Hints and help
In this section I have posted information about some issues that could be of interest. If you have contributions, please contact me (see below).
General
Official support: Empire interactive: support@empire.co.uk. At Empire's site there is a support section with some info for FC and FCG. See also Rowans site for some general support information, though it's not much there nowadays. Try also to post at a flight sim forum, eg. SimHq "Battle of Britain" forum.
Commands
Keyboard and joystick commands for FCG here. See below for remapper.
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.
FCG won't run, black screen
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 here. This fix is often required on newer systems (or maybe newer versions of direct x?).
Windows XP and FCG
Go here to read a description of a FCG install under Windows XP.
FCG general setup issues
Go here to read a description about general FCG setup issues submitted by Cas141.
No CD
To play the game without a cd the following fix can be applied (recommended: speeds things up when going from 3D to accelerated mode):
A. Do a full install of FCG and apply the patch.
B. Edit the file roots.dir in the rowan\fly directory. The file can be opened with notepad. In roots.dir change line 3 to:
3 c:\rowan\fly
(could be different depending on where you have your game installed)
C. Copy the directories Quad and Landscap from the CD into the "c:\rowan\fly" directory.
D. Delete the file slave16.exe from the "c:\rowan\fly" directory.
Keyboard and joystick remapper
Download controls.zip from Rowan.
FCG navigation
Go here for some help and thoughts on navigation issues in FCG. By Cas141.
Edit skins and graphics
The skin graphic files in FCG are in the Rowan *.h8 format which can't be read by any grapics program used by deadly, so the files have to be transformed into *.pcx or *.bmp files. This is easiest done by using the tt2 utility. You also have to have the file dos4gw.exe and the FC palette gpal.pal.
Get tt2 and dos4gw.exe at Mig Alley skin central. (If you have Mig Alley, these files are also found in the mig directory.)
Get gpal.pal here.
The tt2 must be used in dos. The procedure is well described at Mig Alley skin central, the difference is that the files in Mig Alley are called *.x8 and MA uses a different palette.
Short description of the procedure: Put the tt2, dos4gw.exe and gpal.pal in a (new) directory together with the file(s) that you want to edit, eg. "camfus.h8" (fuselage of Sopwith Camel). In the dos prompt write following command:
tt2 -r camfus.h8 -r gpal.pal -w camfus.bmp
to change the file into a windows bitmap. Use camfus.pcx to change it to a *.pcx file. To change it back to the *.h8 format use the command:
tt2 -r camfus.bmp -w camfus.h8
Note that the terrain files used in the D3D version of the game doesn't use the palette gpal.pal and can't be edited in the manner described.