Silent Hunter III Hell
 

Golly, now I don't even know where I am in all this. I have run the 'starthing' un-install, upgraded to that Grey something patch, did the 'dvd' remove thing but it still will not work.

I still get that screen where you have a choice of 'info' or 'ok' and nowhere to go after that.

did you ever get it running? because im having the same issue

I'm another long time hunter just coming back (after more than a year) to this great game and of course the GWX mod.

I'm running a Windows 7 Pro system. I've read through this entire thread and have been able to get SH3+GWX3.0 Gold to run. I've simply installed everything into a custom folder outside the Program Files directory, then enabled SH3 to run in Win XP (Service Pack 3) mode. Works like a charm, however, I've noticed that the game is running in a somewhat low resolution, but in all honesty I don't really remember how it looked the last time I played it. Anyway, is 1024X768 its native resolution?

What's the best solution to get it to run in a higher resolution?

I've read of some sort of hi-res fix mod floating around here, will that help?

Thanks and happy to be back in the hunt!

Yes it is. For hi-res you can try this mod:

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/down...o=file&id=1092

Good luck and welcome back to the pack! :arrgh!:

Thanks:up: Do you by chance know if this mod will enable SH3 to play in 1920x1080 resolution or is there some cut-off limit?

Yes it will run at 1920x1080, but some people have reported an issue with the torpedo button firing automatically when switching control back from the mouse to the keyboard.

It seems to be due to a slight 'stretching' of the display which causes the cursor to end up in the wrong place at the wrong time. There is a workaround solution, so if you use the mod @1920x1080 and run into this issue then you'll need to implement the fix.

Kindly see this thread for a full discussion on the matter:

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/show....php?p=1517019

Hope this helps and enjoy the hi-res! :sunny:

I'm pretty sure that res worked okay when I tried it with the Res Fix, but be aware that the game graphics were all designed to display at a 4:3 aspect ratio. If you run it with a widescreen res, you will probably notice that the 2D screens look somewhat stretched out which is necessary in order to make the graphics fill your entire (wide)screen. That was a dealbreaker for me but some people don't notice it and/or it doesn't bother them enough to be an issue.

Also be aware that the Res Fix reroutes the printscreen/screenshot function to your PrintScreen key and that many people have problems with the game freezing and/or crashing when trying to take a screenshot after enabling the Res Fix. This was never an issue for me with XP but when I switched to Win7 it popped up and nothing I've tried has alleviated the problem (including switching off a bunch of desktop stuff, themes, Aero, running in compatibility mode for earlier versions of Windows - you name it, I probably tried it).

Whether it's a problem for you, you won't know until you try - but if you really want to take screenshots of your game, I would suggest running the Academy tutorials or some single missions first with the Res Fix enabled and trying out the PrintScreen key there - that way if the game does crash on you, it won't be doing it in the middle of a career patrol.

So if the stretching of the 2D images was a deal-breaker for you, have you found a way to run it in 4:3 aspect ratio on a wide screen monitor? I mean is there a way to stop it from trying to stretch the image to cover the entire screen?

The game can be run in "fullscreen" at the 4:3 aspect ratio, but it usually takes some tweaking of your GPU settings and/or the monitor's menu. The first thing to try is deselecting GPU scaling or auto-rescaling or whatever it's called in your GPU software. If the option is there and you can turn it off, the game should run fullscreen but there will be black bars down each side to "fill" the area of the screen that the game doesn't use. For ATI/AMD gfx cards though, some more recent versions of the software won't let you deselect auto rescaling unless you set your desktop to something other than the monitor's native "recommended" resolution. I don't know about nVidia.

If you can't turn off rescaling in the GPU software you can try going through your monitor's settings menu to see if there's an option in there regarding rescaling and try setting the monitor to *not* rescale stuff.

On my old installation I had to change my desktop resolution, make the necessary changes in the GPU software, then change my desktop res back to the recommended settings; when I did that, the options I was just tinkering with would "grey out" but my selection would "stick" and kick in if I lowered the resolution again. Then I used a program called Display Changer to lower the resolution automatically whenever the game was running. It worked as far as maintaining the 4:3 aspect ratio so stretching of the graphics was not a problem. It was just a real headache getting it all set up, and unfortunately I still couldn't take screenshots with the Res Fix enabled because the game would either freeze up or crash totally. :wah:

So... in the long run, for me, not being able to take screenshots was more of a dealbreaker than anything else and when I reinstalled on the new computer and tried the Res Fix it was still a persistent issue. What I'm using right now instead is Conus' SH3GWX Widescreen Mod although I've done a bit of tweaking to make it compatible with my other mods and to personalize it to my own tastes.


http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=170191


The mod reworks the graphics to give a (roughly) 16:9 aspect ratio to the 2D screens that would be stretched out otherwise. I think they are done in 1360x768 or thereabouts, they just get rescaled to 1920x1080 on my system and there's no need to stretch things out horizontally to fill the screen.

I read the entire thread from the link you've posted but it wasn't made very clear if the resolution fix needs to be used along with this mod. Does it?

That thread didn't make it clear but is this mod activated through JSGME?

I'm going to explore my GPU's software to see if I can get it to stop rescaling. I'm using an ATI card btw, which from the looks of it is the one that gives the most problems unlike nVidia cards.

I don't think they can be used to together as each one has its own d3d9.dll file. You have to pick one .dll or the other, you can't use both.

Conus00's mod? I enabled it through JSGME and as I recall it was already set up for that when I downloaded and unzipped it.

The more recent versions of Catalyst Control Center all seem to disable the various options for GPU scaling/rescaling depending on whether or not you are running at the recommended res for your monitor/system. I found that to be a major PITA when trying to maintain a 4:3 ratio at any resolution whatsoever. One other reason (in addition to the screenshot issue) that I opted for the widescreen mod instead. Would it be nice if it were a "true" 1920x1080? Yeah, but with a little tweaking I'm very happy with what I've got right now.

I have AMD VISION Engine Control Center now, with the widescreen mod enabled I went into My Digital Flat Panels under Properties and the option there is "Enable GPU scaling" which I do NOT have checked. This apparently causes the GPU to let the game fill the whole screen in fullscreen mode, instead of scaling the image down to 1360x768 with black bars around the edges. Works for me - I have a proper fullscreen display with none of the stretching that annoyed me before, and so far no CTDs when I take screenshots.

You're right, I've looked around the ATI Vision Engine Control Center and there are options to alter rescaling (Enable GPU scaling) but none of them actually work. They're all greyed-out. So that option went out the window.

I ended up downloading the widescreen mod you recommended and ran it via JSGME and it seems to have solved all my problems. The image is no longer being streched, however, there was a slight drop-off in actual resolution since it's designed to run in 1360x768 mode. It's ok though, I'm happy with the results.

Thank you for the help :up:

No problem, glad it's working for you!

One more question, does the widescreen mod need to be installed as the last one in JGSME? I ask because I'm trying to use it together with other mods and I seem to be getting CTDs.

It overwrites several files which are often used by other popular mods, including some very important ones like the menu_1024_768.ini file, the xx.menu.txt files, and the commands_xx.cfg files (those are the ones I can think of off the top of my head). I use a lot of other mods that also require their own tweaks to those same files, which is why I had to do a lot of manual tweaking and patching to get everything to work together.

When you enable the mod, if you get an alert that it is overwriting files already added or overwritten by other mods, that's a signal to stop and make a note of those files and the other mods involved and back out of the process. Then you'll have to investigate further to see if it's possible to make your own versions of those files that contain everything needed by all the mods that use them. In that respect it's no different than any other mod, and it doesn't matter whether you enable it first or last - if there's a file conflict, it's going to show up one way or the other and will have to be resolved before you can proceed safely.