Old-timer resurfacing with mod questions!

[VikingGrandad]

One thing leads to another...
(for anyone who may remember me from the old days and wondering why I've suddenly re-surfaced)

I stumbled upon the very promising "Uboot" project on Kickstarter a few months ago and gave them my support... But it's not due out until next year, and the anticipation has also got me reminiscing about the good old days of playing SH3. I hadn't been out on a patrol for 5-6 years!

So I purchased SH3 on Steam the other day (can't find my old Ubi CD...), figured out how to install GWX3 on a Steam installation, tweaked a few things to make the game run full-screen without crashing, installed SH3 Commander, and prepared to set sail across the Bay of Biscay once more!

Well, I must admit I couldn't even remember how to get the damn boat moving to start with... But it didn't take long for things to start feeling instinctive again and I felt pretty much in command of U-94 by the end of my first patrol. Even remembered my tried and trusted torpedo settings! Now completed 2 patrols, and sank 3-4 lone merchants on each. Very chuffed!

And so, inevitably, I find myself at the Subsim SH3 forums, amazed (and very pleased) to see how active the SH3 community continues to be, and wondering what I've missed out on over the last 5 years or so!

I've been looking at the SHII Mods Workshop forum, and it seems there's a lot of new, exciting toys to play with!

'SH3 Front-End' and 'Living SH3' both caught my eye as very promising new additions that have emerged during my absence. I'm sure there are plenty of other great new mods that I haven't seen yet.


SH3 Mod Questions...

1. I'm curious to know about these mods/patches included with 'SH3 Front-End':

• 4GB patch?
• H.Sie patch?
• S3S / S3K?
• Steam Fix? (I've managed to get SH3+GWX3+SH3C working without this - but do I still need it?)
• I'm familiar with the other features in 'SH3 Front-End', such as JSGME - but what are "JSGMEMV" and "JSGME4S3C"?

Sorry if I missed an obvious link to the descriptions of these items... I did try using the forum's search tool to look for these terms in the "SHIII Mods Workshop" sub-forum, but I got either no results or hundreds of results mentioning these terms but not one obvious release thread describing what they do!


2. Is there a widescreen mod that works at 1680x1050 resolution with no stretching or other problems?
I'm currently running SH3 at 1400x1050 with Anti-aliasing etc. set in the Nvidia control panel. This works quite well but of course using this 4:3 resolution on a wide-screen gives me black bands either side of the game area. It would be great if there's a hi-res widescreen mod that will work with my gfx card (Nvidia GTX 750 Ti) and monitor's native resolution (1680x1050). I use Windows 7 64-bit.


3. Did anyone ever find a way to force the lazy WO to go back to his station on the conning tower when surfacing?
This little problem is so annoying! I dive and surface repeatedly while using Time Compression, so I need the WO on deck instantly to tell me if there's any aircraft when we surface!

4. Is modded SH3 more fun than modded SH5?...?
I expect there's no easy answer. I've never played SH5, and have only ever heard negative things about it. But I notice that there's a lot of SH5 mods available, so I'm curious to know how it compares to SH3. Perhaps the key question for me: Is modded SH5 as immersive as modded SH3?

[cdrsubron7]

Hey old timer.

Nice to see you again, it's been quite awhile. I hope everything is OK with you and your family?

BTW, you once new me as tambor198.

[Sailor Steve]

Hey, man, welcome home!

The 4-Gig patch, AKA the 'Large-Address-Aware', lets your PC use more than the usual 2 Gigs of memory when operating SH3. It's not necessary for the stock game or GWX, but is absolutely vital for large mods like the Merchant Fleet Mod.

1. H.sie's patch corrects a lot of flaws in the game, like not having the WO come to the bridge when you surface, making the WE's range estimations a little less precise (it rounds to whole numbers), and fixing a bunch of minor headaches. It's a good one.

Here are Blitzkrieg's code-names for all mods:
http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/show...3&postcount=15

2. I don't use widescreen, so someone else will have to answer that.

3. Yes! Answered in (1).

4. More fun? Debatable. As fun? Yes. The Wolves of Steel supermod makes it fully playable, and a lot of people play it and love it. It still only has the four variations of the Type VII and just a handful of merchant types, but there are people trying to fix that. It looks great, but I can't live without my Type II, so I still stick with SH3.

[badwolf]

Hi old timer,
I'm in the same boat as you.
Getting old, been absent for a while and now relearning the ropes of the game.
I ran GWX3 in the older days. Having a much better pc now, thought I'd give Living Silent Hunter III (LSH3) a try.

.................W O W..........................

It's a really nice mod package.
Good installation info.
Great layout for adding in the upgrades and mods.
Plays like GWX3 on steroids. Very graphically intensive, with lots of new harbour objects.

It uses the H.Sie patch which includes the4GB patch.
Also includes loads of great extra corrections and mods, including the fix for the lazy WO.
see - http://www.lsh3.com/dl/v15/LSH3-2015...E-V16B1_EN.pdf

You have numerous Gui's to pick from. I selected OLC's widescreen which fills the screen up perfectly on my normally 1680x1050 monitor, without having any stretch or distortion.

I mentioned LSH3 as it answers most of your questions.

Regarding SH5, I just hate the modern/clean look it has with the GUI.
I prefer the old SH3 GUI graphics, you can nearly smell the diesel while looking at it.

[Mittelwaechter]

Nice to read you again, mate.



The h.sie patch is brilliant.
Send a convoy contact report and BdU may order you to shadow until a wolfpack is in range to join your attack.

The eye candy in LSH is awesome - you will have fun with it.

[Jeff-Groves]

Well looky who surfaced!


I was just going through that News Paper you sent me not 5 days ago!
Wondered how you were doing.

[VikingGrandad]

Originally Posted by cdrsubron7

Hey old timer.

Nice to see you again, it's been quite awhile. I hope everything is OK with you and your family?

BTW, you once new me as tambor198.

Well, it's not been the best time during these last few years for me and the missus, but we're getting though it

I hope you and yours are doing well.

Yes, I remember you very well, Tambor, one of my fellow hammer-wielders on the Ubi forum!

Nice to bump into you here!

Originally Posted by Mittelwaechter

Nice to read you again, mate.

And another old Ubi comrade! Great to see you here too, Herr Mittelwaechter!

Originally Posted by Mittelwaechter

The h.sie patch is brilliant.
Send a convoy contact report and BdU may order you to shadow until a wolfpack is in range to join your attack.

The eye candy in LSH is awesome - you will have fun with it.

The h.sie patch sounds excellent. Definitely need to try that, probably using 'SH3 Front-End'.

And thanks for the LSH recommendation too. You may remember I'm also a sucker for all kinds of atmospheric/immersive eye candy in SH3 - helps us to get those nice screenshots!

[VikingGrandad]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

Hey, man, welcome home!

The 4-Gig patch, AKA the 'Large-Address-Aware', lets your PC use more than the usual 2 Gigs of memory when operating SH3. It's not necessary for the stock game or GWX, but is absolutely vital for large mods like the Merchant Fleet Mod.

1. H.sie's patch corrects a lot of flaws in the game, like not having the WO come to the bridge when you surface, making the WE's range estimations a little less precise (it rounds to whole numbers), and fixing a bunch of minor headaches. It's a good one.

Here are Blitzkrieg's code-names for all mods:
http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/show...3&postcount=15

2. I don't use widescreen, so someone else will have to answer that.

3. Yes! Answered in (1).

4. More fun? Debatable. As fun? Yes. The Wolves of Steel supermod makes it fully playable, and a lot of people play it and love it. It still only has the four variations of the Type VII and just a handful of merchant types, but there are people trying to fix that. It looks great, but I can't live without my Type II, so I still stick with SH3.

Thanks, Steve! Nice to see you again, sir!

And thanks for the useful information.

Is the 4-Gig patch needed for running LSH too?

I'll take a good look at the Wolves of Steel supermod to see how well it's kicked SH5 into shape. What you said sounds promising!

[THEBERBSTER]

A Warm Welcome Back To The Subsim Community > VikingGrandad
Subsim <> How To Donate <> See The Benefits <> Support The Community
Highly Recommended SH3 > LIVING SILENT HUNTER III EDITION 2015 Mega Mod > Full Tutorials And Much More In My Signature

[VikingGrandad]

Originally Posted by badwolf

Hi old timer,
I'm in the same boat as you.
Getting old, been absent for a while and now relearning the ropes of the game.
I ran GWX3 in the older days. Having a much better pc now, thought I'd give Living Silent Hunter III (LSH3) a try.

.................W O W..........................

It's a really nice mod package.
Good installation info.
Great layout for adding in the upgrades and mods.
Plays like GWX3 on steroids. Very graphically intensive, with lots of new harbour objects.

It uses the H.Sie patch which includes the4GB patch.
Also includes loads of great extra corrections and mods, including the fix for the lazy WO.
see - http://www.lsh3.com/dl/v15/LSH3-2015...E-V16B1_EN.pdf

You have numerous Gui's to pick from. I selected OLC's widescreen which fills the screen up perfectly on my normally 1680x1050 monitor, without having any stretch or distortion.

I mentioned LSH3 as it answers most of your questions.

Regarding SH5, I just hate the modern/clean look it has with the GUI.
I prefer the old SH3 GUI graphics, you can nearly smell the diesel while looking at it.

Greetings, badwolf!

Thanks for the H.Sie, LSH and OLC recommendations and descriptions. I never expected to see the SH3 modding community still pushing the boundaries, especially after all the great things the modders achieved in the 4-5 years after the game launched.

Really looking forward to trying these mods out... I guess I won't be in a hurry to try SH5 and Wolves of Steel for a long while yet! ha!

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by VikingGrandad

Is the 4-Gig patch needed for running LSH too?

That I don't know, but it's one of those things that can't hurt.

[badwolf]

hi again VikingGrandad,

Originally Posted by means Waechter
The h.sie patch is brilliant.
Send a convoy contact report and BdU may order you to shadow until a wolfpack is in range to join your attack.

The eye candy in LSH is awesome - you will have fun with it.

Your in for some nice suprises if you install LSH.
Won't spoil your fun of finding out, but took me a while to figure how to get out the harbour on the 2nd mission.

With your pc specs, installing the 4-Gig patch is advisable.

[VikingGrandad]

Originally Posted by BL!TZKR!EG

Now this is really awesome. In fact I find it very awesome seeing so many old SUBSIMers return to SH3.

So welcome back, Kommandant!

Thanks for the warm welcome!

I wonder how many other old sub-simmers are coming back to SH3 because of the upcoming 'Uboot' game?

Originally Posted by BL!TZKR!EG

Please describe which steps you took. Why? There are a number of issues that you will or might run into when using Steam's SH3, see: STEAM and other Download-Versions of SH3. We come back to that later...

That was quite easy. I've tweaked a few files for other games in my Steam folder, so I already knew that Steam would install SH3 there instead of the default location that the original Ubi installer disc used. So, when I ran the GWX3 installer and SH3C installer, I knew I needed to point them to the correct location when the installers couldn't find the default location.

I have two Steam folders on my PC. One is the default folder, which Steam placed in my C drive a couple of years ago. The other one is a separate Steam folder on a separate internal E drive, which I created when my C drive started to get full - and this is where I installed SH3 via Steam (E:\Steam\steamapps\common\Silent Hunter 3)

SH3C is installed in C:\Program Files (x86)\SH3 Commander

The only problem I had was the SH3 application crashing on start-up ("cannot initialise 3D engine" - or something like that). But I soon found a thread on the Steam forum which suggested the problem is usually because of a widescreen resolution, and the easiest fix is to use 1024x768 or any other 4:3 resolution instead.

Thanks for the link to the Steam information. Just read some very useful info there and in the one of the other links you listed ('SH3 Commander and STEAM'):

• It seems that having Steam SH3 installed somewhere other than the default Steam folder is something I did which helped the installation work, even though I didn't know it at the time... That was lucky!
• Regarding SH3C startup delay problem... I often have the Steam app open in the background, which means Steam doesn't need to start when I run SH3 from SH3C. I wonder if that helps avoid delays? I also have automatic rollback switched off, and (so far) have only used used the manual rollback function once to install some of the optional GWX3 mods
• I think I've launched SH3 GWX3 5-6 times via SH3C so far. No problems yet, but I'll continue reading the info you linked to.

Originally Posted by BL!TZKR!EG

The release-and-documentation-thread for S3F(that is Front-End) is on page#1 of the Mods Workshop and has not left that page since the first days of its existence. I believe it was so shocking to some kind of folks (), here's the link: [REL] S3F - Silent Hunter III-Front-End - the NEW way to go (or simply click on S3F in my signature). Extensive documentation etc. can be found on page#1 of that very thread. Enjoy!

Don't worry, I saw that thread! Plenty of well-written, detailed information there, describing what is included in S3F, how it works and how to set it up, etc.... BUT I couldn't see any info or links that simply describe what the included features actually do!
(I already knew about some of them but not the 4GB patch, H.Sie patch, S3S, S3K, JSGMEMV, JSGME4S3C & Steam Fix)

The thread will be very useful when I'm ready to try S3F! Excellent work!

Originally Posted by BL!TZKR!EG

The S3G gives you an entire list of WS-mods, simply click on S3G in my signature.

Originally Posted by BL!TZKR!EG

Yes, H.sie fixed that issue, so look at S3H - the H.sie-patch or the automated recode included in S3F. An overview which includes both is at PATCHES FOR SiLENT HUNTER III [SH3] and their appropriate installation
H.sie-Patch V16B1 completely automated

I've bookmarked these links! Thanks!

Originally Posted by BL!TZKR!EG

It is. I have returned from SH5 to SH3 because I prefer the gameplay. Or have you played MP with SH5, where you can choose between as many boat-types as listed for SH3 here?

I'll take a look soon!

[VikingGrandad]

Originally Posted by THEBERBSTER

A Warm Welcome Back To The Subsim Community > VikingGrandad

Thanks very much, BERBSTER!

[VikingGrandad]

Originally Posted by Jeff-Groves

Well looky who surfaced!


I was just going through that News Paper you sent me not 5 days ago!
Wondered how you were doing.

Greetings, Jeff! Nice to see you again!

I have no idea what you're talking about, but er... I'm glad you got the newspaper...!
Sounds like a weird dream...