[antar05]

I'm running FS2 Open 3.6.8 (23 March build), currently with all features off and no add-on VPs.

Seems like a waste, don't it?

Well, I'm running it on a six-month old Dell Inspiron 6000 laptop, and while I (naively) thought that its specs were great when I bought it, it turns out that it can't handle much fancy. FS2 Retail works flawlessly (as it should, given the game is half-a-decade older than my computer), but I'm trying to write a prequel campaign, and FS2 Retail doesn't like it when I mess with ships.tbl

Even at this bare-minimums setting, I've yet to be convinced that this version is stable (haven't had a problem YET, while 3.6.7 crashed constantly--I'm using D3D, by the way; OpenGL won't let me get beyond the Mission Briefing--so I'm hopeful).

So enough introduction. I want to do missions in subspace. What's the BARE MINIMUM add-ons I need in order to do this?


P.S. Oh yeah, and hi! I'm new!

[karajorma]

Ironically enough you've actually asked questions 1(part 4 I reckon is the cause)  and 2 in the part of my FAQ dealing with mission crashes

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/karajorma/FAQ/fredretailtech.html

Once you've taken both of those things into account you should be able to develop using retail. That said FS2_Open does give you a much richer development environment even if you aren't using any of the new graphical features so it should be worth sticking with what you have if you can convince it to be stable.

What crashes did you get with 3.6.7? It's probably a little late to go back (Missions built on recent CVS builds simply won't run on 3.6.7) but if you haven't done enough to make it a pain to go back it may be that you have a simple cure to your problem.

[antar05]

Many thanks for the subspace link (it looks so beautiful...)

Unfortunately, I didn't see anything in the FAQ that addressed the ships.tbl limit in FS2 Retail.

Doesn't matter. I'm content (for the moment) with Open 3.6.8


As for my issues with 3.6.7: it would start off running fine, but on certain missions would inevitably crash to the desktop mid-mission (usually linked, I think, with especially tasking graphical items, i.e. ships blowing up at close range; ships jumping in). This was using D3D. OpenGL, when it *occasionally* would run, would mess up the models.

But (knock on wood) 3.6.8 seems to be working fine.

[karajorma]

Basically the bit about table files over 380KB in size.

[antar05]

Ah, yes. Well, I knew that. And I had the brilliant idea of taking out some internal documentation.

Didn't work; the game just crashed.

So then I tried taking out some unused models.

Didn't work; the game just crashed.

So I concluded that FS2 Retail just didn't like me messing with ships.tbl

But Open has no problem with it, thusfar!

[karajorma]

The fastest way to shrink the size of the ships table is simply to do a search and replace for double space and replace it with single space.

A few cycles of that can knock around 100kB off the size of the table.

[antar05]

chuckle

[antar05]

And, of course, I jinxed it.

During a particularly grueling and chaotic dogfight, the game crashed.

But this time I got an error message!

The instruction at "0x72285646" referenced memory at "0x00000028". The memory could not be "read".

Whazzat mean?

But at least the game appears to be MORE, if not perfectly, stable.