Silent Hunter (Insert whatever number here): A waste of time?

[Daniel Prates]

Originally Posted by Stealhead

A fact of life in the hobby of PC gaming is that you are going to have to upgrade your gear every few years to keep up and as others have said minimum specs is pretty much a gimmick they always set it too low to get more sales.

Sometimes 6 months is all it takes to make newer games impossible to play.

[I'm goin' down]

First, as an aside, Armistead is at sea 24/7, so if his machine does not CTD, the game is not the issue.

I had computer problems on an old laptop and old destop. Finally, the desktop broke, which occured just as a dd depth charge in TMO hit my boat. I replaced it with a new Leveno computer for about $1,100, and the game works great.

As for TMO/GFO-you must not mix supermods. What you can do is download multi SH4, a program that permist multiple SH4 installs. I have three installs on my new computer: 1. TMO/RSRDC plus mods; 2. GFO plus mods; OM/OMEGU/KIUB plus mods. (I am waiting for Armistead to advise me where I can intercept the Bismark!) I occasionally have found mod conflicts cause problems, such as the Nav Map Makoever for OM which does not allow the course dragging tool in my OM setup to work, but usually I can run lots of mods with no problem.

So, here is what you should do. Get a new computer. You will grit your teeth parting with the cash, but you will end up a happy camper once you have replaced it.

[Stealhead]

Originally Posted by Daniel Prates

Sometimes 6 months is all it takes to make newer games impossible to play.

At the max level this is true sometimes.

Depends on the games that you play and how good you want them to look and how large a display you want to run.My PC suits me just fine right now and I don't see any games coming out for the foreseeable future that I want to own that will make me need to upgrade.I'm not that picky really I still play IL2 often and looks pretty old by modern standards but it is so fun I get to be in the Black Sheep Squadron like the TV show that they showed on Saturdays when I was a kid.

You dont have to have a tip top of the line PC all the time but at the same time you wont do so well with low end one either that is why I just shot for middle ground of course I'm not demanding ultra perfect looks either I mean its never going to look "real" anyway.

[Dogfish40]

Originally Posted by I'm goin' down

First, as an aside, Armistead is at sea 24/7, so if his machine does not CTD, the game is not the issue.

I had computer problems on an old laptop and old destop. Finally, the desktop broke, which occured just as a dd depth charge in TMO hit my boat. I replaced it with a new Leveno computer for about $1,100, and the game works great.

.

That must've been a HELL of depth charge attack!! For a can to take out your box, ...did your ship survive? That's the important thing.

[I'm goin' down]

[QUOTE=I'm goin' down;1660745]First, as an aside, Armistead is at sea 24/7, so if his machine does not CTD, the game is not the issue.

I had computer problems on an old laptop and old destop. Finally, the desktop broke, which occured just as a dd depth charge in TMO hit my boat. I replaced it with a new Leveno computer for about $1,100, and the game works great.

Originally Posted by Dogfish40

That must've been a HELL of depth charge attack!! For a can to take out your box, ...did your ship survive? That's the important thing.

First, my computer started crashing 80 percent of the time when I tried to get my boat back on line. Frustrated, my computer repairman shipped the computer to his counterpart, who diagnoses major computer problems, in Los Angeles. The hard drive was damaged. It would have cost over $600 to fix it if they could even find the part (that is when I stopped laughing), and I would only have a 90 day parts warranty. I gave up, and bought my current Leveno Thinkpad laptop (15 inch horizontal screen) with two extra 2 gb's of ram, giving me 4 gb total, and a camera. My computer repairman, who has been in the business for 25 years, recommended Thinkpad and suggested the model that I bought. It cost $1,200 dellvered with a one year in home warranty for repairs. I handled the ordering over the telephone, I do not want to sound like an advertiser, but their customer service was great. I am now sailing all over the place, but leaving TMO alone -- its too dangerous!

[Armistead]

IGD, haven't had anytime lately to go looking, in fact haven't played in weeks. My mom died a bout a week ago, so as the exec of her estate dealing with all those issues, plus wifey has her long spring honey do list. Honestly, heart just not into it, but I'll get looking one of these days.


I play on a rather old system myself, AMD 3800, 4gigs ram and a 9800gt, but even with mods I run highest settings in game and use rather high settings using nHancer and get good frames. Some of the large 40 ship plus convoys and TF may bring me down to the 20's in FPS, but still smooth enough that it's not too noticable.

You're right, best to just buy another PC than try to update. By the time you update a few pieces of hardware, doesn't do much good, better just to get another one.

[I'm goin' down]

Originally Posted by Armistead

IGD, haven't had anytime lately to go looking, in fact haven't played in weeks. My mom died a bout a week ago, so as the exec of her estate dealing with all those issues, plus wifey has her long spring honey do list. Honestly, heart just not into it, but I'll get looking one of these days.


I play on a rather old system myself, AMD 3800, 4gigs ram and a 9800gt, but even with mods I run highest settings in game and use rather high settings using nHancer and get good frames. Some of the large 40 ship plus convoys and TF may bring me down to the 20's in FPS, but still smooth enough that it's not too noticable.

You're right, best to just buy another PC than try to update. By the time you update a few pieces of hardware, doesn't do much good, better just to get another one.

I tried to locate the Bismark in November '41. The closest mission starts a month before. My UBoat was in Norway, so I reved up time compression and headed for the Denmark Straight. Unfortunately, I was attacked and sunk by a dive bomber, so I never made it. I am sure it will be there, unchallened by yours truly, when you go looking for it. There are some maps on the internet showing the courses of the fleets involved.

[Dogfish40]

[QUOTE=I'm goin' down;1661247]

Originally Posted by I'm goin' down

First, as an aside, Armistead is at sea 24/7, so if his machine does not CTD, the game is not the issue.

I had computer problems on an old laptop and old destop. Finally, the desktop broke, which occured just as a dd depth charge in TMO hit my boat. I replaced it with a new Leveno computer for about $1,100, and the game works great.



First, my computer started crashing 80 percent of the time when I tried to get my boat back on line. Frustrated, my computer repairman shipped the computer to his counterpart, who diagnoses major computer problems, in Los Angeles. The hard drive was damaged. It would have cost over $600 to fix it if they could even find the part (that is when I stopped laughing), and I would only have a 90 day parts warranty. I gave up, and bought my current Leveno Thinkpad laptop (15 inch horizontal screen) with two extra 2 gb's of ram, giving me 4 gb total, and a camera. My computer repairman, who has been in the business for 25 years, recommended Thinkpad and suggested the model that I bought. It cost $1,200 dellvered with a one year in home warranty for repairs. I handled the ordering over the telephone, I do not want to sound like an advertiser, but their customer service was great. I am now sailing all over the place, but leaving TMO alone -- its too dangerous!

I really was commenting on the way that you put it..." ...crashed just as a depth charge attack...) of course it sounded like the depth charge took out the computer, it was more of a visual thing, you sitting there, and suddenly a depth charge goes off in the game and your computer sinks into your office furniture.
Anyway, since I upgraded to the ASUS laptop I really have hit the graphics hard on purpose, just to see if the dang thing would even slow down. It didn't. Of course, now I'm seeing what fog is really like. I used to keep "volumetric fog" off, and now that everythings on,...wow, try and make out that flag with a periscope...
Good Hunting Mate
D40

[Yamato_NF]

Originally Posted by Stargazer

Maybe I just have ridiculously high expectations. Maybe I'm too fussy when it comes to games. But somehow I can;t help but feel that Silent Hunter is pushing boundaries when it comes to being the biggest and most disappointing let down of them all.

I doscovered SH3 not too long ago. I didn;t have to pay anything for it which was nice and when I modded it, it was truly awesome. However, I've often felt that the load times, a well known and unfixable problem, were a little too extreme for me.

I went out and paid for SH4. I could have settled with a pirated copy, but I felt that it would be a good progression from 3 and that Ubisoft Romania would have learnt a thing or two in the process and as such deserved a seperation from my very short supply of money.

First impressions were great. It looked stunning, played well and sounded fab. Even in stock form because I had no idea how much better it could be? In my first few days of playing it, I had only two CTD's. I considered this an acceptable annoyance given how often 3 dies on me. Also, it only took five mins to get back into 4 instead of the twenty-five for 3.

However, patrol 3 is where the love story ends.

I thought initially that TMO had broken my game. Had it borked a bunch of files? Was it overloading part of my old PC with more than it can take?

I don't know.

What I do know is that regardless of what mods were activated and even returning it back to full stock/vanilla, it always crashes in the patrol. And it isn;t something terribly ambitious or unique either. it is to deliver an Intel-Bod to Honshu; almost a carbon copy of my very first mission, yet I now can't seem to get close.

Running the same mission seven times in a day and still not getting even half way through is the final insult as far as I'm concerned. Sadly, I'll have no luck getting my money back because no retailer will not accept, 'The software is broken and buggy and not worth any money at all' as a valid return reason.

But given how many people are in this community and seem to be running it and enjoying it? Where am I going wrong?

Do you run it and accept that sometimes you just have to chance the constant and seemingly random CTD's?

Do you have some magical fix that made the CTD's go away?

Do you just have exceedingly low expectations and thus SH4 doesn't bother you?

How can so many Silent Hunter followers all be wrong? I can only guess I'm doing something wrong. But what?

My PC, despite being old, meets the game requirements. I can run the game smoothly on lower setting and had done so for four glorious days. And then whammo... the thing unravels like a ball of string and now I'm at my wits end with it.

So I end with the big question: What havn't I done, or what havn't I got that you all do and allows all of you to enjoy SH4?

If it worked I'd love it.

And sicne it is going to be asked, here is my PC Specs:

AMD Athlon XP2600+ @ 2.4ghz
2GB RAM
NVidia GeForce 6800XT 512MB
Win XP SP3 (32bit)
SH4 + UBoat V1.5 in following configurations.
---Stock
---TMO 2 + TMO 2.1
---GFO

First four days (Patrols 1&2) [fully stock]: Total 2 CTD's
Today (Patrol3) [In various states listed above] Total 7 CTD's

if you are still paying attention Stargazer...
it appears you have a low end GFX memory....
i have a 2GB Graphics card (yea yea... overkill, lol, ) and it is an ATI Raedon HD 3450...
never EVER had a CTD... even wtih my CPU running at 2.4 GHZ with 6 cores...(Intel sandybridge FTW! )
(although i have ran a duo core with SH4, and had no problems. )
so yea... its probably your GFX card... 512 MB is a little-too-little for SH4..
try installing a new card..
hope that helps!