Issues with ETO install

[Unicorngirl]

Just wanted to start by saying I am not new to CFS nor these campaign mods. My late father got me into them back in early 2000's. since Ive played and used most mods for WOFF BH&H. So
I consider myself a veteran in the install process. Probably also one of the only women flying these old sims in the world , blame my dad for giving me a love for all things aviation related.(laughs)
But I have missed the vast dynamic campaigns and career modes in older sims that sadly are missing from many current sims because big wig developers these days are lazy, not very smart, or both but thats a rant for another day and time. So I have come back to CFS3 for some fun.

My problem though is upon installing ETO 4 times and starting over I have the following problem.

Beforehand I do have CFS3 3.1a on a win 11 x64 system and it is installed in the correct x86 folders.
I run eto 1.0 and set it up correctly. I followed that by 1.20,1.40, 1.50 followed instructions.

When we get to setting ETO to Default spawn and era 1 the program throws tons of errors that it cant find those generate spawn files.
Yes they are in the right folders and Masterbat is set to right locations as well as the bat in global layer folder.

This makes no sense and is highly frustrating. I just now wanted to make sure it wasnt a post 1.0 update that screwed things up and a default 1.0
install is throwing the same errors about generating spawn files.

Spawn selector throws a page full of........ "The System cannot find the file specified"

Whats going on here? I also notice the sim bats call for 1936 files but none of those ever exist when ETO is installed unless they point to someting else.


I did read the forum on ETO issues and found a post mentioning this issue but have not found a way to rectify it. Also I am using the "patch" that is not to be mentioned since using my "CD's" did not work to fix this issue either.

Thanks in advance... Mina

[Unicorngirl]

Link to screenshot after trying to set it to option 1, I also notice its sometimes trying to acess windows/system32 folder when looking for " REN" files which is very strange


https://ibb.co/k6CDfBR

https://ibb.co/F8RsMw2

[FireStorm II]

Did you install 1.40_hotfix after 1.40?

[Unicorngirl]

Yes but this issue happens with any version of ETO, like I said I even tried a base 1.0 install just to test the fault and its not finding and generating the spawns when selecting 1 through 5. Check my screenshots.

Those files are where its looking and I have UAC set to Users full permissions and read only set only on the 2 Bat files so this issue makes no sense to me.

[FireStorm II]

Does the game run okay after this? I seem to remember that this 'error' was OK for running
that spawn selector because it may have already been set as you wanted it. Not sure tho'.

[Unicorngirl]

Yes games running fine, however the reason I decided to check was because I had a 1940 campaign going and was tasked with destoying ammo depots.
But at the target location, there was only bridges, an aifield, and a few vehicles at the airfield, nothing in the targets objective was anywhere within say a 50 mile radius except a ton of bridges so I keep failing missions in this sector area. There isnt even any convoys that Im used to seeing all over.

I suspected the spawns were not setting up right because my last install had tons of ammo depots and other targets. I just suspect something is wrong with spawns after seeing the warnings that it cant find files.

[Unicorngirl]

I just tested attack in the west again, seems the spawns are working ok now even though it throws errors when running spawn seletor sometimes, maybe its a bogus report? Im sorry for creating this thread and probably beating a dead horse. Its very weird but it is an old program.

[mongoose]

The expert on campaigns is definitely Daiwilletti, so if he has not seen this or messaged you, perhaps message him.

[Daiwilletti]

Spawns work differently for campaigns. Whilst air.spawns are generated by the order of countries listed in the country.xml file, and one Allied and one Axis nation will spawn for air spawns, facilities like an ammo_depot are different. All nationalities listed in the campaign need to be able to generate the facilities, otherwise the strike_ammodepot spawns will be glitchy. One missing vehicle type for an obscure nationality can cause the generation of targets to be patchy. On the frontline, where the strike ammo dump and strike dugintanks etc missions occur, the frontline facilities are generated for ALL participating nations in the campaign, at random.

For example if the Attack in the West campaign includes SCW as a nationality (which it probably doesn't), and SCW does not have a harborgunS or an armor_tank_light, then facilities which include these units will spawn less reliably.

So when I go though a large install like ETO or MAW, I do a lot of work to ensure that all nationalities have all the main vehicle types represented, that way the spawning environment will be lively. If a unit is missing for a nationality, you can tell because when flying over an invasion defence the aa guns might be missing. I install a flag into most facility xml files, so when I fly over a facility that is a bit lifeless, I know which country is trying to be represented in the ground facility.

One of the things about ETO is that a lot of spawns have been created that are nationality specific, so that at least for target spawns, the nationality is fixed. I tend to use random spawning for my campaign overlays, because I like it.
Sorry if this is all garbled, it takes quite a bit to get the complex issues communicated easily.

[Unicorngirl]

Spawns work differently for campaigns. Whilst air.spawns are generated by the order of countries listed in the country.xml file, and one Allied and one Axis nation will spawn for air spawns, facilities like an ammo_depot are different. All nationalities listed in the campaign need to be able to generate the facilities, otherwise the strike_ammodepot spawns will be glitchy. One missing vehicle type for an obscure nationality can cause the generation of targets to be patchy. On the frontline, where the strike ammo dump and strike dugintanks etc missions occur, the frontline facilities are generated for ALL participating nations in the campaign, at random.

For example if the Attack in the West campaign includes SCW as a nationality (which it probably doesn't), and SCW does not have a harborgunS or an armor_tank_light, then facilities which include these units will spawn less reliably.

So when I go though a large install like ETO or MAW, I do a lot of work to ensure that all nationalities have all the main vehicle types represented, that way the spawning environment will be lively. If a unit is missing for a nationality, you can tell because when flying over an invasion defence the aa guns might be missing. I install a flag into most facility xml files, so when I fly over a facility that is a bit lifeless, I know which country is trying to be represented in the ground facility.

One of the things about ETO is that a lot of spawns have been created that are nationality specific, so that at least for target spawns, the nationality is fixed. I tend to use random spawning for my campaign overlays, because I like it.
Sorry if this is all garbled, it takes quite a bit to get the complex issues communicated easily.

Thanks for the clarification on this. I got my feet wet by editing strike fighters 2 campaigns, even editing them to add all sorts of other planes and supplies of weapons loads but this sim is way more complicated in scripts and the vast array of files all over the place. Really easy to mess something up!