Flying Corps Gold on XP - is it possible?

[Lt. Raper]

I have a copy of Flying Corps Gold by Empire and want to try to play it on my PC. It won't load properly though. I have Windos XP and plenty of memory space. Any ideas?

[Kilian]

We discussed this problem about a month ago please read here:
>Flying Corps<

[Testerchild]

Lt. Raper,

I have FCG running fine on my XP rig, thanks to advice from Ursus site. Rather than go through it all as to how I did it, here is how Ursus did it - I saved the web page for future ref. Hope he won't mind my quoting him, but it's thanks to him i got it running.

Ursus
Member
Member # 1831

- posted May 02, 2004 03:37 Profile for Ursus Send New Private Message Edit/Delete Post Reply With Quote TonyEH, here is some information copied from my FCG site:

Patching:
To update Flying Corps Gold to the latest version, apply the patch fc_111y.
To update the original Flying Corps to gold version, first apply the patch fc_111a, then the same patch as above, fc_111y. Download the patches from Rowan, Empire or 3Dgamer.
Apply a patch by simply unzipping it to the installed game directory overwriting files and maintaining directory structure. Don't try to run any setup.exe program in the patch!
Note: Updated FC to FCG will lack some features that are present in the retail FCG: Fokker D7, mission editor and french campaign.

Smack32.dll:
If FCG won't run or you get a black screen on startup you should try to replace the file smackw32.dll in the rowan\fly directory with a newer version that can be downloaded (see below!). This fix is often required on newer systems (or maybe newer versions of direct x?).

Notes on install on windows XP from G Gardiner:
1. Insert the FCG CD in the CD R/W drive. It seemed to prefer that over the DVDROM one.
2. Turn off the auto play and browse the CD. In the top level of the disc directory are two program exes "setup" and "install".
Leave setup as it is but go to install and open its compatibility page. Set the mode by checking all the boxes ie Windows 95 screen to 256 colours and resolution to 640, visual themes off (whatever they are?).
3. Run setup by clicking or double clicking on it and follow the prompts. My first successful install was a small one (just to get the game into the computer but it would not load and run properly) but I have since installed and reinstalled the large install.
4. Apply the y patch and updated smackw32 files and set the Wfly.exe compatability mode to Windows 95 but leave the other boxes unchecked.
5. Cross your fingers and run Wfly.exe directly. At least that worked for me on my new machine.

See also information about XP setup in this thread SimHQ Forums: Viewing list of forums

Link to smackw32.dll

Cheers!

Ursus

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Ursus' FCG site




I think I have the patches stored on CD somewhere, so if you can't get them from the above sites let me know and we'll work out how to get them to you.
(I think you can find smack32w.dll downloads just by using "smack32w.dll" as a search term).

Good Luck

Bob

[Lt. Raper]

Well, clearly I don't know what the heck I am doing with this game...