Splash messed up
 

I installed GWX Gold a while back and have just got back into the game. When I break the surface with my periscope or if I am running on the surface and take a bomb hit or shell hit and there is a big splash the screen goes all weird and pixelated.

Clearly there is some file corruption here and I need to fix the files associated with the splash graphic and it also makes using the periscope rather dangerous as I have to completely clear the surface before I can see anything.

Instead of reinstalling the whole mod is there a work around perhaps?

Thanks in advance,

Scape

For a fix, I dont think you can help your installation... usually when data corruption is large enough that your seeing it in your GUI its pretty deep into your installation.
Having said that, I highly recommend putting such a large install on a partition that is not shared by your operating system. Windows does a terrible job of fragmenting your directories, swapping files and general os nonsense that it only takes a while for something to go corrupt.
On top of putting the installation for SHIII in another partition, if you have the space... make two separate installations of SHIII. Patch both of them up and set one up as an archive which you'll never, ever.. play from. If you get data corruption... just copy and paste the installation over your old one.
Make sure you check your HD for errors and defrag before you do a large install as well. Its prolly not a bad idea to check your registry for errors before you start this whole process wither.:yeah:

Oh yes, I wanted to add that I have used a method like this for years after experiencing what I felt like was too much data corruption. I ran one game for around 3 years and just recently reinstalled so I could upgrade to GWX3.0.

You are of course correct that there is some bad data being displayed there. The question is where it got corrupted. There is really only four possibilities.

Hard Drive
You should probably run chkdsk <drive letter>: /r and tell it yes if it asks to do it on next start up. That command can take quite a while, especially if it finds any problems. If the test finds bad sectors, you need to replace your hard drive before everything becomes corrupt or the drive fails completely. Replacing the files would be pointless since the media they are stored on will just corrupt them again. This sort of problem typically causes your computer to run very slowly when accessing the drive since the OS has to query it over and over for the same data.

System RAM
If your video card does not have much memory, you may be using system RAM to store the graphics data. If that is the case, it could explain the images. Recopying the files would be pointless in this case since they are likely fine on the disk, but get corrupted in memory after they are read. If you have bad RAM you will usually notice many other symptoms such as several attempts required to boot successfully or random lockups or restarts of your computer.

Video Card/Memory
If your video card is overheating or has some buggy or misconfigured drivers you can get some very odd results. You can also get your sort of results if your card is simply too old to support modern methods back buffer uses or has some sort of physical damage. Recopying the files would be pointless in this case since they are likely fine on the disk, but get corrupted in memory after they are read.

Microsoft/Power Loss
If your system looses power while running, or one of MS's 'features' goes wayward, it is possible that the data just became corrupt due to software issues. If that is the case, recopying the files would be a perfect solution. I don't know what files would be the cause however since it appears to be pulling art from several unrelated files. That leads me to believe this isn't the issue.

The pattern you have there sure looks like old back buffer data getting written to the screen instead of the right data. That makes me wonder if it is pulling from the wrong buffer, or if your video card memory has some issues. If you have never run into this problem before on this system, it is unlikely that the video card is not adequate. I would thus look at your video card possibly overheating or physical defect or possibly the drivers being corrupt.

What I mean to say is that the screen shots suggest you may have more wrong than a simple file copy will fix. I'd find the problem and sort it out so you don't have trouble later on. At any rate, a reinstall is always guaranteed to fix any file problems that aren't hardware related the first time (if done properly), and thus is my recommendation. If you still have issues at that point, you have a hardware problem to be fixed.

Just my penny's worth.

So there is no mod that would change splash graphics that could fix this? I don't think it's a HD problem, but it is possible. However it's the 1st such error I have had if it is.

System RAM,Video Card/Memory and Power Loss are not an issue either, but a good suggestion none the less. It just seems to be this one bug the rest of the program runs fine and I have had no issues with more graphically intense games.

Don't burn too much of the candle on the issue......reinstall from new.

Good Idea! I assume windows mode won't do the trick. I did notice when I hit escape to save the glitch does correct itself. Sadly it reverts once I go live again.

My first question would be to your cook. "WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU PUTTING IN THE FOOD !?!"

Nobody asking the obvious question.:timeout:

WTF have you done to run SH3 in that resolution with no bounding window?

I mean, you have top left corner for SH3 twice, then I can see your desktop wallpaper and then I see a screengrab of Subsim.

Whatever you modded to achieve this, has it occurred to you that it might just be the cause of the image corruption.

This image contains all type of wrong!

http://img127.imageshack.us/img127/7430/shot2l.jpg

Dual monitors.

Maybe but it's being treated as a single desktop display, as evident by the screengrab.

Is the same issue still present when using a single monitor, with SH3 @ full screen and with nothing else running? (also try this with SH3 in windowed mode)

Whether the screen shot includes the active window, the back buffer, or the entire display is dependent on how the image is captured from the video card.

http://img44.imageshack.us/img44/3845/shot3d.jpg

There it is in windowed mode.

http://img29.imageshack.us/img29/1305/shot3a.jpg

Scape, I know you probably want to avoid it but reinstalling really is the best choice. You could have it reinstalled and running by now. If you still have the issue after that, you either didn't clear out the old files properly or have a hardware/driver issue.

Most of us that have this sort of trouble start keeping a copy of the SH3 folder in it's freshly installed state handy to compare to the install we are using when there are issues. You can also copy it in place of a bad install to speed up the recovery process.

Yeah, I think a reinstall is the only option at this point. I did see some mods for better wake graphics on ships but nothing about the splash file itself.