This issue has been around from the SH3 days. Can't believe it hasn't still been addressed, but it can be minimized (actually eliminated in my experience) by the following practices:

- Don't save while submerged
- Don't save while close (say within 20km) to other vessels or to ports.
- Try to save under different filenames as much as possible.
- one poster elsewhere suggested saving as close to midnight as possible.

I know it would be nice to save just after sinking the Yamato, Mushashi and all the Kongos in one salvo, right before the escorts can mount their counterattack, but all I can suggest is what NOT to do in certain circumstances. That would be one of them.

If you look at the SH3 boards, you'll see this has been around for years, and the steps I've proposed have been gleaned from the bitter experiences of many, many others.

How many of you guys with reload crashes are using default filenames or overwriting existing ones? Any problems Vista Vs XP? How about systems specs? Running minimum as opposed to generous margins?

Saving within 10 minutes of a crew change is NOT a good idea (midnight) as your crew health gets reduced when you restore the game moments prior to the new crew going on duty (which happens between zero seconds after the hour and up to 11 minutes.)

I have saved in proximity to objects and submerged so I don't think those are the important issue in this particular problem.

The saves are in My Documents which can get corrupted when the user profile gets damaged. Anyone having trouble who has had a lot of crashes to blue screen or stop errors?

When you get these reload crashes, can you then reload an earlier save OK? Just the last one in your current campaign that norks?
-Pv-

I'm in mission 1, get CTD whenever I attempt to load any of my more recent saves (Win XP, name my own saves). I assumed it was because I saved while submerged, and even SHIII was sensitive to that sometimes.

I would go and test this, but for some reason I've picked up a German accent and I seem to be in the North Atlantic fighting the British while SHIV bakes a bit more.

I make my own mission names up. Still have this issue. Amazing that they elected to add, well, anything at all to the game with this issue outstanding.

I have not had any CTD with exception of the infamous 'A' key. All my saves load fine. What I do is name the save with what is happening at the time of save....like surfaced, stopped, enroute,....my games still load fine. I can not understand why yours would be any different than mine:hmm:. Try naming each save and see what happens.

Also, I go to the map screen and then save. Maybe you should try that???

Uhmmm....how else do you save a game to play later on?:hmm:

Very good tip (well, it can't hurt at least). I have always done that (over a year of SH3 included), and have never had a corrupted save, once I started following the advice above.

I do all of these things. I never save while in TC. I name my own saves. I do them from the map screen because frankly almost the entire game is played from the map screen.

Like I said, I am saving while submerged and that may be the reason.

Saved submerged was a bad bug in SH3. Since most of SH3 has carried over it sounds like the same deal. Save outside port, surfaced and away from ships:up:

How's this for coincidence? I'm wearing my spring jacket for the first time (hey it's Ottawa) and just five minutes ago while emptying my pocket I found a print out from last year with tips gathered from the SH3 boards on how to avoid bad savegames!

In addition to the others, here's a key one I'd forgotten about. Do not start a patrol unless all other career patrols are in port. Christ, play it safe and only use one career at a time.

All these do this do that to save a game properly are BS. If the game connot be fixed to save under conditions X, Y, and Z, then they need to have a simple dialog that warns the player "savinging is not possible under time compression," or "saving is not possible while submerged, please pick a point when you can safely surface to save game."

It's not rocket science, but people need to be warned.

Yeah, this idea of "only save on on the first Tuesday after St. Swithin's Day unless the groundhog spots his shadow" does get a bit tiresome.

Don't forget about the full moon that is required as well.;)

Not covered in manual,or readme
 

If it isn't covered in this Forum,Or addressed. Knowone would play this game for long ! Keep up the good work.:sunny:

1. I have indeed overwritten savefiles but I don't use default filenames, ever. I am on Windows XP SP2; Pentium 4 3.6 Ghz, 2 GB Ram, ATI 1900 XTX, game runs fine no stutters etc

2. I see .. I have not paid attention to that so far so it is likely that I did what you suggested not to do.

3. I have too but it doesn't seem to be the issue since none of my savegames can be loaded because the whole career becomes corrupt.

4. My user file is ok, I have no bluescreen or freezes etc and other games work just fine.

5. I can and I can not, it depends. Let me explain. As long as my career is not corrupted, the savegames usually load up fine - except for when I try to reload an old save from earlier in the patrol while I am on patrol which sometimes causes the game to CTD (but upon restarting the game it usually works). But if I load it up from the main menu it works (1 CTD while doing so so far only and it wasn't fatal to my career).
However - I am getting to the "can NOT reload" part now. I have noticed that when my game CTD's while on patrol, none of the savegames I have from that patrol work anymore as they all crash the game to desktop right after the "Please wait" screen disappears (named differently according to what is going on too - Combat, Patrol 1, 2, 3 and so on but it doesn't help it). I can however reload any save I have before going out of the port from that career.

The gut feeling I have (let's call it semi-educated guess ^^) is that this problem is somehow related to the fact that after loading a savegame the game is a little quirky - engine on stop, crew losing health etc .. but that doesn't explain why it will still work if the game has not crashed during the patrol.

At least you can complete the main objective. The only time I have completed the main objective was on my 1st patrol out of Pearl. It was to patrol off the South coast of Honshu.... Im on patrol 5 and havent been able to complete the main objective yet. Even after sitting smack in the middle of the marker (star) for 48 hrs.

I also keep getting the same mission .... all 5 patrols.....

This unfinished state is an insult and slap in the face of us subsim fans....

I do the same after corrupted saves with SHIII. I save at map screen and since then have never had a bad save.

If TC is a problem, is paused better?

tater

Same problem here...
Lost about 40 hours of gameplay, all because of this tarded bug. Started happening after applying 1.1 patch. GJ ubisoft.
Btw, never encountered it in SH3 .

Conversely, you could try not saving at all. Or, to be as safe as possible, avoid playing SH4 alltogether. SH4 dev's should be proud of themselves. :rotfl: