Has anyone encountered this weird glitch?

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Has anyone encountered this weird glitch?

jmarso
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Post by jmarso » Sun May 17, 2020 11:09 pm

All of a sudden, in the flight simulator, when I go to a full briefing it is somehow is kicking the sim into MP mode. The briefing plays normally but with a chat box and team select icons at the top.

When the briefing is over, I can't go on to start the mission. (Probably because it's waiting for other players that aren't there) I have to select back, bringing up the screen telling me I'm in a 'game session' and do I want to leave? Yes --> error message in a standard windows box, which I can clear by hitting enter, which takes me 'back' to the MP simulator load screen, from which another key hit sends me back to the concourse. Whatever is happening is not crashing the game, it's somehow switching me on the fly from SP to MP modes when I select the full briefing in the SP simulator.

Oddly enough, if I re-enter the SP flight simulator and click on 'quick start' instead of 'briefing', everything works fine, indicating that the glitch is in the briefing mode somewhere.

Anyone else ever seen this one? Is there a fix other than uninstalling / re-installing?

I have another installation installed as my default backup, and when I switch over to it the briefings work normally in SP. Somehow, something borked my modded executable and I can't figure out what, although I have a suspicion: While working on a mission briefing for a custom mission, AlliED crashed. I reloaded, re-built the briefing, and then this started happening in game with ALL the missions, even the stock ones. If that is the cause; I'm at a loss to explain how the briefing editor in AlliED could cause something like that in game.

Just curious as to whether or not anyone else has ever encountered this, and how they ended up resolving it. I could re-create my modded game folder without too much effort, but I'd prefer to just fix the one I'm using. What bugs me is not being able to find the cause.

Where does the game store the mission briefing data? I can't find it.

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Darksaber
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Post by Darksaber » Sun May 17, 2020 11:26 pm

What do you have installed XWAUCPv1.6 or DSUCPv2.6, if it was DSUCPv2.6 did you select the X-Wing Alliance Tour/Combat Engagements hook for Multiplayer by Justagai?

The mission Briefing data are in the mission *.tie files
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jmarso
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Post by jmarso » Sun May 17, 2020 11:49 pm

I have DSUCPv2.6 installed; I do not believe I selected any hooks associated with MP. At least I don't see that one in the list of hooks.

And like I said, everything was working normally until today, and all of a sudden it started doing this. There is only one logical way to account for it:

1. I was working on a mission briefing.
2. AlliED crashed.
3. I reloaded, rebuilt the briefing (from scratch)
4. Testing in game, the briefings in SP are suddenly kicking me into a MP mode. It does not crash the game.

WEIRD!

What I'm hoping is that I now don't have a corrupted mission file. This one took some effort to build. I had all the damn kinks worked out of the mission itself...

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Post by Ace Antilles » Sun May 17, 2020 11:59 pm

Always backup lots I find. Copy your files into XWA not the originals.
I now have a Clean XWA install for ref, a copy of my working install which I update after a while and my main game folder.
So if something goes wrong hopefully I have something recent to go back to.
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jmarso
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Post by jmarso » Mon May 18, 2020 12:05 am

I have the same thing WRT to a clean install for reference- I was able to go back to that one and make sure the briefings were working properly in that one.

What I'm unsure of here is what, exactly, is borked. I removed the suspect mission from the install, but even without it the briefings are still kicking the game into MP.

I may go folder by folder and see what shows as 'modified' with today's date. Unfortunately, the main executable was modified today as well when I installed a new craft. I don't think that could have been anything to do with it, however, as I used a shp file from an existing craft and just modded the stats a bit.

jmarso
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Post by jmarso » Mon May 18, 2020 5:18 pm

Well, I quickly decided that making a new game folder from my backup was ultimately going to be less time-intensive than trying to ferret this out, so that's what I've done.

Made a new copy of my 'default' backup and transferred over copies of all the modded files and missions, and installed all the new ships. So far everything is working normally. The whole deal yesterday was just sort of bizarre.

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Post by jmarso » Wed May 27, 2020 1:16 am

Noticed something today when installing a new ship: when I recreated my SAAB modded folder and reinstalled my ships from previously created ship files, the ships installed in the proper slots but were somehow all tagged as fighters, even the capital ships. For the latter, it caused a change in their shield and hull ratings that I had to go back in and adjust them manually.

I'm a little concerned about this in terms of putting the whole mod into an installer, and then maybe having the capital ship files install incorrectly. Has anyone encountered this deal before? I understand that most people aren't altering ship files but improving opts. Still, the craft pack does replace a lot of stock ships. Is this or was this a known issue at some point? If so, how is it avoided / fixed?

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JeremyaFr
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Post by JeremyaFr » Wed May 27, 2020 11:58 am

I recommend re-installing the game and see if the problem persists.

I think that the crash with AlliED may have broken the game.

jmarso
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Post by jmarso » Wed May 27, 2020 4:12 pm

I'm currently working from a copy of my backup install; the crashed one isn't a factor any longer. When the whole thing is said and done, I'll ask Ace or someone to help me package it in an installer and obviously test it on a fresh install to make sure it works okay. If it ends up being hopelessly borked, I'll probably just settle for hosting the opt files somewhere and letting it go at that.

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keiranhalcyon7
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Post by keiranhalcyon7 » Mon Jun 01, 2020 12:11 am

For a packaged distribution, I recommend modifying the exe using a single binary patch based on known-correct modified exe rather than trusting MXvTED.

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Darksaber
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Post by Darksaber » Mon Jun 01, 2020 12:34 am

I agree, MXvTED is a great little program if you want to view the stats, but for editing them use BHE and save as a *.202 file
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jmarso
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Post by jmarso » Tue Jun 09, 2020 9:58 pm

The real question I have is what do you use when you plan to have it all in an installer? How does the installer change the executable file, like when you install the latest version of the craft pack?

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Darksaber
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Post by Darksaber » Tue Jun 09, 2020 10:03 pm

*.202 files more commonly known as *.ZT files
“You can please some of the people all of the time, you can please all of the people some of the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time”.”
- John Lydgate

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