FOTRS will not activate - Please help!

[lotharbucheim]

Hi everyone,

It has been many years since I played SH3-GWX and loved it. I have finally come back to Silent Hunter and am desperate to play SH4 with the FOTRS super-mod. The fact that so many people are prepared to put so much effort in to improve the games is amazing.

I am not great with PC’s...but have read, and re-read the instructions for how to load SH4 on Windows 10, and how to activate the FOTRS.

My SH4 was bought directly from the Ubisoft site.

FOTRS is activated and showing in JSGME but when I open the game (via the SH4 .exe icon) the game seems to open stock. There seems to be nothing to indicate that the FOTRS is activated.

I haven’t opened the game beyond the titles screen (except for changing the game resolution).

I have downloaded DirectX9C (as far as I can tell).
I have set SH4.exe to ‘run as an administrator’.
I have activated the LAA to SH4.exe
I have deleted the SH4 Folder as instructed

I am obviously missing something/being dumb....but I just cannot see it.

I would be very grateful if someone could advise me what I’m missing, as I am desperate to get on patrol !

Specs:

MSI B350 PC MATE USB 3.1 AM4 RYZEN Motherboard + AMD RYZEN 5 1 2600 19MB CACHE Up to 3.9GHz CPU + 8GB DDR4 2666MHz RAM

Antec VP500P 500W 80+ Efficient Continuous Power Silent Power 1 Supply
MSI GeForce GTX 1060 OC OVERCLOCKED Edition 6GB GDDR5 1280 1 Core VR Ready Graphics card
Samsung 960 EVO 250GB M.2 PCI-e 3.0 x 4 NVMe Solid State Drive 1 (SSD) MZ-V6E250BW / Max Read : 3200 MB/sec / Max Write : 1500
MB/sec
Western Digital Blue WD10EZEX 1TB HDD / 7200RPM / 64MB Cache 1 SATA 6.0Gb/s / 3.5" Internal Hard Drive Bare Drive

I am attaching some pics showing what I am seeing on-screen, in the hope that someone can help me out.

Many thanks in advance for any advice.

[lotharbucheim]

I wasn’t kidding about being no good with PC’s...hopefully these pics are better and clearer...

[Aktungbby]

lotharbucheim!

[Mad Mardigan]

Originally Posted by lotharbucheim

I wasn’t kidding about being no good with PC’s...hopefully these pics are better and clearer...

To begin with... your computer specs look adequate to handle it, as far as I can tell.

1st things 1st... of utmost importance... you did NOT install SH4 itself, in either:

C:\Program files

or C:\Program files (x86)

Did you...?

If not, then moving on...

Next up... did you run SH4 before doing anything else to add in, as doing so, will set it up, including the directx... which you should NOT have to add that in, if I am remembering that correctly... which I am fairly confident that I am..

When going into properties, for the SH4.exe, did you also ensure that on the 1st page of 'properties', that in the 'atttributes' section in the General tab, that the box there tagged as 'Read Only' was unchecked...???

If this is NOT unchecked... then the files & such for the mod, will not overwrite what they need to & end result... the mod FotRSU... is NOT going to take & will only open up the standard 'stock' vanilla SH4....


I may add, that it would also be beneficial, to ensure using multiSH4, if you plan on later on, running any more copies of SH4 modded with other mega mods... if you don't then you can bypass getting multiSH4 then.

Outside of that... these are the only things I can think of, offhand...

Hope this helps...

M. M.

[lotharbucheim]

Hi Mad Mardigan, and thank you so much for talking the time too help.

To answer your questions:


1). 1st things 1st... of utmost importance... you did NOT install SH4 itself, in either:

C:\Program files

or C:\Program files (x86)


No, I was very careful not to do that :

Currently I have this set up ( and I think the folder structure might be the problem..more of that later)...

D:\Games/Silent Hunter IV

Inside that I have two folders:
(i).SH4FOTRS (inside which is all the JSGME and MODS folders etc)

(ii). Silent Hunter 4 Gold Edition (in which is all the usual stuff including the SH4.exe

3). Next up... did you run SH4 before doing anything else to add in, as doing so, will set it up, including the directx... which you should NOT have to add that in, if I am remembering that correctly... which I am fairly confident that I am..

When going into properties, for the SH4.exe, did you also ensure that on the 1st page of 'properties', that in the 'atttributes' section in the General tab, that the box there tagged as 'Read Only' was unchecked...???

If this is NOT unchecked... then the files & such for the mod, will not overwrite what they need to & end result... the mod FotRSU... is NOT going to take & will only open up the standard 'stock' vanilla SH4....


Yes, I did do all that as suggested.


I must point out that I downloaded the original SH4 Grey wolves of the Pacific (V1.5) from the Ubisoft website. Could the problems be something to do with that? The stock game seems to play ok...and I have then deleted the C;\SH4 folder, as per instructions.

My feeling is that I am doing something wrong with the structure of the folders. The reason I say this is that there are multiple MODS folders within the structure and yet I donÂ’t create them deliberately.

If someone is operating SH4 Wolves of the Pacific with the latest version of FOTRS and they are willing to put up some pics of the folder structures that they have, I would really appreciate it.

I am so impatient to get playing this wonderful mod !

Thanks guys!



is it something to do with loading the game off the website?..offline?

[Cybermat47]

Originally Posted by lotharbucheim

Inside that I have two folders:
(i).SH4FOTRS (inside which is all the JSGME and MODS folders etc)

(ii). Silent Hunter 4 Gold Edition (in which is all the usual stuff including the SH4.exe

Apologies if I’m not reading this correctly, but are you saying that there is no sh4.exe in the SH4FOTRS folder?

[lotharbucheim]

Hi Cybermat47, thanks for the reply. You have read it correctly. Basically right now I have two folders within my “D:\Games” folder.

One folder is called ‘Silent Hunter 4 Gold Edition’ Into this folder I have directed all the components of the ‘Silent Hunter 4 - Wolves of the Pacific V1.5’ game itself.

The second folder is called ‘SH4FOTRS’ and into this I downloaded the add-on.

There is no SH4.exe in the ‘SH4FOTRS’ folder. It is in the ‘Silent Hunter 4 Gold Edition’ folder.

If you look at the four pics I attached to the thread, you should be able to see the structures within each folder...please let me know if you can’t see them and I will try and post better ones.

Thank you for any advice you can offer.

[Cybermat47]

Okay, if you just want to play FotRSU, take everything in the SH4FOTRS folder and put it in the Silent Hunter 4 Gold Edition folder. Deactivate, then reactivate FotRSU and any other mods you have installed in JSGME, and I believe that FotRSU will work for you then.

If you want to play FotRSU and keep an unmodded version of the game, make a copy of the Silent Hunter 4 Gold Edition folder, rename the copy to something of your choosing and carry out all the above steps with the copy folder. Then open up MultiSH4 1.5.exe (this will be in the copy folder after you reactivate FotRSU) and create a new save folder with a 3-character name (‘FRS’ for example). This will keep your modded saves and your unmodded saves seperate.

Let me know what happens, if it doesn’t work I’ll see if I can figure out something else

[Mad Mardigan]

Ahoy, lotharbucheim...

Ok, having read your reply to Me & the ones to CyberMat47, as well...

As I understand it, your copy of SH4, is from & through Ubisoft, itself... correct.?

As I know of it, ''SH4 Gold Edition'', is version 1.5 of it, which is with all the bells & whistles added in... they did a release of SH4 initially which was tagged version 1.4 (which did NOT include the Uboat Missions, in the Pacific, they did add that in, a bit after they released 1.4 & re-released SH4, then tagged as version 1.5, then subsequently later, re-re-released it, yet again & tagged it as ''Gold Edition'', if memory serves Me correctly... )

That said, everything should be in 1 folder & 1 only, to get FotRS to work...

I have SH4 w/UBoat Missions v1.5, (obtained from Steam, installed, but basically, your folder should look like Mine after all is said & done with maybe a wee tiny bit of difference, but not enough to matter... mind you, I do have the add on for FotRSU-EN named Nippon Maru added into the mix... If you are ONLY going to run with FotRS, itself ONLY, then disregard having MultiSH4 in your folder (IF you are going to go with any other Mega mods with SH4+UBM, then it is best if you ensure you keep a copy of SH4 freshly installed (NOT modded at all.... ( most important)before making said copy to keep back to do so 1st before modding the original... then & only then will you need MultiSH4 (which helps to keep each modded copy of SH4 away from the others...) otherwise My folder should serve you well, as a basic blueprint for yours. ) & had to do 2 screenshots to get the whole folder info.

Hopefully, this will assist you in getting the whole thing set up...

SH4 folder shot #1...


SH4 folder shot # 2...


M. M.

[lotharbucheim]

Guys, thank you so much for all your advice and efforts ... it really is greatly appreciated!.
Tomorrow, I will do a clean install and follow what you guys have told me and shown me on the pics you posted.

Before I do though: one thing is still confusing me...why did I end up with several MODS folders within another MOD folder? Is it because I downloaded JSGME, when there is actually a copy included in the FOTRS mod files?
So, to clarify..in my FOTRS folder there is a folder called MODS...and within that is another folder..also called MODS

I hope that question made sense, as I am not very computer literate...not very literate at all actually

[Mad Mardigan]

Originally Posted by lotharbucheim

Guys, thank you so much for all your advice and efforts ... it really is greatly appreciated!.
Tomorrow, I will do a clean install and follow what you guys have told me and shown me on the pics you posted.

Before I do though: one thing is still confusing me...why did I end up with several MODS folders within another MOD folder? Is it because I downloaded JSGME, when there is actually a copy included in the FOTRS mod files?
So, to clarify..in my FOTRS folder there is a folder called MODS...and within that is another folder..also called MODS

I hope that question made sense, as I am not very computer literate...not very literate at all actually

Ahoy, lotharbucheim...

No problem...

As for that, am drawing a blank, as to how you ended up with multiple mod folders, inside of the MODS folder.

With intially running JSGME for the 1st time, it then creates(or has you to do it, that is)... a MODS folder. Any time of running it (JSGME) opens it up so that you can then decide what mods in the MODS folder gets put in there, & in what order to activate those mods.

After you create the 'MODS' folder, on opening that folder up, the only thing that should be in there is 3 things, listed below:

Name Type
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
!BACKUP
!INSTLOGS
JSGME Configuration settings

That's it, that I recall of.

After that, it is just a matter of unzipping the mods that you want to add in, ensuring you follow the instructions included with those mods, before placing them into the MODS folder.

Soooo... again, just how you ended up with multiples of MODS folder, inside the main MODS folder... no idea.

Hopefully this info helps...

Keep us updated as to how it goes for you.

M. M.

[propbeanie]

Originally Posted by lotharbucheim

Guys, thank you so much for all your advice and efforts ... it really is greatly appreciated!.
Tomorrow, I will do a clean install and follow what you guys have told me and shown me on the pics you posted.

Before I do though: one thing is still confusing me...why did I end up with several MODS folders within another MOD folder? Is it because I downloaded JSGME, when there is actually a copy included in the FOTRS mod files?
So, to clarify..in my FOTRS folder there is a folder called MODS...and within that is another folder..also called MODS

I hope that question made sense, as I am not very computer literate...not very literate at all actually

The JSGME.exe file included in FotRSU is in the "Extras" folder. If you run it from there, it will use that folder where it resides as its point of reference (unless you point it elsewhere), and create a MODS folder there. If you instead copy the JSGME.exe file to the "root" folder of the game ("C:\Games \SH4FotRSU" as an example) and run it from there, JSGME.exe will then want to create a "MODS" folder in that, such that you end up with "C:\Games \SH4FotRSU \MODS", into which you put the FotRSU mod. You can create the folder yourself (be sure to use all caps when you name it "MODS") inside that SH4FotRSU folder (in my example), put the mod in that MODS folder, and then copy JSGME into the SH4FotRSU folder, run it from there, and confirm (with the same dialog in JSGME) the use of that MODS folder you made.

We used to have JSGME.exe in the "root" folder of the FotRSU mod, but having it there, it will then overwrite itself when activating the mod, delaying that activation of the mod a good bit, and potentially complicating the issue if you de-activate the mod later. JSGME.exe like other apps, can be run from any location on the computer, but you do have to be careful as to which folder(s) you are using, since it uses ini files in both its "root" folder, and in each MODS folder. It has a Windows XP interface, hence its GUI "austerity"...

[lotharbucheim]

Guys, it is working...and it is wonderful !

I am sure that I will have some stupid questions to ask as we go forward (I was just about to ask why the external views weren’t working...until I realised I had to ‘tick the box’ - DOH!) but right now FOTRS is working, and I think I have sorted out the folder problems.

I want to say a very sincere ‘thank you’ to all of you for your help.

What a great game..what a great Mod....and most of all...what a great community!

Thank you!

[Cybermat47]

Glad to hear you got it running, enjoy!

[Mad Mardigan]

Originally Posted by Cybermat47

Glad to hear you got it running, enjoy!

Cybermat47+1

M. M.