Aanker - thanks for the link! Man, is that ever what I was looking for. "Install DosBox & SHI for Dummies".
I sort of figured it out on my own with a hint here and a clue there with ISO images and mapping to virtual drives hidden under a rock till later, got the thing working until I broke it all trying to get it to play without the disc in the drive. That was a couple of weeks ago, but been so busy getting SHIII up to snuff, its been low on the to-do list. Now, I can go at it again with much more confidence.
One thing that occurs to me from this thread, as well as the SHIII Mods Forum.
Lots of people struggle with CTD and installation issues. Now, a lot of it revolves around stupidity and failing to read instructions, but some are clearly system/hardware related (like SHII being unplayable on nVidia cards, due to text getting graphically murdered.) Scattered through all these threads are lots of hints and tips about 4Gig patches, 3 Gig switches, optimising page file settings etc, programs to minimise background apps, and switching off interrupting programs (like firewalls).
These things would appear to be important to know about regardless of which game one wishes to play, or which platform/OS/or hardware configuration you have, but the LOWER your computer's spec, I would say the MORE IMPORTANT these tweaks become. My guess is that the majority DON'T have a 64 Bit OS with 8Gig of RAM and anther 4 Gig on their graphics card.
So, would it be possible for someone with computer smarts to compile a SEQUENTIAL list of recommendations to optimise hardware performance ESPECIALLY relevant for those wishing to run additional Mods - hence requiring much more of the system?
I have seen something like this done for an individual, where a kind poster was trying to step someone through a series of 'do this, then that and get back to me for the next step if that doesn't work' - sort of an escalating list from the simple to the more intrusive to get the whole show working to it's max capacity.
That, I think, could be a really useful sticky on its own, or accompanying any supermod release etc. For example, in my own case, I don't know whether the 4Gig/3Gig 'fixes' would even be appropriate for my machine (with 2.95Gig of RAM), and I don't even know what setting virtual memory/page files from the 'current' default 'custom' level to Min=max="recommended" does, but I did it anyway.
Anyway, with help I think I have got my 32 Bit (whatever that means) XP Pro machine to maybe 90% optimised, and I run (mostly) SHIII+COMMANDER+SJGME+MFM3.2+1 (sometimes 2) Skins+ a bunch of little mods. Not bad, but still not as stable as I would like.
Maybe it could be better with a few more tweaks, and a coherent step through would certainly save a lot of frustration for a lot of noobs/computer non-geeks who want to spend their time battling battleships, not wrestling with CTD's & buggy installations. I sometimes feel like I am oh, so gingerly!, trying to push a wheelbarrow with a squirming three-year-old across a tightrope over a chasm. The support & assistance has been great, but I wonder if a step-through would have saved us all time?
