I am so frustrated i am going to break something!!

[JokerOfFate]

Originally Posted by desirableroasted

I go get a beer while the game loads to the first menu, then drink it while the saved game loads.

Same here

Originally Posted by Capt. Morgan

Ale, Lager or Pilsner?

Lager for me mate. Harp by the way

[K-61]

Originally Posted by Capt. Morgan

I hear you. I'm back with SH3 too (Really like piloting my boat through the locks on a pitch-black night).

As to why I'm lucky with saves, I'm just religious about how I save. Never when submerged ( and always very careful not to be momentarily submerged in bad weather), never if any harbors or surface or air units are within 30Km (now 50Km), and always at zero time compression (forgot about that one, never save at a high TC)

If I can't meet those conditions and i need to leave, then I pause the game and alt-tab out of it. I've left it like that for hours without any ill effects.

I've also cut down on the number of Mods I load (I did have more problems when I was experimenting with every mod there was), and I've installed the 3GB patch which allows SH3 to access a lot more virtual memory.



Ale, Lager or Pilsner?

Whoa there!!! What's this thing about a patch for memory? I've never heard of that. My gaming rig has 8 GB of real RAM. Are you saying there is a patch that allows the game to access more physical RAM? If so, would it work for systems that have 4 or more GB of physical RAM?

I seem to suffer from more than my fair share of corrupted saves or games in play that just go poof! and crash to desktop. My last patrol, I lost the whole thing, in spite of reloading from four saves made at four different times in that patrol. A shame, that, as I lost over 47K of tonnage I had sunk. On my XP gaming rig I never had that nonsense, but it happens all the time on my Windows 7 machine, in spite of following to a T the installation instructions.

[Captain Nemo]

Originally Posted by Capt. Morgan

Thank you sir. This is new information to me. I guess I've been lucky with saves.

Your welcome.

Nemo

[Pisces]

Originally Posted by Capt. Morgan

...
2) If you are within 30km of any harbour.
...

Did I miss any other conditions? Following these 3, I've not experienced a bad save in about a year.

Better make that 50km or so. To begin with hydrophone range is 34km. Any unit that comes within is 'materialized'. But since you'll allways have some units that patrol's outside of the harbor you have to keep a margin of safety avoiding them being included in the savegame.

[dannygjk]

I have no idea why people are having problems with SHIII. I use the stock patched to 1.4b and never have any problems!

[fastfed]

Originally Posted by Captain Nemo

I'll refer to my contribution to a thread on a similar topic:

Making saves regularly during a patrol may sound like you are ensuring that if something goes wrong one of the saves will come to your rescue. This is not always the case, unless you exit the game and reload the save each time you make one to verify they work OK, they may all be corrupt. As I understand it if you make a save but do not exit and that save is bad for some reason, then all subsequent saves will also be corrupt, like a chain reaction. I always save and exit after a session playing SH3 and each time I do this I save under a different name. That way if my most recent save goes bad, I know that the previous save did work. I lose a bit of progress but not the whole patrol.

Hopefully the project team looking at the save game problem will find the cause and a solution.

Nemo

I save all the time.. and each save is, "111" "222" and so on.. Of course for "666" I use "676" just because the devil is bad

I get up to "2020" which is 20 saved games.. Last night, from 20 down, number 8 or so worked.. It took over and hour..

Which brings me to another question with out posting again..

HOw long does it take you guys to load the game? Mine is about 4-5 minutes to load a saved game.

2 gigs of ram,

[desirableroasted]

Originally Posted by fastfed

HOw long does it take you guys to load the game? Mine is about 4-5 minutes to load a saved game.

I go get a beer while the game loads to the first menu, then drink it while the saved game loads.

[ediko]

Before when I got just 768mb of ram I managed to take a shower, make something for dinner and watch some TV enjoying the food. And it ain't a joke either
Now with 2 gigs it loads about 5~10 minutes.

[Gunther_Prime]

SH3 is still best, but I have a wide screen, and it looks bad streached, so I have to play SH4...and will SH5 at some point.



I have never had probs with Saves - I always save after a mission and only when I'm docked....


---------------------------------------------

[MILLANDSON]

I have 8GB RAM, so it only takes me about 2 minutes max to load up a save, because SH3 has the 3.5GB it can use all to itself.

[frau kaleun]

Originally Posted by Gunther_Prime

SH3 is still best, but I have a wide screen, and it looks bad streached

You can try one of the widescreen mods currently under discussion in the Mods Workshop forum. If that doesn't work, you can always do what I did - disable the auto-rescaling function of your gfx card. This retains the 4:3 aspect ratio of the game so there's no stretching of the graphics at all.