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I wish I would have known sooner, but...

Rami

Rami

Administrator
Staff member
Hey guys,

A member reached out to me this morning about an issue he was having with the Dutch East Indies campaign, and I checked out the source of the problem and found out that because I had not put a "dummy" text file in the panel and sound folders within each ship folder that didn't have one, it deleted the folders and the ships wouldn't work.

This proved to be a common problem with Fall Weiss, Sink the Tirpitz, Pedestal / Mezzagosto, Western Desert, and Papua New Guinea campaigns, among others.

I take ultimate responsibility for the problem, I'm not trying to blame anyone else for it. But here's my issue; each of these campaigns have had close to or over one hundred downloads, and of all the people who might have tried to install them, only people like Finn, Killer Svend, and Highpockets have been kind enough to actually say they are having a problem.

With this in mind, I corrected the following campaign and mission packages this afternoon while watching football...

Western Desert 1942 campaign - Part II.zip (Corrected ship folders)

Operation Pedestal and Mezzagosto - Part II.zip (Corrected ship folders)

Papua New Guinea campaign - Part II.zip (Corrected ship folders)

Royal Australian Air Force - Part II.zip (Corrected ship folders)

Fall Weiss and Poland, 1939 - Part II.zip (Corrected ship folders, added Pen32Win's .dp files)

Dutch East Indies campaign - Part II.zip (Corrected ship folders)

Malta Spitfire campaign - Part III.zip (Corrected ship folders, incorrect aircraft names in three missions)

Malta Spitfire campaign - Part II.zip (Corrected ship folders)

F.A.A. - Sink the Tirpitz.zip (Corrected ship folders, added Pen32Win's .dp files, added the missing Groundcrew Destroyers, and replaced the two original carriers with UncleTgt's VN Illustrious redux package to better represent the HMS Formidable and HMS Indefatigable)

Please let me be clear: It takes a lot of effort to put these packages together, but there's no point to doing them if they don't work. I need to know if there is a problem, so that I can fix it, please!

Thanks!
 
Dear Rami: I think we have an issue here: Only idiots like myself say if they have a problem. Most guys / girls here are clever enough to simply find the culprits and just repair them, and then enjoy the missions / campaigns. But seeing it from the designers viewpoint it is only helpful to actually TELL it when you find a bug, and it is only being helpful to the rest of us, if it's being repaired. Thus I believe we should make it part of the normal behavior here to report everything. If you don't want to tell everybody that you have a problem, then PM the designer and tell him/her.

I, myself do historic research and I simply love it, when someone points out a missed point - then I learn myself, and can make it better for the benefit of others. So please DO report, even if you manage to make it work on your own. (then save the designer his time by telling how your did it)

Best regards, and thanks for all the wonderful campaigns - still haven't found time to install all, but looking forward to enjoy your work.

Finn
 
Reply...

Finn,

Thanks, that's exactly the point I'm trying to make. I am designing these campaign and mission packages more for those who are not as skilled as some of us old salts are. I'm not trying to brow-beat anyone, I have just realized that there are those who are getting their feet wet in CFS2, and the knowledge base is not as wide as it once was, so I am making sure to try and lower the learning curve so that we can provide the very best of CFS2 to as broad of a base as possible.

To that end, it really only works if you can click "fly now" and not get a warning message. :very_drunk:
 
Rami said:
Hey guys,

A member reached out to me this morning about an issue he was having with the Dutch East Indies campaign, and I checked out the source of the problem and found out that because I had not put a "dummy" text file in the panel and sound folders within each ship folder that didn't have one, it deleted the folders and the ships wouldn't work.......
Click to expand...

Hi Andrew,

forgive me for asking, but I cannot understand what deleted the panel + sound folders in the ships. Usually that happens when zipping folders with subfolders inside, the empty ones are ignored and left out of the *.zip file.

Was the installer program that did it? Is it a new CFS2 bug which laid dormant all of these years and now is acting up?.....:biggrin-new:

Seriously, I just want to know what I should be watching out for.

Cheers!
KH :ernaehrung004:
 
Stef,

Probably operating system specific issue.

The newer "improved" OS really don't like empty folders - folders have to have something in it :smiley_simmons:. Every so often an MS update comes along & decides "empty" folders need to be removed, lest these EMPTY folders be full of malicious code :indecisiveness:.

A simple text file as dummy content suffices... and now the great and powerful OS is happy...:banghead:
 
Reply...

Hey guys,

It is the clickteam installer program. When it goes through the folder I create to assemble an executable program after gathering all the parts, it will delete any folder that is empty. So for ships, you need to double-check to ensure you include a readme or dummy text file in the panel and sound folders in every ship so that the clickteam program does not delete these placeholder folders.

If you forget to do this, unsuspecting users will have ships the sim says it cannot find because these folders were deleted. Grizzly50 runs into this exact same issue when he does stuff for CFS3.
 
UncleTgt said:
Stef,

Probably operating system specific issue.

The newer "improved" OS really don't like empty folders - folders have to have something in it . Every so often an MS update comes along & decides "empty" folders need to be removed, lest these EMPTY folders be full of malicious code :indecisiveness:.

A simple text file as dummy content suffices... and now the great and powerful OS is happy...:banghead:
Click to expand...

Yes, the good ole' MS updates! :hopelessness: More damage was caused to computers in the past by "vital system updates" than what was expected of hurricane Patricia but, Thank God, did not happen.

Roger UncleTgt, thank you! I got the message and now I recall that this subject was covered other times.

My two cents: I firmly believe in investing in a standalone pc dedicated to CFS2. I came to this conclusion over the years.

What can seriously endanger our CFS2, apart from foreseeable hardware crashes due to wear and tear? PC viruses.

How do viruses diffuse from a pc to the next? Through Internet connections and poor, or poorly updated, antivirus applications. One might add trough usage of USB pens from an infected pc to the next one. A good antivirus, diligently updated and set to scan USB external devices will take care of that.

So, what's the solution? Keeping one's pc with CFS2 installed away from Internet!!!!

Most of the updates released regard security issues, very rarely they have to deal with system bugs that would impair CFS2. With a pc carefully kept offline, there's no need to have installed:


  1. Browsers.
  2. E-mail applications.
  3. Antiviruses.
  4. Firewalls.
  5. All kinds of system services necessary to operate online connections (this means also more computing power for CFS2).
  6. 99% of MS updates.

Just CFS2 and tons of addons, in other words a pc dedicated exclusively to combat flight simulation.

I rest my case.

Cheers!
KH :ernaehrung004:
 
Reply...

Good morning,

Courtesy of a yet-unknown friend, I've been informed of more issues that have been fixed. There was still an issue with the JMK_Kamoi in the DEI campaign, which I finally corrected, and I made a very small oversight with the FDG P-40e which prevented the aircraft from displaying.

I am getting more information about problems as this person tests them, I'll see what comes up.
 
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