Silent Hunter Series: Woeful, Brilliant or Both?

[BigWalleye]

Sorry to hear that you have had so many problems and challenges. All the Silent Hunter series I have played have been interesting games. Except for SH1, they all had problems in their stock form. But games cost $40-50 at release, and today you can get any of the SH series now for under $10. Microsoft Office costs a couple hundred, and the graphics software I use professionally costs $1000s. Games get rushed out the door, and are often released with a full complement of bugs. "Don't buy Version 1.0" is a good rule for any program.

I also started with Silent Hunter (SH1) on a tower, and loved it. BTW, I found it absolutely trouble-free. I never played SH2, because of a lack of interest in U-boats. (But see below....) I got SH4 hoping to recreate my wonderful gaming experience with SH1. I couldn't run it on my then-current laptop. A couple of years later, I got a gaming laptop. SH4 would run, but it required heavy modding before I would even bother to play it. And then the flavor, atmosphere, style (Thanks, Sailor Steve) just wasn't right. Saw a lot of posts about SH5. Bought it, tried it, and it ran, but oh! the modding it required to be playable. Found I didn't like the scripted feel at all. Soooo, I took a step backward (So I thought!) and tried SH3. There were a lot of limitations, but it had the same feel as old SH1. With all the heavy mod work that has been done, I found SH3 can be tailored to a really enjoyable and fairly high fidelity simulation game. And it runs just fine on what is now an obsolescent and very midrange gaming laptop. In fact, all three games - SH3, SH4, and SH5 - run fine on this machine, an Alienware (Hate that name!) M11X R3. I did have problems with SH3, problems which took weeks to identify and correct. But they were all of my own making, were due to fundamental mistakes I made (no deep technical issues), and were within my power to correct - permanently. I now play SH3 for days and weeks with never a problem.

Regarding your question about laptops: Laptop manufacturers often use custom versions of the standard chipsets, with minor technical changes and limitations. And they make changes without advertising the fact. While most laptops work fine with most programs, no publisher of a $40 game is going to hem himself in by claiming to be compatible with a dynamic environment he can't control. Stating on the box: "Comaptible with X" generates a legal liability which the game publishers don't want to assume.

If you look around these forums, you will see that there are a lot of people who play SH3, SH4, and SH5 successfully, on desktops and on laptops. The number of questions regarding gameplay and performance, compared to the number regarding hard-fail problems, tells me that a lot of people can make the games run just fine on their hardware. And the level of technical expertise is quite varied - there are plenty of options for those who would plug-and-play. And there is plenty of help and expertise available when you run into problems. Don't sell the games short. There's a lot of entertainment value here for the money.

Just personally, I'd urge you to give SH3 another look. Make a good clean reinstallation. Add GWX or NYGM, and color mods to taste. The combination got an old fleet boat skipper to enjoy being a Kaleun. You might like it, too.

[the dark knight]

I have never had a CTD issue playing on a laptop, however, I had the top of the line multimedia Vaio at the time, and am currently playing on an Alienware M17X with the hopped up Nvidia card. However, my run of the mill HP that is ment for things other than high end video work or gaming will not run Silent Hunter III at all because it does not meet the minimum requirements. The game is very demanding on the processor chips and video cards.

[jonmar]

Like others here I've never had any problems (other than the inevitable issues that arise when trying to run an old game on new technology) with the games. I've only played 3 and 4 though.

SH3 was never 10 years ahead of it's time. Can you list your PC specs because to me it sounds like your hardware is 10 years behind it's time. You said you used a laptop that ran MSFS 2002. No offense but that's ancient hardware and you shouldn't expect it to run even SH3. However any PC or gaming laptop built or bought after around 2007 should run SH3 smooth as a baby's butt.

The problem is definitely hardware related or you somehow mis-configure the games when you install them. I can't really think of anything else.

[scott_c2911]

I'm starting to wonder whether its just me then. You are probably right about the past PC specs not being quite right as it was a long time ago and I may have forgotten which game I've tried on which PC. The point is however that when u play an x box game it doesnt switch of the console randomly and give u alarming strange noises from the tower with a blue screen of death. Which is exactly what sh5 did to it 2 days ago despite getting green ticks across the board for compatibility and the game is fully patched to v1.2. If I could return it I would but they dont let us do that here with PC games. I'm just angry and fed up with ubisoft. Like I said the games are phenominal when they work but sometimes they just don't. I'm sticking with sh3 for now as its the one that's working tolerably well until my career becomes corrupted like it always does. I know you guys are defending the games and so u should as they are great but we shouldn't stand for shoddy rushed out the door sims anymore that need to be patched. By the fifth game I was hoping all that was behind them. It isn't and I'm not buying another ubisoft product again. Even their CSI games crash. How many potential subsimers bought them installed them found they didnt work and forgot about them. The products should not be on the shelf until they are proven to work. This sort of thing is what is killing the PC game industry. Consoles are booming, android and iPhone games are booming PC games are not doing well with a few exceptions such as WOW and and other online RPGs. Would you pay a subscription fee to play sh5? I doubt it.
The solution is to release a silent hunter game on the ps3 ps4 or the Xboxes They have keyboards and mice and high capacity hard drives so why not! Some of you guys made GWX 3.0 so why don't you make a subsim to end all subsims for the ps4 for example

[Bilge_Rat]

might be a problem with your PC?

I have played them all from SH1 to SHO. Stock, fully patched, never had a problem running them on win 98, XP and now win 7 (SH4, SH5, SHO). When I did have a CTD, it was usually because of mod conflicts.

Have you checked to make sure your OS and drivers are up to date?

I was unable to run Fallout 3 on my Win 7 machine. It would refuse to start. After checking various forums, it turns out I was just missing a specific Win 7 update, now it runs perfectly.

[scott_c2911]

Yes I have mentioned that everything is up to date. I am a relatively new user of subsim but I have been viewing the advice pages for years I know that already. I appreciate all of your help but I'm giving up officially on sh5 and sh4. I'm not buying any more ram I'm not buying another GPU I've had enough. I have met and exceeded the spec in most cases and it damn near blew my electrics. Fsx works on ultra high settings with a good frame rate released 2008. Sh5 released 2010 and it nearly blew up my tower. I know stuff advances a long way in two years but surely there's something wrong there.
My PC
Intel Pentium 4 2.8 GHz dual core
Nvidia GeForce 210 1Gb ddr3 v296.10 (latest driver)
2 x 1Gb PNY RAM (minimum I know)
Windows XP Home Edition v2002 Service Pack 3 32bit ( fully upgraded and updated)
Direct X v10.1
If that's not good enough it never will be because I'm not buying anything else to run these games.
Compatibility test all ticked green
SH5 v1.2 (after 2hrs of installation and another 1hr auto patching) absolutely ridiculous

[Jimbuna]

Have you cleaned the registry prior to installing?

[scott_c2911]

Why should I clean the registry most games consumers don't know what a registry is. People are not getting the point. An average consumer of video games expects to put a game into a machine that meets the required spec install it in around 30 mins and be playing it is that too much to ask for. I'm not an it tech and neither is the vast majority of the games market but since you kindly took the time to reply with something I haven't tried I will and I will get back to you thank you jimbuna

[scott_c2911]

Thank you bilgerat that is probably the problem the tech guy at PC world said it would be fine and the games diagnostic program says it would be fine. Like I say I'm not an IT guy and neither is 90 percent of the video games market. As far as I was aware with the info I had the spec of my PC was more than enough. Change is needed or the PC sim will die and I will miss them.
This is Lt Scott Cooksey. Last survivor of the PC games market. Signing off.
Thanks for all your help guys but I've had enough. I'm going to stick to my Xbox.

[BigWalleye]

Originally Posted by scott_c2911

Why should I clean the registry most games consumers don't know what a registry is.

Because Windows sometimes flubs the uninstall process and not everything uninstalls cleanly. If you are using SH3 with SH3 Commander, for example, there are links through the registry entries which let SH3 Commander work some of its magic. If those links are not cleaned up properly, you might encounter problems. The fault would be with Windows, not Silent Hunter, but it still would impact your game. Other programs, not all of them games, have the same issues.

All the SH products are complex programs. You can not compare them to Flight Sim, which provides a here-and-now environment without much complex AI interaction and with no past and future. SH has campaign layers, where historical events are simulated, a scripted environment which is much larger than the game horizon, AI which must react to the player's actions but not be so good as to overwhelm him, and the real-time simulation of the sub itself, including animations within the sub. The SH games are far more complex that an FPS. And still, the stock game - SH3 and SH4, not so much SH5 - plays OK right out of the box, without any fixes by the gamer. They are all A LOT BETTER with mods, but if you can not get them to work rock-stock, then you have done something wrong. Running SH5 in an environment which is inadequate will guarantee you a very unsatisfactory gaming experience. But that is hardly the fault of the game, or of its developers.

[Bilge_Rat]

Originally Posted by scott_c2911

My PC
Intel Pentium 4 2.8 GHz dual core
Nvidia GeForce 210 1Gb ddr3 v296.10 (latest driver)

Hey Scott,

there is your problem right there, your CPU and GPU dont meet the minimum requirement for SH5 which was CPU: C2D 4400/ GPU: NVIDIA 8800 GT.

The GeForce 210 was an entry-level card back even back in 2009.