd patrol, alternating between 3 seperate save files and being very careful to only save when I'm on the surface and there is nothing but wide open water around.

Things were going great until I tracked down a merchant, fired all torpedoes and missed, then decided to go back and re-try it.

I loaded the most recent save, which was about 1 hour game-time before picking up the contact on sonar. When I loaded it, I had the exact same symptoms... all my map markings were gone, and I heard "torpedo in the water" about 4 times.

I wasn't worried because I had been keeping 3 consecutive save files... I figured I'd load the next game save in my list...
Same thing happened... :-?

I'm afraid to load the 3rd one for fear of losing my whole patrol AGAIN.

Now I'm starting to think that the problem has less to do with when I save the game, and more to do with when I LOAD a game.

The common thread that I'm noticing is that I fire torpedoes, miss, then hurriedly try to reload a save file (and torpedoes are still in the water.) I think something's getting mixed up in the bunch, and it ends up corrupting the game save that I load.

This is frustrating the hell out of me. I REALLY like this game, but if I can't save/load games like any other game I play, it could be a dealbreaker for me.:wah:

[G2B]

Check your tubes and see if the fish are gone, if external camera is on check for torp wakes. I've had this issue a couple times also :shifty:

[jerm138]

When I load the game and hear "torpedo in the water" several times, all my tubes are still loaded, and nothing is missing from reserves.

There are no wakes either.

[G2B]

Let it play out for a minute, sounds like a voice glitch carried over from previous. If everything seems o.k. create another save point and exit then reload new save.

[magic452]

On some occasions I get the torpedo launch thing, I just ignore it and play on.
It doesn't seen to affect play any.

Bad saves and CTD are sometimes caused by things outside the game.
Be sure to turn off anti virus, auto up dates, etc. I turn off my hi-speed connection when I play.

I was playing with FOTRS the other day and my connection was on and I had a similar thing with my save, contact and map markings gone. Never had this before playing TMO 1.63.

Edit What I did was just to play the save and very soon the contact did show up right where it was before. I just played the thing out and my next saves were fine. Wasn't in career mode so it wasn't too important. It was like the game went back in time about 10 minutes.

Use SH4.exe not the default GU.exe.

Good luck.

Magic

[HMCS]

I'm having this identical problem; it was happening with RFB as well - so something definitely is wrong. I played the game for months without this happening, and now it is happening constantly. Very frustrating. I load the game, exit and reload it and it crashes at the "FIND 'EM...." screen.

[Armistead]

we all get the torpedo launch sound over and over every now and then, can't explain it, but it's been around forever. Most of us get the swoosh sound as we come into the game and a big steam bubble. These are rare, so I don't worry about it.

I also noticed my waypoints are gone when I reload a save and I'm at zero speed, but it's never effected my gameplay or changed anything, I just reset them however and the game plays fine.

Since the beginning these little bugs have been apart of the game, but never corrupted my saves, just when you reload a save, some things are reset back to standard. If you notice, your radar will set back, your torp tubes are reset, waypoints, ect...just part of the game and things reset with a new load.

If this is all that is wrong, your saves aren't corrupt and you should be able to play fine. If they won't load, you have some file residue somewhere that is fubar, course you know the other obvious issue, bet that solves your problem.

[HMCS]

Well, saves are definitely being corrupted because they don't load @ all, and ctd happens. I am going to try a couple of things and will share what I learn.

[Kenneth]

Well, saves are definitely being corrupted because they don't load @ all, and ctd happens. I am going to try a couple of things and will share what I learn.


Have you solved your load saved game crash yet? I have SH4 version 1.4 on a brand new windows 7 PC and have not been able to finish a patrol yet. All my saved games CTD.

[THE_MASK]

What mods are you guys using ?

[heartc]

From the loading screens ("Find 'em, chase 'em...") I'd wager they run Trigger Maru. But it will be interesting to hear what *they* think they run. ;)

Also, I have to say this: I wouldn't be surprised if the installs with all the additional little or big details would become too bloated for the engine / program to handle when you add mods, especially several on top of each other (even when they are compatible). Although I was using Trigger Maru before and now RFB and never had a problem with my savegames, I very well remember SHIII: Everybody says that SHIII was prone to crash on loading saves and you should never ever save under the circumstances already discussed here (under water, near a contact etc.), while in fact I cannot confirm that. I *never* had a corrupted savegame in SHIII vanilla, but as soon as I loaded up a big mod (first with NYGM), I started having them occasionally.
So, the game is not really to blame when it can't handle things it maybe was never expected to do. I think the only reason why SHIV is usually not crashing when modded is because its save / loading routine seems to be much improved over SHIII (seems a lot faster and efficient) so there's probably more "room" here to handle additional data / details than in SHIII.

And just to avoid any handwringing here: This is not an attempt to diss the mods. The modders are doing a superb job and I wouldn't want to run SHIV without mods. Just keep in mind that the engine or code is limited in what it can do, and where exactly those limits are is probably mostly guesswork for people who don't have the source code.
Oh, and follow the install instruction for the mods to a T. I think it's amazing how many people are surprised when they learn they cannot run Trigger Maru on top of RFB or something.

[Jan Kyster]

Running SH IV on XP until some months ago, Win7 since. Always running smooth, troublefree and never have had a corrupt/bad save - until a month ago.
Same issues as above - all saves were corrupt and causing SH IV to CTD.

Next day afterthoughts concluded, that the only thing changed on my system was installing DirectX9 (needed for racesim)... unable to confirm DirectX change may have that effect (don't want to install all again :D ), but since then no problem at all.

Just a thought... :88)

[Fincuan]

As you know SH4 doesn't support addons and the only way to change things is to overwrite original data, so "layering" several mods doesn't bloat things by default. If several mods contain the same file the mod that's enabled last in JSGME will have its file in the game's data folders and that's it, no extra.

What comes to savegames there's on surefire way to make sure they work: After enabling or disabling mods, no matter how small or how irrelevant, delete your "My Documents/SH4"-folder(default location). Sometimes it's just redundant and not needed, but unless you 100% know what you're doing the safest way to avoid trouble is to get rid of it. You'll lose all your saves and settings in the process, but the game will recreate anything it needs the next time it's run. I can only speak for myself, but I've been doing this since day one, saving while in contact, while underwater, at port etc and never-ever had a corrupt savegame.

[magic452]

@ Kenneth Welcome to the boat mate. :salute:

You might try a few things
Install the game in a different folder not the Programs Files folder.
Run as administrator.
Use the SH4.exe to launch the game not the default GU.exe
I only save when I'm on the Navigation map and the game is paused.
It works for me.

Hope this helps

Magic

[tramazi]

Strange things for me on saving too but not in campaign mode. Weather seems to reseed but contacts etc stay the same.

[green_abobo]

mods i am using currently and having problems with:

RFB_2.0
RFB_2.0_Patch_23April2010
Hydrophone Line Extended

SH4 gold (DVD) 1.5-windows xp

same thing. loading saves=CTD. :damn:

if i don't run into any contacts (like on my way from port to objective) saves load fine.

if i sink a few ships, or miss with 'torps,save,load=death. never over-writing previous saves either.always new ones.

on the flip side,for the hell of it,i tried a uboat campaign with RFB 2.0,happy to report (so far) that all saves are functioning properly.

am using jsgmeg and multi SH4 for different mods/campaigns sides.

tried posting in RFB 2.0 thread. no one wants to hear about it. :nope: and i really do like the mod and wish everything worked as close to perfect as possible.

i refuse to play stock. it insults my intelligence on many different levels.

so it's either this, or i play operation monsoon. i'm not a TMO kinda guy i guess.

any suggestions are appreciated as always.