A couple of things. The ATI cards are known for running very cool. I'd check it, but wouldn't expect that to be a problem. Your CPU is quite another issue. All some bozo has to do is not use the thermal grease properly and you've got a problem. SH4 is surprisingly rough on video cards and CPUs compared to games that should give them more of a workout.
Saving games is a matter of saving games. It doesn't matter whether you save under water, with contacts around, in combat, not facing Mecca, nothing matters. I've even saved with a torpedo in the water, reloaded the game the next day and watched the torpedo hit home. SH4 save game procedure is rock solid with no issues.
One thing you MUST fix is how you start the game. If your SH4 icon starts gu.exe, you need to change that because gu.exe has issues that the game does not. Make sure your startup shortcut points to sh4.exe!!!! This is vital for game stability and uncorrupted saves.
But your crashes sound like mod soup to me. It comes from installing and uninstalling mods and doing it in the wrong order. Then different parts of incompatible mods are left active.
SH4's error handling routines aren't the best. It seems logical that if the game is instructed to look for a certain kind of ship and the file for that ship doesn't exist, the game should just skip it. It crashes instead. I understand that it crashes any time it does not find a file it is looking for.
The situation is so bad that you can't save at sea with RFB, load up TMO and resume. The game will CTD immediately. You can only change most mods after an in-port save if you want to continue your career.
In your case, the doctor prescribes a visit to the
How to Reinstall SH4 thread. This will allow you to uninstall SH4 and reinstall it in such a way that you don't lose any saved games. Unfortunately, those saved games may not be playable after you're done unless they are saved in port. It all depends on how messed up your mod soup is right now.
When you get done I'll bet your CTDs mysteriously stop.
Everybody gets mod soup. I made a separate read only installation called SH4 Pristeen. It has stock 1.5, JSGME, MultiSH4 and SH4 Menumaker already in it. When my soup tastes bad I just uninstall all mods, delete everything but the mods folder from my Wolves of the Pacific directory and copy all the files and folders from my SH4 Pristeen into it. THEN I HAVE TO WRITE ENABLE EVERYTHING THERE, was I yelling? Run JSGME to enable mods of your choice and you're back up again. I don't care how careful you are. If you change mods you're going to eventually get mod soup. And it tastes lousy!
Welcome to Subsim! Hope it was worth your while to stop lurking and start participating. Let us know how all this works out.
