Silent Hunter IV has gone GOLD !!

[Jevhaddah]

Maybe it's because UbiSoft's a French company... They're out to get everyone else...

Sigh, quite possibly [:(] 

I think the Software industry as a whole is 'probably' the only industry where some people expect to buy an unfinished product and have it made semi workable in little chunks over time.  It's a sad state of affairs and IMHO harms PC gaming a great deal. 

Console owners have been  pretty much shielded from this in the past, but I wonder how things will work out for them now that the consoles are hooked up to Broadband Connections making it possible for 'patches' to be made availible for a game that has been rushed to market to suit the accounts department. [8|]

This is the only game (apart from Matrix titles) that I have pre-ordered/ ordered on release in ages, I normally wait until the 2nd or 3d patch with the subsiquent price drop before I even think of purchasing a game, but sometimes, like now, I take a leap of faith and pre-order. 

I cannot comment on the games unfinished nature or bugs because I have not yet installed it, but with all the bugs being reported at Subsim and SH4 own forums, I am just as glad I do not have time to play it.

Were DOOMED I tell yoo, LONG LIVE MATRIX [:D]

Can I have some brownie points please Mr Heath?[8|]

Cheers

Jev

[ravinhood]

I didn't buy it either. I forgot I don't like naval games of any type like SH series. Except the very first Harpoon that was the only one I played for longer than a day. I do like carrier battles where I get to send out the sorties though.

[Hertston]

ORIGINAL: Terminus


- Periodic CTD's due to low virtual memory. It says 1Gb minimum memory and 2Gb recommended memory, but that should definitely be 2Gb minimum.

Do you mean 'virtual' memory? That's allocated hard-drive space. I only mention it as the notes to the patch say;

"HARD DRIVE SPACE

Windows will require additional free hard drive space for its operating system
(virtual memory). If you encounter the following message in an error dialog:
"Ran out of virtual memory", free up some more hard drive space."

I notice the guys at subsim are as puzzled as I am as to what the heck that is all about.. surely nobody running this puppy is struggling for a few gig of hard drive space? If it is virtual memory causing the problem, try setting the allocation manually via My Computer/system properties/advanced/performance/advanced. Try setting both max and min paging file size to 4000. It is hungry for physical RAM, but I've managed to lose the pauses completely by shutting other stuff down; you could try that - especially any active AV software. [/quote] Running very nicely now, and I can live with low graphics settings as I said; there's nothing like the difference you would see in an FPS game, for example.

[Terminus]

ORIGINAL: Hertston

ORIGINAL: Terminus


- Periodic CTD's due to low virtual memory. It says 1Gb minimum memory and 2Gb recommended memory, but that should definitely be 2Gb minimum.

Do you mean 'virtual' memory? That's allocated hard-drive space. I only mention it as the notes to the patch say;

"HARD DRIVE SPACE

Windows will require additional free hard drive space for its operating system
(virtual memory). If you encounter the following message in an error dialog:
"Ran out of virtual memory", free up some more hard drive space."

I notice the guys at subsim are as puzzled as I am as to what the heck that is all about.. surely nobody running this puppy is struggling for a few gig of hard drive space? If it is virtual memory causing the problem, try setting the allocation manually via My Computer/system properties/advanced/performance/advanced. Try setting both max and min paging file size to 4000. It is hungry for physical RAM, but I've managed to lose the pauses completely by shutting other stuff down; you could try that - especially any active AV software. Running very nicely now, and I can live with low graphics settings as I said; there's nothing like the difference you would see in an FPS game, for example.

Well, DUH!!! I have nearly 20Gb free on my HDD, and my page file is above 4000...

[Hertston]

Just trying to help. I shall cease trying.

[Terminus]

Sorry... This is very embarrassing, but I'm going to post it anyway. My two "bugs" don't seem to have been bugs at all:

- The virtual memory/pagefile was set to a maximum level of 1500 and a minimum of 768. It's now 4000/4000.

- The mysterious torpedo launches were my fault. The time compression controls are the plus and minus keys on the numeric keypad, and out of reflex I pressed enter on said keypad to automatically reset to 1X time. Unfortunately, that's the torpedo trigger.

I apologize to you, Hertson. I appreciate that you were only trying to lend me aid. I got angry at myself for buying the game and Ubi for selling a "faulty" product. It may still be faulty, in fact it probably is, but those two "faults" weren't...

[Hertston]

NP.  Now, go sink stuff!  [:D]

[Terminus]

The sinkage have mostly been my boats. I was playing the convoy attack submarine school scenario, and had shot my boat out of torpedoes. I'd only noticed one IJN destroyer as escort, and happily thought, "hey, I've hit it, it's got a heavy list and is burning, let's surface and deck gun the remaining merchies!"

Unfortunately for me, there were two destroyers...[:D]

[cdbeck]

So Terminus... your problems are both self-imposed, and now fixed. What are your impressions with the finished product?

SoM

[Fredk]

Yeah, what is the dope of this game from the real wargamers?

I've currently got:
Abit - KN9
AMD 64 5200 2x (2.6 ghz)
2GB DDR2 800 MHZ
ATI 1900 (all in wonder)

So i'm thinking I should be a shoe in to run this, but maybe the video card could be a problem..I suppose i should go post this over on the subhunter forum tho'.

[Fredk]

haha...did some reading on the subhunter forums - no way I'm going to buy this (allegedly) bug ridden piece of crap at this point if I'm complaining about too many problems with WitP. [:-]

[Terminus]

ORIGINAL: Son_of_Montfort

So Terminus... your problems are both self-imposed, and now fixed. What are your impressions with the finished product?

SoM

Even though it causes me emotional and physical pain to say this about an UbiSoft game, initial impressions are (gulp) favourable.

With tweaking and poking, I've gotten it to run at medium detail levels on my rig (P4 2.8 GHz, 1Gb RAM, GeForce6600GT), and although I haven't really pushed it yet (with lots of ships and aircraft having to be rendered simultaneously), it's running pretty well...

I'm about to leave on my second war patrol from Cavite Navy Yard as commander of USS Spearfish. The date is 12/21/41 and the Japs are crawling all over the Phillipines. My first patrol was relatively uneventful, although I managed to sink two enemy freighters for 12000+ tons. Took six torpedoes to do them; seems like two of my Mk 14's malfunctioned somehow... I wonder what the problem could be?[;)]

Anyway, I can tell you this: if SH4 had been another U-Boat game, I'd NEVER have bought it. I only spent my money because it's a Pacific theatre game. There are a few "oddities" in it (their idea of an Allied fighter is the F2A Buffalo, and their long-ranged 4-engined bomber is a Lancaster in US markings), and it's pretty clear that the people who programmed it don't have English as their first language (they're Romanians), but overall... it'll do nicely.

[Hertston]

ORIGINAL: Fredk

haha...did some reading on the subhunter forums - no way I'm going to buy this (allegedly) bug ridden piece of crap at this point if I'm complaining about too many problems with WitP. [:-]

I think it probably is 'allegedly', although as always just because one person hasn't suffered problems (i.e, me) doesn't mean that others haven't. In any event there's a big difference between "has some bugs" and "bug ridden piece of crap". The verdict is still open on whether SH4 demands playing ahead of a modded SH3 though; I'm not at all sure it does... certainly if you are more/just as happy with U-Boats than the Pacific theatre.

and their long-ranged 4-engined bomber is a Lancaster in US markings..

Yeah.. I thought that was odd! [:D] The Lanc is the 'patrol' plane in the museum, too, which suggests the whole thing was still work in progress when released. Maybe the devs had an unfinished night-bombing sim on the shelf somewhere...

[cdbeck]

Herston,

I have SH3, and I like the U-Boat stuff. I'm not really sure if buying the Pacific Theater would really "improve" my play experience, if it is the same nuts and bolts under the hood.

You keep mentioning mods for SH3, which would you suggest? I a woefully ignorant of the modding communities. Any help?

SoM

[Terminus]

There are still CTD's[:@], but at least it's not whining about lack of virtual memory...

Of course, it came while I was on the way home from a successful war patrol...

[Dixie]

ORIGINAL: Son_of_Montfort

Herston,

I have SH3, and I like the U-Boat stuff. I'm not really sure if buying the Pacific Theater would really "improve" my play experience, if it is the same nuts and bolts under the hood.

You keep mentioning mods for SH3, which would you suggest? I a woefully ignorant of the modding communities. Any help?

SoM

Have you checked Subsim.com?

[Terminus]

Screenie from my last war patrol. Doesn't look too bad...

[Fredk]

god Terminus...don't make me go buy this before the first 7 or 8 patches come out! [;)]

[Terminus]

Oh, make no mistake... I didn't post that screenie to make Ubicrapsoft feel good... Just wanted to show that the game actually looks pretty decent even on the middling detail levels.

Definitely needs more patching, though...

[histgamer]

Looks real nice but i doubt it would run.

I have 126mb video card but its a laptop so its a crappy generic video card 1.6GHZ but its a dual core processor so thats basically a 3.1ghz and 1.5gb of ram but SH-3 was a bit laggy for me when i was on the bridge or attacking large convoys so somthing tells me while that was laggy but worked this wouldnt be very playable.[&:]

And i dont have money for a new computer the laptop is less than a year old but laptops are not ment for games.[:-]