Saves Frustration

[podunkpete]

I'm at wits end, about to give up careers. For some reason saving games in a career is a crapshoot, usually with the odds against me. I'm running Wolves of the Pacific with OM 7.2 and nothing else. I had made it to 01/45 with increasing problems with saves that just couldn't be restarted. In the end I had no working saves. Goodbye 2 carriers and a huge European liner. I blew out everything, re-installed and started over, and on my 3rd patrol I've got a saved game that is useless. I've tried saving on the surface, not making any changes for a period before a save, reducing sound/graphic complexities,you name it. I'm guessing some upgrade outside the game is causing me heartache, but I've also noticed the museum also crashes. Any ideas??:damn:

[fireftr18]

Are you overwriting saves? That's normally the problem. Always save in a new file. I start with a master save while in the office, ex: "Fireftr18." The while saving on patrol, I add a number to it, ex: "Fireftr18-1." After finishing a patrol, delete them all and start over.

[TorpX]

I'm guessing some upgrade outside the game is causing me heartache, but I've also noticed the museum also crashes. Any ideas??:damn:

You aren't changing/experimenting with mods between saves, are you? That usually leads to problems.

The museum has always been flakey; I wouldn't worry about that.

[mobucks]

I also suggest never to save near any AI, never to save near any harbor.

I always save while surfaced, open water (no nearby landmass), all stop, no units within ~20 km. (or whatever the distance is that draws units.) I don't even save near sinking/destroyed units.

[torpedobait]

It may be superstition according to some on the board (no disrespect intended), but in addition to being at least 50nm from any shore installation, etc. I followed someone's advice and only save when surfaced and in the Control Room. Works flawlessly for me.

[TorpX]

I don't know if it's superstition (or maybe trauma from SH3), but my experience is very different. I've saved in many different circumstances with very few problems.

I have never overwritten saves, though.

[Diopos]

I rarely had any problems with saved files (even overwritten ones). What I have observed is a lag during the opening of said files when there are a lot of saved files in the folder. So, what I do during a career, is that I delete save files from previous missions, except from the "in port" ones and those of my current mission. Now, what is a "lag" in my system, might something more severe in another system ... :hmmm:

.

[fireftr18]

It may be superstition according to some on the board (no disrespect intended), but in addition to being at least 50nm from any shore installation, etc. I followed someone's advice and only save when surfaced and in the Control Room. Works flawlessly for me.

This goes back to older systems when sh4 came out. The computers had difficulty processing all the information to load the game. Newer systems don't have that problem.

[Aktungbby]

Podunkpete! after a year of silent running! on your second post!:Kaleun_Salute:

[podunkpete]

To all, thanks for the many responses. I did forget to mention one thing, I had also used Multish4, keeping an unused copy of a clean install (well, I fired it up, cleared the harbor and did a save to make sure it worked.) This weekend, I blew everything out again, re-installed (no mods) and am keeping my fingers crossed. Years of Happy Times and then this. Something for those with deeper knowledge than myself to chew on: When I opened the last two saves before the saving collapse, the screen opened to being told that first one, then a second torpedo was in the water. With no targets in the area, I checked onboard stores and found that I indeed still had a full load of torps! I was informed in due time that the torpedoes had missed, surprise, surprise. Hmmm, has someone hacked my computer and hijacked my boat???:arrgh!:

[TorpX]

I'm at wits end, about to give up careers. For some reason saving games in a career is a crapshoot...


Ummm....didn't think to ask before, but...

Are you using version 1.5 of SH4? Most recent mods require the latest version, 1.5.

Otherwise, if you are having problems that are severe enough that you must reinstall the game, I would delete any saved games/careers/whatever, and start fresh. You can't be sure what might be corrupt in the saves.

[russ663]

hey bro,

Ive had the same thing with torps running and full load still. Ive also had probs upon saving and exiting it crashes to desktop, upon reload it will fail, but on second try it loads fine.

As mentioned i have at times had to delete all my saves and start over, but usually have no probs overwriting files.

Do wish you luck

russ

[CapnScurvy]

I think good "Save" practice should include deleting your older saved points. Keeping too many saved game points will just slow down the whole process. Keep the saved points that your working on now, but delete the older saved points you won't go back to.

As far as the Museum not working properly......that's a problem. CTD's within the Museum usually means a particular object (ship, plane, whatever) isn't set correctly to be displayed in-game. This means that when that particular object is called on to be displayed in-game, you'll get a CTD during game play. Simple things like proper "Type", or "UserDisplayName", can throw the game into a CTD when one file doesn't have the same parameter as another. Or, there aren't sufficient modeled files that go along with the model (like a texture file) to have it displayed correctly. If the Museum can't display a particular object? It won't display it in-game either.

One way to know which Museum object is the culprit is to run the Museum feature and just jump from one object to the next, keeping tract of which objects are displayed correctly. The object that doesn't display.....sending you to the desk top, is the object that's a problem. You'll need to restart the game, restart the Museum, and take a look at the Museum list of objects you have the CTD with. That next object after the last one correctly displayed is the problem one.

There can easily be more than one object having a problem. So, recheck again the list, this time avoiding the problem object.

[Sniper297]

If your "My Documents" folder isn't on an SSD, I would suggest deleting all saves, clean up and defrag the hard drive, run check disk to mark bad sectors, then try again from the start.

[LCQ_SH]

I also suggest never to save near any AI, never to save near any harbor.

I always save while surfaced, open water (no nearby landmass), all stop, no units within ~20 km. (or whatever the distance is that draws units.) I don't even save near sinking/destroyed units.

Lol... that's is lovely.......not being able to save whenever you want to.......:hmmm:

I've had had the same troubles (except the torps one...), I was having more petty officers than allowed (Guess it's a bug that allows me to promote all sailors to petty officers...) and all my saves after that were corrupt......just deleted the extra petty officers and that's it...

Good luck :salute:

[podunkpete]

Thanks for the many replies. A quick update/summary: I know my first career had all the required updates before installing OM. The only "mod" I may have installed was a hack I made to increase the number of officers/petty officers, but again it wasn't until 01/45 that the saves died. My re-install after that, I can't guarantee I brought everything up to 1.5. Again, I had multish4 installed (for the first time) and may have botched the install. I have now blown everything out, re-installed (just one sh4), updated, started again, so far so good. A new question: Is each save a complete set of data, or does it build on prior saves (only capturing changes)? If I had say, 10 current saves and I wanted to reduce the number, could I safely delete the oldest 5 from the current patrol?:hmmm:

[captgeo]

I over write my saves all the time , never had a problem,

the rule for saving that I have always used.......

never save with contacts close

never save while submerged

[ReallyDedPoet]

Welcome to SUBSIM podunkpete :up:

I see you have been with us for a couple of years, but recently started to post again. Each save I think is a new one, based on the date in that particular save. Starting with that save and saving anew and then deleting the old saves will not affect your game. At least I have not had this issue.

[fireftr18]

Each save is a complete new set of data. The old saves are unnecessary.

[Diopos]

And while we are at it, avoid large save files, that is don't stay at sea forever. Do a one - two months patrol, maybe one or two refits in a forward base (to load torps) and then return to base for the next mission.

.

[podunkpete]

Well, it's still happening. I think I may be closing in on the source, though. The one tip that my saves are useless is the following: I see the ship sink, I'm told the ship has sunk, the ship is added to my captain's log as sunk, but, THERE IS NO ICON ON THE MAP SHOWING A SINKING! I'm starting to think it's a video card (or update) issue. Each time I've had useless saves, it's after watching a sinking. In one case the ship was blazing, sinking fast, and then the flames went out, the ship seemed to take too long to sink, and then EGAD everything said ship sunk except the map. Experimenting I found that deck gun or torpedoes, if it isn't on the map something is corrupt. I love this game but boy, is it making me pay!

[Sniper297]

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=212256

[TorpX]

Well, it's still happening.


You should post a screen shot of your JSGME mod activation list. Without knowing exactly what you're running, we can only make wild guesses as to what's wrong.

[Sniper297]

Bad or incompatible mods usually cause game crashes, not corrupted saves.

Call me Johnny One-Note, but I still think 99% of these corrupted saves are hardware problems - bad disk sectors, so run checkdisk - or fragmented files - run defrag.

Other option, I'm still chugging along with XP, never tried Vista or anything later, could the common denominator be people who don't know how to disable UAC? From what I've read (again no first hand experience) Microsoft decided to protect users from themselves by using a "virtual folder" which doesn't actually make any changes to the original files, so when you exit any files that would have been changed or overwritten in XP have been "protected" from user changes.

In my opinion the reason UAC was invented was to stop office drones from screwing up their workstations, costing the company money for techs to unscrew the software constantly. So if it's your own personal computer and you're the only one who uses it AND you play games which require changes to files, turn the blasted thing off.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/turn-user-account-control-on-off#1TC=windows-7

[BigWalleye]

Bad or incompatible mods usually cause game crashes, not corrupted saves.

Call me Johnny One-Note, but I still think 99% of these corrupted saves are hardware problems - bad disk sectors, so run checkdisk - or fragmented files - run defrag.

Other option, I'm still chugging along with XP, never tried Vista or anything later, could the common denominator be people who don't know how to disable UAC? From what I've read (again no first hand experience) Microsoft decided to protect users from themselves by using a "virtual folder" which doesn't actually make any changes to the original files, so when you exit any files that would have been changed or overwritten in XP have been "protected" from user changes.

In my opinion the reason UAC was invented was to stop office drones from screwing up their workstations, costing the company money for techs to unscrew the software constantly. So if it's your own personal computer and you're the only one who uses it AND you play games which require changes to files, turn the blasted thing off.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/turn-user-account-control-on-off#1TC=windows-7

I am skeptical that the cause of most corrupted saves could be hardware problems. The advertised write error rate for SATA drives is 1 error per 10 terabytes written. That's 10x10^12 bytes. Published tests on real-world hardware report write error rates 10 times greater than that. If a save requires 100 kB of data, that is 1x10^5 bytes. If we use the worse, published figures, we should expect to see a write error evry 1x10^7 saves. That's once every ten billion saves.

Some people report corrupted saves more often that once in 10 saves. If that result is attributed to hardware-generated errors, that is an error rate of 1 per 10^6, an error every 1 megabyte. I routinely read, save, and edit graphics files that are tens of megabytes without corrupting the files. I doubt that any operating system could function with write error rates as high as 1 per 1 megabyte.

Rather than assuming that our hardware is so unreliable as to be useless (I know mine isn't), it seems more likely that problems of corrupt saves can be traced to software corrupted by user activities. Saving a game mid-patrol, changing activated mods, then attempting to reload the save is a classic way to get CTDs. There are others. But the frequency of reported corrupt saves is out of all proportion to what might be predicted from hardware errors.

[Sniper297]

Those statistics don't factor in the number of clueless users who have never run a check disk and have never defragged the main drive. I'm speculating about Vista / Win7 / Win8 UAC since I've never seen it myself, but I've had a lot of experience with new gamers ("NEW" meaning those who came along after the Days of DOS and Dinosaurs when computers didn't routinely come with the OS pre-installed) complaining about problems, one checkdisk one defrag and all problems disappear.

People who use computers for internet activity and reading email should defrag once a year, people who play games should do it once a month. People who mod games should do it once a week, because that involves a lot more new files, changed files, backup and restore files, delete old backups after uploading, etc. Check disk should be run at least once a year, just to make sure whatever bad sectors might have developed are marked that way. SSD drives of course are a different thing, but most still have standard whirling hard drives which have gotten larger and faster over the last 30 years but still have the same basic design.

[les green01]

i defag regular and clean regular still gets them every once in while play other games dont have the problem with them save curropts been going on since silent hunter 3 dont remember about sh2

[Sniper297]

Hee-hee, I ain't saying the game ain't buggy, I'm insane but not stupid. :har: I've had occasional corrupted save GAME one each. On 1st patrol save as 1 Scorpion 1, 1 Scorpion 2, 1 Scorpion 3, etc until I end patrol in port and start the second patrol, then it's 2 Scorpion 1, 2 Scorpion 2, 2 Scorpion 3 and so on. 3 Scorpion 6 is corrupt and crashes the game every time I try to load it, try 3 Scorpion 5 and that works fine, so I delete 3 Scorpion 6 and move on. It's rare but occasionally I'll get 2 Scorpion 1 and 2 Scorpion 2 corrupt at the same time, so go back to the previous good save and move on.

These guys are talking about ALL save games corrupt, if they ALL go corrupt at the same time - assuming they're not doing something stupid like trying to load vanilla game saves after installing a supermod - then you gotta start looking at the disk. If it's something to do with modding, delete all the save games and start a new career, you can either play through an entire career or play around with adding/removing mods / experimenting with your own mods, never both. That's not a game bug, that applies to any moddable game. Wanna see some spectacular crashes try adding or removing a TES IV: OBLIVION mod without starting over with a new character. :dead:

[BigWalleye]

Those statistics don't factor in the number of clueless users who have never run a check disk and have never defragged the main drive. I'm speculating about Vista / Win7 / Win8 UAC since I've never seen it myself, but I've had a lot of experience with new gamers ("NEW" meaning those who came along after the Days of DOS and Dinosaurs when computers didn't routinely come with the OS pre-installed) complaining about problems, one checkdisk one defrag and all problems disappear.

People who use computers for internet activity and reading email should defrag once a year, people who play games should do it once a month. People who mod games should do it once a week, because that involves a lot more new files, changed files, backup and restore files, delete old backups after uploading, etc. Check disk should be run at least once a year, just to make sure whatever bad sectors might have developed are marked that way. SSD drives of course are a different thing, but most still have standard whirling hard drives which have gotten larger and faster over the last 30 years but still have the same basic design.

On that point, you are mistaken. The published statistics are determined using an automated write/readback program which NEVER defrags or runs a checkdisk utility. They determine the actual performance of the hardware and have nothing to do with defragging, which is a function of the file management software, not the hardware.

[bandit484]

If you guys want to talk about saves frustrations you should try using the updated Sobers Mod List for SH5. That is frustrating!i finally said the hell with SH5 and came back to SH4 where I know that it is aLOT MORE STABLE! :/\\!!:hmmm:

[Sniper297]

"They determine the actual performance of the hardware and have nothing to do with defragging, which is a function of the file management software, not the hardware."

Corrupted files are not related to the file management software?

Let's make it simple, fragmented files on disk cause problems, so defrag occasionally. Bad sectors happen, and files on bad sectors cause problems, so run checkdisk once a year. That eliminates two possible causes, so those who get chronic save game file corruption can look into other causes. Like UAC.

[BigWalleye]

"Call me Johnny One-Note, but I still think 99% of these corrupted saves are hardware problems...."

"They determine the actual performance of the hardware and have nothing to do with defragging, which is a function of the file management software, not the hardware."

Corrupted files are not related to the file management software?

Hardware? Or software? Which do you want to blame?

Personally, I think that blaming systems of hardware and software which are used successfully and with excellent reliability by literally 100s of millions of people every day is a bit naive. I check the forums on SubSim daily, and a lot of postings relate to corrupt save issues. I would say that all of the corrupt save issues in the SH series can be traced to EBKAC. You can defrag and checkdisk all you want, but ignore a few simple Don't and you WILL get corrupt saves, be your HDD ever so pristine.

[Sniper297]

Okay, I should have said hardware and software, and specified user error involving same. We're actually in agreement here with the EBKAC, failure to maintain the operating system by cleaning up, emptying the recycle bin, checking and defragging the disk occasionally is a classic EBKAC that goes back to when they started selling computers with the OS already installed and configured. Trainz train simulator is notorious for buggy and unstable patches, the people who never have a problem with their patches are the ones who clean up temp files, defrag, and shut down other programs before patching. The ones who don't do that are the ones who have a disaster with every patch every time. SH4 is the same way, the save game subroutine is fragile at best, so anyone with chronic problems involving corrupted save game files should at the very least try some basic maintenance to eliminate the most likely causes.

[podunkpete]

Maybe I've been chasing the wrong trail. To answer some previous questions, I regularly use a commercial defrag program, and all I have installed is SH4 and OM both brought up to date with JSGME. Once again I encountered a ship whose sinking just would not be recorded properly by the game. Looking more closely, I noticed obvious graphics issues concerning the hull under and around the bridge area.
875

876

Are the ship files somehow corrupted? Is there a way to reload only this info?

[podunkpete]

I've replayed this save several times where I start prior to encountering this ship. Using a variety of attacks, this sinking just doesn't work out. I decided to just bypass this one, and changed course so I never encountered it. In due course I met a different class ship which went to the bottom obeying all the rules. I hate to have to save any time I get a contact just in case. Has anyone encountered this before?