Why do some aircraft fail to initialize?

[JayS]

What are some of the reasons for these type of failures? I have less than 96 AC in my Aircraft folder. I dl'd a campaign which required the Br P40K ac which I dl'd and installed in the Aircraft folder. With QC and FreeFlight I can find this ac and fly it. When I try the missions in the campaign that have the ac as the player aircraft, the missions show 1) ac fails to initialize, 2) mission fails to load, and 3) I don't see this ac in the list of player ac.
Thanks for any help. I've played the game but am not knowledgeable on mission building or CFS2 file interelationships.

[Happ_Hazard]

Hi JayS,
It's a common problem with imported missions & campaigns and aircraft, the AC file name may be slightly different to the player aircraft the mission is trying to load, you should see the dialog ' player aircraft blah blah brP40k cannot be found' check the spelling & wording against the actual file in the aircraft section & you'll need to rename usually cures it.
Dont be frightened of 'Mission builder' you can change 90% of missions in here player aircraft-weapon loads- enemy aircraft/strength etc etc, get a mission you dont like & get in there and alter it, it's the only way to learn.
Another annoying thing that happens when you have a 'failure to load' is all your settings  disappear ) radio coms, ac tags etc.. is'nt it fun !!!!!
Happ

[JayS]

:
I looked into the mission file and find things like;
[unit_type.4]
type_id=3859
unit_family=4
name=BR_P-40K
and
"player_aircraft_name_string"=BR_P-40K Flying Tiger
Should the "name=" be exactly the same as the file name in the Aircraft folder?  What should the name be for the "player_aircraft_name_string"=?  Same file name as in the "name="
I've never used Mission Builder.  Where is it?  I installed everything from my CDs to the hard drive but I don't see it there!
Thanks for helping a newbie.

[Hagar]

Hi JayS. Look for a file in the CFS2 root folder named Error.log & open it in Notepad. This will give you the name of the problem mission & the unit number of the offending aircraft in that mission. You can use this information to find the type_id number & the name of the aircraft in that particular mission. This is an example from a default mission. Let's say my Error.log tells me this.
[Mission file error]
error=Unable to init unit 9138

First you need to find the type_id= number corresponding to unit 9138 (or id=9138 )

[unit.0]
id=9138
type_id=3814
name=%name_string.0%
allegiance=3
skill=3
aggression=2
payload=0

The type_id is 3814. Further down the mission file you should see something like this. (The Notepad Find feature is very useful when searching for these numbers.)

[unit_type.1]
type_id=3814
unit_family=1
name=f4f4_wildcat

The name= entry is usually (not always) the exact folder name of the offending aircraft. If yours has any other name it will work fine in Free Flight & QC but not missions. This is one of the most common causes of those error messages in missions/campaigns using 3rd party aircraft. The first thing I would check is the folder name of the Br P40K. Make sure it matches the name= entry in the missions. (In your example this is BR_P-40K.) I suspect this will fix your problem. If not, check the title= name in Aircraft.cfg. A few 3rd party missions use this instead of the folder name.

I have less than 96 AC in my Aircraft folder.

The CFS2 "100 plane" limit will vary depending on the aircraft you have installed. If you have over 80 aircraft (including defaults) & get unexplained error messages I would try removing a few 3rd party aircraft.

[Happ_Hazard]

Hi Jays,
dont thank me, i learnt from 'Hagar' & the other 'heavy hitters' here 8)
You need to have the same NAME on the A/C folder in the aicraft section as what your mission is looking for, it could be anything stupid, being in the wrong case(lower instead of upper or the other way round) a missing hyphen etc anything, the plane is obviously there if your flying it in free flight, your mission's just not finding it, note any changes you make in the rename & go back if it does'nt work & try something else, IT'S ALL TRIAL & ERROR  ::)
The mission builder? should be in start>programs>microsoftgames>missionbuilder right click on it & create a shortcut, paste it somewhere handy, read the pdf manual (need acrobat) to get the basics of it, BE WARNED it's addictive once you get the hang of it  :o you'll be forever altering missions
Happ

[Hagar]

Hi Happ.

Hi Jays,
dont thank me, i learnt from 'Hagar' & the other 'heavy hitters' here
You need to have the same NAME on the A/C folder in the aicraft section as what your mission is looking for, it could be anything stupid, being in the wrong case(lower instead of upper or the other way round)

Just to point out that folder names are not usually case-sensitive. Despite what many people seem to think this applies to any CFG-style text entries in the M$ sims. In my example the name= f4f4_wildcat entry in the mission file refers to the default F4F4_WILDCAT in my CFS2\Aircraft folder. It works just fine.

PS. To avoid silly typos when renaming folders copy/paste the appropriate entry from the mission. Then it can't possibly be wrong. Most of this stuff is logical once you understand the basic principles & know what to look for.

[JayS]

I changed the name in the mission to exactly that of the folder and that mission worked.  Still having problems with missions using the P39 Airacobra but I continue looking at those.  Found MB, tried to open it and got some kind of an error about a corrupt database.  Is there an error log for this I can use to help figure this one out?

[Hagar]

[quote]I changed the name in the mission to exactly that of the folder and that mission worked.

[JayS]

One more question please.  I removed ac from Aircraft down to 56 acs.  I have two campaigns that do not show a number of the ac I have installed when I expand Player Aircraft.  I also get an initialization error when I try to open MB.  I'm hoping you won't tell me I have to re-install to fix these problems!!  Could I just replace all the ac ion Aircraft with just the default ones and restart CFS2?  Will that fix anything?  Is there another to re-initialize these databeses??

[Hagar]

Ask as many questions as you wish. I don't claim to know all the answers but I'll do my best to help.

Right. Let's start again & see if we can figure this out. The problem with aircraft not displaying on the Player Aircraft menu in campaigns is probably the entered_service= date in the DP files. This must be be earlier than the date of the first mission in the campaign. This is easy enough to fix if the aircraft have their own DP files. Either change the date or if the entry is missing copy one from a suitable default aircraft & paste it in. This is the entry for the CFS2 default Wildcat which should be selectable in all US campaigns.

[MISC_DATA]
unit_family=1
category=1
allegiance=3
max_group_size=8
min_speed=240
cruise_speed=405
max_speed=607
min_alt=50
cruise_alt=5893
max_alt=8839
entered_service=11/1/40
crew=1

The CFS2 limit is usually somewhere between 80 to 100 aircraft. 56 is well below that so this is not causing the problem with the MB. I seem to recall that the MB won't run below 1024 x 768 display resolution so this would be the first thing to check.

Hope this is some help. Please don't be afraid to ask again. If I don't know the answer it's quite likely someone else will.

PS. DP files can be edited in Notepad. Each time you edit a DP file delete the corresponding CDP.

[JayS]

Thank you.  I'll check the date entered service in the dps.  I discovered my probelm with MB.  I have three copies of the CFS2 installed.  I copied two of them from the initial install and named them differentlly (CFS2 SIM1, and CFS2Sim2).  MB runs out of the CFS2 folder, the original one, and I found that two directories in that folder were mis-named(SHIPS_original instead of SHIPS, etc).  I fixed that and MB runs fine.

[Hagar]

Glad you figured out the MB problem. Please tell me if you fix the other one.

[JayS]

Yup, you were exactly right.  The "date-entered-service" dates were after the campaign start date.  I adjusted the dp file date entered service dates to precede the campaign and everything is now fine.  Thanks for your help I certainly learned from this one.  Any advice on how to learn to use MB?

[Hagar]

[quote]Yup, you were exactly right.