SHIII gets unstable ?

[submariner]

Hey all. I have been playing SHIII since release, at 92% realism, have had 26 patrols, and made it from '39 to early '43 (I do reload when killed until I get through the war at least once). I had one 100K patrol.

I have played Silent Service on the Commodor 64, and upgrades on the Atari ST, and SHIII is by far a stunning and beautiful sim, despite some bugs and shortcomings (thank God for all the mods out there!).

Now the problem ..... for over a year, no big problems or crashes. I tried the DX-Tweaker last week. Now, crashes to desktop or reboots 5 times in the last 2 days!

I suspect a Tweak did this, but I have deleted the SHIII profile, and made DX-Tweaker "inactive", but still the crashes come.

Anyone have SHIII go unstable? DX-T supposedly operates as a 'plug-in' via .NET1.1, but I have no idea what has been altered.

I have no idea what to do, except possibly a reload of SHIII and maybe Nvidia drivers?

I have an Nvidia 5500 w/256, but my mobo only supports 4X AGP, so I work with a bottleneck. Get about 20-30 fps on external/bridge views.

There have been several times I was so stunned playing this thing I said WOW out loud .... with my wife and family just shaking their heads.... LOL. Once was watching three escorts look for me at night with searchlights ..... awesome! Another was finding my first convoy. Another was plowing through a massive storm with thunder booming through the subwoofer!

I wish I had a better rig so I could load the really big mods ..... maybe for SH IV ...

[andy_311]

Have you tried to back track you say"DX-t" I haven't come a cross it yet in the game and as far as I know I haven't got DX-T on my pc and sh3 works well, have you concidered deleting it? (back up you files before you do anything)

[Mooncatt]

yeah it is a litlle unstable i only changed my sound card and i started to crash back to desktop mid game all i did was turn off the music and its fine, just going back to what you said bout silent service on the c64 i used to have that and spent many an hour on it, it was the best sim game out at that time for the c64 brings back some good memories

[submariner]

I reinstalled old Nvidia drivers for the 5500, I think version 61.77, where everythink works right and I can see the sun glare and proper black smoke.

I tried Omega and the new Nvidia drivers, and I think that's where the problem was .... so far no more crashes (too much tweaking gets one in trouble).

I need a new machine ....

Speaking of the C64, I also liked Kennedy Approach, the air traffic controller sim .... what a blast!

[Mooncatt]

mmm havent heard of kennedy approach before, i did also have on the c64 gunship, f-16 fighter pilot and loads of other sim games really cool i would play them again if i still had the old c64

[JScones]

D/l a c64 emulator, some of the games, and play to your heart's content on your PC. I do.

I remember Kennedy Approach.

[submariner]

mmm havent heard of kennedy approach before, i did also have on the c64 gunship, f-16 fighter pilot and loads of other sim games really cool i would play them again if i still had the old c64

Kennedy Approach was fun, as you had to manage all take-offs, all inbound flights, plus through traffic, with occasional "May Day May Day" emergency landings, and thunderstorms ..... all in 3D space with DIGITIZED SPEECH on a C64 !!!!!!!!

You had to maintain vertical separation of aircraft and horizontal separation, plus all aircraft had to leave your screen at the proper handoff altitude, I think 4000 ft. You were promoted or fired, depending upon flight delays (inbound and outbound) and any serious conflicts .... OR CRASHES !

It was Microprose software.

I also had c64 Gunship .... I hated when the HIND chopper showed up! YIKES!

I did download one of the C64 emulators once, and did find the image for Kennedy Approach ....it was a little buggy but worked.

[Mooncatt]

lmao yeah gunship i loved that like you say when the hind turned up it was like "arrrgghhh", only prob with it was when i finished a mission i had the option to play the same mission again or go back to main menu, i used to choose main menu but all it would do then is start loading again then the tape ran out, was this the same for you by any chance?

[Gizzmoe]

Guys, this isn´t the right forum and right thread to talk about C64 games... :)

[Mooncatt]

ahem errrm sorry getting a little carried away there. wont happen again

[submariner]

Guys, this isn´t the right forum and right thread to talk about C64 games... :)

Yes, you are right, did not mean to hijack my own thread!

So regarding SHIII, one other thing I tried was the on-board sound upgrade .... with strange results!

I have Realtek AC97 chips and downloaded the latest drivers/codec and the sound from my 2.1 system is beautifully clear and can go LOUD. In SHIII I do get the frame 'hesitation' when a torpedo hits. I lowered hardware acceleration. But then I picked up a cheap Blaster Audigy SE.

Terrible ..... the sound fidelity was worse than AC97, and there was no effect for SHIII that I could observe ..... so I took out the card and went back to onboard sound.