SH3 goes gold is it just me

[wodin]

I have a 4200ti 128 meg I'm using the old and trusty 45.32 drivers. I haven't experienced any graphical errors. The game runs fine. I have only 512 meg mem and an AMD 1.8 overclocked to 2.0.

[DeepSix]

You know, I wonder if the problem I'm having is really with Starforce? My drive is a DVD-RW. I sent Ubi the dxdiag file and will see if anything crops up there; if not, I'll ask them if it could be (Death)Starforce.

[ravinhood]

Do you have an anisotropic filtering feature with your card? I remember I did with my GEforce 4200ti. I found if you turn this filtering all the way up 8x I think it is, then it should resolve your mouse problems. I had some of your problems with RTW and this resovled the mouse stuttering issues. Also, I read that your refresh rate should be as high as your monitor can handle with these older cards. I run mine at 85mhz, using an old CRT 15incher (yeah I'm a cheap bassturd) lol

Also try adjusting the resolution to coincide with the refresh rate and adjust for 16bit and 32bit and see if there aren't improvements there as well. It doesn't sound like a sound card problem, those usually just crash you to desktop, video problems will lockup your system as you have been stating. I still run a SBlive 5.1 gamers sound card, don't seem to have any issues with it, just video problems from time to time and it takes a rocket scientists to figure out what the problem is. lol Also test your triple buffers and "force mipmaps" feature. By process of elimination I was finally able to get RTW to work correctly, lol, though afterwards it wasn't worth the effort to me.

[DeepSix]

ORIGINAL: ravinhood
I run mine at 85mhz, using an old CRT 15incher (yeah I'm a cheap bassturd) lol

Well you and me both, then.[:D] Mine is my old Gateway monitor from about 5 or 6 years ago. It's still better than the one that came with the Dell I had after that (which quit, hence the return to the Gateway). Now I have a real hodgepodge of stuff....

I run the monitor at 85, too, although 100 is as high as it will go (I don't display settings I can't use). As far as the card goes, yes, I think the 4600 has anisotropic filtering. So far I've either had it off or let the app run it (using the Nvidia systray manager). I've also tried 16-bit depth without success.

Ok, now when you start talking about mipmaps, LOD, and triple buffers, I start turning into Homer Simpson. LOD stands for "lunch of doooonuts..."[:D] I can manipulate these with the tuner, I just haven't yet because I didn't know what they did. Also, I couldn't find "fastwrites" called by that name in the BIOS (someone else recommended turning that off). My BIOS is Phoenix Award v6.

Sound card is old too. Another Dell artifact. It's a SB (SBLive! maybe?) but I can't remember the rest of its details. Sound quality is definitely bringing up the rear on my system and best represents the hodgepodge. I ditched the old 'two-and-a-subwoofer' computer speakers several months ago and now have the PC connected to a circa 1985 Sony stereo receiver (the kind with one capacitor and a ribbon cable connecting all the components) and my Bose bookshelf speakers. I did this so that I could enjoy the RTW sound effects but it's not nearly as good as surround sound. More volume, yeah, but it's still just stereo.[:D]

But I think you're right -- sound is most likely not the problem. The more I think about it the more I become convinced it's a Starforce/DVD incompatibility. I'm not an expert at all when it comes to this sort of thing, but I've never run anything with video or lockup problems that I wasn't eventually able to solve by tweaking the things you and others have suggested -- one of my other games is a train sim that renders a completely 3D environment from any camera angle possible, much like the free cam in SH3. But with the train sim you can place as many 3D objects as you want in a space that's as large as you want, and to top it all off it uses open architecture so people can create their own objects (which have to be read off the hard drive and then rendered in that 3D sphere). SH3 doesn't have to work nearly as hard. Yet the train game runs flawlessly despite the heavy fps load, and SH3 is rough. Another reason I suspect Starforce.

Anyway. 'Nuff rambling from me until I hear more from Ubi.[8|]

Cheers,
Rob

[wodin]

Ive read somewhere if your having problems run the game at 60HZ yes I said 60.

[DeepSix]

Knock on wood -- it is running. If it keeps running I will owe ravinhood a case of his favorite beverage.[&o] I turned the anisotropic filtering up to 8 (the max) for one thing. For another I turned the particle effects off completely. This was a little bit serendipitous because I turned it off due to the known issue with Nvidia cards and particle effects.

Some discussion of this over at subsim, I think. Basically what happens is that the particle effects get screwed up on Nvidias so that the binoculars and UZO are useless when looking, say, straight over the bow because the bow spray obscures them. So I don't know if that had anything to do with my problem or not. At any rate, from here I can now start building things up again, I think.

The only other thing I did that I could see might make a difference -- I shut the computer down (not just a restart). I don't know why, but sometimes you need a good 15-30 seconds to completely "drain" the power -- resetting a cable modem for instance -- and simply restarting apparently doesn't shut the power completely off. So perhaps the reboot you're supposed to do after installation never really "took," if that makes any sense.

Anyway -- knock on wood. Hope I'm not putting a jinx on myself for posting this.[:'(] But I finally ran the entire torpedo attack tutorial without one single lag. I sure hope I can get back at least some particle effects, 'cause they're really cool, but at least I seem to have got rid of the 'alle machinen stop' problem.

[KG Erwin]

Deep Six, I'm glad to hear that you got the game to run. I'm going to wait until I can upgrade my PC before I buy the game. Filplanet support e-mailed me, and I confirmed my order cancellation. It's unfortunate, as I was really getting excited about trying out the game--it's too bad they didn't offer a demo as a system compatibility test. It would save gamers a lot of hassles.

[DamoclesX]

It runs perfectly here to, ati card, that sucks about having issues with this game, its awsome.

But

Its really complex to, I literly cant hit the broad side of a cargo ship lol.

[testarossa]

I glad you fixed it. Fastwrites option is in the AGP sub section of Advanced Chipset options of MoBo BIOS. It's like select speed 8, 4 or Auto etc, everything related to AGP is there.

[DeepSix]

Thanks testarossa; I remember seeing some AGP options so I'll check it out again. I'm so glad I finally got it going. Now if I could just improve my torpedo attack success I'd be in business.[:)]

I still think you can forget about running SH3 on anything but a machine that comfortably meets the 'recommended' system specs. Especially when it comes to particle effects (and if you're using an Nvidia card) -- the usual particle effect hit on fps seems a lot more amplified here. If I turn them way up, the mouse scroll and overall frame rate plummet to near freezing. The good news is that, on the other hand, there is probably no need to have particle fx set to maximum in order to enjoy them. At 100%, they look almost too soft and fuzzy (to suit me).

KG Erwin -- yes, it's probably a good idea to wait until you're sure your machine will run it well. It's worth doing that to enjoy the game. Knowing what I know now, if I hadn't already bought it, and a new drive, I'd definitely wait. It would run a whole lot better if I had a video card that was a notch or two better. And, as always, you can never have too much RAM![:D]

Anyway. That's another reason why Ubi should absolutely have a demo for this, IMO. They're only going to screw themselves by not having one. I haven't played long enough to say so definitely, but it looks like this really is what it's cracked up to be. All the more reason to give people the chance to find out if they can run it or not.

Thanks to everybody for the great advice on pistol-whipping this thing into cooperating. I really appreciate all the help!

[Tankerace]

On the particle effects, just hit Cntrl-P to disable them. I typically leave them on, but when I hear ship or plane spotted I have to turn them off, thanks to the Nvidia bug. Still, best darn subsim I've ever played, bar none.

[Charles2222]

ORIGINAL: DeepSix

Knock on wood -- it is running. If it keeps running I will owe ravinhood a case of his favorite beverage.[&o] I turned the anisotropic filtering up to 8 (the max) for one thing. For another I turned the particle effects off completely. This was a little bit serendipitous because I turned it off due to the known issue with Nvidia cards and particle effects.

Some discussion of this over at subsim, I think. Basically what happens is that the particle effects get screwed up on Nvidias so that the binoculars and UZO are useless when looking, say, straight over the bow because the bow spray obscures them. So I don't know if that had anything to do with my problem or not. At any rate, from here I can now start building things up again, I think.

The only other thing I did that I could see might make a difference -- I shut the computer down (not just a restart). I don't know why, but sometimes you need a good 15-30 seconds to completely "drain" the power -- resetting a cable modem for instance -- and simply restarting apparently doesn't shut the power completely off. So perhaps the reboot you're supposed to do after installation never really "took," if that makes any sense.

Anyway -- knock on wood. Hope I'm not putting a jinx on myself for posting this.[:'(] But I finally ran the entire torpedo attack tutorial without one single lag. I sure hope I can get back at least some particle effects, 'cause they're really cool, but at least I seem to have got rid of the 'alle machinen stop' problem.

I have the particle problem too, but it's way too good to not run it. If you just have to use ugo (after the patch) just hit ctrl-p to turn it off and then when done with ugo turn it back on. I haven't seen this affect the binoculars, but then it may take the really big waves to cause that.

[TheHellPatrol]

Other than a slowdown when using time compression(1024) i'm having no real problems with my GeForceFX5700 128mg card and 1024 ram. The UZO can be a pain to scroll when i first use it, i only see snow the first few seconds, but it eventually comes around. I think that may be related to the "Nvidia issue" but i can live with it as everything else is beyond belief[X(]. I have found that setting the AGP higher (8) helps some games perform better even though common sense would lead me to believe that lower settings would improve performance[8|]. Overall i was quite suprised as i've been playing 5-8 hours a day without a single crash, and only get "lag" when i'm out of ammo and trying to time compress past that taskforce that, like two ships, passed in the night[;)].
Whatever it takes it's worth the trouble as this is going to be the biggest "classic" of the genre for quite some time...mindblowing, really, mindblowing[:D].
P.S. I you could only buy one game in life this would probably do it[&o].

[Charles2222]

ORIGINAL: DamoclesX

It runs perfectly here to, ati card, that sucks about having issues with this game, its awsome.

But

Its really complex to, I literly cant hit the broad side of a cargo ship lol.

If you're using the targeting computer like I am, I think you will find this will pretty much solve your targeting. Someone of the SHIII board mentioned that the computer doesn't retarget or something for the next tube. Something like it takes the last target without readjusting. IN order to readjust it you have to toggle the speed setting. If you ran the previous torp at slow, click the next firing tube and click the speed to fast, and then back to slow. If I understood them correctly you want to toggle the opposite speed first and then the speed you want. It sounds as though even if the speed shown is fast and you want slow, then you need to click slow, then fast, and back to slow again. It sounds screwy but it seems to work for me.

Oh guys, instant love. A few minutes ago I fired my first bow steam torpedo while surfaced and looking from the bridge. Ahhhh......

Funny I haven't seen a single screenshot out of all the screenshots I've seen of that occuring. I suppose the only rarer thing would be to see one coming from the stern. When I did it, it was really weird too, because if I had saved the game just beforehand (and who in the heat of battle does?), and managed a screenshot (I'm not sure if the regular 'print screen' keyboard option will work) you would have seen that torpedo going into the Twilight Zone because the ship had just disappeared due to fog and the visibility was just as 50-100 meters short of the torpedo's shortest range. Seeing the torpedo swimming into the fog like that was sort of like sending a torpedo at the Flying Dutchman.

[Charles2222]

ORIGINAL: DeepSix

Thanks testarossa; I remember seeing some AGP options so I'll check it out again. I'm so glad I finally got it going. Now if I could just improve my torpedo attack success I'd be in business.[:)]

I still think you can forget about running SH3 on anything but a machine that comfortably meets the 'recommended' system specs. Especially when it comes to particle effects (and if you're using an Nvidia card) -- the usual particle effect hit on fps seems a lot more amplified here. If I turn them way up, the mouse scroll and overall frame rate plummet to near freezing. The good news is that, on the other hand, there is probably no need to have particle fx set to maximum in order to enjoy them. At 100%, they look almost too soft and fuzzy (to suit me).

KG Erwin -- yes, it's probably a good idea to wait until you're sure your machine will run it well. It's worth doing that to enjoy the game. Knowing what I know now, if I hadn't already bought it, and a new drive, I'd definitely wait. It would run a whole lot better if I had a video card that was a notch or two better. And, as always, you can never have too much RAM![:D]

Anyway. That's another reason why Ubi should absolutely have a demo for this, IMO. They're only going to screw themselves by not having one. I haven't played long enough to say so definitely, but it looks like this really is what it's cracked up to be. All the more reason to give people the chance to find out if they can run it or not.

Thanks to everybody for the great advice on pistol-whipping this thing into cooperating. I really appreciate all the help!

They may have an 'ethical' reason for not making a demo. Because the SHOWW2 game had a demo which also had Starforce. This game if I hadn't already mentioned it (see the back of the box) has a warning about the 'security technology' it has, that it may conflict with some CD-RW, DVD-RW, and virtual drives, written in a very small yellow box, however, it doesn't mention Starforce by name.

[TheHellPatrol]

[X(]Came under a HUGE convoy today led by a destroyer, i waited patiently as the first wave of ships 5 or 6 lines abreast passed to go to periscope depth. Much to my amusement i saw a passenger liner in the middle just ripe for the sinking, it took 4 torps to bring it down. After the patrol i had sunk 2 destroyers, 5 large cargos, 1 large tanker and a neutral(cruiseliner). I ended up with -190 renown[X(]Oops...poor families[:D]

[DamoclesX]

Man, this game is HARD, no matter what I do, on manual targetting, I can NOT hit any kind of ship that is turning, or doing anything other then going in a nice straight line, and even then its hit and miss.

I find this game really hard, I run into merchent ships a lot, and its ALWAYS during a storm, so I cant use the damn deck gun, and, they ALWAYS seem to spot me so they do this zig zag thing and I can never hit them lol

[freeboy]

get in close and use a spread of torps

[TheHellPatrol]

ORIGINAL: DamoclesX

Man, this game is HARD, no matter what I do, on manual targetting, I can NOT hit any kind of ship that is turning, or doing anything other then going in a nice straight line, and even then its hit and miss.

Once i got used to the compass/bearing relation, that was the biggest hurdle, i learned to move in anticipation of the fleeing enemy. Two things have helped me line up shots:a) engage within 1500m b) fire at 40-50 degree/fore angle...by the time they wiggle the torp hits at 80-85 degrees and it's over[;)]. The only luck i've had at hitting a destroyer when i'm spotted is when she's coming right at me 5 or 6 degrees, i fire of 3 torps slowly @800m/700m/600m +/- [X(] Talk about point blank...but it works for me. It's all about when they spot you, if your not in the right position it's nigh impossible[8|]

[DeepSix]

ORIGINAL: Tankerace

On the particle effects, just hit Cntrl-P to disable them. I typically leave them on, but when I hear ship or plane spotted I have to turn them off, thanks to the Nvidia bug. Still, best darn subsim I've ever played, bar none.

Excellent! Thanks for that tip -- the only time I'd like to have them off completely is when using the UZO.

I read above that some people are having trouble hitting anything using manual firing. You can always come down here to my level, where it's hard to hit anything using the idiotproof targeting assistance. I have yet to figure out how to even turn that off.

Still on Patrol 1. It's still running pretty well for me, but I have a weird problem when attacked by aircraft. If I try to assign crew to the flak gun, it says "Cannot man flak gun in storm!" Well, WHAT storm? The sun is out, the sea is like glass. Why the heck are my guys wearing their foul weather gear and why are the planes flying if we're in a storm? Ask the navigator for the weather report, I get something like "Fog - none, Precipitations - none, wind 0, bearing 100." Where's the storm? For that matter where's all the great thunder, lightning, and heaving seas? Anybody else run into this?