[TEC] Frozen gauges resupply bug resurrected

Sniper297 · 05-06-19, 01:55 PM

Original thread on this issue;

www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=202298

All the gauges in both the control room and conning tower are affected, something sets them to a "neutral" position, all needles straight up and down as if they're not getting the signal from whatever controls the needle movements.

Was working on GONE ASIATIC 3 and decided to get fancy, creating a feel of setting up a new supply base on a remote island, then getting chased out after a few months then opening a new supply base on a different island a week or two later, only to have the enemy discover that one and having to move somewhere else 4 months later.
If you can't tell by this I've been reading about McArthur's "guerilla submarines" in the Philippines, added a twist he should have thought of.

Might have overdid it, whatever happened the disconnected dials bug was triggered, this time I definitely narrowed it down to US_NavalBases.mis, which has all the additional resupply bases. Restored a backup copy of the previous hack from a week ago, restarted a new career and am currently trying to trigger the bug with the simpler mod.

Pure speculation at this point, possibly there are locations that you can't add US naval bases, or the activate/deactivate multiple bases over time is buggy, all I know for sure right now is it's in the file US_NavalBases.mis somewhere. Best I recall the original problem six years ago had fewer bases than the good copy I have now, so it's probably (again, guessing here) not a simple numbers overload.

propbeanie · 05-06-19, 08:32 PM

You could put a US_NavalBase on one of the Japanese main islands, and the game wouldn't care. Might be a bunch of explosions and smoke, but it won't freeze the dials. The main thing to look for is something conflicting with the player's submarine, and ninety-nine times out of a hundred you'll find an AI submarine is to blame. You probably have equipment ID conflicts in the DAT or SIM or etc. files causing issues.

Sniper297 · 05-07-19, 12:38 AM

You got it, it's submarines. Got to where I could duplicate the gripe or confirm it wasn't bugged, start from the office, fire some torpedoes, proceed to a resupply base and refit, save and exit to windows, restart the game and reload the save. If the bug is there, triggers every time.

What I was trying to do was make "starting at tender" more realistic, for one thing add an actual tender next to the starting point, then a "nest" of friendly subs next to the tender with the player starting in the nest.

Apparently that's a no-no, any sub, one or multiple, triggers the bug every time, the first time you refit, save, exit, and reload. Any surface ship works fine, any sub freezes the gauges.

So for now until we know more, a tender and a tanker with the player between works fine, but don't use any of the submarines as docked ships.

Sniper297 · 05-07-19, 01:04 AM

Just confirmed it's fixable by merely deleting any subs used as docked ships. Backed up my latest unbugged file, restored the bugged one, ran the fire torpedoes - resupply - save - exit - reload, confirm broken gauges. Did that twice, then opened in ME, found one S class in the list, located and deleted that. New career, run test twice, no bug.

propbeanie · 05-07-19, 05:40 AM

All you have to do is use an AI sub that does NOT conflict with the player's sub. Don't use any of the regular playable submarines. You're using v1.4 of the game, correct? I'm not sure if any of the mega-mods' AI subs would work in v1.4, but it's worth a try to make certain of the "testing". If it does work, then clone a playable sub following one of the tuts on that, of which I can't find a link for yet... keltos01 & Peabody did one, and I thought ETR3(SS) did one, as well as someone else, but I can't find any of them yet. s7rikeback has some files in his collection. I'll look there and see if I can find you a link...

Sniper297 · 05-07-19, 02:39 PM

Yeah, tried to clone a sub tender to see if I could get rid of the "collision siren" (which doesn't sound anything like the real ones) but it wouldn't work for me.

What I was trying to do was get an effect like this;

with the player sub starting between the other two subs.
But if there's no simple way to clone a static (docked only, never moves) sub, this is really good enough for freeware;

BTW, if anyone is wondering, I keep zipped backups of the original SH4 1.4, and tested with all the default subs placed in various locations. This is in the original game - not a mod soup factor. No mods.

propbeanie · 05-08-19, 12:42 AM

Yeah. I still don't understand why the game conflicts like that. Surely the devs discovered that in testing? You would think though that if you can have a multi-player mission with multiple player subs, that surely you could have playable subs as "static" models in the SinglePlayer side? But alas, apparently NOT!...

Sniper297 · 05-08-19, 02:26 PM

Yeah, the bizarre thing is I could understand if it crashed the program, but disabling the gauges - and only after resupplying, saving, exiting the game, then restarting and loading a save game - is just plain weird.

Most irritating thing they missed is "Errors found when validating mission. Please see the mission validation window and solve them berore saving." The blatantly obvious misspelling of "before" is a clue to how good their quality control was, and you would think that if you get that error every time you try to save without going to Mission, Parameters, check the box for Ignore player submarines ON before it will actually let you save, they would have set it to be ON by default.

05-10-19, 04:35 PM

Save games for SH3-4 have always been very strange. I wish I could understand what was done as well.

Maybe one day once they both lapse into Abandonware we will get the tools to dig deeply into the .exe and figure things out, but that won't be before 2028ish, unless GoG buys it for themselves, like they've been doing lately.

05-06-19, 01:55 PM	#1
Sniper297 The Old Man Join Date: Dec 2005 Location: Philadelphia Shipyard Brig Posts: 1,386 Downloads: 160 Uploads: 19	Frozen gauges resupply bug resurrected Original thread on this issue; www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=202298 All the gauges in both the control room and conning tower are affected, something sets them to a "neutral" position, all needles straight up and down as if they're not getting the signal from whatever controls the needle movements. Was working on GONE ASIATIC 3 and decided to get fancy, creating a feel of setting up a new supply base on a remote island, then getting chased out after a few months then opening a new supply base on a different island a week or two later, only to have the enemy discover that one and having to move somewhere else 4 months later. If you can't tell by this I've been reading about McArthur's "guerilla submarines" in the Philippines, added a twist he should have thought of. Might have overdid it, whatever happened the disconnected dials bug was triggered, this time I definitely narrowed it down to US_NavalBases.mis, which has all the additional resupply bases. Restored a backup copy of the previous hack from a week ago, restarted a new career and am currently trying to trigger the bug with the simpler mod. Pure speculation at this point, possibly there are locations that you can't add US naval bases, or the activate/deactivate multiple bases over time is buggy, all I know for sure right now is it's in the file US_NavalBases.mis somewhere. Best I recall the original problem six years ago had fewer bases than the good copy I have now, so it's probably (again, guessing here) not a simple numbers overload.

05-06-19, 08:32 PM	#2
propbeanie CTD - it's not just a job Join Date: May 2016 Location: One hour from Music City USA! Posts: 9,911 Downloads: 444 Uploads: 2	You could put a US_NavalBase on one of the Japanese main islands, and the game wouldn't care. Might be a bunch of explosions and smoke, but it won't freeze the dials. The main thing to look for is something conflicting with the player's submarine, and ninety-nine times out of a hundred you'll find an AI submarine is to blame. You probably have equipment ID conflicts in the DAT or SIM or etc. files causing issues. __________________ "...and bollocks to the naysayers" - Jimbuna

05-07-19, 05:40 AM	#5
propbeanie CTD - it's not just a job Join Date: May 2016 Location: One hour from Music City USA! Posts: 9,911 Downloads: 444 Uploads: 2	All you have to do is use an AI sub that does NOT conflict with the player's sub. Don't use any of the regular playable submarines. You're using v1.4 of the game, correct? I'm not sure if any of the mega-mods' AI subs would work in v1.4, but it's worth a try to make certain of the "testing". If it does work, then clone a playable sub following one of the tuts on that, of which I can't find a link for yet... keltos01 & Peabody did one, and I thought ETR3(SS) did one, as well as someone else, but I can't find any of them yet. s7rikeback has some files in his collection. I'll look there and see if I can find you a link... __________________ "...and bollocks to the naysayers" - Jimbuna

05-08-19, 12:42 AM	#7
propbeanie CTD - it's not just a job Join Date: May 2016 Location: One hour from Music City USA! Posts: 9,911 Downloads: 444 Uploads: 2	Yeah. I still don't understand why the game conflicts like that. Surely the devs discovered that in testing? You would think though that if you can have a multi-player mission with multiple player subs, that surely you could have playable subs as "static" models in the SinglePlayer side? But alas, apparently NOT!... __________________ "...and bollocks to the naysayers" - Jimbuna

05-07-19, 12:38 AM	#3
Sniper297 The Old Man Join Date: Dec 2005 Location: Philadelphia Shipyard Brig Posts: 1,386 Downloads: 160 Uploads: 19	You got it, it's submarines. Got to where I could duplicate the gripe or confirm it wasn't bugged, start from the office, fire some torpedoes, proceed to a resupply base and refit, save and exit to windows, restart the game and reload the save. If the bug is there, triggers every time. What I was trying to do was make "starting at tender" more realistic, for one thing add an actual tender next to the starting point, then a "nest" of friendly subs next to the tender with the player starting in the nest. Apparently that's a no-no, any sub, one or multiple, triggers the bug every time, the first time you refit, save, exit, and reload. Any surface ship works fine, any sub freezes the gauges. So for now until we know more, a tender and a tanker with the player between works fine, but don't use any of the submarines as docked ships.

05-07-19, 01:04 AM	#4
Sniper297 The Old Man Join Date: Dec 2005 Location: Philadelphia Shipyard Brig Posts: 1,386 Downloads: 160 Uploads: 19	Just confirmed it's fixable by merely deleting any subs used as docked ships. Backed up my latest unbugged file, restored the bugged one, ran the fire torpedoes - resupply - save - exit - reload, confirm broken gauges. Did that twice, then opened in ME, found one S class in the list, located and deleted that. New career, run test twice, no bug.

05-07-19, 02:39 PM	#6
Sniper297 The Old Man Join Date: Dec 2005 Location: Philadelphia Shipyard Brig Posts: 1,386 Downloads: 160 Uploads: 19	Yeah, tried to clone a sub tender to see if I could get rid of the "collision siren" (which doesn't sound anything like the real ones) but it wouldn't work for me. What I was trying to do was get an effect like this; with the player sub starting between the other two subs. But if there's no simple way to clone a static (docked only, never moves) sub, this is really good enough for freeware; BTW, if anyone is wondering, I keep zipped backups of the original SH4 1.4, and tested with all the default subs placed in various locations. This is in the original game - not a mod soup factor. No mods.

05-08-19, 02:26 PM	#8
Sniper297 The Old Man Join Date: Dec 2005 Location: Philadelphia Shipyard Brig Posts: 1,386 Downloads: 160 Uploads: 19	Yeah, the bizarre thing is I could understand if it crashed the program, but disabling the gauges - and only after resupplying, saving, exiting the game, then restarting and loading a save game - is just plain weird. Most irritating thing they missed is "Errors found when validating mission. Please see the mission validation window and solve them berore saving." The blatantly obvious misspelling of "before" is a clue to how good their quality control was, and you would think that if you get that error every time you try to save without going to Mission, Parameters, check the box for Ignore player submarines ON before it will actually let you save, they would have set it to be ON by default.

05-10-19, 04:35 PM	#9
Slyguy3129 Stowaway Posts: n/a Downloads: Uploads:	Save games for SH3-4 have always been very strange. I wish I could understand what was done as well. Maybe one day once they both lapse into Abandonware we will get the tools to dig deeply into the .exe and figure things out, but that won't be before 2028ish, unless GoG buys it for themselves, like they've been doing lately.