CTD when loading a saved game.....

[MRV]

Hi everyone,

I now decided to take on a problem I have since quite a while now. All games saved AFTER I reached my patrol grid are CTDing when I try to load again. At first I was thinking I saved to close to enemy ships, land or whatever, but thats not the cause. I noticed that all saves are fine until my patrol grid task is completed.


anyone else got this problem?

[QC01]

I have a similar problem the only exception is that I can't start a new mission in port ! Have completed only one mission that's it !
:damn:

[BigRich]

I've noticed that most quick saves almost always ctd when I try to load them. It appears to me that the first 'save' I make, provided I'm well out at sea with nobody near me is safe. Any save point after the first one usually causes a ctd, irrespective of patrol grids.

[PapaKilo]

Do not overwrite savegame files, use unique save names in every patrol. Make sure your save names on the next carreer isn't matching the save names of the previous career. Avoid save a carreer at 00:00 time. 2 GB is only a minimum of RAM to run heavy moded GWX that could trigger CTD due to lack of RAM. 4 GB and more are ok in most cases.

[MRV]

Hmm, strange, I have 8 GB of RAM available and the >2GB-fix applied to SH3.exe, is there anything more I can do to give the game even more RAM?

[PapaKilo]

Hmm, strange, I have 8 GB of RAM available and the >2GB-fix applied to SH3.exe, is there anything more I can do to give the game even more RAM?

So you have 8 GB on 32 bit OS ?

[MRV]

No, Win7 64bit, my FSX-flying made me well aware of that RAM limitation problem ;)

[Kaleun Wagner]

Hi everyone,

I now decided to take on a problem I have since quite a while now. All games saved AFTER I reached my patrol grid are CTDing when I try to load again. At first I was thinking I saved to close to enemy ships, land or whatever, but thats not the cause. I noticed that all saves are fine until my patrol grid task is completed.


anyone else got this problem?

I have had a similar problem, although it had to do with the GWX Wilhelmshaven harbor mod that I added after already beginning a career. I was not able to restore my saved game with the mod enabled, so I had to abandon it and was able to add some other mods to make up for it.

With the exception of the 4GB patch, there hasn't been any discussion in this thread about what version of SH3 or what mods are in use when the CTDs occur or what OS is running for that matter. To my knowledge there are several different flavors of vanilla sh3.exe (sans mods) available: retail with Starforce, later retail sans Starforce, later retail sans Starforce and with 1.4b pre-applied, one called SH3 reloaded (not sure about the background of this one - saw it mentioned in a 4GB patch), and the Steam version. Then each of these may or may not have the 4GB patch applied and then any applied mods then must be considered (although few mod the .exe directly, most significant mods do have an impact on the execution of the file).

Cliffs: no meaningful comparisons of our individual situations can begin unless we include as much of the above types of information as possible.

I have a similar problem the only exception is that I can't start a new mission in port ! Have completed only one mission that's it !
:damn:

Do you happen to use SH3 Commander? There is an option in that program to enable the "Start at Sea" mod, which may temporarily solve your problem until you can pin down what's going wrong with ports in your game. It's as easy as ticking a check box and then executing the game file through SH3 Commander.

If you prefer not to use SH3 Commander, you can also apply the mod directly. Get it here: Start at Sea (http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/downloads.php?do=file&id=557). I recommend using JSGME to install it and most other mods, as it makes adding/removing them a breeze, highly useful in general but especially when testing different combinations of mods/patches.

Do not overwrite savegame files, use unique save names in every patrol. Make sure your save names on the next carreer isn't matching the save names of the previous career. Avoid save a carreer at 00:00 time. 2 GB is only a minimum of RAM to run heavy moded GWX that could trigger CTD due to lack of RAM. 4 GB and more are ok in most cases.

I have not had any of the above problems - I am running Win 7 64 bit with 8GB ram and the 4GB patch applied to the Steam version of the exe, which seems to support your conclusion these are ram related issues.

Hmm, strange, I have 8 GB of RAM available and the >2GB-fix applied to SH3.exe, is there anything more I can do to give the game even more RAM?

Is the ">2GB" fix you refer to the standard 4GB+ RAM patch?

I am running a heavily modified game (20km environment, high res, FM interiors, GWX, harbor/ships mods, etc) and the RAM usage while using the external view in harbor is under 2GB for the exe of about 4GB total. I know those numbers make it seem like I have no 4GB patch applied at all, but I can definitely tell a difference in performance since I have applied the patch. Since I did not start monitoring system resource usage by the game until after I already significantly modded it, I can only assume that the game, even if it does not make the system use more than 4GB in a particular instance, still uses more RAM with the 4GB patch applied than it otherwise would have.

I suppose my point is that it is very difficult to use 4GB+ of RAM in a non server environment with the exception of heavy video encoding, serious multi-tasking, or particular apps which are programmed specifically to use heavy multi-threading. Individual applications have to be specifically coded to utilize that much resources (the newer the program, the more likely this is to be the case) and then they must have enough resources to load (excepting cases of "memory leaks" where programs utilize more RAM over time than they should or is necessary), after a certain point (usually above 4GB in most cases without considering bus speed) additional RAM does not confer any additional advantage to the use of a single application. At that point the vast majority of applications which run less than optimally are either "bottlenecked" by the CPU, GPU (esp. games), or coding limitations of the app itself.

For at least awhile in the future you'll have plenty of "headroom" with 8GB for the vast majority of applications, and if the patch you have applied is what I'm thinking it is (4GB patch), then you've done your "due diligence" with respect to SH3, as I have not heard yet of anyone modding the exe to enable additional multi-threading from the game.

Now that I'm done with that long-winded spiel... are you even experiencing any performance issues besides the CTDs or was this last question more like "wishful thinking" or "nice to have"?

[QC01]

Thank you Sir for your help and advice it is greatly appreciated , especially the start at sea recommendation , will download the mod and apply . :salute:

[Kaleun Wagner]

Thank you Sir for your help and advice it is greatly appreciated , especially the start at sea recommendation , will download the mod and apply . :salute:

You're most welcome - glad to help! :up:

Let us know if starting at sea resolves the issue; if it does and you would still prefer a port start, go ahead and finish the patrol, return to port, exit game, disable the start at sea mod, and start your next patrol. There is only a small chance it will work, but whatever is glitched in your current save may be cleared up when it is re-saved during your patrol or when returning to port again. If it doesn't work, just re-enable the start at sea mod and you should be back in business.

If nothing at all works to get your current save running again, it will be useful to create an alternate "test" profile (separate from your real career profile) from which you can create new careers for testing purposes. Try starting careers at each of the available ports and note which ones successfully load. Make sure to disable the start at sea mod before you try these so that the game will actually attempt to load each port. Each time you click on the test profile and then click "new career" it will automatically delete the previous test career (it will inform you of this via a pop-up window). If you can load all of the ports successfully from new careers then that would lend some support to the hypothesis that something got glitched with your save file and it isn't a technical problem such as insufficient RAM, video driver error, etc. If new careers in ports or in particular ports aren't loading - then either something is wrong with your game files or there is a technical issue with the ports (they tend to use a lot of resources since there obviously is a lot the game has to load when you are in a port).

Try a new career with. If that works, you know you have a backup option if ports continue to give you grief. You would lose a little eye candy and immersion by not sailing in and out of ports, but the silver lining to that is you also shave off the time spent in port from your patrols.

Waidmannsheil! (good hunting!) :salute: