Zephyr Net

Hi All:

I've been working on my custom LIB project for several months now -- long enough to have encountered a fair share of crashes and errors in FA and the Duosoft Toolkit. I've started assembling a list of errors/crashes and their potential causes (see below).

Although the list was originally intended for my own reference, I thought others might find it useful. Corrections, suggestions, and additions would be most appreciated. Once this list is in a reasonable state, I'll convert it to an RTF file and post it.

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Fighters Anthology & FA Toolkit Crashes & Errors
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** Fighters Anthology (FA) Crashes & Errors **

1. FA crashes just after splash screen and before video screen or main menu w/ no error message.

Potential Causes:
- Lack of system resources/memory (reboot necessary).
- Bad LIB file or conflicting LIBs being loaded.
- Bad object (esp. shapes) in LIB or bad object file being loaded.

2. FA crashes just after splash screen with error message "This program has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down." The "details" button reports: "FA caused an invalid page fault in module FA.exe at 0123:45678999."

Potential Causes:
- Too many custom objects loaded through custom LIBs or object files (threshhold = between 1500-1600 custom objects).
- Successive loading of incompatible LIBs (incl. switching b/wn FA & ATF Gold).

3. When loading a custom mission file (in Custom Mission Editor or Play Single Mission) FA crashes to desktop without any error message.

Potential Causes:
- Too many objects in mission and map (threshhold between total 600-650 objects; most maps allow between 50-80 new mission objects on top of those included in the map itself).
- Corrupt/incorrectly formatted mission file.
- Waypoints exist for non-existent mission object.
- MAP_OBJ_SUCCESS_FLAGS points to non-existent map object.
- PreferredTargetID for mission object or waypoint points to non-existent mission or map object.
- Bad/corrupt mission object file being loaded.

4. When loading a custom mission file (in Custom Mission Editor or Play Single Mission) FA crashes to desktop with the error "Can't load OBJECT.XX," where OBJECT.XX is the name of an FA object or item.

Potential Causes:
- Mission file points to object not available in FA, a loaded custom LIB, or a loaded object file.

5. While playing a mission, attempting to view an object with F7, F8, or F10 causes FA to crash to desktop.

Potential Causes:
- Corrupt or missing shape file or texture for the object.

6. While playing a mission, targeting, then viewing an object with F7 or F8 causes FA to crash to desktop.

Potential Causes:
- Corrupt or missing shape file and/or texture for the object.
- Object being targeted is loaded through a custom LIB and uses/points to another object that is not loaded by the *same* LIB file or by the default FA LIBs.

7. While attempting to add object/item to mission in the Mission Editor, FA reports "Too many objects of this type."

Potential Causes:
- Too many mission objects in mission file & map.


** FA Toolkit Crashes & Errors **

8. When loading a LIB project, FA Toolkit crashes with error "Input past end of file."

Potential Causes:
- Corrupt or incorrectly formatted ITEM.DAT (usually extraneous spaces somewhere in file, esp. at end of file or end of a line).

9. When attempting to build a LIB file from project, FA Toolkit crashes with error "Not enough memory."

Potential Causes:
- Project size is extremely large (threshhold = over 1100 project items plus great number of custom graphic & sound files) and/or system is low on resources (reboot necessary).

10. While building a LIB file, FA Toolkit reports that an error was encountered and asks if you want to continue.

Potential Causes:
- Incorrectly formatted line for a particular object in ITEM.DAT (usually an extraneous or missing double-quote or comma).

11. While building a LIB file, FA Toolkit reports "Bad file name," then crashes.

Potential Causes:
- Incorrectly formatted file name for one or more objects in ITEM.DAT (usually a comma instead of a period in item name -- e.g., AGM65G,JT).

12. While building a LIB file, FA Toolkit reports "Missing file," then crashes.

Potential causes:
- Item/object specified in ITEM.DAT does not exist in the LIB project directory.

13. FA Toolkit fails to load and graphical items (textures, icons, etc.) or sounds for viewing/editing, even default FA graphical or sound objects that have not been modified/customized.

Potential Causes:
- FA Toolkit cache is corrupted.

14. When attempting to edit or load a custom map, FA Toolkit reports an error and/or displays an incorrect version of the map.

Potential Causes:
- Custom map files (*.PIC, *.BMP, *.T2) not stored in toolkit cache and/or specified in $PIC.DAT.


** Other Anomalous FA Behavior **

15. AI-controlled aircraft won't take off from air base, just taxi across runway and surrounding ground.

Potential Causes:
- Air base (runway) has been changed from Enemy to Friendly (or vice versa). Bug in FA prevents aircraft from taking off from air base that has changed sides.

16. You attempt to take off in an aircraft and it crashes (just as if you had landed too hard).

Potential Causes:
- Crash-Vertical Speed (Aerodynamic Info) is set too low. FA default for most aircraft = 90, but some custom LIBs may set it to as low as 40 on certain aircarft for "realism". Value of 75 is minimum safe for most aircraft.

17. Fuel tanks, ECM devices, and some ordinance items disappear from Load Ordinance screen.

Potential Causes:
- Too many custom ordinance items (*.JT) have been added (threshhold for custom ordinance items between 180-190).

18. Aircraft assigned to bomb a target never do so, instead circling high above the target and constantly showing the status (in the F8 window) "Acquiring target."

Potential Causes:
- Aircraft ordered to descend from waypoint to the next at a greater rate than aircraft "movement" characteristics allow. Default Movement-Max Dive for most aircraft between -70 to -90, however some custom LIBs may lower that value on some aircraft to as low as -5.

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Eric L. Howes

Well you've done a wonderfull job of re-stating stuff that has been debated and debugged here for what 5 years?



Incorrect, "Crash: Forward Speed" is what causes this combined with not getting your nose gear up soon enough.





Perhaps, but far more likely it is a seeker related problem with regards to the weapon being used. By the time the weapon is in range, the look-down angle for the weapon seeker can no longer "see" the target due to the high altitude. This is a common problem with heavy bombers even when using iron bombs.

_________________
Fighting for justice with brains of steel

Let your anger be like the monkey which hides inside the piniata.

KAPTOR:

You wrote:



Wish I had been around for those five years. What you see in the document as it stands is largely what I learned the hard way over the past few months. Even still, there are a few errors that I encountered that I forgot to write down. Maybe I'll run into them again some time...



I hadn't encountered that one -- thanks for the addition.

I can confirm, though, that "Crash: Vertical Speed" will do it, too. I know because I had several aircraft exhibiting this behavior -- drove me nuts. I finally isolated the problem by taking the default FA .PT file and the customized variant .PT file for one aircraft and replacing sections and values one-by-one until I hit the value that caused the problem. I then matched the value back to what I saw in the FA Toolkit GUI.

Lo and behold, setting the "Crash: Vertical Speed" higher on the other aircraft solved the problem for them as well. In fact, on one or two of those other aircraft, I was getting this strange bouncing effect just before the crash during takeoff. Very weird.

I can see how the Crash Forward Speed would cause the same problem.



Yes, I've hit the problem with bombers dropping iron bombs -- a similar problem, but this one is a little different. Again, this is a problem that had me banging my head against the wall until it hit me: "It's as if they can't get down to that altitude fast enough..." And then I remembered the MaxDive value. Sure enough boosting it on certain aircraft or decreasing their angle of descent over a series of waypoints solved the problem.

Best,

Eric L. Howes

KAPTOR:

Should have added this in my previous post, but with the Lookdown Angle problem on the bombers w/ iron bombs, what's your recommended value to solve the problem?

I solved it by changing the AI logic profile on the bombers from B.BI to F.BI, which causes B-52s to start bombing like fighters. Not pretty, but it works.

Eric L. Howes

Nice list of problems and solutions. Are you going to release anything you've been working on?

For the bomber problem, wouldn't a pitch angle of 90 degrees, and a max range of 10 nm, solve the problem?

Yes opening the seeker angle fixxes it and naturally the distance has to be greater than the altitude.

_________________
Fighting for justice with brains of steel

Let your anger be like the monkey which hides inside the piniata.

Zephyr:

You asked:



Thanks. I'll release an RTF version of the Errors & Crashes document once it's finished. You're welcome to host it with the other FA downloads that you offer.

As for my other work, it's available here:

https://netfiles.uiuc.edu/ehowes/www/fa/index.html

Although my LIB set was originally based on that "other guy's" LIB set (discussed in an earlier thread here), it's now so completely overhauled that it bears only passing resemblance to the original. See here for a list of the changes and additions that I've made:

https://netfiles.uiuc.edu/ehowes/www/fa ... ReadMe.TXT



I tried setting the pitch angle to 180 degrees, but that didn't work for some reason. Looking back, I now realize the altitude values may have been too low, so I'll have another go at it.

Eric L. Howes

we're talking seeker angles here not aircraft pitch angles. BUFFs dont dive bomb.

_________________
Fighting for justice with brains of steel

Let your anger be like the monkey which hides inside the piniata.

KAPTOR:



Yes, and by "pitch angle" I was referring to the FOV Pitch on B52R.SEE.



They sure don't. As I said, using the F.BI AI profile was a choice of last resort. I just wanted them to bomb something instead of flying around like drone bait for SAMs.

Eric L. Howes

Nice work...

Its good to see a novice come along and contribute.

But the truth is that we here on the forums already know of these errors and issues. We ahve been uncovered them, and many many more, throught trial and errors since FA's release 10 years ago...

Most are flatly due to EA not doing a correct job from the start when they built FA from several seperate platforms combined into one...

Unfortunately there are not many people doing any real development any longer, so dont be surprised if your work goes under appreciated.

Good luck with your future work, and when I have time I will critique your list for further data you may want to consider...


CAG out...

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CAG Hotshot:

Thanks. I figured that folks like you KAPTOR, and Zephyr would already be quite familiar with these issues. I thought the document might be useful to folks like me who are either relatively new to the toolkit or have a spotty memory (some of those errors I resolved several times simply because I hadn't bothered to keep notes).

If only a few people get any benefit from it, that's fine. At least this stuff will be in one document that is easily referenced.

Any corrections or additions you could provide would be much appreciated.

Best,

Eric L. Howes

It will indeed be very useful and dont think we all cant learn a thing or two from your work.

Keep it going!

_________________
Hotshot
"FAF Shape Meister"
FAF/FA-2 Design team
TSH Member/Developer
VNFAWING.com Forum Administrator

VNFAWING Forums
VNFAWING Website

FA Futures/FA-2 is Still Being Worked On and Will Be Released...