Thanks for the replies!>1. Navy SOP is to divert damaged aircraft...
Makes sense. Sometimes I don't feel like doing the marshal stack thing and was trying an emergency approach so I could be guaranteed a clear deck, but since it doesn't work that way in F18, I guess I'll just have to force it on in there <G>.
>2. Suggest you go into a TE with FAC,
> JSTARS, and Escorts and just go through
> the menus, writing down the comms.
Eeeek, that's what I was trying to avoid, with so many menus and with the menus staying on the screen for such a short period of time, it makes it very time consuming. I'd rather by flying than writing. Oh well, guess it's time to bite the bullet.
> Oddly, when you edit a mission in the
> mission builder, it still keeps the same
> position even though the file
> modification date is later.
Ok, I see what's going on now. The list of "user" missions is basically unsorted - it's not using file dates at all! After looking around in the missions folder here's how I think it works: The default Jane's missions are shown first because they are listed in the file index.dat (I've tried modifying this file by adding the names of all missions, but this didn't seem to work. If I remove this file, the default missions act just like any other mission, they don't necessarily appear at the top).
After the default missions, the rest of the missions are basically unsorted - the files are listed in the same order as in the FAT (i.e. the order that they were added to the missions folder) with newest files at the top. Remember way back in the DOS days before you had dir /on etc... the dir command listed files in this same manner.
For a team that can design and code all the complexities that exist in this sim it's a real shame they didn't take 5-10 minutes to qsort their list, basically entry level programming, a one line function call and a one line callback function is all that's needed.
The good news is now that I see how it works, I now have a sorted missions list 
Here's how I did it in case anyone else wants a readable list:
VERY IMPORTANT!!! make a backup of your mission folder before you begin, a good practice in any environment, but especially in Windows
First, I moved all missions (.cmf files) from the F18 missions folder to a temp folder - the files must be moved, not copied (i.e. after this step, there should be no .cmf files in the F18 missions folder).
I then copied all the .cmf files from the temp folder back to the F18 Missions folder in descending alphabetical order (you can do this manually, one file at a time, or see below for another option). Since F18 shows files in reverse order of when they were added to the folder (i.e. newer files at top) copying in descending alphabetical order will cause them to appear in alphabetical order in F18. Important: you must copy, not move, these files if your temp folder is on the same drive as F18. This is because a move from one folder to another on the same drive is the same thing as a rename, the order in the FAT table does not change. Making copies of the files, obviously, has to create new directory entries.
When done, you can delete the files in the temp folder. Now you should see a sorted list with Jane's default missions at the top followed by the rest of the missions. If you want all missions to be sorted (included the Jane's default missions), try renaming the file index.dat to something like index.dat.bak (don't delete the file, just to be safe).
Note: I used Windows Commander to copy the files (www.windowscommander.com I think). Windows Commander is kinda like the old Norton Commander or Windows 3.1 File Manager, but better. You can sort on name, date, ext, etc... ascending or descending and when you copy files, the copy is done using the current sort order. Windows Explorer may or may not copy files this way (something tells me it doesn't but I don't know for sure, haven't tested it). Of course, you can always copy the files back one at a time in the order you prefer and this technique will work but I suggest something like Windows Commander to make the process go quicker. With a directory list set up in Windows Commander it takes me less than a minute to fire up Windows Commander and sort the list.
So anyway, that's how to get a sorted mission list, a PITA I know, but short of writing a utility to automate this, or finding something like the old Norton Dirsort, I can't think of another way to do it.
posted 09-30-2000 11:05 PM
