SH was the first and still the most memorable Sub Sim for me. Back in its day, the graphics and sound were astoundingly good.

While 3D graphics technology have left 2D games like these in the dust, the immersion is hard to get.

And oh, manuals. Don't remind me. I even write my own for some sailing games I play.

OP reminded me. I play as often as I check down here for posts which isn't often enough.

In my opinion SHCE has never been equaled - however the pretty graphics of SH4 have even won me over. I do miss the historical accuracy of the different boat classes but that can be 'fixed'. Also, IMO the radars & TDC are much better in SHCE. Capital ships do not appear in-game after they were sunk in real life. For example in SHCE after Oct-44 you won't find a SHOKAKU CV and after Jun-42 there are no KAGA, AKAGI, or SORYU CV's.

SSI had "Bud" Gruner - a WW II submarine captain as a consultant when SH1 was created and it appears they tried to make SH1 close to the real thing. Once Hawk made his utilities, SH1 - SHCE was almost right on. Kim Rønhof furthered Hawks original work to put the frosting on the cake with his utilities but by then the 3d games had really taken over and there were very few of "us" left.

The SMK movies from the SHCE CD can still be viewed with a Smacker movie viewer so there are about 30 min of Buds reassuring voice explaining submarine operations in the Pacific Theatre that apply to SH4.

I try to mod my SH4 install to perform like SHCE (as if with Kim's & Hawks utilities installed too). I wish the Dev's had sunk a year into playing SHCE before making SH4 or had a team member that had - who had more input. Of course the folks at headquarters want a product so the Dev's did the best job they could and fortunately they made SH4 very easy to mod.

All in all SH1 - SHCE had and has a big impact on me and my style of playing even though I don't play often enough.

Happy Hunting!

Art

Hi All

I couldn't agree with you more Aanker. For me, Silent Hunter Commanders Edition is the best Subsim ever. I have it installed on my new Windows 7 64 machine with DosBox & it works great.

I have the complete Silent Hunter series & the rest in my mind pale in comparrison.

If only SHCE had been so moddable as SH4, and with a real 3D environment :damn: I could pass on the dated graphics (Which were excellent for their time BTW) but watching the ships "jump" when the AOB changed was not very inmersive.

In my mind, AOTD and SH1 are equally good games; AOTD was better in the true 3D environment and SH1 in the amazing manual TDC with position keeper.

I think the main constraint the Devs had was time, and the need to make SH4 out from a german subs base. In all, SH4 ended up being little more than an "official" mod for the Pacific theatre to SH3, but nonwithstanding it is a reasobaly good sim because it can and has been modded into something much better. There are still rough edges, but many can be polished. It's just that we lack enough talented and dedicated modders :damn:

Dos-Box & d-fend worked!
 

OK, so I'm not a Systems Analyst or other form of computer geek, but I surprised and delighted myself with the download and apparent good operation of SHI (v1.11) straight off the disk. So far, so good.
Next question, for those of you using with dosbox, is on the question of upgrades/patches (even no-cd crack, if such a thing exists, to save the disk from - God Forbid! - damage).

I'm concerned if I run a patch, like to v1.3 etc, the .exe file will no longer be recognised by d-fend. Experience?

SH1
 

Hi, I still play SH1. Right now I'm trying to get through the war realistically, (If I die, I'm DEAD, and have to start the war from scratch-this also means NO aborting!). Also, I always play with realism 115%, even when I play a mission. I recommend playing this way, it's more intense to play as if it's real. Plus it means you make sensible decisions.

Dan

ps. I have the SHCE CD and I wouldn't sell it for $500 :D

I don't use DOSBox but am searching for a procedure for someone else regarding running SH1 from DOSBox and I stumbled on your message.

Sure, upgrade 1.1 to 1.3. DOSBox is running SH off the exe or a bat file (whatever you told it to run from). I'd copy your entire SILENT folder that works to a backup location, upgrade to 1.3 and if it doesn't work delete it and put your working install back.

To run without the CD copy the entire BUD folder from the CD to your HD and point to it rather than your CD. The game is looking for the movie that is the largest smk file in the BUD folder. For example copy the BUD folder to SILENT\BUD\. Then edit BUD in SHPATH.INI:
BUD =BUD\

Happy Hunting!

Art

As a side-note, the smk movies can be viewed with a program that plays smacker movies.

Edit - Oh yeah, my SHCE CD is worth more than $500.00 it is priceless!

When I first came into my Windows 95, it was already old. I happened to find SHCE in the bargain bin at a Comp USA store. I didn't have any computer games and was eager to find one that would run on my system, so I bought it. It stayed in a drawer for some time before I got to messing around with it. Initially, I was most impressed by the interview movies. I played some of the missions, off and on, before learning it was possible to have a "career". I was using auto targeting, not realizing for a moment that any other method was possible. Then one day, when I was goofing around with the TDC, I turned the auto/manual switch, and SURPRISE! Who knew this thing actually worked? I had just assumed it was eye candy--just another part of a computer game. This is why I fell in love with the game. It is the difference between shooting ducks in a computerized shooting gallery and having to think, plan and calculate to hit your target. After that, I figured out how to manually calculate a firing solution without the TDC. This gave me a chance to use my high school geometry for a change.

When I got my Windows Vista machine, I tried to install SHCE, but couldn't get it to work, but I still have fond memories of playing. More importantly, the lessons and tactics I learned in SHCE (and reading some of the books about sub ops) help me to play SH4.

I agree with others about the SH4 devs not making use of the lessons to be learned. It's a pitty really, SH4 could have an exemplary sim that set new standards, instead of being, playable only when modded. Apparently, they didn't learn much from the experience either (SH5:down:).

I still have the cd, of course. I may still try to get it going again. The biggest improvment in SH4, IMO, is being able to sail over the entire Pacific. The small, box-like, patrol zones, and teleporting from base to the zone, was a weak point.

Hey TorpX,
I have been a little distracted of late getting up to speed with SH3 + GWX3.0+SJGME+Commander+MFM3.2 +++ mods, plus, simultaneously FreeSpace Open +Mods (they are as crazy dedicated over there at Hardlight as this lot are here - incredible stuff!)

Anyway, I've played briefly with DosBox, Defend Reload & IsoBuster with SHI. Looks to me that I will be able to resurrect the game. If you got as much out of it as you report, I would recomment having a go with the above-mentioned programs. (There seems to be a pretty good Forum group over on DosBox that are willing to talk you through issues.)

Thanks, Aanker. That's MOST helpful.

When I free up a couple meg of brain drive space, I'll have a wack at getting a clean run at it. I was last fiddling around with ISO images of the disc, trying to get DosBox to point to that instead of the disc in my DVD drive - your information should let me get it sorted - thanks.

So does the new 1.3 version of dosbox work woth Vista 64 bit? Last time I tried to fire up my old SH 1 game, it would just lock the computer up, and I would have to hit the reset button on the tower to exit out of it. So I figured something was goofy with dosbox or a compatability problem between dosbox and SH 1.

Man I loved SH 1 in the old days! Made it real easy to watch my kids when they napped in the afternoon. Spent many hours playin' that one. Have the original on CD, plus the upgrade on CD.

Check this out, Ed just wrote it: (install procedure w/64 bit - top link)
http://www.subsowespac.org/

Happy Hunting!

Art

With with latest version of Dosbox 0.74, I have SHCE running on a Vista 64bit laptop and Win7 64 Professional desktop with no problems at all. It was an easy migration from my aging XP machine, I just copied the existing Dosbox and SHCE folders over to the new rigs, and they worked like a charm.

Aw, man!!! I miss the 'Classics' forum for a few days and I miss an awesome thread.

I too am one of the ones who's hooked on graphics even while I deride the whole concept of graphics over gameplay. :oops: I agree with Hitman that AOD and SH1 are the best of the genre, yet I too spend most of my time playing SH3 and SH4.

That said, I'm not playing SH3 at the moment because I'm so caught up in the latest mods that I have to wait for a new computer before I'll play SH3 again. My current rig won't run it with all the mods I want to use, and I won't play without them. SH4 U-boats is better, but none of the mods I like have been done for it. SH4 Pacific is awesome, but I have this fixation with playing multiple campaigns, and 1942 is a long way off.

My copy of SHCE is buried in my storage at the moment, but I do have AOD on my computer and I put it on from time to time, but it just doesn't look the same anymore.

Do I have issues or what? :damn:

Aanker - thanks for the link! Man, is that ever what I was looking for. "Install DosBox & SHI for Dummies".

I sort of figured it out on my own with a hint here and a clue there with ISO images and mapping to virtual drives hidden under a rock till later, got the thing working until I broke it all trying to get it to play without the disc in the drive. That was a couple of weeks ago, but been so busy getting SHIII up to snuff, its been low on the to-do list. Now, I can go at it again with much more confidence.

One thing that occurs to me from this thread, as well as the SHIII Mods Forum.

Lots of people struggle with CTD and installation issues. Now, a lot of it revolves around stupidity and failing to read instructions, but some are clearly system/hardware related (like SHII being unplayable on nVidia cards, due to text getting graphically murdered.) Scattered through all these threads are lots of hints and tips about 4Gig patches, 3 Gig switches, optimising page file settings etc, programs to minimise background apps, and switching off interrupting programs (like firewalls).

These things would appear to be important to know about regardless of which game one wishes to play, or which platform/OS/or hardware configuration you have, but the LOWER your computer's spec, I would say the MORE IMPORTANT these tweaks become. My guess is that the majority DON'T have a 64 Bit OS with 8Gig of RAM and anther 4 Gig on their graphics card.

So, would it be possible for someone with computer smarts to compile a SEQUENTIAL list of recommendations to optimise hardware performance ESPECIALLY relevant for those wishing to run additional Mods - hence requiring much more of the system?

I have seen something like this done for an individual, where a kind poster was trying to step someone through a series of 'do this, then that and get back to me for the next step if that doesn't work' - sort of an escalating list from the simple to the more intrusive to get the whole show working to it's max capacity.

That, I think, could be a really useful sticky on its own, or accompanying any supermod release etc. For example, in my own case, I don't know whether the 4Gig/3Gig 'fixes' would even be appropriate for my machine (with 2.95Gig of RAM), and I don't even know what setting virtual memory/page files from the 'current' default 'custom' level to Min=max="recommended" does, but I did it anyway.

Anyway, with help I think I have got my 32 Bit (whatever that means) XP Pro machine to maybe 90% optimised, and I run (mostly) SHIII+COMMANDER+SJGME+MFM3.2+1 (sometimes 2) Skins+ a bunch of little mods. Not bad, but still not as stable as I would like.

Maybe it could be better with a few more tweaks, and a coherent step through would certainly save a lot of frustration for a lot of noobs/computer non-geeks who want to spend their time battling battleships, not wrestling with CTD's & buggy installations. I sometimes feel like I am oh, so gingerly!, trying to push a wheelbarrow with a squirming three-year-old across a tightrope over a chasm. The support & assistance has been great, but I wonder if a step-through would have saved us all time? :hmmm: