New SP mission: "The Bear Came over the Mountain": Pls help me debug one issue

[Bahger]

Edit: I have traced the bug, improved timings and incorporated voice comms. Please see new thread for final version of the mission.

 

Guys, this is a good, tactical, 2-ship, half-hour CAS/escort mission, air-started, with JTAC. I was inspired by film footage of Hogs flying in support of U.S. infantry in the mountains of Afghanistan and wanted to recreate the seat-of-the-pants mountain flying in the Caucasus region of DCS A-10. The mission is well evolved, enjoyable to fly/fight, thoroughly playtested and has a full briefing, range of events and triggers and radio messages. It's not really a Beta at all except...

 

There is a DCS crash (failure) notice on exiting the mission that has been driving me around the bend. You still get the debrief but the failure disables my TIR, making a restart necessary and eliminates the track file for the mission. I cannot tell you how hard I have worked to eliminate the bug, which only appears to occur in this one mission, and did so in the A-10 Betas as well as in the release. I have tried different Maverick loadouts, disabling Windows Aero, updating my nVidia drivers but now find myself stumped and demoralised. I have a high-end gaming system with an nVidia G285.

 

I think you will enjoy the mission, the flying and fighting are good and it accomplishes what I always seek in mission design in all high-fidelity sims, which is to compel the player to make a few tactical decisions under pressure. You should use your wingman, avail yourself of JTAC and respect the SAM-9 engagement envelope. It's a good CBU deployment mission. At MT + 30 min exactly you will get a message informing you of your success or failure. (And the individual infantry units are each named after my high school classmates, 35 years ago).

 

I'd be really grateful if you could help me out here. It would be good to know if you all experience a similar issue or whether it's specific either to my system or to the way I play the mission, both of which seem unlikely to me. There must me some small mission design gremlin that is causing this; please help me identify him and squash him flat.

 

.Miz attached. Thank you.

Edited March 21, 2011 by Bahger
Relaced file: See new post

[mtuckner]

Excellent, looking forward to some new single player missions. They seemed to have dropped off since release. I'll report back on if I receive the crash or not.

[Bahger]

Thank you, mtuckner. If you can identify the bug, I'll owe you one. Help me solve it and I'll owe you ten.

[mtuckner]

Played the mission, no errors on my end. No TrackIR failure, was able to watch track upon completion. Enjoyed the mission. I did fail because I forgot to employ the wingman. Was nice and heart pumping watching those tracers flying. Overall, good mission. Voice acting would be nice addition, and maybe a cry for help from the OP when things aren't going well.

 

Thumbs up from me!

[Bahger]

Thanks! But why, oh why, does it crash on exit for me? If you run it again, please let me know if it behaves itself again.

 

At any rate, glad you enjoyed it. I like it. Except for the fail.

[Bahger]

I think I fixed it. My system is unusually rigid about admin permissions and wouldn't let DCS A-10 write a file (probably the mission track) to the HD after exiting the mission. Solution: Start the sim by right-clicking the .exe and using "Run as Administrator".

[Speed]

I think I fixed it. My system is unusually rigid about admin permissions and wouldn't let DCS A-10 write a file (probably the mission track) to the HD after exiting the mission. Solution: Start the sim by right-clicking the .exe and using "Run as Administrator".

 

Glad you fixed it. I'll try to remember this one in the future, and it may complicate some of my scripting if the script is run without DCS as administrator...

 

Anyway, we've been seeing this problem alot in the 16th ACCW Flying Tigers with Windows 7 users. Something about Windows 7 and administrator rights was very poorly thought out and programmed by microsoft. Of course, what other microshaft software could you not say that about?

[Bahger]

Thanks, Speed. I had assumed that I could change these too-rigid admin settings somewhere in Windows Vista 64x...but maybe not.

 

Obviously I did not get this problem in MP but neither did it crop up after exiting the DCS stock missions, which presumably, try to write the same file to my HD.

 

I might consult the forums at SharkyExtreme.com, my favorite tech hub for many years now. If those guys don't know how to make my operating system less dictatorial, no one will.

[jeffyd123]

all u have to do is right click on the games shortcut, then left click on properties, select the compatibility tab, then check run as admin... BAM! the game runs in admin.

[Bahger]

Thanks jeffyd, rep inbound.

[Lucky]

Enjoyed this mission. Thanks.

[dne48]

Same here, thanks

[Bahger]

Thanks, guys. Now that I have addressed the problem I was having (see above) I am busy recording sound files for the radio messages, which I will substitute for the current text messages. I will then publish a final version of the mission with slightly improved timings and victory conditions.

[JimMack]

I think I fixed it. My system is unusually rigid about admin permissions and wouldn't let DCS A-10 write a file (probably the mission track) to the HD after exiting the mission. Solution: Start the sim by right-clicking the .exe and using "Run as Administrator".

 

I think many players are getting caught out by this problem/feature of windows.

[Speed]

I think many players are getting caught out by this problem/feature of windows.

 

Yea, but the question is, is there any way you guys can deal with it? To me it seems something like a third of all problems are caused by this.

 

I really haven't a clue what is going on with these people... they are set as administrators on their own computer, so why should they have to run the game as administrator? Does anyone have an explanation as to why windows does this, and if there is any solution? Also, is it only Windows 7 that has this problem?

[Bahger]

Well, I have recently discovered that you can turn the User Access Control setting off:

 

Control Panel->User accounts->Turn "User Access Control" On/Off

 

The (small) problem with disabling it is that it upsets my Avira AV suite, which throws up a warning every time I boot up.

 

Alternatively you can use the right click/Properties menu of the DCS A-10 executable to set Windows always to open the program "As Administrator". This places a little Windows shield symbol over the .exe.

 

Using the two above solutions I have never experienced my initial problem again.

 

Speed, it's not only Windows 7, I have Vista 64x.

 

I suppose the purpose of this is to add a layer of security for computers with multiple users.

 

It took me so long to get to the bottom of this, and the symptoms of the problem could so easily have been an A-10 issue rather than a Windows issue, that I would think ED might be wise to tip users off about it, i.e. that, in certain missions -- such as those made by the user, I'm not sure what the parameters are -- a failure notice will occur when exiting a mission when Windows Access Control settings prevent the sim from writing a file to your HD.

Edited March 18, 2011 by Bahger

[mtuckner]

I had disabled my UAC many moons ago and had never experienced this problem in A10C.

[Speed]

Is it JUST UAC then? I turned off UAC the first thing I did when I installed Vista.