Where is the sun?

[SPCPapaJoe]

Silent Hunter 4 Steam edition with TMO 2.5 + RSRD. I'm on my first patrol, and for several days of sim time the sun has not risen. It's night all the time. I can see that the moon moves around the sky, but after it sets the stars stay out and it's pitch black. I had sunlight when I started the patrol, but that's about it. My gameplay style might be unusual. Normally I let the sim run overnight unattended at 1x or 2x time compression (to match how long a patrol would take in real time), then save in the morning, then close the game and shut down my PC to go to work. At night I load the last save and repeat. I've played SH4 like this for the past few weeks, and a week of sim time has passed since I left port. Has anyone else noticed this?

Side note: I've played SH3 + GWX for years this way and found that if I left the view on the map all the time I had a similar problem, but leaving the view on the control room fixed it-- no such luck with SH4.

[Aktungbby]

SPCPapaJoe!

[propbeanie]

Front Runner is a member that uses 1x time almost exclusively. He was having daylight (Base Time) issues, especially in an earlier version of Fall of the Rising Sun Ultimate (FotRSU). He made a thread Base Time 2018, updated in 2019 - but fair warning - Alice's rabbit hole wasn't as big as this one... The subject gets "deep", so take a pair of hip boots if you enter.

Your situation almost sounds like either you are near the Arctic or Antartic Circle, and running under the "endless night" sun... but the game does not do that very well, if you are there... More than likely, you have a configuration issue of some sort, and maybe the Save folder is trashed also. Here's a series of questions for you: Where do you have the game installed on your computer? In other words, what is the path to the game, such as "C:\Program Files..." etc.? Second, which version of the game are you using? You say you have Steam, but is it the "Wolves of the Pacific", or the "Uboat Missions AddOn" you are using modded? Have you attempted to apply the 4Gig Patch or the LAA app to the SH4.exe file? Next, you show TMO and RSRDC mods applied, but have you altered the mod list since you began play? Had you emptied the Save folder after adding or subtracting mods? Answer as best you can, and someone can help further.

[KaleunMarco]

Originally Posted by propbeanie

Front Runner is a member that uses 1x time almost exclusively. He was having daylight (Base Time) issues, especially in an earlier version of Fall of the Rising Sun Ultimate (FotRSU). He made a thread Base Time 2018, updated in 2019 - but fair warning - Alice's rabbit hole wasn't as big as this one... The subject gets "deep", so take a pair of hip boots if you enter.

Your situation almost sounds like either you are near the Arctic or Antartic Circle, and running under the "endless night" sun... but the game does not do that very well, if you are there... More than likely, you have a configuration issue of some sort, and maybe the Save folder is trashed also. Here's a series of questions for you: Where do you have the game installed on your computer? In other words, what is the path to the game, such as "C:\Program Files..." etc.? Second, which version of the game are you using? You say you have Steam, but is it the "Wolves of the Pacific", or the "Uboat Missions AddOn" you are using modded? Have you attempted to apply the 4Gig Patch or the LAA app to the SH4.exe file? Next, you show TMO and RSRDC mods applied, but have you altered the mod list since you began play? Had you emptied the Save folder after adding or subtracting mods? Answer as best you can, and someone can help further.

PB, you are way-too-on-topic.
i would have replied with this.


or one of George Harrison's many gif's, etc.

[Mad Mardigan]

SPCPapaJoe!

[Bubblehead1980]

Originally Posted by SPCPapaJoe

Silent Hunter 4 Steam edition with TMO 2.5 + RSRD. I'm on my first patrol, and for several days of sim time the sun has not risen. It's night all the time. I can see that the moon moves around the sky, but after it sets the stars stay out and it's pitch black. I had sunlight when I started the patrol, but that's about it. My gameplay style might be unusual. Normally I let the sim run overnight unattended at 1x or 2x time compression (to match how long a patrol would take in real time), then save in the morning, then close the game and shut down my PC to go to work. At night I load the last save and repeat. I've played SH4 like this for the past few weeks, and a week of sim time has passed since I left port. Has anyone else noticed this?

Side note: I've played SH3 + GWX for years this way and found that if I left the view on the map all the time I had a similar problem, but leaving the view on the control room fixed it-- no such luck with SH4.

Depends on location on earth as Propbeanie mentioned such as Arctic, also time of year. For example in SH $ Dark Waters mod, I have noticed that at higher latitudes in North Atlantic during summer months esp in July...it never really gets dark and even when it should be daylight, no sun some days, although its bright out.From September-May do not have issue. Mid to lte June noticed it starts and lasts through most of july into August, at or above above certain latitudes. Noticed this in higher latitudes of the pacific as well.


Other factors that can cause issues with sun/moon and weather is heavy use of time compression, depends a lot on individual machines running the sim, tabbing out to windows, and loading of saved games.


All the modding I have done to TMO, can say it can acts strangely at times to reloaded games, especially repeated reloads.

Always make sure to:

1. Save away from any other ships, etc. Make sure have no visual contacts
or anything on radar sound etc. Always check hydrophone, make sure cn hear nothing the green indicator light , lights up on when focus on bearing.


2. Avoid saving near ports or land.


3,Make sure are making a fresh save each time, never overwrite the saves.


4. Save in nav map view only.

[Gerald]

Welcome to Subsim. As a Sub Captain ya are most stuck under water so ya got to deal with the fact " no sun for a while" except when ya are on the bridge for target or experience fast moving plane... but ya got plenty of that when free time comes.

[SPCPapaJoe]

Sorry I left everyone hanging! I thought I had email notifications set up here, but I had no idea anyone had posted! Thought I must be pretty boring. I came here to post an update and was surprised to see all of this!

Originally Posted by Bubblehead1980

Always make sure to:
3,Make sure are making a fresh save each time, never overwrite the saves.
4. Save in nav map view only.

Ahhhhh. So, as it turns out I have been overwriting 10 arbitrary saved game slots so as not to bloat the SSD. They add up over time! I may try writing fresh saves and see how that goes.

In the meantime I have discovered a workaround: just speed up time compression to 4x and daytime/nighttime work fine. For some reason 2x and 1x just don't work. They may let the sun sink, but they won't let it rise. I appreciate some of the detailed troubleshooting steps, but I think this workaround will be sufficient for me. I think I have come to accept I was overly obsessed with the sim running at real time. By not doing that, the sim will proceed at about the same pace as real life (since it only runs while I sleep at night), and I like that better.

In response to some other questions I saw, I'm running SH4 + Uboat missions. They come as two games from Steam, but I always launch Uboat missions. I haven't made any changes to TMO or RSRD or changed their order or anything. I would rather not change the installation path of the game at this point.

Playing an S boat in the Asiatic fleet, patrolling around Formosa and the Phillipines, so not super high/low latitudes. And after 20 days on patrol I just spotted my first small convoy! I had been attacked by planes repeatedly and thought there might not be any ships in this game.

Thanks for the advice, everyone.

[SPCPapaJoe]

Update: 2x time compression and higher keep the Earth spinning.

[Armistead]

Doesn't sound like an eclipse, tho they actually happen in the game on time for those years. Doesn't change the light tho...