VN_USS_Indianapolis

[alpha_1]

Hi All;

It's been a long time since I installed and played tuskagee airmen. I am so taken with the new scenery available that I thought I'd give it another go. I've installed Part I so far and everything looks OK except for the VN_USS_Indianapolis. I get a 'can't find' message for it when I load the mission from the carrier to Casablanca. I've tried swapping out the model files but no joy.

Perhaps there's something I should know but have forgotten? Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks.

Cheers;

[Allen]

Sounds like something in the mission may be wrong if a ship swap didn't work.

[Rami]

Alpha_1,

This is a head-scratcher. I looked at the mission and campaign files for misspellings or anything obvious which would cause a load failure. I also don't see anything glaring in the ship package, either.

However, you can use Morton's mission utility to change the ship back to "SHA_INDIANAPOLIS"; this is a stock ship. That should allow mission one to load.

[alpha_1]

Hi Guys;

Yer right, it IS a head scratcher. Rami, you raise a good point. I'll try your suggestion on Mort's untility.

If I don't go into 'advanced' and just fly the mission by going directly to 'fly now', it runs fine. I even checked out the ship.cfg file and removed the catapult info, thinking that might do the trick, but again, no joy. I also re-downloaded the ship with my antivirus deactivated but it made no difference.

I'm going to go through my 'ships' folder and just make sure that everything is OK there, too. Thanks for your input.

Cheers,

[Blood_Hawk23]

check the ship.

make sure the file name, ship.cfg name, model name (in the model folder) and the text in the Ship.cfg all match.

if there is any variation then that can throw it off.

have you deleted the ship and re installed it?

I'll get a copy of the ship and look at it.

[Blood_Hawk23]

the ship looks fine. try re-installing it.

just for SnGs, is it spelled correctly.

[alpha_1]

Yup, tried that, no joy. everything matches and there's no missing files. I'm completely baffled. I've avoided going 'advanced' in the first mission, just to try and get into the air. The mission loads fine if I don't go 'advanced'. Hard time gettng off the deck, though. I've been shot down 7 for 7 times so far before I can even get my gear up. It must be friendly fire. I notice the carrier's 5 inchers swinging over to the flight deck and down every time I get about two thirds down the flight deck. Go figure. (kinda like they're waitin' for me to try and run the gauntlet, LOL).

Jeeez, I've just gotta lay off the good stuff!.........(joking, of course). I may hafta tinker with the carrier's dp file a bit.

As for the Indianapolis, I have 114 ships in my ships folder and haven't used a ship swapper.......yet (as Rami suggested). I added the campaign to the basic MTO install that I have ( which includes 'Malta') and have used it for Beaus in the Sand, no problem......Could be that with Bruno's ships in there, I've gone over the limit. the Indie is right at the end of the bunch.

Cheers, and thanks guys.

[bearcat241]

Alpha_1, do you have empty panel and sound subfolders included in the Indy's folder? If not, copy them from one of the stock ships. They should be kept empty.

[alpha_1]

Hi Bear. Yup, those folders are empty. Thanks, though. What's the ship limit for the sim? It's the last ship in my list and I'm wondering if that would be a problem. I'm taking some wild guesses now. This has got to be some kind of a glitch with my system. It's not a campaign killer, but it niggles away at what active brains cells I have left.

Cheers,

[Allen]

Advanced as in the advanced info?

[bearcat241]

That aircraft/ship/dp limitation only applies and shows up in QC and FF sessions. If you only played missions and campaigns and completely avoided FF and QC you'd never see the error message relating to limitations no matter the counts. From what i'm reading in your posts, you seem to be having trouble loading this particular ship in missions. You just have yet to find that hidden bug in the ship's configuration.

A quick workaround would be to fool the sim into thinking that the VN Indy is the stock Indy by renaming everything in the VN Indy folder to match that of the stocker, then renaming to the stocker's files to something close but different than its original nomenclature if you want to keep using it or just retire it to a backup location. This how i've permanently replaced my own stock Indy and several others.

Also, when checking for misspellings, its very easy to focus on alphanumeric characters and overlook special characters like dashes and underscores. For example, the folder name might be "VN_USS_Indianapolis", but some vital component within it might be named "VN USS_Indianapolis" or "VN_USS Indianapolis". BTW be sure to check the spelling in the data of the model.cfg file of the MODEL folder. This one's easy to overlook also.

Finally, you noted that the problems occur when you use the "advanced info" feature. I haven't flown the campaign in a long while, but is this "advanced" thing necessary for this campaign? I never use this mode unless the campaign author specifically directs it as part of the mission briefing. Its been known to cause crashes and missing object messages if something is askew in the mission files.

[alpha_1]

Great advice, Bear. Thank you.

Not to worry, guys, I'll get back to figuring out what I've done wrong and fix it, even if I need a clean install to do it. You've given me lots to be going on with. If the campaign works for everybody else, then it's up to me to find out what I've done or not done that's messing things up.

In this particular install, I've got a t'ousand things installed that aren't required for the campaign and that could cause problems. I'd be willing to bet that if I went with a fresh install and then added the campaign, things would work fine.

I usually try running a couple of missions seperately before getting into a campaign, so that's worth cosidering on the flak front as well, though when I tried getting airborne in the campaign, I got the same result with the first mission. (Live and learn.....I didn't realize that single missions might behave differently.....DOH!) This, too, may be something I tweaked. I added a more 'serious' flak file, overwriting Blade's so can thank myself for that one. That's easily fixed, I think.

As for the Indy, I'm going to try 'swapping' the two ships and see what happens.

I will get back to you on these probs once I've figured some stuff out. Thanks again for bein' there to help. Just knowing I can come here and get good advice when I need it is bluidy fantastic!

Later then,

[Blood_Hawk23]

can you post copies of the mission. both files if it has them. I'd like to see what you have.

[alpha_1]

Blookd Hawk, I'd be happy to do that, if I knew what I was doing. I just added them as an attachment. Hope this works.

Cheers,

[Roxane-21]

That aircraft/ship/dp limitation only applies and shows up in QC and FF sessions. If you only played missions and campaigns and completely avoided FF and QC you'd never see the error message relating to limitations no matter the counts. From what i'm reading in your posts, you seem to be having trouble loading this particular ship in missions. You just have yet to find that hidden bug in the ship's configuration.

As long as I can remember, the 100 aircraft limitation has an other side effect with missions.

If you have more than 100 aircraft installed, when you are flying a mission containing NON-Plane objects (like ships, vehicles, AA Guns etc.) and you open the "Advanced Info" window, you will receive a warning "Could not load <object name>", "Failed to load mission". You will then see the map, but only with your player aircraft in it.

[Blood_Hawk23]

you changed it to the sha_indianapolis?

its in the SHIPS folder not the SCENEDB\ships. correct. I just have to ask.


Just for SnGs, add this to your MDLNAMES.dat

"VN_USS_Indianapolis"=VN_USS_Indianapolis

If its not already there.

Add this to the INFO/descrip.dat

# VN_USS_Indianapolis
Portland class heavy cruiser (CFS2 object). When selected from the Ship list, you can add waypoints to make this vessel move through the water. When selected from the Infrastructure list, this vessel is just scenery and won't move, but can be damaged and destroyed.

It can't hurt.

I just noticed something. the allegiance=3 and the player AC is allegiance=7
that should be the USN and USAAC.
what country.CFG are you using?

if its not right then that might be why your getting shot down.


I think there is 100 ship limit. if your way over that then it could be getting lost in the mix. Take out any not being used. then see if that helps.

I can't think of anything else.

[Devildog73]

Guys,

The panel and sound folders are not kept empty.

You must put a txt file in them.

I have panel.txt in the panel folder and sound.txt in the sound folder. Each of those have the word panel and sound typed on the actual txt document.

Also, check to make sure there are textures in the texture folder.

DD73

[Blood_Hawk23]

some of my ships don't have them and they work fine. but at this point it can't hurt...

[Devildog73]

Yes, for whatever reason(s) the stock ships are empty, but add-ons seem to not show without the files in those two folders.

I don't know why. I just know that for my several installs, if I do not place a txt file in those two folders, my add-on ships do not appear.

As we all know, CFS2 can be querky on many things.

[Fibber]

.....had a "dummy file" for that purpose that he posted years ago. I believe it is still available. If not easy to do( even for me!).

[Captain Kurt]

I've had the same thing happen to me alpha_1. The best I can figure out is it is not a problem with mdlnames.txt, or sound/panel folders, or even the name punctuation because all of those are correct. What's more, it's an intermittent occurrence even when the same mission is repeated.

For some freaky reason CFS2 sometimes can't differentiate between between the two similar names. After fighting it for some time I gave up and did what Rami advises. It's the path of least resistance. I use Morton's utility to switch to the stock Indianapolis and then the missions will work fine.

[alpha_1]

Hi All;

Many thanks for all the infeed. It is appreciated. I haven't had time to get back into the nuts and bolts yet, but I will. It's sure nice to be surrounded by you guys, let me tell you.

I WILL let you know what happens and I'll be trying your suggestions to see if I can get to the bottom of this.

Cheers;

[alpha_1]

Here's what I've done, Guys;

I swapped the .dp files for both carriers and cruisers and renamed them, of course. I also cut down the number of ships in my 'ships' folder. The result is not too bad.

I'm running the mssion from the campaign folder and not independently from the missions folder as I did before. The Indy now shows up and I get no messages about missing ships in the 'Advanced Info' screen.

The flak problem though has me stymied. On taking off, the flak is less but it's still pretty severe. It took a couple of tries to get fully airborne, and even then with substantial damage to my bird. I'm wondering why there's any flak at all, though. There's no enemy in the area and I doubt that the USN would be shooting at it's own ships and known flight paths so close to the carrier.

I'm going to replace the stock Enterprise with the same from a default install that I keep handy and see if that helps with the flak. You never know. I'll be back shortly with the results........

............ Well, I tried that and it doesn't work at all. For now I'll stick with the swapped dp files.

Cheers;

[Devildog73]

alpha_1,

Someplace one of your aircraft is showing up as an enemy.

Make sure that all of your aircraft DPs have this:

[MISC_DATA]
unit_family=1
category=1
allegiance=7
max_group_size=8
min_speed=240
cruise_speed=435
max_speed=590
min_alt=50
cruise_alt=5893
max_alt=8839
entered_service=11/1/40
crew=1

OR THIS:

[MISC_DATA]
unit_family=1
category=1
allegiance=3
max_group_size=8
min_speed=240
cruise_speed=435
max_speed=590
min_alt=50
cruise_alt=5893
max_alt=8839
entered_service=11/1/40
crew=1

If you have the Med screens with USN as [3] and USAAF as [7] you have to have one or the other in your P-40s DP.

Also, make sure all of your ship DPs are listed as ALLIED.

That should cure the flak.

DD73

[alpha_1]

Hi DD, thanks for the advice. I checked every allied aircraft and they're all either 3 or 7 in the dp file. I don't know what you mean by 'allied' for the ships, though. I'm still getting serious flak the second I lift off from the end of the flight deck, doesn't matter what aircraft I try. That's gotta mean something's haywire with the ships, doesn't it?

I've also reinstalled Blade's effects_2, thinking the flak was too strong or something.......no joy. Also copied over the stock ships from a basic install......no joy. With fewer ships in the ships folder I no longer get any 'can't find' messages.......check.

I'm feeling dumber 'n a newborn calf right about now.

Cheers;