Before when I got just 768mb of ram I managed to take a shower, make something for dinner and watch some TV enjoying the food. And it ain't a joke either :har:
Now with 2 gigs it loads about 5~10 minutes.

I hear you. I'm back with SH3 too (Really like piloting my boat through the locks on a pitch-black night).

As to why I'm lucky with saves, I'm just religious about how I save. Never when submerged ( and always very careful not to be momentarily submerged in bad weather), never if any harbors or surface or air units are within 30Km (now 50Km), and always at zero time compression (forgot about that one, never save at a high TC)

If I can't meet those conditions and i need to leave, then I pause the game and alt-tab out of it. I've left it like that for hours without any ill effects.

I've also cut down on the number of Mods I load (I did have more problems when I was experimenting with every mod there was), and I've installed the 4GB [edit] patch which allows SH3 to access a lot more virtual memory.

Ale, Lager or Pilsner?

Same here :DL
Lager for me mate. Harp by the way :DL

I, and several others, know several facts which we have proved with
some very hardcore testing.

The Stock files with StarForce cause CTDs and Save Game errors.
The Reloaded hack approved by UbiSoft causes MORE CTDs and Save Game errors.
The files in the latest release of SH3 are PRE-StarForce and cause LESS CTDs and Save Game errors.

The 'Project' is a tough one!
We must decode files no one has decoded before.
And it all has to be done by studying the files in Hex.

So if a Sub is surfaced in port for test 1,
then submurged in the same port in test 2?
Where are the differences in the files and how do we read them?

Then we must go farther!
But one small step at a time till we figure things out.

Animations were opened this way.
One small bit of understanding at a time by many people.

My Goal is to develop an editor that will allow us to fix
corrupt Saves.

Not change them so a Ship not sunk is changed to a Ship sunk.
Just make the Save work!

Whoa there!!! What's this thing about a patch for memory? I've never heard of that. My gaming rig has 8 GB of real RAM. Are you saying there is a patch that allows the game to access more physical RAM? If so, would it work for systems that have 4 or more GB of physical RAM?

I seem to suffer from more than my fair share of corrupted saves or games in play that just go poof! and crash to desktop. My last patrol, I lost the whole thing, in spite of reloading from four saves made at four different times in that patrol. A shame, that, as I lost over 47K of tonnage I had sunk. On my XP gaming rig I never had that nonsense, but it happens all the time on my Windows 7 machine, in spite of following to a T the installation instructions.

thats because windows 7 is, in a word, crap. :shifty: I hate it honestly

Cheers mate! Sounds like you have your hands full. Keep us in the loop as I for one am intrigued by all this. And good luck.

It allows older programs to access more virtual memory (or swap). Ordinarily they can only access 2gb - This gives them more. Here it is...
http://www.ntcore.com/4gb_patch.php

It's called the 4GB patch (I've edited my post above, which incorrectly called it as the "3GB" patch). There are discussions about it throughout subsim, here's one from the Merchant Fleet Mod - which is especially heavy on SH3 resources.
http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/show...170741&page=24

Also this post
http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=174592

IIRC, if you have a 32bit OS, you also need to add the /3gb parameter to your boot.ini file. That's discussed later in the first link.

WOW!
http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/e...ie-johnson.jpg

lol :haha: is he smoking "weed"
(Can I say weed here or does that offend potheads?)

Thanks for the info! I have a 64 bit OS on my gaming laptop, but my gaming desktop is 32 bit XP with 2 GB but I am going to be adding another 1 GB of physical RAM.

Until you get out and cut some ship so your frustration is reduced

SH3 is still best
 

SH3 is still best, but I have a wide screen, and it looks bad streached, so I have to play SH4...and will SH5 at some point.

:DL

I have never had probs with Saves - I always save after a mission and only when I'm docked....


---------------------------------------------

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J90KhauH7Pc

I have 8GB RAM, so it only takes me about 2 minutes max to load up a save, because SH3 has the 3.5GB it can use all to itself.

My save game load times are between 5-7 minutes. I have 3GB of memory on XP 32 bit (no switch). I also have the GWX Merged Campaign activated.

Nemo