Saves Frustration

[podunkpete]

Thanks for the many replies. A quick update/summary: I know my first career had all the required updates before installing OM. The only "mod" I may have installed was a hack I made to increase the number of officers/petty officers, but again it wasn't until 01/45 that the saves died. My re-install after that, I can't guarantee I brought everything up to 1.5. Again, I had multish4 installed (for the first time) and may have botched the install. I have now blown everything out, re-installed (just one sh4), updated, started again, so far so good. A new question: Is each save a complete set of data, or does it build on prior saves (only capturing changes)? If I had say, 10 current saves and I wanted to reduce the number, could I safely delete the oldest 5 from the current patrol?

[captgeo]

I over write my saves all the time , never had a problem,

the rule for saving that I have always used.......

never save with contacts close

never save while submerged

[ReallyDedPoet]

Welcome to SUBSIM podunkpete

I see you have been with us for a couple of years, but recently started to post again. Each save I think is a new one, based on the date in that particular save. Starting with that save and saving anew and then deleting the old saves will not affect your game. At least I have not had this issue.

[fireftr18]

Each save is a complete new set of data. The old saves are unnecessary.

[Diopos]

And while we are at it, avoid large save files, that is don't stay at sea forever. Do a one - two months patrol, maybe one or two refits in a forward base (to load torps) and then return to base for the next mission.

.

[podunkpete]

Well, it's still happening. I think I may be closing in on the source, though. The one tip that my saves are useless is the following: I see the ship sink, I'm told the ship has sunk, the ship is added to my captain's log as sunk, but, THERE IS NO ICON ON THE MAP SHOWING A SINKING! I'm starting to think it's a video card (or update) issue. Each time I've had useless saves, it's after watching a sinking. In one case the ship was blazing, sinking fast, and then the flames went out, the ship seemed to take too long to sink, and then EGAD everything said ship sunk except the map. Experimenting I found that deck gun or torpedoes, if it isn't on the map something is corrupt. I love this game but boy, is it making me pay!

[Sniper297]

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=212256

[TorpX]

Originally Posted by podunkpete

Well, it's still happening.

You should post a screen shot of your JSGME mod activation list. Without knowing exactly what you're running, we can only make wild guesses as to what's wrong.

[Sniper297]

Bad or incompatible mods usually cause game crashes, not corrupted saves.

Call me Johnny One-Note, but I still think 99% of these corrupted saves are hardware problems - bad disk sectors, so run checkdisk - or fragmented files - run defrag.

Other option, I'm still chugging along with XP, never tried Vista or anything later, could the common denominator be people who don't know how to disable UAC? From what I've read (again no first hand experience) Microsoft decided to protect users from themselves by using a "virtual folder" which doesn't actually make any changes to the original files, so when you exit any files that would have been changed or overwritten in XP have been "protected" from user changes.

In my opinion the reason UAC was invented was to stop office drones from screwing up their workstations, costing the company money for techs to unscrew the software constantly. So if it's your own personal computer and you're the only one who uses it AND you play games which require changes to files, turn the blasted thing off.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/w...#1TC=windows-7

[BigWalleye]

Originally Posted by Sniper297

Bad or incompatible mods usually cause game crashes, not corrupted saves.

Call me Johnny One-Note, but I still think 99% of these corrupted saves are hardware problems - bad disk sectors, so run checkdisk - or fragmented files - run defrag.

Other option, I'm still chugging along with XP, never tried Vista or anything later, could the common denominator be people who don't know how to disable UAC? From what I've read (again no first hand experience) Microsoft decided to protect users from themselves by using a "virtual folder" which doesn't actually make any changes to the original files, so when you exit any files that would have been changed or overwritten in XP have been "protected" from user changes.

In my opinion the reason UAC was invented was to stop office drones from screwing up their workstations, costing the company money for techs to unscrew the software constantly. So if it's your own personal computer and you're the only one who uses it AND you play games which require changes to files, turn the blasted thing off.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/w...#1TC=windows-7

I am skeptical that the cause of most corrupted saves could be hardware problems. The advertised write error rate for SATA drives is 1 error per 10 terabytes written. That's 10x10^12 bytes. Published tests on real-world hardware report write error rates 10 times greater than that. If a save requires 100 kB of data, that is 1x10^5 bytes. If we use the worse, published figures, we should expect to see a write error evry 1x10^7 saves. That's once every ten billion saves.

Some people report corrupted saves more often that once in 10 saves. If that result is attributed to hardware-generated errors, that is an error rate of 1 per 10^6, an error every 1 megabyte. I routinely read, save, and edit graphics files that are tens of megabytes without corrupting the files. I doubt that any operating system could function with write error rates as high as 1 per 1 megabyte.

Rather than assuming that our hardware is so unreliable as to be useless (I know mine isn't), it seems more likely that problems of corrupt saves can be traced to software corrupted by user activities. Saving a game mid-patrol, changing activated mods, then attempting to reload the save is a classic way to get CTDs. There are others. But the frequency of reported corrupt saves is out of all proportion to what might be predicted from hardware errors.

[Sniper297]

Those statistics don't factor in the number of clueless users who have never run a check disk and have never defragged the main drive. I'm speculating about Vista / Win7 / Win8 UAC since I've never seen it myself, but I've had a lot of experience with new gamers ("NEW" meaning those who came along after the Days of DOS and Dinosaurs when computers didn't routinely come with the OS pre-installed) complaining about problems, one checkdisk one defrag and all problems disappear.

People who use computers for internet activity and reading email should defrag once a year, people who play games should do it once a month. People who mod games should do it once a week, because that involves a lot more new files, changed files, backup and restore files, delete old backups after uploading, etc. Check disk should be run at least once a year, just to make sure whatever bad sectors might have developed are marked that way. SSD drives of course are a different thing, but most still have standard whirling hard drives which have gotten larger and faster over the last 30 years but still have the same basic design.

[les green01]

i defag regular and clean regular still gets them every once in while play other games dont have the problem with them save curropts been going on since silent hunter 3 dont remember about sh2

[Sniper297]

Hee-hee, I ain't saying the game ain't buggy, I'm insane but not stupid. I've had occasional corrupted save GAME one each. On 1st patrol save as 1 Scorpion 1, 1 Scorpion 2, 1 Scorpion 3, etc until I end patrol in port and start the second patrol, then it's 2 Scorpion 1, 2 Scorpion 2, 2 Scorpion 3 and so on. 3 Scorpion 6 is corrupt and crashes the game every time I try to load it, try 3 Scorpion 5 and that works fine, so I delete 3 Scorpion 6 and move on. It's rare but occasionally I'll get 2 Scorpion 1 and 2 Scorpion 2 corrupt at the same time, so go back to the previous good save and move on.

These guys are talking about ALL save games corrupt, if they ALL go corrupt at the same time - assuming they're not doing something stupid like trying to load vanilla game saves after installing a supermod - then you gotta start looking at the disk. If it's something to do with modding, delete all the save games and start a new career, you can either play through an entire career or play around with adding/removing mods / experimenting with your own mods, never both. That's not a game bug, that applies to any moddable game. Wanna see some spectacular crashes try adding or removing a TES IV: OBLIVION mod without starting over with a new character.

[BigWalleye]

Originally Posted by Sniper297

Those statistics don't factor in the number of clueless users who have never run a check disk and have never defragged the main drive. I'm speculating about Vista / Win7 / Win8 UAC since I've never seen it myself, but I've had a lot of experience with new gamers ("NEW" meaning those who came along after the Days of DOS and Dinosaurs when computers didn't routinely come with the OS pre-installed) complaining about problems, one checkdisk one defrag and all problems disappear.

People who use computers for internet activity and reading email should defrag once a year, people who play games should do it once a month. People who mod games should do it once a week, because that involves a lot more new files, changed files, backup and restore files, delete old backups after uploading, etc. Check disk should be run at least once a year, just to make sure whatever bad sectors might have developed are marked that way. SSD drives of course are a different thing, but most still have standard whirling hard drives which have gotten larger and faster over the last 30 years but still have the same basic design.

On that point, you are mistaken. The published statistics are determined using an automated write/readback program which NEVER defrags or runs a checkdisk utility. They determine the actual performance of the hardware and have nothing to do with defragging, which is a function of the file management software, not the hardware.

[bandit484]

If you guys want to talk about saves frustrations you should try using the updated Sobers Mod List for SH5. That is frustrating!i finally said the hell with SH5 and came back to SH4 where I know that it is aLOT MORE STABLE!