Save game problems.. anyone else?

[Duke_Wellington_1st]

I have been struggling past most of the bugs that have been brought up so far, but it seems now that I cannot play from save games after 2 or 3 saves into a career.
I will go to load a save game thats say, mid-way into a patrol - game goes through normal loading screen and then crashes after the "please wait" message...

I reinstalled SH4 twice now, patched, defragged, thumped my fist on my desk alot.... I havent seen the issue elsewhere yet so im ready to belive its my system. anyone else out there having the same issue?

GTX 8800
ASUS Cammando motherboard
1 gig ram
win xp sp2

Thnx!

[FAdmiral]

I've read of some more issues along those lines with saves not responding
part of the time. I don't think its your system so keep reading here at the
forums on any patches or fixes to help the problem. From my experience
with SH3, I don't recommend campaigns till the modders do their thing.

JIM

[Anachronous]

It wouldnt surprise me if there are many more hidden game protection systems than the couple the devs responded to.

I'm using the Disk (unfortunately), so I can only assume that my bugs are bugs, and there are a lot. Though I have heard of people with Nforce 3/4 boards getting false positives when it comes to protection due to the protection systems being unable to detect the controller properly on those boards, but this was a couple year back. I have no idea what its like now.

I had a crash during gameplay, and my saves would not reload from that mission. Though up until the crash they were loading fine. That is as close as I have got to your problem. I'm on my second boat now.

Im having the same bugs as everyone else. http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=107766

[donut]

03-26-2007, 06:24 PM #2 Schlageter-JG26
1 - "Save Games have 50/50 functionality. They get worse if you've been in the game for a long few hours. Likewise, settings on your sub and enemy ships all are RESET when you load.... which means you are entering a totally different situation from the one you saved." http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/newr...ote=1&p=466169 Check it out

[Schlageter-JG26]

Yeah, I'm still having issues.

Some of my saves are for my modded versions of the game. Others are for bone stock settings and the problems persist.

One way "around" it has been to Log Out of XP and back in. Maybe it's something with the ram that causes it to crash out when I load on occasion?

Haven't found much rhyme or reason to it yet, otherwise. I don't mind the game crashing out occasionally... come on, I started out with Dos and Win 3.1 back in the day. But the whole POINT of a save game is to be able to return to the game in a previous state..... and while these put you in the same place at the same time, the setting or state of things is totally changed. That's a bummer.

[malkuth74]

I name my own saves.. No problems yet.

[Juju]

Same problem here: loading career save=CTD (just into my 4th patrol). Re-installing didn't help. Pointless to play this game in this state. Bah.

[Galanti]

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.

Originally Posted by Galanti

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.

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:

[Spaxspore]

Originally Posted by Grunt

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:

Am just sayin if u r goin to use the pervious games file structure/engine... FIX THE BUGS FIRST!! THen start building your dream pacific getaway

[SteamWake]

Strangely I havent had any of these issues and I have alot of saved games.

I use this scheme... I have the usual autosave on entering / leaving base.

Then I have a series of 'named' saves x1, x2, x3, x4 I step through and over wright those saves 'in order' as I go. I save every half hour or so. When I reach x4 I start overwrighting x1 etc.

I did notice that when I first loaded RFB it took a looooooong time to save, in the order of 5 minutes or so. I dont know if this is actually related to the mod or not but the first time I passed it off as froze up and rebooted. The second time I went to the bathroom, got something to eat etc. basically 'waited it out' and the save would finish and return to the game. But after two or three of those looooong save times its back to 'normal' and only takes a few seconds.

Now... I sure hope I havent cursed myself.... at least I have a 'recent' save game to go back to

[Arclight]

I think the reason these issues haven't been fixed yet is because the cause hasn't been pinpointed. Some peolpe have issues, others don't. I, for one, never have these issues. I save whenever, wherever and it's all good. Others stick to specific rules (no saving underwater or near contacts, for example) with mixed results.

To me, it is the most illogical and puzzling issue with SH4.

Hold on... :hmm: yes, once. RFB was generating insanely large save files. Figured out it was because of the replay data always getting saved. Ran out of discspace, so I opened up the folders with the save-games and deleted the replay data. All save-games got corrupted, even the ones I didn't mess with. (deleted the temporary replay data as well, in an effort to make it impossible for the game to save it)

I loaded a war patrol, let it finish loading till I was standing in the control room, facing my XO. Then I tried loading a save-game I hadn't messed with (but wouldn't load before) and it worked!

Maybe it can be of some use to someone in the future. :hmm:

[-Pv-]

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-

[Rykaird]

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.

[tater]

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.