SH3 commander problems

[orangehat44]

We'll they arnt really problems persay, but I am having non conformities with certain things with SH commander. I create a captain in sh3 cmdr and load it and the commander profile is in the game and sh3 commander does keep track of it but a list of things dont occur:

1.) it is suppose to skip the intro movie but it still plays everytime I load.
2.) This is the big one, I have set cmdr to use no fatigue model, yet I am still getting to points when my effiecinecy drops to a certain point I cant operate compartments, so it appears I am getting effected by fatigue.
3.) if I set a uboat number in commander I get a different one in the game.

There may be other small ones I cant think of atm but I do get these inconsistencys and dont understand why. I followed the directions to the t. I do have a steam version of the game I dont know if this affects the mods I install and could cause a problem. I still love commander for the things it does do when I tell it too, but it would be great if I could get it to do everything its suppose to. Especially the fatigue, I was thinking of playing a campaign without fatigue to learn the ropes then another time do one with fatigue on. Problem is when I assume fatigue is turned off it usually gets to a very unopportun time for me to realize it is off like when Im tryin to evade and realize Im not moving because my engine crews are exhausted.

Any tips?
Thanks

[Sailor Steve]

For (2) I understand that you have to do something else, but I don't know what it is.:oops:

As for (1) and (3), did you click 'Apply' before you clicked 'OK'? I know it's silly, but those things both work fine for me so I thought I'd start there.

[frau kaleun]

Another silly question - you are loading SH3 via the Commander interface every time you play, right?

[orangehat44]

Pretty sure I hit apply and when I go back into options they are already checked and such indicating they are selected. So thats why I was wondering if it had anything to do with steam. Ive seen a few posts where people have said to turn off auto updating, wish I would have seen those before I installed all mods and such. I guess I may have to delete and reinstall all the games and mods and start fresh. Not a huge problem as Ive only gotten through a few months on each campaign but still a pain in the butt.

[orangehat44]

yup frau, I click the check mark and cmdr loads the game. its seems half the stuff loads with sh3 but some of the settings dont. like my new profile name will load and cmdr will keep track of it but if I select u-34 i was in game in u-53. so some of my settings dont transfer.

[frau kaleun]

yup frau, I click the check mark and cmdr loads the game. its seems half the stuff loads with sh3 but some of the settings dont. like my new profile name will load and cmdr will keep track of it but if I select u-34 i was in game in u-53. so some of my settings dont transfer.

Do you have it set to rollback all changes made each time you exit the game? I know sometimes not rolling back Commander and then making other modifications to the game files can have odd effects.

As for it being an issue with the Steam version of the game, maybe other Steam users can advise. You might also do a search of the forum with keyword 'steam' and see if you turn up anything that others have already posted about.

[flakmonkey]

this only applies if your using vista, but its sounds like you went and did something silly like installing sh3 into the program files folder! (good old windows eh, have a folder called program files and make it break any programs you put in it!)
The folder permissions in vista may be preventing sh3 commander from actually altering any of the game files.
If this is the case the best solution would be to re-install sh3 outside the program files folder, or alternativly set sh3 commander to run as administrator.

[orangehat44]

I am using vista, I dont know how to install it outside the program folder, because steam installs it in the programs folder. Do I have to remove steam and install steam outside the program folder? Stupid computers.

[JScones]

I followed the directions to the t.
Not according to page 3 of the SH3 Commander User Guide (http://www.users.on.net/~jscones/software/documentation/SH3CUG.pdf), or the squillions of posts in this very forum discussing Vista installation of SH3. ;)

Microsoft Vista Users
If you intend running SH3 Commander on Microsoft Vista and have installed Silent Hunter III in your Program Files folder, then you must run SH3 Commander as administrator. To do this, after installing SH3 Commander, right-click on SH3Cmdr.exe in Windows Explorer and select "Run as Administrator". Alternatively, right-click on SH3Cmdr.exe and select "Properties". In the properties window select the "Compatibility" tab and check "Run this program in compatibility mode" and in the box below select "Windows XP (Service Pack 2)". In some instances you may need to apply both solutions.

The Help file is your friend. :yep:

There's also posts here regarding installing the Steam version outside of Program Files. Check out the Search function top right of screen...it should help you. ;)

BTW, this "problem" is not limited to SH3Cmdr - by installing SH3 into Program Files, EVERY modification you install under the standard privileges will be diverted to your VirtualStore folder, left to the whim of Vista to deal with. Google "UAC" for a better understanding of what your system is doing with your files.

[orangehat44]

jscones thank you for gracing me with a response. I will recheck that I ran as administartor, but I am more than positive I set compatability to xp. I cant find the thread about installing steam games outside the programs file and I did a search last night. I will check again as I assume that is probably my problem. If some one could direct me to that post that would be greatly apprecieated but I will look again. I did read your help file, I've seen the pain lurker has gone through with OM and others and read all teh install files for the mods I put on. I only post a question after I be sure I install it right.

[Threesixtyci]

I've only did the following for the older interface of Steam, not current version... But I suspect that it'll still work. the main purpose of doing the following is to not have to redownload your games.

Make a copy of (or move) the "steamapps" folder (located inside the Steam folder). Depending on how many games you have installed, can take hours to "copy" that folder somewhere else or minutes (moving them should be instant, though.) It Doesn't matter where you copy/move it to, you're just doing this so your games don't uninstall when you uninstall Steam.

Then uninstall Steam with add/remove programs.

Reinstall Steam, but install it anywhere outside the program files directory. It should prompt you to where you want to install steam... that's when you should choose something other than where it defaults too. Which is likely, "C:\program files\steam". If you can afford one buy yourself a 1 terra-byte Harddrive and install it on that. (those steam games can take a lot of space. I installed Steam on a 160GB HDD about 8 months ago, and I've already have more games than I can put on that HDD.)

Log-in and let it self-update and whatever else.

Exit Steam...

copy/move your steamapps folder back into the freshly installed Steam directory (which should not be in program files).

Log back into steam and download your games.

Steam should quickly verify that the programs are already in their proper place and will allow you to play them completely, bypassing the actual downloading of them. As for your saved games, most games put saves in the my documents folder, so the new install shouldn't have any problems finding them. And if the game saves the game in it's own directory... it would be in the "steamapps" folder

------------

If you care about keeping hours played for each game and such... i don't know where that stuff is stored. My guess, is that it's stored on the actual server, but I don't really know.

The instructions of the above were really for the older interface, which didn't really keep track of that stuff. I suggest you copy the whole Steam directory, before uninstalling it and then finding out where those stats are saved via trial and error of moving stuff back over or asking around, if they do disappear, and you care about that stuff.... But if that stuff is stored on the server, then it's worry over nothing.

[orangehat44]

well the transfering steam worked, now to see if it solves my commander issues. But getting steam games out of the programs(86x) folder should help me in general and I love you for that help! I owe you a beer.:()1:

[JScones]

If you don't install SH3Cmdr into Program Files you should be OK.

[danzig70]

Anybody have problems with the gramophone when using SH3 Commander? I cant seem to play audio files I have placed in the gramophone folder.

[frau kaleun]

If you go to your Commander install and look at the folders, there's a Date folder with many subfolders, some of which include a data\Sound\Gramophone folder. There are sound files in those directories that will be written into your game's Gramophone folder according to the date you are at in your current career.

The files are all called Radio.wav and they are recordings of radio broadcasts relevant to certain date ranges, that's why they're in the Date subfolders and inserted into the game accordingly.

If you are using numbered filenames in your Gram folder to create an in-game "playlist," like I did, it may be that the unnumbered file from Commander is interfering with that by "confusing" the game somehow. (IIRC GWX puts 20+ numbered files into the Gram folder when you install it, so if you're using GWX and haven't altered the Gram files that came with it, you would still have those in there at the very least.)

Also it's a .wav file, and the general consensus seems to be that .ogg files or .mp3 files are much less problematic and that one or the other should be used in the Gram folder but not both. Most people seem to feel that .ogg files are likely to cause fewer problems, altho on my system I have not found this to be the case.

Most of the trouble I had involved certain spots in the "line-up" being completely skipped over (regardless of what file was there) or else the game getting hung up when it seemed to be trying to locate the next track to play and just freezing up and crashing. I will say that the game didn't seem to have any trouble playing the .wav file that Commander added when I cleared everything else out, but when I had other files in there that I added myself I always had trouble.

I was experimenting with converting the Radio.wav files to one of the other formats, renaming them with a numbered filename in order to fit them into my "playlist" when they were added via Commander, and finally with just deleting them from the Commander files completely.

Unfortunately I got so involved in testing out other mods and resolving other unrelated issues that I haven't gotten back to playing around with my in-game music yet, so I can't say for sure which solution is going to be one that works for me.

Anyway, Commander does add that file to your Gram folder so if you find you're having issues only when starting via Commander, that would be the first thing I'd look at.

[danzig70]

If you go to your Commander install and look at the folders, there's a Date folder with many subfolders, some of which include a data\Sound\Gramophone folder. There are sound files in those directories that will be written into your game's Gramophone folder according to the date you are at in your current career.

The files are all called Radio.wav and they are recordings of radio broadcasts relevant to certain date ranges, that's why they're in the Date subfolders and inserted into the game accordingly.

If you are using numbered filenames in your Gram folder to create an in-game "playlist," like I did, it may be that the unnumbered file from Commander is interfering with that by "confusing" the game somehow. (IIRC GWX puts 20+ numbered files into the Gram folder when you install it, so if you're using GWX and haven't altered the Gram files that came with it, you would still have those in there at the very least.)

Most of the trouble I had involved certain spots in the "line-up" being completely skipped over (regardless of what file was there) or else the game getting hung up when it seemed to be trying to locate the next track to play and just freezing up and crashing. I will say that the game didn't seem to have any trouble playing the .wav file that Commander added when I cleared everything else out, but when I had other files in there that I added myself I always had trouble.

I was experimenting with converting the Radio.wav files to one of the other formats, renaming them with a numbered filename in order to fit them into my "playlist" when they were added via Commander, and finally with just deleting them from the Commander files completely.

Anyway, Commander does add that file to your Gram folder so if you find you're having issues only when starting via Commander, that would be the first thing I'd look at.

Thank you very much. I was wondering where that radio.wav file came from. This is precisely what I needed to know.

[frau kaleun]

Thank you very much. I was wondering where that radio.wav file came from. This is precisely what I needed to know.

You're welcome!

At one point I thought I was losing my mind because I'd cleared everything out of the game's Gram folder that I or GWX had added, and then put back in the one file that the stock game has in there. And then I'd load the game and the stock file would play and then a second file would play and I could not for the life of me figure out where it was coming from, lol.

I had just started using Commander and didn't think at first to check those folders.

Due to other issues that came up I never did get back to playing around with the Gramophone folder - but the best luck I ever had with it was when I started converting the ogg files that never seemed to play into mp3 and using those instead. Got better results with mostly mp3s but there was the occasional file that would only get played when I used the ogg version instead. Contradicts most people's experience, but that's how it was working for me.

What was really odd was that when I numbered the filenames to make them play in a certain order, there were always certain spots in the order that seemed to get skipped in-game no matter what track was in that spot. So it didn't seem to have anything to do with the actual file, just its place in the lineup. The same file would play fine if I put it somewhere else in the order. I never did figure that one out.

Now that I've got everything else set up again (knock wood) I will probably go back and start looking at the Gram folder again... probably just try it with the files that came with GWX and see if I have the same issues with certain tracks getting skipped.

[ryanglavin]

Ha Frau, I remember when you had issues with your gramophone folder, and I suggested a clean re-install.

good times.

[orangehat44]

I'm still having the same issues after transfering steam outside of my programs folder, I also reinstalled commander to ensure it was outside the programs folder and ensured it was set to run as admin and in xp compatibility. Ran through the help file again and dont think Im missing anything from there.

Any Ideas?

Thanks