CTD in Middle East Wars

[NZgunner 0]

Hi everyone, I'm just rediscovering SF: P1 after a long break and I have just been amazed at the amount of modding and mission building that has gone on in the last couple of years!!!! When I was last playing, the Burning Sands campaign was still broken !!

 

Anyway I've downloaded the Middle East Wars pack and all the associated files (aircraft, terrain, etc) but I'm getting random CTDs in about half the missions I fly, regardless of the campaign (ie just as likely to crash in the 6 Day War as I am in Yom Kippur). The last CTD coincided with jettisoning the drop tanks on an Israeli Phantom, but I'm sure I've dropped tanks before.

 

I've downloaded the most recent updates for each file and everything was added to a clean install patched up to the last service pack and subsequent patch.

 

I was wondering if anyone else has installed the pack recently and if they found that they had to do something extra not mentioned in any of the install instructions or readmes to get it running smoothly?

 

Any help would be most appreciated.

 

(NB I've also downlaoded the DRV terrain for missions in 'Nam but the only associated campaign (Rolling Thunder) doesn't work properly - any tips here would also be cool)

[Bulldog 0]

I know once in awhile when I do a single mission ( I don't have the campaigns yet) with the Israel2 terrain it will CTD while it is loading, and I checked the planes to see if they were avaliable for small fields and they were, so I'm not sure what"s up with that.

 

As for the DRV terrain, try the "Vietnam 1968 On... (Fictional)" campaign in the downloads here at CA. It should work better for you.

[NZgunner 0]

I thought it might have something to do with updates to *.ini files where the requirements have changed - eg no longer need to update groundobjectdata.ini but need to make sure each new ground object has a new line in its default ini file.

 

It is also sometimes a bit unclear as to where files end up extracting to and I've had to clean up a few that have gone to a default directory rather than into a new custom folder for the object/aircraft.

 

The campaigns aren't unplayable but ithe crashes are annoying.

[MigBuster 2,884]

Firstly if you havnt done so create a new install of Strike Fighters for each campaign you want to install - they wont work well when mixed together. When i say new install you dont have to install from the CD just install SF once and patch up. Then copy the entire game folder for each install and rename appropriately.

 

Once thats done there are lots of issues that will cause CTD's however they are nearly always fixable because they are down to modified files.

Finding a campaign thats been updated for the latest service pack is a good start - if not then you may have to spend time testing each plane to see if it works properly - and of course the ground object issue was a big change.

 

The readme's with campaigns sometimes assume the installer knows his stuff unfortunately however - there is no end of info in the knowledgebase on this site - also try searching the SIMHQ archives - nearly everything you will need to know is in there.