Time compression at TC > 256

erahmig · 05-18-19, 07:00 PM

Hey all,

I'm noticing something odd in my campaign patrol. When I left base (Pearl) I could ramp up TC to 2048 or higher and the game would still run smooth as glass. The keyboard was responsive, the mouse was not jerky, etc. The only way to know that time compression was set to something other than "1" was by the speed of my sub on the tactical map or by looking at the TC setting in the lower right corner of the screen.

Somewhere during my patrol something changed. Now, time compression is only really usable up until TC = 256. Anything higher than that and the following things happen:

tactical map updates are no longer smooth but stutter
the mouse pointer is very "laggy" - i.e. it lags behind the actual mouse movements
the keyboard is almost unresponsive. It takes multiple key presses for a key to register.

Because of this it's taking much longer to return from patrol than it did to get to my patrol area. As you might imagine, this is somewhat frustrating.

Has anyone else ever experienced this change in TC behavior during a patrol? Is there anything I can do to fix what's happening?

Sniper297 · 05-18-19, 09:22 PM

Happens in stock game usually when there are a lot of things for the game to keep track of. I get it most often after sinking an entire convoy, the game continues to process all the life boats, rafts, floating boxes and barrels until I'm 20 or so miles away. Some mods aggravate the effect, thinking there wasn't enough debris after a ship went down they edit \Data|Library files debris.dat and LifeBoat&Debris.dat to double or triple the amount of floating junk after a ship goes down. Looks great for 1 or 2 sunken ships, sink half a dozen and the game slows down because it's tracking all that movement.

If it's not related to a recent sinking (if the game doesn't smooth out when you're 20+ miles away) or near something that appears as a contact 5-10 minutes after the stuttering starts, check your video and sound drivers. Never figured out why, but unless the sound card can process audio correctly it somehow makes the video stutter even if the video card and drivers are perfect.

propbeanie · 05-18-19, 09:36 PM

If you have a 64-bit OS, you could try this: Windows10; Large Address Aware; SH4 Install - CapnScurvy speaks specifically about a Windows 10 install, but any of the other 64-bit Windows is very similar. He installs Silent Hunter 4 and LAA (Large Address Aware), to set the SH4.exe file. It allows the game access to more than 2 gig of RAM (or rather tells the OS it can address more properly), and that will sometimes - sometimes, not always - let the game run smoother. If you have a 32-bit OS and more than 3 gig of RAM, let me know, and I'll accelerate my tutorial for that. I have had success with Windows XP 32-bit, but I still have to try things out on Vista and Win7 32-bit, to see if similar is available, but I'm lazy right now, and the Vista machine is sitting in the corner unplugged, missing a hard drive... does not look good...

erahmig · 05-18-19, 09:53 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sniper297

If it's not related to a recent sinking (if the game doesn't smooth out when you're 20+ miles away) or near something that appears as a contact 5-10 minutes after the stuttering starts, check your video and sound drivers.

Once it starts it never seems to go away. Also, it's a newish PC (March) so I don't know whether the drivers are an issue. Haven't had any weirdness with any other games, and I've played a bunch that are newer and much more demanding on the hardware than SH4. But, thank you for taking the time to reply!

Quote:

Originally Posted by propbeanie

If you have a 64-bit OS, you could try this: Windows10; Large Address Aware; SH4 Install - CapnScurvy speaks specifically about a Windows 10 install, but any of the other 64-bit Windows is very similar.

Thank you. I saw a write-up about Large Address Aware and I have done that to SH4.exe. I'm on Windows 10.

Sniper297 · 05-19-19, 12:47 AM

I'm still chugging along with an ancient Dell XPS 400, Win XP media center (kind of half assed XP pro with a movie maker app) upgraded a few times with a Pentium D 3.4, 2 gigs RAM, Nvidia GTX 650 2 gig, and a SSD. Running SH4 off the F drive (the SSD) I get better performance than 12 years ago, but if the patrol runs on long enough and I get 300,000+ tons (happens a lot since I have all these resupply bases) it will sTTTTTTart sTsTsTuTTTTTering in TTTTTTTime compression.

Only cure I've found is quit before it gets up to 400 thousand, return to base, end patrol, start a new patrol and the stuttering is gone. Until I go crazy again, of course. Not really an issue if I don't get carried away, medals max out before 200 thousand tons anyway, and by the second patrol I have more renown than I can possibly spend.

Get back to base, end patrol, see if it does it after starting the next patrol - save files getting fat is my main theory, although I haven't proved it yet.

Krieg Francis · 05-19-19, 02:36 AM

It's kind of normal.
256 compression in extremely crowded areas and even close to land cause a lot of stutter due to the amount of elements the game has to process.
I have noticed this happening both in SH3 and SH4, keeping around x64 compression seems to prevent this issue though.

Krieg Francis · 05-19-19, 02:37 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by erahmig

Once it starts it never seems to go away.

Didn't read this, sorry.

It might be a memory leak in this case, did you set up Large Address Aware before playing?

erahmig · 05-19-19, 03:11 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sniper297

Get back to base, end patrol, see if it does it after starting the next patrol - save files getting fat is my main theory, although I haven't proved it yet.

After writing my previous message I tried returning to base. I couldn't even make it back - the game always crashed to desktop during TC, even at TC=256. I certainly wasn't going to sail back from Taipei to Pearl at TC=1. Very frustrating as I had a nice (for me) patrol in the bag.

I decided to throw that install way and re-install the game from scratch and try again.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Krieg Francis

Didn't read this, sorry.

It might be a memory leak in this case, did you set up Large Address Aware before playing?

Thank you - good thinking, but yes I did do that. Check http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/show...03&postcount=4 for more details.

Sniper297 · 05-19-19, 07:42 AM

If you're overwriting one save game repeatedly, need to break that habit. Quickest way to (1) corrupt a save game file and (2) leave yourself with no backup is to save over a previous save without changing the name.

What most do is save as 1patrol1, 1patrol2, 1patrol3, and so on, sometimes adding onto the same number with 1patrol3a, 1patrol3b, and so on when you're doing a lengthy and complicated end-around with the same convoy.

Second patrol 2patrol1, 2patrol2, etc, and when you get a lot of saves go back and delete all the even numbers from the first patrol, or all but the first and last, whatever.

If you do it that way and the latest save crashes due to too much data or whatever, you can restart in the middle of the patrol and head back to base from there.

Tired of the long slog back and forth, this might help;

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/down...o=file&id=5477

Changes the starting base for Pearl campaigns to a secret base near Japan.

Anything worth doing is worth overdoing, although sometimes you have to cut back;

This is the first day of the second patrol, haven't left the entrance to Manila Bay yet and I have 6 merchants, 25 warships, 414,000 tons sunk. As you can see I have two resupply bases near the entrance, which is two too many when it's possible to resupply with torpedoes in the middle of a battle - while submerged even.

That alone slows my TC down to jerking and stuttering, the game apparently keeps track of every wreck laying on the bottom in the save games. Gonna have to cut down on the resupply bases before I upload this mod, obviously. Temptation to get more torpedoes and sail back into battle is strong, and being a sinner when tempted I fall.

propbeanie · 05-19-19, 11:51 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by erahmig

After writing my previous message I tried returning to base. I couldn't even make it back - the game always crashed to desktop during TC, even at TC=256. I certainly wasn't going to sail back from Taipei to Pearl at TC=1. Very frustrating as I had a nice (for me) patrol in the bag.

I decided to throw that install way and re-install the game from scratch and try again...

That almost sounds like you ran into the "Run-A-Way" spawn issue, where a few groups in the Campaign are not set correctly and just keep on spawning one ship every few days, and they finally gather into huge convoys, usually all DD. You get near that, and you get very similar symptoms... your patrol there, were you near the Japanese coast, or down south of Truk, say mid to late 1944 or later? Or - had you sunk quite a few ships, gone to an "advance base" for re-supply, went back out and sunk a lot more ships? Maybe a couple of patrols, and are saving on top of the other Saves?... ??

Sniper297 · 05-19-19, 01:25 PM

Yeah, I don't know what the actual limit is, but this is nuts;

And slows TC to a jerky crawl.

erahmig · 05-19-19, 02:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sniper297

If you're overwriting one save game repeatedly, need to break that habit. Quickest way to (1) corrupt a save game file and (2) leave yourself with no backup is to save over a previous save without changing the name.

I had done some of that (saving over previous saves) earlier in the patrol. But, part of the way through I had stopped doing that and had begun creating new saves each time I saved, somewhat along the lines of your suggested naming convention but not exactly.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sniper297

Tired of the long slog back and forth, this might help;

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/down...o=file&id=5477

Changes the starting base for Pearl campaigns to a secret base near Japan.

I may look into this - thank you for the suggestion!

Quote:

Originally Posted by propbeanie

That almost sounds like you ran into the "Run-A-Way" spawn issue, where a few groups in the Campaign are not set correctly and just keep on spawning one ship every few days, and they finally gather into huge convoys, usually all DD. You get near that, and you get very similar symptoms... your patrol there, were you near the Japanese coast, or down south of Truk, say mid to late 1944 or later? Or - had you sunk quite a few ships, gone to an "advance base" for re-supply, went back out and sunk a lot more ships? Maybe a couple of patrols, and are saving on top of the other Saves?... ??

Hm, interesting. I was using the GFO mod. I wonder if the issue you mention ("Run-A-Way" spawn) happens with that mod?

This was the first patrol of the campaign and I had chosen a 1942 start. The first patrol was a "Patrol off of Honshu" patrol. I fulfilled that with about 8 ships sunk - a mix of DDs, merchants, and 1 fishing boat. I then radioed in and was given a photo recon mission at Taipei harbor. After barely surviving that due to a over-zealous Japanese DD (which I was able to sink) I had to spend some time repairing and pumping out the flooded forward torpedo room. Finished that and was on the long slog back home to Pearl when I started seeing the CTDs I mentioned earlier.

However, the jerky, stuttering TC started happening in the middle of the patrol - even during the "Patrol off Honshu" part.

Sniper297 · 05-19-19, 03:00 PM

Yep, that's weird. GFO doesn't have that million destroyers convention glitch, that's in one of the super mods. GFO doesn't add any extra traffic anywhere. Unless you're running into a ridiculous number of contacts it has to be something else. 8 sunk shouldn't be any kind of a problem, I've done a dozen in one battle by sinking all the escorts and big ships first, then surfacing and chasing the small to medium freighters with the deck gun. That sometimes causes a LITTLE stuttering as I'm leaving the area in TC, but it's mild and smooths out when I'm 20+ miles away from the scene of the crime. It's only when I get an outrageous number sunk combined with ridiculous tonnage that it gets to be chronic. On the rare occasions when it gets too bad, I just reload a previous save and that solves the problem.

Mios 4Me · 05-22-19, 01:56 PM

LAA and Sniper's saving suggestion alleviated the issue for me, but did not eradicate it. I haven't had the million destroyer issue in awhile but the TC issue remains anytime I run up a high score, such as unzipping two columns of BBs and CAs off Samar, then heading up to the usual fishing hole in Empire waters, where I add another couple hundred thousand tons on a single pass. Aside: why on earth does the game permit this more than once?

There's a new telltale for when this will start: at some point the external camera views of nearby ships goes wonky, showing strange angles, etc. Then I have to nurse the boat home at TC < 2500.

Returning to sniper's suggestion, on several occasions I've generated as many as nine different saves in a long patrol, only to find that nothing past the first two will ever load.

I'm running GFO with "Midway Balao" and "Cheap & Early Torpedoes".

propbeanie · 05-22-19, 04:12 PM

OK, that might explain a little bit. We'd have to have Webster tell you for sure for certain, but you are probably overwriting a bit of GFO with either or both of those mods, and that might be the contributing factor to it still doing the same basically, and not being able to load later Saves... It would be a few days before I could look at it, but I do have all of the files between a couple of computers, and I can try and see if there is a conflict. Another little point that we found with the Balao boat in FotRSU, is that it does NOT like going out before January 1943. I don't know if it's a crewing issue or an equipment issue (bad dates??) or what, but the Balao can cause grief in the FotRSU modded game at times, when prior to 1943. I don't know if they had the same with the Midway Balao mod or not. When are you going out on patrol here?...

05-18-19, 07:00 PM	#1
erahmig Watch Join Date: May 2015 Location: USA Posts: 21 Downloads: 88 Uploads: 0	Time compression at TC > 256 Hey all, I'm noticing something odd in my campaign patrol. When I left base (Pearl) I could ramp up TC to 2048 or higher and the game would still run smooth as glass. The keyboard was responsive, the mouse was not jerky, etc. The only way to know that time compression was set to something other than "1" was by the speed of my sub on the tactical map or by looking at the TC setting in the lower right corner of the screen. Somewhere during my patrol something changed. Now, time compression is only really usable up until TC = 256. Anything higher than that and the following things happen: tactical map updates are no longer smooth but stutter the mouse pointer is very "laggy" - i.e. it lags behind the actual mouse movements the keyboard is almost unresponsive. It takes multiple key presses for a key to register. Because of this it's taking much longer to return from patrol than it did to get to my patrol area. As you might imagine, this is somewhat frustrating. Has anyone else ever experienced this change in TC behavior during a patrol? Is there anything I can do to fix what's happening?

05-18-19, 09:36 PM	#3
propbeanie CTD - it's not just a job Join Date: May 2016 Location: One hour from Music City USA! Posts: 9,735 Downloads: 439 Uploads: 2	If you have a 64-bit OS, you could try this: Windows10; Large Address Aware; SH4 Install - CapnScurvy speaks specifically about a Windows 10 install, but any of the other 64-bit Windows is very similar. He installs Silent Hunter 4 and LAA (Large Address Aware), to set the SH4.exe file. It allows the game access to more than 2 gig of RAM (or rather tells the OS it can address more properly), and that will sometimes - sometimes, not always - let the game run smoother. If you have a 32-bit OS and more than 3 gig of RAM, let me know, and I'll accelerate my tutorial for that. I have had success with Windows XP 32-bit, but I still have to try things out on Vista and Win7 32-bit, to see if similar is available, but I'm lazy right now, and the Vista machine is sitting in the corner unplugged, missing a hard drive... does not look good... __________________ "...and bollocks to the naysayer/s" - Jimbuna

05-19-19, 02:36 AM	#6
Krieg Francis Medic Join Date: Dec 2016 Location: Milan, Italy Posts: 160 Downloads: 226 Uploads: 0	It's kind of normal. 256 compression in extremely crowded areas and even close to land cause a lot of stutter due to the amount of elements the game has to process. I have noticed this happening both in SH3 and SH4, keeping around x64 compression seems to prevent this issue though. __________________ "Those who never change their minds, never change anything" -Winston Churchill Mods by me: U-571 Dive Sequence for SH4

05-22-19, 04:12 PM	#15
propbeanie CTD - it's not just a job Join Date: May 2016 Location: One hour from Music City USA! Posts: 9,735 Downloads: 439 Uploads: 2	OK, that might explain a little bit. We'd have to have Webster tell you for sure for certain, but you are probably overwriting a bit of GFO with either or both of those mods, and that might be the contributing factor to it still doing the same basically, and not being able to load later Saves... It would be a few days before I could look at it, but I do have all of the files between a couple of computers, and I can try and see if there is a conflict. Another little point that we found with the Balao boat in FotRSU, is that it does NOT like going out before January 1943. I don't know if it's a crewing issue or an equipment issue (bad dates??) or what, but the Balao can cause grief in the FotRSU modded game at times, when prior to 1943. I don't know if they had the same with the Midway Balao mod or not. When are you going out on patrol here?... __________________ "...and bollocks to the naysayer/s" - Jimbuna

05-18-19, 09:22 PM	#2
Sniper297 The Old Man Join Date: Dec 2005 Location: Philadelphia Shipyard Brig Posts: 1,386 Downloads: 160 Uploads: 19	Happens in stock game usually when there are a lot of things for the game to keep track of. I get it most often after sinking an entire convoy, the game continues to process all the life boats, rafts, floating boxes and barrels until I'm 20 or so miles away. Some mods aggravate the effect, thinking there wasn't enough debris after a ship went down they edit \Data\|Library files debris.dat and LifeBoat&Debris.dat to double or triple the amount of floating junk after a ship goes down. Looks great for 1 or 2 sunken ships, sink half a dozen and the game slows down because it's tracking all that movement. If it's not related to a recent sinking (if the game doesn't smooth out when you're 20+ miles away) or near something that appears as a contact 5-10 minutes after the stuttering starts, check your video and sound drivers. Never figured out why, but unless the sound card can process audio correctly it somehow makes the video stutter even if the video card and drivers are perfect.

05-19-19, 12:47 AM	#5
Sniper297 The Old Man Join Date: Dec 2005 Location: Philadelphia Shipyard Brig Posts: 1,386 Downloads: 160 Uploads: 19	I'm still chugging along with an ancient Dell XPS 400, Win XP media center (kind of half assed XP pro with a movie maker app) upgraded a few times with a Pentium D 3.4, 2 gigs RAM, Nvidia GTX 650 2 gig, and a SSD. Running SH4 off the F drive (the SSD) I get better performance than 12 years ago, but if the patrol runs on long enough and I get 300,000+ tons (happens a lot since I have all these resupply bases) it will sTTTTTTart sTsTsTuTTTTTering in TTTTTTTime compression. Only cure I've found is quit before it gets up to 400 thousand, return to base, end patrol, start a new patrol and the stuttering is gone. Until I go crazy again, of course. Not really an issue if I don't get carried away, medals max out before 200 thousand tons anyway, and by the second patrol I have more renown than I can possibly spend. Get back to base, end patrol, see if it does it after starting the next patrol - save files getting fat is my main theory, although I haven't proved it yet.

05-19-19, 07:42 AM	#9
Sniper297 The Old Man Join Date: Dec 2005 Location: Philadelphia Shipyard Brig Posts: 1,386 Downloads: 160 Uploads: 19	If you're overwriting one save game repeatedly, need to break that habit. Quickest way to (1) corrupt a save game file and (2) leave yourself with no backup is to save over a previous save without changing the name. What most do is save as 1patrol1, 1patrol2, 1patrol3, and so on, sometimes adding onto the same number with 1patrol3a, 1patrol3b, and so on when you're doing a lengthy and complicated end-around with the same convoy. Second patrol 2patrol1, 2patrol2, etc, and when you get a lot of saves go back and delete all the even numbers from the first patrol, or all but the first and last, whatever. If you do it that way and the latest save crashes due to too much data or whatever, you can restart in the middle of the patrol and head back to base from there. Tired of the long slog back and forth, this might help; http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/down...o=file&id=5477 Changes the starting base for Pearl campaigns to a secret base near Japan. Anything worth doing is worth overdoing, although sometimes you have to cut back; This is the first day of the second patrol, haven't left the entrance to Manila Bay yet and I have 6 merchants, 25 warships, 414,000 tons sunk. As you can see I have two resupply bases near the entrance, which is two too many when it's possible to resupply with torpedoes in the middle of a battle - while submerged even. That alone slows my TC down to jerking and stuttering, the game apparently keeps track of every wreck laying on the bottom in the save games. Gonna have to cut down on the resupply bases before I upload this mod, obviously. Temptation to get more torpedoes and sail back into battle is strong, and being a sinner when tempted I fall.

05-19-19, 01:25 PM	#11
Sniper297 The Old Man Join Date: Dec 2005 Location: Philadelphia Shipyard Brig Posts: 1,386 Downloads: 160 Uploads: 19	Yeah, I don't know what the actual limit is, but this is nuts; And slows TC to a jerky crawl.

05-19-19, 03:00 PM	#13
Sniper297 The Old Man Join Date: Dec 2005 Location: Philadelphia Shipyard Brig Posts: 1,386 Downloads: 160 Uploads: 19	Yep, that's weird. GFO doesn't have that million destroyers convention glitch, that's in one of the super mods. GFO doesn't add any extra traffic anywhere. Unless you're running into a ridiculous number of contacts it has to be something else. 8 sunk shouldn't be any kind of a problem, I've done a dozen in one battle by sinking all the escorts and big ships first, then surfacing and chasing the small to medium freighters with the deck gun. That sometimes causes a LITTLE stuttering as I'm leaving the area in TC, but it's mild and smooths out when I'm 20+ miles away from the scene of the crime. It's only when I get an outrageous number sunk combined with ridiculous tonnage that it gets to be chronic. On the rare occasions when it gets too bad, I just reload a previous save and that solves the problem.

05-22-19, 01:56 PM	#14
Mios 4Me Sonar Guy Join Date: Feb 2019 Posts: 394 Downloads: 38 Uploads: 0	LAA and Sniper's saving suggestion alleviated the issue for me, but did not eradicate it. I haven't had the million destroyer issue in awhile but the TC issue remains anytime I run up a high score, such as unzipping two columns of BBs and CAs off Samar, then heading up to the usual fishing hole in Empire waters, where I add another couple hundred thousand tons on a single pass. Aside: why on earth does the game permit this more than once? There's a new telltale for when this will start: at some point the external camera views of nearby ships goes wonky, showing strange angles, etc. Then I have to nurse the boat home at TC < 2500. Returning to sniper's suggestion, on several occasions I've generated as many as nine different saves in a long patrol, only to find that nothing past the first two will ever load. I'm running GFO with "Midway Balao" and "Cheap & Early Torpedoes".