musicpete

Hi! In earlier versions OFP would occassionally freeze, when I clicked on "Multiplayer" on the main game screen. It never happened when entering a multiplayer game through Gamespy or the Eye. It generally never happened during singleplayer, only if I tried to enter multiplayer mode from the game menu. And even then only sometimes (but still quite often). Now with v1.4 it happens EVERY SINGLE TIME! After clicking on the button I can see the main menu, with activated button (red), the game loads for a few seconds and then hangs. It didn't freeze the whole computer, just OFP! I know this 'cause I could still hear ICQ-messages arriving in the background. However the game wouldn't let me switch away, not even pressing CRTL-ALT-DEL worked. Only a complete reboot solves the problem. After trying about everything (changing preferences, closing all unneccessary background-programs, increasing swap-size, new drivers for everything, reinstalling OFP from scratch, ...) and rebooting about 100 times in the process (*aaargh!*), I found out what could be the reason: On my system I always have Zonealarm running in the background. While usually this is never a problem, with OFP it is. Why? Every single program up to now tried to acces the internet, Zonealarm asked me if I want this, I chose my option, then it worked flawlessly. Obviously OFP has some serious bug or is simply programmed in a bad manner that it tries to access the internet in some weird kind of way. It captures the mouse, keyboard and screen while doing so, waiting for a response of some kind. And because it seems to use a non-standard conform method of doing it, Zonealarm doesn't ask me what to do, resulting in the neccessity to reboot. Shutting down the program (ZA) is the only way to make it work. Now some of you may shout:"What the heck is this guy ranting about? Shut off the damn program if you want to play the game!". But shutting it off is not the way a firewall is supposed to work! I want to be protected AND play OFP online. So my question to YOU is: Is there another workaround? AND I'm VERY eager  to hear from a programmer: Why oh why did you make the game this way? Every single windows program handles internet connections and interaction with Zonealarm with ease, why not OFP?? Why cant I switch away from OFP while it tries to load Multiplayer? Why can't I press simply "ESC" while it waits for a connection? Why won't you let me access my Task-Manager, while waiting? Why?  Sorry for the long posting! Greetings! musicpete

One time I was playing a training map on an Austrian server. There were two bases (on Malden, I figure...): West near De18, East was somewhere in the Southeast (around Ea20?), separated through a huge forest area from West. Each side had tons of aircraft, tanks, ... to play around and attack with. It was quite much fun, and basically Team-DM with respawn. Does anyone know a map like this? No? Me neither, so I tried to create one myself. I have no experience with this, so I simply put many units into the bases on every side and tried to include enough spawnpoints. In the evening I went to sleep and saved it as "User Mission". No I cant load it anymore!!!! When I click on "Load", I get an empty selection box.... *aaah!!* How can I rescue my mission?!?!? Need help! musicpete

YES! Thanks RED, that was it! I finally made it with your tip! My mission is saved! wooohooo! Thanks! musicpete

OK, so my beloved ZA is the evil factor... The strange thing is that EVERY other game worked with ZA in the way that it drew it's pop-up window into the game screen. That's why I supposed OFP did something wrong. Working examples are Half-Life and SWAT3. They both let ZA draw its box into them. musicpete

Somehow I don't understand what you want me to do.... I went into the editor from OFP's main menu. Then I edited around and chose "Save as User mission". The file was placed into the folder OFP/Users/Username/missions/mission_name and is called mission.sqm. Copying the file to OFP/MPmissions didn't work, cause the file is obviously in a different format than all the other missions. Still any idreas what I can do? musicpete

Thanks for you tips, people! After starting OFP once in windowed mode I could easily access the ZA-dialog and set it up for OFP. The real problem was: OFP grabs the screen and doesn't give it to other applications while waiting for response from the internet. It also blocks all keys, so that you can neither Alt-TAB away or call the task-manager with CTRL-ALT-DEL. I've NEVER seen a game or application before, that held the screen so tight for itself. Even all the games let ZA draw a window in actual screen resolution on top of them. musicpete

No, that isn't the error..... ONE single time I've got a Zonealarm Box, asking for permissions after the update. But I couldn't move the mouse into it (in fact I coudn't move the mouse at all), not even the keyboard worked (ALT-Tab, etc.). Then I figured that removing OFP from ZA (thus letting ZA recognize it completely for the first time) would help. Didn't..... Now it freezes and ZA doesn't even notice it (or maybe it's in the background and OFP grabs the screen, mouse and keyboard so I can't see it). If I turn ZA off everything works fine! I'm really puzzled..... musicpete