Done Playing For Awhile

[Sailor Steve]

I'm done with SH3 for awhile, and maybe forever.

I've now started my fourth new career in a row. Each time I sail out of port and go to my assigned grid. Each time the weather turns bad. Each time I find I'm too old and tired to play the hours required for the weather to turn good again. Each time I'm forced to save in the middle of a storm. And each time when I reload the game I'm underwater and in a death dive. Every single time. It never fails.

Too many headaches. I haven't played a real career in more than a year, and now it seems I can't.

SH4 is much smoother, and I've never had a problem like that. But SH4 is still very incomplete, at least on the Atlantic side. It doesn't have the things I most enjoy, mainly SH3 Commander. I'll still fiddle around with it, because it's so pretty, but it's not the same.

I'll still work on the Ship Names, because that's an obsession I can't quit. And I may be in the position to buy a new computer soon. We'll see what happens then.

Sorry to be negative, but I'm very tired and very frustrated right now.

[Gerald]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

I'm done with SH3 for awhile, and maybe forever.

I've now started my fourth new career in a row. Each time I sail out of port and go to my assigned grid. Each time the weather turns bad. Each time I find I'm too old and tired to play the hours required for the weather to turn good again. Each time I'm forced to save in the middle of a storm. And each time when I reload the game I'm underwater and in a death dive. Every single time. It never fails.

Too many headaches. I haven't played a real career in more than a year, and now it seems I can't.

SH4 is much smoother, and I've never had a problem like that. But SH4 is still very incomplete, at least on the Atlantic side. It doesn't have the things I most enjoy, mainly SH3 Commander. I'll still fiddle around with it, because it's so pretty, but it's not the same.

I'll still work on the Ship Names, because that's an obsession I can't quit. And I may be in the position to buy a new computer soon. We'll see what happens then.

Sorry to be negative, but I'm very tired and very frustrated right now.

Good luck!

[ryanglavin]

Well friend, join the club. I was about 15 seconds from losing my 890K career from corrupt files.
System reset thingy saved it.

I'm giving this game a break... I can't deal with the stress anymore, heh.

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by Vendor

Good luck!

Yeah, there is that! I ran into a little money today, so tomorrow I'm picking up my second one in three weeks, plus some other goodies. So I'm not all doom-and-gloom, just about the game.

[Gerald]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

Yeah, there is that! I ran into a little money today, so tomorrow I'm picking up my second one in three weeks, plus some other goodies. So I'm not all doom-and-gloom, just about the game.

as always ....

[Flaxpants]

Well I must be lucky then so far as I haven't encountered any of the problems you're having Steve. Admittedly I've only been playing the game for a few weeks but I've given it many hours of my time and so far it seems extremely stable. I installed a mod or two that seemed to affect the stability, so I took them off right away and the issues were fixed.
Sorry to hear you're on a downer with SH3- I'm on an upper!

[Tolkemec]

To Steve: I feel you. I had the same problems over and over again, losing a lot of careers (and I know it will happen again). The issue of the savegames is unforgivable in a retail game, and it's something I really am angry about. It is usually this issue that makes me lose interest in playing SH3, yet after a while (maybe as long as an year), I just come back to my old Type IIa again. I've been playing this game since 2006 I think (that was when I first wrote in subsim, asking for help as usual).

Now I am VERY careful with my saves (you know I save a lot, so I figure I am just ok being a rider of permastorms). Never got the death dive pbl though (fingers crossed).

Now before I save I put TC to 1024 to see if there is a frame drop, If there isn't, I go to the nav map, go to TC 1, hit esc, then come back to the navmap without saving, then hit esc again and save game, each time with a different name. Then I copy my SH3 folder in a SH3backup folder. Yeah, its kind of a ritual... still it is working fine.

Before knowing that the savegame was actually an issue (didn't know of the subsim www), I once saved a corrupt file hiting ALT+TAB multiple times while in the loading screen. Eventually (don't know why), It worked. It took a lot of patience and complete lack of computing skills, but I *really* was very happy. I think (SH3 never told me what hit me), I got bombed by a plane in a mediterranean night one hour later, losing all hands. Oh well...

To Flaxpants: You don't know the extent of your luck, Flaxpants... but you're tempting your karma! You're attracting the unwanted attention of the Macbeth Curse to your SH3... do it at your own risk :-)

[Flaxpants]

Originally Posted by Tolkemec

To Flaxpants: You don't know the extent of your luck, Flaxpants... but you're tempting your karma! You're attracting the unwanted attention of the Macbeth Curse to your SH3... do it at your own risk :-)

I do hope not, I'm having way too much fun! One thing I have noticed though with regards the saves, is that the dates/times of the saves you make sometimes seem to corrupt, a later save will suddenly have an earlier date than a previous save, or vice versa. This caused me a problem once only. Is it possible to correct these dates perhaps before loading the game?
At the end of the day, my motto in life is 'keep it simple', and that applies to my PC, my games and any associated mods, which I will always keep to a minimum.

[Panser]

Like Flaxpants, this is an issue I've thankfully never had and I easily have 200 hours or more of play time on the game over the years (120 this year alone).

I always save when dived just as I'm engaging convoys as many is the time I've knocked PrtScrn instead of F12 and caused my game to crash due to the resfix mod, losing hours of stalking, shooting and evading.

What exactly is the nature of the death dive, an uncontrolled dive that even blowing ballast can't save?

[RConch]

Sorry to hear this Steve.
I also have had none of these problems you have related.
Since I got my new computer and the "new" version of SH III, I have not experienced any problems at all.
I save when I want no matter what or where I am( underwater, under attack and in sight of enemy ships ect.). I save game often.
I keep my mods VERY simple and load them myself with back up.
From my experience, if you can, get a new machine with Win 7 and the "new" version of SH III and I think you will find alot of the problems are gone and keep the mods simple.
It maybe a case of few is better.

[Svendog]

Hi Steve, I know what you mean about the storms, I recently started a new career and I'm on patrol 5 now, off the north of Ireland shadowing a convoy. The weather went bad about 2 days out of Willi and has been like it ever since. I don't get the save game issues people are always talking about though. I hit the convoy last night, went to 30 metres and re loaded my tubes then saved before going to bed. This morning I loaded the saved game and was back in the thick of it, submerged and shadowing the convoy. Maybe its that your hardware is too good? I use an A-bit nf7 mobo, Athlon 3200 xp, nVidia 7600 gt and 2gb ram running stock SH3 v1.4b and apart from a very occasional CTD I have no problems. Just a thought anyway. Best of luck. Sven.

[Herr-Berbunch]

Hi Steve, sorry to see you quiting SH3, I'm sure you'll be back one day - just a quick trawl through the Comments to SUBSIM Review reveal people returning in droves, well, a trickle. Thanks for continuing with Ships Names - it adds greatly to alot of peoples games - are there many left for you to do, you must run out eventually?

I hope you'll still pop into the SH3 threads to offer your experience and advice, wisdom and wit

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by Flaxpants

Well I must be lucky then so far as I haven't encountered any of the problems you're having Steve. Admittedly I've only been playing the game for a few weeks but I've given it many hours of my time and so far it seems extremely stable. I installed a mod or two that seemed to affect the stability, so I took them off right away and the issues were fixed.
Sorry to hear you're on a downer with SH3- I'm on an upper!

Glad to hear it!

Originally Posted by Panser

What exactly is the nature of the death dive, an uncontrolled dive that even blowing ballast can't save?

Exactly. You're very careful to save on the surface, nowhere near land, no ships anywhere around, and when you load the the game you are submerged and headed for the bottom at flanks speed.

Originally Posted by Herr-Berbunch

I hope you'll still pop into the SH3 threads to offer your experience and advice, wisdom and wit

Oh I'll never leave Subsim. Even when I was homeless and couldn't play at all I was still here every day, posting from the library. This is only about playing, not about modding or posting.

[Kapt Z]

Sorry to see you go Steve. Know what you mean, though.

My old machine just barely ran SH3 and even then it couldn't handle GWX and I had pretty much given up on the game entirely about a year or so ago. Then we finally bought a new computer and now SH3 is brand new again! I can run GWX and a bunch of mods no problem, no graphics issues, no save issues, unbelievable difference!

I'll get SH4 someday, but with all the complaints I hear about SH5 I could play SH3 for years to come.

Good luck in the Pacific and give my regards to the IJN.

I can entirely understand. Oddly enough, bugged saves and lost careers are what stop me from playing SH4, and got me playing SH3. Have a good rest, you've obviously earned it!