Game slows down after port hopping

[Tonnage_Ace]

This has probably happened to someone else here, but I'll explain. When I first got this game I tried going to every British port out of pure curiousity, after visiting a few ports I'd shut the game down, but when I booted up the game the next time, the loading screen was normal but the 'initializing' screen was a little too long. Then when I get passed that, into the game itself, things seem fine then they slow waaaayy down(for at least a minute), it's like watching a slide show, then things go back to normal. For the rest of my patrol, whenever I shut the game down and reloaded at a different date, the same thing happened, even if I had saved in open waters. It's now my second career and I've been sticking to open waters and have had no problems. Then I decide to tour the Caribbean in my IXD2. Things go fine, I visit the first few ports then go to bed, upon restarting, the same thing happens. After I went through all of the Carribean's ports, I decide to head home but I'm shocked to find that, even in open water, away from any ships, 512 TC is ok but 1024 TC is really slow, suffice it to say, I made my journey back to France at 512 TC :doh:

The next patrol, while in open waters and without visiting any enemy ports, I saved and exited then booted it back up, no problems. I'm thinking memory leak but would love anyone else's ideas/fixes because if I go to an enemy port once it seams I'm tainted with bad(up to five minutes total) load times.

[Maui]

I noticed the same/similar symptoms a couple patrols ago, actually. 512x would be somewhat choppy, and 1024x was ridiculous. I actually got stuck in 1024 for a good bit because it would not even register keystrokes to lower the time compression-- it took a ship sighting to finally get me out of it.

First, I kinda doubt the problem is a memory leak. If it were a memory leak then saving, shutting down SH3, and reloading should fix the problem. Also, a memory leak would likely cause worse performance over time whereas, at least in my case, performance seemed pretty consistenly bad until I got back to port.

I suspect there is some sort of condition that gets applied occured which somehow necessitates excess calculations. I never visited any ports on the patrol where this occured to me, so we don't have anything in common there.

At the time, the only mod I had installed was the d3d9.dll to allow me to run at 1280x1024. I had assumed this was related to the dll, but if you weren't using it, maybe I'd change my mind....

[Cdre Gibs]

Have either of you sunk ships in those shallow waters?

Its a problem that appears after a certain amount of shipping sunk in shallow water. I'm taking a guess here that it has something to do with the collision mesh of ships and the sea floor. I get this problem ONLY if I sink ships in shallow waters. I noticed 1 day after I had sunk 1 that it slowly went right on through the sea floor, after that my PC slowed right down.

[Maui]

Thanks Gibs!

I bet that's it. I sunk about 4 ships that patrol very close to the coast of England where the water is plenty shallow. If tonnage was in ports, he was obviously around shallow water too.

[VonHelsching]

I have noticed the same thing.

In addition, one time I stepped upon the weirdest bug. I sunk a C2 near Loch Ewe (real shallow); the ship was sunk vertical to the seafloor, half was sticking out of the water...

The weird thing is that I could still hear strange screaking sounds coming from this ship while 100 km away and more...

[jasondef]

I've noticed the same slow downs, especially with the 1024 TC was so choppy, it wasn't saving me any more time then 512 tC. Then I upgraded my CPU a few weeks ago, and 1024 TC now runs faster than a speeding bullet. So maybe not a memory leak, but a CPU leak? No idea if such a thing exists, so just guessing here.

[Tonnage_Ace]

Maybe it has something to do with the fact that the game renders ports when your about 30Km from them. Maybe it keeps rendering them after you've left, becuase it seems the game slowed down after visiting three ports. That sinking ships in shallow water makes a lot of sense because I've followed some sinking ships with free look in deep water and they seems to 'disapear' after a certain depth while ships interacting with the ocean floor obvious take up a CPU's time with physics.