Here is my condensed list of SCDA hints and problems, many gathered from people on this forum and from my own experiences with this buggy game.

1) Go to http://www.playtool.com/pages/home/index.html and check to see if your video card supports pixel shader 3.0, which is required for SCDA to work on your PC.

2) Try creating a shortcut command; "C:\Program Files\ubisoft\Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell Double Agent\SCDA-Offline\System\SplinterCell4.exe" -ll (add the -ll at the end) to get around a major cause of not getting into the game, CTD and Runtime error with no launch! This hint came from dedicated users on this forum, but it doesn't always work for everybody and I still got the Runtime error and CTD occuring during the training missions.

3) In display options, UNCHECK the HDR option (check box for customize settings, not next generation), then you can turn on anisotropic and anti-aliasing to the settings of your choice, it should work and be somewhat stable. Set your video card preferences in it's own control panel to 'application controlled' for both of the above. You may still get a CTD occasionally and if you do, try turning off AA. If you want higher than 4X AA, check out LennardF1989's posts on how to modify the SplinterCell 4.ini file for up to 16X if your card supports it. Also check out his modifications to turn on soft shadows. Much appreciation for his hard work.

4) Safe cracking bug: make sure that Sam is moving faster than a sneak when approaching the safe by using the mouse scroll wheel to speed him up slightly before reaching it. Directional keys will then work while in the safe cracking mode. The mouse wheel can then be used to control the wheel turn speed, or even stop it if you want. This also applies to the mine assembly and bomb disarm modes as well.

5) Only 'load last save' works when you want to reload within a mission. If you try to load another time point, all you will get is the load screen reappearing each time you try to load. [Update: Workaround courtesy of forum member Not-Apsalar. You can also quit back into the main game menu and then load a mission from there.]

6) 'Quick saves' seem to disappear when going back to Windows or especially during a reboot of your computer, don't use them for vital save points, use an actual 'save' for those.

7) Forget mission reloads during Kinshasa, Part 2. You will get a CTD every time. You will have exit back to Windows and the restart the game to reload the mission point you want. Some people have also had the problem occur during the bonus NYC Harbor mission, although I didn't run into it there. [Update from forum member Not-Apsalar and also I tried this myself. If you die and want to reload a mission, quit back into the main game screen and then load the mission save of your choice. A little quicker than returning to Windows and going back into the game.]

8) Sounds seem to disappear at many points during the game, especially weapon or sonic whistle noises.

9) You will also find missing textures on many of the levels, for example the generators and supports are missing from the wind turbines in the first level, all you see is the rotating blades. There's a funny one in the small office off of the casino on the cruise ship. There seems to be a closet or locker that Sam can hide in, but no textures are visible, so Sam can be seen in your camera view but not to the guards.

10. There seems to be a bug with thermal vision. When you first turn it on, things seem to be blurry or out of focus. If you switch to night vision and back to thermal, things get really sharp and clear, at least on my system set to 1600 X 1200 with 4X AA. I noticed that you can see through some types of doors or walls in this mode as well.

These are just some of the problems I have run into playing this game. I want to thank all those on this forum for your help, so I just thought that I would make a list for any other noobs or suckers (including me) who bought this game and end up here trying to get it working.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: tunnelcat,

tunnelcat, you rock. Well-written and nicely summarized. (Sticky!) Fellow nubs, also note that there are no patches coming to fix these issues so this list will be spot-on for, uh... ever.

Thanks, but now I can't seem to find any of LennardF1989's post's concerning .ini file modifications. Were they pulled from the forum?

His 'tweaker' posts are back, yeah!

About mission 9: you don't actually have to quit to windows to load saved games: just quit to the main screen, then load. It worked for me.

Thanks, I'll give that a try next time. It's really frustrating to have to exit back into Windows and then restart the game.

I'm going to sticky this.

Jackie,

Thanks for pinning this. I hope it helps out others who are having problems with SCDA. Most of this info. came from others on this forum, I just collected it together in one spot.

I like your avatar, the dancing kitty is a riot!

quote:

Originally posted by tunnelcat:
Jackie,

Thanks for pinning this. I hope it helps out others who are having problems with SCDA. Most of this info. came from others on this forum, I just collected it together in one spot.

I like your avatar, the dancing kitty is a riot!

Yea he's really cute. LOL

And you are very welcome. I hope this is able to help someone.

Thanks for the info.

I've seen a lot of threads of people asking for saved games. Perhaps uploaded saved games would be cool in this sticky

In particular the Shanghai save after Sam lands on the roof! I'm after this myself lol

Did all your missions just vanish? After you've played the whole game, all the mission beginnings are saved by default. Can't you just go the the screen that has load either 'progress' or 'mission' and select 'mission' then Shanghai? I was able to go to a specific mission beginning even after I had deleted all my save games.

I finished the game once but Sam would get stuck after the chopper lands on top of the roof in Shanghai. I got a saved game (progress) off someone here but now I wanna replay the game... thing is I formatted my PC so all my saves are gone (forgot to back up)

1. have you got help for me for multiplayer because i run the single player fine without anyproblems and havnt needed any help to run it and it isnt my greaphics card and my firewall/antivirus thing isnt interfering but when i load multiplayer it comes up to the unreal logo thing and then it stops loading and the computer works as normal appart from that logo is stuck there in the middle of the screen and its really annoying.

2. will there ever be a map editor for it?

3. (off-topic). how to you become a moderator, just curious

Sorry, I can't help you on the multiplayer but there are several posts about that subject on this forum. When I have time, I might search through all the posts here and add any information to the above list.

Have you searched this forum for an answer to your question? I know that it's has been a subject here many times.

As for becoming a moderator, ask TFS_Jackie.

quote:

Originally posted by tunnelcat:
Sorry, I can't help you on the multiplayer but there are several posts about that subject on this forum. When I have time, I might search through all the posts here and add any information to the above list.

Have you searched this forum for an answer to your question? I know that it's has been a subject here many times.

As for becoming a moderator, ask TFS_Jackie.

what should i search for? because i was wondering, don't bother if you haven't but , if you have, can you tell me exactly what to search for or put it on here because i WILL search but i was wondering if it was quicker for u to do, thanks for your help anywhay

Try out this thread link from the forum: http://forums.ubi.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/3651075192/m/4...171032605#8171032605

They discuss the .exe modifier for the online version of SCDA. Someone else has another clue about startup in windowed mode there as well. If that doesn't solve your problem, try searching on 'SDCA Multiplayer' in this forum. You'll get a lot of hits.

Sorry I can't be of more help here. I haven't gotten into multiplayer yet. My DSL connection isn't quite up to speed for online gaming. I'm a little too far out in the country and I hate the cable company, so I'm stuck.

One thing that has not been documented and might be in large responsible for the terrible performance (depending on system specs), unoptimized code not withstanding...

Whenever you load a saved game, or the game starts a new map to continue the storyline the game resets your video configurations.

I can confirm this because I'd play Iceland, and then go to Ellsworth (Prison) and checked my graphics settings and they were automatically set to "Next Gen" when I had set them to "Standard" previously on Iceland.

The Next Gen mode is horribly unoptimized. It is very similar to Tomb Raider Legend's Next Gen mode when that game was released. They never fixed it and dropped it from future TR games on all the platforms.

And in my opinion, you don't really need "Next Gen" to enjoy SCDA at all. The high resolution textures and soft shadows are what increase the visual quality more than anything.

The solution for this problem is as follows:

You must set your desired graphics settings in the DefaultConfig.ini file in the Systems directory.

Then set the same settings in the SplinterCell4.ini.

Do this and you will not only get better performance, but more consistent performance which is the key.

Also, I am looking into some of the other problems like the sound cutting out. If you look at how this game was structured nothing is where it should be as far as folders and how the game reads things...

I also noticed that the options menu didn't seem to be keeping the settings when I was changing them. But the game seems to be loading with the options I have set previously, even though the menu doesn't seem keep them.

I'll go and check my .ini settings and see what is really set there. I haven't had any trouble with the game crashing lately and it is running with 4X AA and 4X aniostropic set within the game and 'application controlled' set on my cards control panel, at least it looks that way when I play SCDA.

Thanks for your suggestions for looking into the .ini settings.

Here is the thing about this unfinished game:

If you take the time to dig through the files that make the game work, you will find you should set everything through the .ini files instead of the main menu just to be sure.

I am running the game at 1280x1024 (60 Hz) with the Low Resolution textures... And it plays fine. It doesn't look any worse than Chaos Theory (PC). And I am get pretty good frame rates. Approx. 75-90 FPS. I get a little stuttering when in the JBA and you enter a new zone, but that's to be expected due to how the Unreal Engine renders things. But other than that it's fine.

I think the primary thing that is unoptimized most of all are the high resolution textures.

If you have a high-end video card with 512 VRAM, or a top-of-the-line card (8800 series; 2900 series) in general you can probably run the game with all of the high resolution textures and graphical settings turned up.

But if you don't... You're going to get a slide show. Which might explain a lot of the complaints on this forum as far as in-game performance goes.

I also saw the recommended RAM requirements are 1.5 Gigabytes. I only have 1 GB and will be upgrading soon (not for this game!).

Requiring more than 1 GB is becoming the norm for most games, but this is primarily because of high resolution textures more than anything else.

Most games are console ports due to cross-platform development. SCDA is no exception, obviously. But this is why I think the 1.5 GB RAM requirement proves the textures aren't optimized because the XBox 360 doesn't even have a full 512 MB to use... Yet the game runs like you'd expect it to on a high end PC, more or less.

Bottom Line: I think people have to make the choice between eye candy and a playable game in this instance.

I wish there was an auto-detect graphical settings feature to tailor them to each system and its specs. Usually, I disagree with the recommended settings in games that have this because they are too conservative. But in this case, I think this is what would alleviate a lot of the complaints with regard to performance not being that great.

Now, loading bugs, disappearing save games, in-game glitches are a whole other issue...

tunnel cat, i tried out the link you gave me and i have asked something on it and i was wondering if you, or anyone else on this forum could answer it (read the whole thing and it will make sense) because this will mean i am more likly to get an answer + why do people keep saying da is so glitchy, apart from multiplayer i have had no problems with this game