MISSION BUILDER WON'T EDIT/SAVE IMPORTED MISSIONS

[Mongoose_Leader]

Hope somebody else has seen this one before... When I try to edit and save an imported mission (even some of my own missions when I install them on different machines) Mission Builder crashes back to my Desktop. The same thing happens when I click the "Advanced Information" icon. If I didn't know better, it almost seems like these things have suddenly become "write protected". What gives? If anybody's got any insights on this mess, I would be MOST grateful!! THANX!!

[Happ_Hazard]

Hi Mongoose,
your right someone has posted on this before, cant remember all of it tho'.
Think you can only edit/save missions that are done in the mission builder format, there's other builder formats out there, crashing to desktop in advanced info is probably that you have'nt got an aifield entry in the DATS folder in info or the computer you download it to has'nt the airfield entry either, hope that helps.
do a search on 'crashing to desktop ' see if that helps.
Happ

[Hagar]

If I didn't know better, it almost seems like these things have suddenly become "write protected".

This is quite possible depending on how you transferred your own missions to another machine. Burning files to CD makes them Read-only. If so, you can soon fix it. Right-click on the files & select Properties. Uncheck the Read-only box.

[Mongoose_Leader]

Thanks for the help, guys! Unfortunately, this thing still hates all of us! The missions I made, I made with MB itself (a few others came from the web, so I guess I can't vouch for those). My airbase data is complete, although I WAS getting a few "can't locates" on a couple of planes--even though I know that they're there (I've double-checked, re-loaded, re-typed the title, etc)and other missions that don't crash "see" them just fine. I hadn't thought of the the Properties/Attributes thing, but when I checked, the only box ticked off was the "Archives" selection. "Read only" was blank (...so much for "write-protected", I guess. I'm old-fashioned anyway, the missions came from a floppy!). There's just no good, discernable, pattern to these gremlins, which is what really drives me crazy. Some missions work, some don't.  They've worked on certain installations, but not on others. If the mission data were corrupt, they shouldn't work at all, right? I know a little bit about manual editing, but is there any way to check this out for sure? THANX AGAIN!!

[Hagar]

I have 2 other suggestions. If I'm reading this correctly the problem seems to be with editing existing 3rd party missions on different machines. Maybe you don't have all the included aircraft or other 3rd party mission objects installed
- OR -
it could be the old CFS2 aircraft limit bug. Maybe you have too many aircraft installed. This causes all sorts of unexplained problems & error messages.

[Mongoose_Leader]

Thanks, Hagar! Sorry to say, I think we've struck out, though... Editing problems on non-origin CFS installations? Yes. Some are third party, some were made right here at home by Yours Truly. But I'm next to pretty darn sure that nothing's missing, and I know it isn't the dreaded too many airplanes curse, either. Here's why: About a month ago, my Hard Drive augered in with no survivors... Since then I've had to go back and start the whole thing over from scratch. Fortunately for me, however, I did manage to save most of my missions on an old floppy disk. This is a brand new CFS2 installation on a brand new Hard Drive. Many of these missions had third party objects, planes, and airfields, written into them, but I have been careful to look up each of these unique artifacts in the individual mission files and then put them all back in place before I fire up each mission. Like I say, some of the missions work fine, but others--at a complete random, it seems--don't. The same aircraft I've put back are recognized by some missions, but not by the other missions that crash. In fact, I've even gone so far as to manually edit out the offending objects (by opening the files with Notepad), gotten rid of the error messages that way, and then still have the rotten things crash on me anyhow. I had the exact same 'error-message-free' crash problem with a VMF-214 Blacksheep campaign I got from the Web a while back, too. And that was with the pre-crater CFS installation I had before my Hard Drive bought the farm. So, go figure...

[Hagar]

One last try. This doesn't seem possible if 3rd party aircraft are recognised in some missions & not others but please check anyway. There has to be a logical answer.

Make sure all 3rd party aircraft used in the missions are correctly installed. One common problem is with other 3rd party aircraft they are aliased to not being installed, or installed incorrectly themselves. My own AI Only drones used in the FF Korean War campaigns are configured not to display on the Free Flight menu. We had a few problems reported & on investigation found these were caused by people not installing all the files, which included the Lear45 sound for aliasing to. Obviously the jet aircraft aliased to this file were not recognised, although they appeared to be correctly installed. The answer in this case is to delete Panel & Sound CFG files (or use dummy CFG files) as these are not used by AI aircraft. They will still work in AI providing they have Panel & Sound folders, even if these folders are empty.

[james007]

Moongose I had the same problem a while back. My previouse PC had Me Window and 600 MegaHertz speed and the game would stutter alot. So I decided to install Window 98 instead. I copy all my mission to CDs.After I copy and pasted them again. I had the same problem. If your missions where made thru Window 98 or Me you will have this problem. If you bought a new PC and it came with XP Window you wiil have this problem.

[Hagar]

Thanks James. This brings up a good point. Using a different OS on various machines could be causing the problem. There is a known conflict with some earlier FS2000/CFS2 aircraft models & Win2000/XP. These aircraft are often used in older 3rd party missions. The conflict is with the OS & they work perfectly on Win98/Me. This bug can usually be fixed by patching the MDL file of the offending aircraft with the MDL Repair Utility. http://www.simviation.com/fs2000utilities_gen2.htm
If these aircraft are configured with special AI Only versions be sure to patch these too.

[Mongoose_Leader]

Thanx again, guys. You're great! That's an excellent suggestion on the "alias" matter. I had sort of guessed at something like that, but probably hadn't looked closely enough at the idea until now. Unfortunately, for me, however, I couldn't find any obvious problems (I think...). The aircraft in question ARE a couple of drones. The first one is the Gramps 1% "birdcage" Corsair. I had originally put a new paint scheme on it and re-titled my creation as "F4U-1 VMF215" (I emptied the Panel folder). I put the same animal back together again with the same name, but am now told--and ONLY by the bogus missions in question--"cannot locate object 'F4U-1 VMF215(4)'". This is exactly how the title reads in the longhand (Notepad) version of the mission, too (family=4). The really strange thing is that CFS2 (as opposed to MB) has no problem seeing it at all. It reads "F4U-1 VMF215" just fine, and puts the little darlings exactly where they belong. The bogus missions fly just perfectly, too--without a hiccup, that is--until I go and reach for that darned "advanced info" icon, and then, once again, it's all over-- POOF! The only "alias" (I could recognize) in "F4U-1 VMF215" is to the stock Corsair sound file, so I don't see how that should be a problem... The other drone is the original "VB_G3M NELL". When I went back to the Web, I couldn't find an original copy of this anywhere, so I downloaded an updated version and simply changed the title back to the old one. Again, the only "aliases" were to the stock A6M2 Zero. CFS2 flies it just fine, but MB continues to play possum. Although I re-typed the original title, might there be any chance of an "internal" mix-up with a newer model name (or something like that)?