Njinsa wrote on 2022-12-24, 08:53:

Correct. Same happens in some campaign missions in Iran and Iraq. Meanwhile....take a look here at this post 10 years ago....ht […]
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Correct. Same happens in some campaign missions in Iran and Iraq.
Meanwhile....take a look here at this post 10 years ago....https://simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/3295378/1
It seems that it was broken even at Windows XP.
I'm away from F-15 installation, so can't test it but the author who made the post/fix is very skilled.

That was a good find, and it fixed it too. When the crash happened, you should have seen text there. That's what the error message says. Probably the text display format is no longer supported, or supported for other languages of Windows. I will just have to check if the resource handling results in missing text.

Njinsa wrote on 2022-12-19, 08:23:

Thank you for your efforts. I saw that GHO tried to assess the weird nature of game layout but it proved not to be worth of an e […]
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Thank you for your efforts. I saw that GHO tried to assess the weird nature of game layout but it proved not to be worth of an extra effort. Although DXWND development continues with more or less probable solution for DDRAW, I found a solution which works perfectly with Janes F-15.
It's right here - https://github.com/elishacloud/dxwrapper
After clean install and v1.17 patch, extract following files in F-15 root folder: dxwrapper.dll, dxwrapper.ini, ddraw.dll, dsound.dll.
dxwrapper.ini file need some configuring in order to activate direct draw v5 and direct sound translation.
Endgame - no more screen clipping, menus working again, text is displayed correctly.
Oh, briefing animations work like charm, no need to rename UV2 files any more.

Wow, that worked nicely, but I still have some issues and I wonder if this is on my end or not. If anyone could check something for me - run the game, go to Train, select first mission (Take off and nav), run the mission (Fly) and when mission loads just quit the mission by pressing Esc and confirm with Yes. For me everytime the game will crash to desktop. It also crashes the same way in the campaign when I land after a mission and want to quit. It sucks when it crashes since I can't progress in the campaign.

Thanks in advance!

Didn't crash on my setup. Did you use DXWND for starting F15.EXE ?
DXWMD should be avoided in this session of tests as it can make a mess.

Njinsa wrote on 2022-12-26, 18:34:

Didn't crash on my setup. Did you use DXWND for starting F15.EXE ?
DXWMD should be avoided in this session of tests as it can make a mess.

I used Dxwnd before, but after having the issues I uninstalled the game, reinstalled it so I had fresh intall, patched it with 1.17 patch and used the 3 dll files with one config ini file (setup properly per previos post) and run the game from the f15.exe. The game runs fine, didn't had to remove the UV2 files etc. The only problem that it crashes on some missions when I exit the mission. One of them is the first one of the training missions so that's my reference point since it crashes every time on this one. I never had the same issue before, the game crashed sometimes during missions but never on exit mission. I was able to finish both campaigns few years ago when I got it running on Windows 7 with nglide and acqrit ddwrapper.

Some more (maybe useful) info:
OS: Windows 10 22H2 / 19045.2364
GPU: NVidia GTX970 / display driver 522.25
I'm using nGlide 2.10 as 3dfx wrapper but the crash also happens with software rendere so I gues it's not a graphical issue?

Config looks fine.
Did you use fixed F15.exe or original v1.17 patched ?

Maybe this could help providing some logs....
Go here - http://www.jf18-resource.com/ and get 'Read table for WindowsXP/Vista/7'.
Instructions how to use are within archive, it works on Windows 10.
This could provide some clues what's going on at least before someone attempt to debug with some more capable tool.
I'm not an expert, but I intend to use that while provoking some CTDs.

A trivia....
This game was highly praised back in the days but also anticipated after Longbow success. It had very good marketing campaign which fought for prestige in golden era of flight sims. That fact drove game development into trouble as post launch support was extremely bad - whole team packed their stuff and left for other projects, leaving a pile of optimizations and bugs lingering to be resolved by no one.

I think it's the issue with the game itself, as even if I run it without any wrappers (removed the dll files from game folder), the game crashes when exiting the missions.

Edit: Also something weird I noticed after a crash the Jane's F-15 process is still running in the background (as seen in task manager), I have to close it before I can run the game again.

Also I tried both exe files. Both behaves the same.

@Njinsa
Could you post your registry entry regarding F-15 compatibility flags
it can be found here (use regedit)
Computer\HKEY_USERS\---some numbers-----\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\AppCompatFlags\Compatibility Assistant\Store

I have a suspicion I borked my registry entries for F-15, because now every mission crashes on exit...

OK, I think I have fixed it, I removed one registry entry that seemed suspicious.
In [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\AppCompatFlags\Layers]
"D:\\JANES\\F15\\F15.EXE"="$~ DWM8And16BitMitigation IgnoreFreeLibrary<WRAPPER.DLL>"
After that the game didn't crashed when exiting mission. Keeping my fingers crossed it was it.

Nice work.
I just checked and although an entry for F15.EXE, it had 3 different bytes.
It's best to do what you actually just done, to leave it without any compatibility attribute.
WRAPPER.DLL is very important file as it load and process weapons, sensors, platform and mission data.

Some good discussions here, and I also have some results:

damson wrote on 2022-12-26, 22:32:

OK, I think I have fixed it, I removed one registry entry that seemed suspicious. In [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windo […]
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OK, I think I have fixed it, I removed one registry entry that seemed suspicious.
In [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\AppCompatFlags\Layers]
"D:\\JANES\\F15\\F15.EXE"="$~ DWM8And16BitMitigation IgnoreFreeLibrary<WRAPPER.DLL>"
After that the game didn't crashed when exiting mission. Keeping my fingers crossed it was it.

The registry generated on my computer is incomplete, thus I didn't get the crash -

1$~ DWM8And16BitMitigation IgnoreFreeLibrary<WRAPPE>

I completed the line, by putting WRAPPER.DLL there. The shim describes a bug from the application, the DLL gets freed before it should be and that results in access violation. By removing the shim, you are allowing the application to free the library when it wants, which is the correct behaviour as to what it does so special.

Njinsa wrote on 2022-12-26, 19:28:

Config looks fine. Did you use fixed F15.exe or original v1.17 patched ? […]
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Config looks fine.
Did you use fixed F15.exe or original v1.17 patched ?

Maybe this could help providing some logs....
Go here - http://www.jf18-resource.com/ and get 'Read table for WindowsXP/Vista/7'.
Instructions how to use are within archive, it works on Windows 10.
This could provide some clues what's going on at least before someone attempt to debug with some more capable tool.
I'm not an expert, but I intend to use that while provoking some CTDs.

I looked into DxWnd for this issue. Turns out the setting Compatibility/Handle Exceptions gracefully solves the crash. There is a big pause at the moment where it crashes, probably because it skips over a lot of violating instructions. Probably DxWnd can be changed to put NOPs there just like the patch, I will ask.

Great findings guys, thnx!
A custom patch for F-15 would be awesome.

Played few missions today, it appeared everything is fine, but had one crash during mission (3rd Iraq campaign mission, as I was nearing the target and activated A/G radar), and after replaying it the game crashed after I landed and tried to exit the mission. So it seems the crashes still happen though not so severe as before.

I took a look into the registry and found something odd. The values string from
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\AppCompatFlags\Compatibility Assistant\Store] and
[HKEY_USERS\S---bunch-of-numbers---\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\AppCompatFlags\Compatibility Assistant\Store]

for my previous F-15 install which I used vedmysh's mydxwn solution (no longer installed on my machine) looks like this:

"D:\\mydxwnd\\f15\\F15.EXE"=hex:53,41,43,50,01,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,07,00,00,\
00,28,00,00,00,00,b0,1e,00,00,00,00,00,01,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,01,05,\
71,20,00,00,63,1f,6e,6f,0e,de,d4,01,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,02,00,00,00,28,\
00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,80,00,30,00,00,00,40,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,\
00,00,06,48,00,00,00,00,00,00,04,00,00,00,04,00,00,00

while current one has a lot more values:

"D:\\JANES\\F15\\F15.EXE"=hex:53,41,43,50,01,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,07,00,00,00,\
28,00,00,00,00,b0,1e,00,00,00,00,00,01,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,01,05,71,\
20,00,00,50,bb,64,ed,dd,ac,d5,01,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,05,00,00,00,10,00,\
00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,03,01,05,00,84,00,00,02,00,00,00,78,00,00,\
00,00,00,00,00,00,80,00,30,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,\
0c,34,25,00,00,00,00,00,08,00,00,00,08,00,00,00,00,03,01,05,00,84,00,70,00,\
00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,3c,c9,00,00,00,00,00,00,01,00,\
00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,84,00,30,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,\
00,00,00,00,00,de,0b,02,00,00,00,00,00,01,00,00,00,00,00,00,00

maybe it's messed up somehow? I might try removing it completely and see if it's rebuilt.

Yes, it would be wise to remove those completely out and check whether if it recreates.

I removed those long entries. It recreated them with the lenght of the previous (mydxwn) one. Its content is a bit different, but I will test it either way. Completed 3rd campaign mission without any problems.

WinXPSP3.
1) LBGold 1.03F + lbg104e + goldfx = not starts. "By design", can't be fixed? Copy flight.dle, objview.dle, tutor.dle, wail32.dll and wrapdll.dle from [CD1]\GAME to the game directory THEN use goldfx.exe.
2) No movies (goldfx and 1.04f). Can be fixed?
Tnx.

Few years ago I followed this guide and it worked , but as I favored LB2, can't recollect if there were crashes- https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Jane%27s_Longbow_Gold
On XP it must use DirectX (no direct access to GPU hardware as DOS does) your problems might be related to the DirectDraw (give a DXWrapper a shot) or nglide version.

Njinsa wrote on 2022-12-28, 01:07:

Few years ago I followed this guide and it worked , but as I favored LB2, can't recollect if there were crashes- https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Jane%27s_Longbow_Gold
On XP it must use DirectX (no direct access to GPU hardware as DOS does) your problems might be related to the DirectDraw (give a DXWrapper a shot) or nglide version.

LB2 needs the GetDiskFreeSpace shim for removing th initial memory issue, and EmulateHeap shim if you want to read books in game. On Windows 11 22H2 Emulateheap shim is highly incompatible and it doesn't work as well, there's no solution as far as I am concerned until MS fixes Windows.

For LB Gold, it won't work on new Windows because of the way the video is handled (tested on win7, 10 and 11). I had to create a BIN/CUE of the CD removing movies.tre file as it was the video.

Additionally I had to enable EmulateHeap shim (this game works fine on Win11 22H2 fortunately) because the BACKDOORS/HEAP_PERCENT=0 setting IN CA.INI was still crashing in many occasions. If I used the DirectDraw game, I also had to enable a 60fps cap that could be done easily using DxWnd. EmulateCreateFileMapping shim is alrso oquired to remove some startup issues. On Glide versions, nGlide restricts it to 60 (at least on my system and monitor). The Glide version was still bugged in one mission where I had to pause and resume the game to see a section of screen, the DirectDraw version, till wherever I tested was flawless.

For Longbow 1/FPK/Gold I recommend DOS version running with DOSBox, works great (no 3dfx though).

For Longbow 2 I use PCem v17 with Windows 98, you don't need any fixes it works fine, I was able to finish entire campaign without a single crash.

Regarding Jane's F-15, I still see mid-mission crashes from time to time, especially frequent if you use jump feature (Shift-J by defaul - it skips to save time as mission can get lenghty).

Njinsa wrote on 2022-12-28, 01:07:

Few years ago I followed this guide and it worked , but as I favored LB2, can't recollect if there were crashes- https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Jane%27s_Longbow_Gold

Tnx, looks like my 1st question was answered in this article. Use goldfxa.exe for correct 1.04F -> 3dfx patching... Failed. 1.04F + goldfxa.exe: the game starts, the main menu works but Instant Action fails with an error:

Well, lb104e.exe modifies flight.dle, objview.dle, tutor.dle, wrapdll.dle and deletes wail32.dll. If I copy these files from CD1 (the \GAME directory) -- then this will "unpatch" the game.
Tested: lb104e.exe -> "unpatch" -> goldfx.exe. The glide version works.

BEEN_Nath_58 wrote on 2022-12-28, 04:44:

Additionally I had to enable EmulateHeap shim (this game works fine on Win11 22H2 fortunately) because the BACKDOORS/HEAP_PERCENT=0 setting IN CA.INI was still crashing in many occasions.

IIRC EmulateHeap is already enabled for lbwin.exe in the WinXPSP3 default *.sdb. EmulateCreateFileMapping, IgnoreAltTab and IgnoreException are enabled too.