Save game crash important discovery!

[brett25]

thanks again Jim

now that we are back at sea, i suppose it would be helpful if people could report in as marco did and lets see if there a consensus around weather the save game crash is connected to a ship sinking, whatever the exact cause, i think this is a step that will be quite helpful. There are several on this forum whose understanding of the game is quite deep and perhaps in time this may become worthy of their notice.

This issue is such a show stopper for many that it deserves whatever attention can be leveled at it. Of course Ialso know this topic has been hashed out many times before.....

you cant imagine how excited I was when I got this to work, its nothing more than that


***as an aside to those interested, in case i wasn't as clear as i could have been:

the save game would crash 100% of the time once the ship in question has sunk. I repeated this many time with many different attempts to fix it (including re installs, mod removals, registry clean up), then I pointed my game to another install i have of J scones most excellent SH3 Commander (i cant imagine playing SH3 with out it) and then went back into the game from a good save, waited for the ship to sink and tried a save...this worked...then i dove to 45 meters and did a save...it worked...now the game seem stable again.....could it be a coincidence? yes it could, or it could be something else

that is all i have to report

[Mittelwaechter]

Well - the save game bug is as old as the game itself.
I guess a later developed SH3 Commander is not responsible for the bug.

By the way - I don't use savegames on a regular basis, but when real life calls me I save and leave the game. It happens.
In all those years playing Vanilla, GWX or LSH - modded and/or tweaked by myself + running SH3 and Commander on three different computers - no such bug has yet occured to me.

I had and have SH3 problems with CTDs, GameExplorer, UAC or even my firewall - and this PatrolLogEditor doesn't work in my set up - but my save games do fire up.

I'm knocking on wood...

[Marko_Ramius]

I did a complete reinstall of GWX 3, without installing SH3Cmdr.


Began a campaign in 2nd flotilla. I made several saves, with no sinking ships and with some after sinking 2 enemy ships.

Well, exactly the same issue : save game crash if i load the one in which i sunk targets.

The game saved before shooting load fine So, in my install, it's not SH3Cmdr problem. I will investigate with the mods i have installed, it takes time but it's weird because it's the few mods i was using in the past and all was ok.

[brett25]

ok Marko, thats interesting, well at least your issue is related to the sinking of a ship and thats exactly the issue I have as well...I can conceed that the Commander fix i suggested, although it appears to have fixed my issue, may not be the cause, and that's ok for now...but I at least want to know if more peole have crashes specifically due to ship sinking....

regarding mods, I have had many heavy mods installed and when the game is woking fine , there is never a save crash, and as stated earlier, when the game is working I can save in the middle of a batlle and at depths...but when the game is not workin (ie after I have sunk a ship), then no amount of fussing around will result in a good save.....

[Marko_Ramius]

Yep, definitely something to do with sinking ships.

I tried again, but this time without one of the mods installed,and without hyperthreading (never knows ..).

Same thing : as long as i don't sink a target, game load ok ; but not after a hit ..

i'm lost ..

[brett25]

marko do me a favor, hit a ship and then try to save after hes sinking (broken ship icon on nav map) but before it goes under and see if that save will open///aslo do one again once it goes under and see if that will open (though we know it probably will not)....

[Marko_Ramius]

ok, will try that

[brett25]

Well I have good news and bad news to report. The bad news is that my crashes are back, and indeed the Commander theory has proven not o be true. The good news is that I have narrowed down the poin of crash to a very specif thing...a ship has to go under water in order to produce the corruption...I saved that game at several points after hitting a ship and inflicting critcal damage, all saves prior to sinking were good, after sinking the corruption occurs...of this i cannot be more certain......I hope this discovery may lead to some new theories and even a solution, but I fear the people who are in a position to propose such things are long gone from this one....happy sailing...out


Marko, please put your modlist up here, thanks

[MLGathome]

The second solution in this thread worked for me:
http://www.subsim.com/radioroom//sho...d.php?t=166283

NO CTD sinds then.

Good Luck, Marcel

[brett25]

@MLGayhorne, thats great news m8

@Rudewarrior rather than send you another PM Id rather make it up with you here. I appreacie your thoughtful message, and im sorry as well for reacting the way I did to your input (your reasoning was sound ), I should not be afraid of a little salt , after all we are pretty crusty bunch of fellows here....perhaps a mug of beer if Jim will join us?

Actually, heres the deal....in my case it seems to be Lifeboats and debriv4 (hense the ships sinking and corrupt save) I dont blame this mod howver but my choice in using it as im using the POTD steel sharks mod (plug for SteelSharks league right here) and this may be the reason for the conflict with LB&D.. Im hoping to see if Marko is using Lifeboat and Debri as well, so maybe he has his solution as well.

Also For Windows 7 Users it probably would hurt to run the exe as admin, this is a good all round thing that solves many diverse issues in Win 7.

I am coming to the conclusion as you mention in your message rudewarrior that these corrupt saves are general and affect people differently and so may be impossible to pinpoint exactly. I hope my posting has been of help, if not I suppose it can be piled up with all the other save game crash posts

Well I am happy to be sailing again and in my case at least im all fixed.....

[rudewarrior]

Hi brett,

Just want to say no need for an apology, as we hashed it out via PM, but thanks anyway.

The only comment I would like to make here for anyone who reads this far is that the true problem here is the inherent buggy nature of SH3 saves. There are several threads that talk about this problem, but it is never stated in a central location. So I will just reiterate it here, so that more people can see it whenever possible.

The best conditions under which you can save a game in SH3 is when you are on the surface with no ships or aircraft of any sort in the area.

This means that your save game is most likely to load. Unfortunately, since it seems that the issue is inherent to SH3 itself, this is the best you are going to get. Once you start adding mods in, your chances of successful load are only going to go down.

It's a shame that you can't use the Lifeboats & Debris mod, since I think it adds a nice effect to the game. However, consider saving away from the wreckage, and you still might be able to keep it. I have quite the mod list. I won't post it here, as it would just be spam (but you can see a posting of it here). Just as a side note, if you read further in that thread, you will see that people who inspire the size of that mod list are like, "Wow! That's a lot of mods!" So the problem is that if I change something in there and the game starts to be unstable, sometimes I just wonder where I am going to start. The simple solution would be to just discard the new change, but I always just have to have that mod!

The point of that is to illustrate a story. One day, my wife wasn't home, and I settled in to play SH3 all day. I started a new patrol, went out to sea, engaged a convoy, and sank an assload of tonnage. Calm weather, I was on the surface the whole time, all the torpedoes were hits, all the ships were sinking right away. I also got some deck gun action on the surface. Couldn't have gone better. I have a tendency to save right after weather changes, so I don't feel like I'm cheating (or to give me something else to be anal about). So I am heading home. Just before I get to port, the weather changes, I save the game and then exit so that I can edit my pennants to enter port. When I load the game, CTD. I keep going back through each of my save games, CTD. I finally get to the save game that works, and it is right at the beginning of the patrol. And I know for a fact that the first save that corrupted all the others was on the surface, 0 m/s wind, clear skies, 16 km visibility, and in an area where there is low shipping traffic and nothing was visible. And it still crashed. Since then I've realized that CTD's are just part of life in SH3, and the best you can hope for is that it happens as infrequently as possible.

Good luck and smooth sailing to you all!

[LGN1]

Hi,

anyone using TDW's depth-charges disturbance mod? I ask because this sounds similar:

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/show...0&postcount=93

Regards, LGN1

[rudewarrior]

Originally Posted by LGN1

Hi,

anyone using TDW's depth-charges disturbance mod? I ask because this sounds similar:

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/show...0&postcount=93

Regards, LGN1

I would like to say +1 on this diagnosis. The personal story that I relay in the 8th post of this thread actually revolved around that exact mod. When I removed it, all the problems went away. It's a shame, because it would be a fabulous addition to the game.

I was hesitant to bring it up, as it seems that they could get the game to load sometimes, but no one has actually posted a mod list, so it could very well be the case.

Thanx for bringing it up LGN1.

[Stiebler]

There has been some interesting information given in this thread.

One thing that I have discovered is this:
When you make a game save, the game information is just pumped out as a data stream without any checking. Even if the data saved were corrupt.

However, when you reload the saved game, there is a lot of checking of the input data. So the central problem is that corrupted RAM has been output to the save file without checks, but the problem has been discovered during re-input. That's when the CTD occurs.

(I used to keep a small list of corrupted saves, and check what happened during reload with OllyDbug, a disassembler. The CTD always occurred - for me - while a series of ships was being reloaded, always from a convoy in my particular case. Of course, there may be other causes of corrupt RAM of which players are blissfully unaware - until they save the game, then try to reload it.)

Why are convoys the cause of my problems?
There are a number of possible reasons:

1. Ships which have build defects which were not apparent during normal testing. For example, ID conflicts with other ships. Or fitted with inappropriate equipment, which causes corruption of RAM for another ship. Aircraft may suffer from the same difficulty.

2. RAM overflow. If two convoys have spawned near the U-boat, then RAM has to be allocated for every ship. Depending on how much RAM you have available, two convoys may cause this problem. More convoys will increase the probability of a RAM overflow or other conflict, which can corrupt RAM without the player being aware - until he saves the game and tries to reload it.

3. You're in a high-density minefield. Each mine has to be rendered!

The solution to problems (2) and (3) is to add more RAM. If anyone has any doubts about this RAM problem, try taking a U-boat to the narrow waters between Scotland and Northern Ireland in 1944, through which lots of convoys pass quickly and often at the same time. All your game saves will cause CTDs (unless you have a mighty big computer!), and you may even find, if you return to base without any game save, that you will get a CTD as soon as you dock at base.

Faulty mods can also corrupt RAM, but this problem can be solved by removing the offending mod (but it may take some time to locate the problem, since corrupt saves by their nature will not always affect the reloading of a saved game.)

And finally, as others have pointed up here, it may be that SH3 sometimes gets into a muddle when trying to handle sinking ships.

Of course, there may be other ways of corrupting RAM too.

Stiebler.

[Marko_Ramius]

So, i can confirm that :

A ship hit by a fish, but not enough to sink --> games load ok ( even underwater at 48m depth , in the middle of a convoy ! )

The same patrol, loaded with a saved game made after the wounded ship have sunk ---> Crash at the "not so long ago" ; Same with a saved game made hours after sinking ship, at surface, with no visual contact ..

Now, the mods : ( Pay attention to the first two ..)

- LifeBoats&Debris_V4
- GWX-Ehanced Damaged Effects
- Torpedo Damage Final V.2.0

- GWX - English Nav Map and Grid Refs ( updated ver.)
- GWX No Medals on crew
- GWX open hatch Mod
- FubarSVII58 mrk 2
- GWX-TA1.3_Seafloormod -256mb
- SH4StyleFlags_GWX
- Thompsen's Whispering Ring mod
- GWX - Merged Campaign
- GWX Integrated orders
- TheDarkWraith_DC_Water_Disturbance_V4.0_SH3
- TheDarkWraith_Ship_Plane_Fire_Damage_V1_4_SH3
- SB_cameras_mod_SH3
- WBNN Mission Orders Lite
- M.E.P_V2_Env
- M.E.P_2_Jake1024x1024 foam
- Undersea_Mod_Reworked


The link provide by MLGathome is interresting ! I will check this out with the mods ( the first two ones in the list ; I don't think the "Torpedo damage final" has something to do with this mess, but will check that too )

Everything, even the more little thing, could be of any help with this strange crash bug, so, Thanks to Brett and everyone else to report


I repeat myself, but : In the past, it's a bug which i didn't know well. My SH3 was rocking solid ( with the same list of mods !!) so, i really don't know what happened ..