So, you stumbled upon the Hell's Angels website, and have seen the screenshots. You get extremely excited about this so you order Red Baron 3D off of Amazon.com. Finally the day comes when it arrives, and the case has a big DOES NOT WORK UNDER WINDOWS XP label on the front. And you have XP! Dang. But you don't understand, you know people have run RB3d under WinXP, why can't you? It has something to do with the way Sold Out Software has burnt the game onto it's disc. Fortunately, thanks to members of the Red Baron community, we now have a fix that lets you run Red Baron on XP. I suggest that you have a LEAST 700MB before attempting this. In the end, this version will take up 450MB of HD space, and you will always need 80MB for file swapping.

1. Download IsoBuster, and then install it.

2. Create a new, empty folder where you want Red Baron to go. For this example I am creating a folder in C:\games\ and I name it RB3d.



3. Now that you have a place to put Red Baron, put in the SOS CD into your CD-Rom drive. If a setup screen pops up, just close it. It isn't necessary.

4. After you have the SOS CD in your drive, start ISO buster. A screen should come up, and the words RedBaron3D should appear twice, with the second one have a whole bunch of folders under it. Right-Click the second RedBaron3D that has a BLUE box in front of it, and select "Extract RedBaron3D"



5. A screen will pop up that will let you navigate your computer. Navigate to the folder that you created for Red Baron, and hit OK. The time to extract the files will vary with your computer's speed.

6. Eject the SOS CD from your machine.

7. Now go to the directory you extracted the files. Run Setup.exe, NOT Setup.now.exe. This will install Red Baron Properly on your machine. Follow the installations instructions like normal.

8. You need the video files to run video. Go back to where you originally extracted the file, and go into the Data subdirectory. Copy the whole Videos directory, the go to C:\SIERRA\RedBaron3D\Data (or where ever you installed it) and paste the whole directory there.

9. Now you need to install the 1078 patch. Open up My Computer, and navigate to where you have extracted Red Baron. There should be a folder called PATCHES. Go into that folder and there will be a file named RB3D1078.EXE. Run it, and it will patch RB3D.

Now you will have a working copy of Red Baron 3D on your computer, videos and all. I suggest that you ask a friend to try the CD burning way, which I will post tomorrow, so you will always have a nice, working disc if you ever need to reinstall. (Or install more copies! He he) Also, if you have a USB joystick, you might notice you have lost the sound on the second time playing. I'm also planning to write a guide on that.

How to UPGRADE the "VALUE LINE" Version of RBII to RB3D.

The next trick is for those of you who may have bought the Red Baron "2" game, and wish to upgrade it with the Super patch to RB3D.

These are the instructions to get your game to work that way.

1) Open the Registry Editor (run 'regedit')
2) Expand 'HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE'
3) Expand 'Software'
4) Expand 'Sierra On-Line'
5) Expand 'Red Baron 2'
6) Create a new key off of Sierra On-Line called 'Red Baron II'
7) Copy, word for word, every string in 'Red Baron 2' into 'Red Baron II'.
There is 'cddir', 'workdir', 'version' and another key named the same as the entry for 'version'.
8) Close the Registry Editor.
9) Run the Super Patch.

Credit for this one is to B. Massey.

Correcting the Loss of Sound Issues in Windows XP

From JFM24577 on the FCJ forum

You can get around the annoying "joystick unplugging" with these .bat files.

Download 'em here: http://www.ibiblio.org/phha/RB3Dbatfiles.zip

1. There will be four files after unzipping.
2. Put the .bat files in the root RB directory, and put the RB3D_MP and RB3D_SP files on the desktop and use them to launch the game (SP=single player, MP=multi player).

The result? You never have to unplug your joystick again!

If your RB3D is not in the default folder, of if you have upgraded from RBII, as I did, you will have to change the directory inside the .bat file. This is easily done with notepad.

ALSO From RENS of SWWISA:

I made a program that turns your ("in sim") sound back on in XP before starting RB SP or RB MMP

http://rensg.sqhq.net/a_utilities/downloads/XP_RB3d_start.zip


It works for me fine saves plugging/unplugging your USB joystick every time.

I get the campaign CTD, took a couple of reinstalls to get it working again.

S! Rens"

Resurrecting a dead pilot

In your \sierra\redbaron3d\campaign folder there is a campagnXX.dat and a campagnXX.mis file to match.  

Also you will see matching files backupXX.mis and backupXX.dat that have the same number as the campagnXX files above. Count the pages in the pilot log and note the one that the dead pilot is on.  Delete (or rename) the two original campagnXX files to another name, and rename the two backupXX files to the original campagnXX file.  

Now restart Red Baron, and viola', your pilot is resurrected. 

This Hell's Angels AI is Stupid!!!

If you are finding many pilots crashing their planes, this is a common occurrence.  If you think you're having issues flying the Royce II FM, try being the AI.  The data in the FM is very accurate and unfortunately the AI of Red Baron was built on the old FM.  I have seen this problem with every FM that was out there, but now more than ever, we have strived to make these crates as real as possible... well... now we have to strive to educate and train the AI as well.

1. Download the AI enhancer on the Hell's Angels website... here.
2. Unzip it and select the level which you might feel comfortable with. 

• The higher the better.  The 250 and higher files seem to work best...

3. Copy the one you choose to your desktop, and rename it rbprefs.dat 
4. Place this new file into your \sierra\redbaron\data folder, overwrite, and play.
5. The way to tell if the AI enhancer is working is to look at the pointer on the Realism slider.  It should be way to the right.

*Note:  because this is a Preference file, some of your setting may change.  Check all setting before you play.  However, if you change any setings in the Realism menu, the AI enhancer will drop to stock AI levels. 

Turning off the Force Feedback properties in Red Baron

Taken right from the S/D Red Baron readme file...

"Because of difficulties switching video modes while in Glide and Direct Draw modes, many pop-up system requests are be disabled in these modes. One of these requests was the system's joystick calibration routine. Because of this, you can not calibrate joysticks while in the game. In general this doesn't cause any difficulties, but it does make you need to take one extra step when enabling force feedback joysticks.

To enable your force feedback joystick in single player, go to the Preferences, select Graphic Setting, then go to the Graphics Options screen and click the checkbox to run the sim in Windowed mode. While the sim is in Windowed mode, right click to bring up the options menu and choose to calibrate your joystick. You should now be able to turn on force feedback support. Once you have done this, you can exit the simulation and return your Grapic Setting to Glide or Direct Draw mode. You can enable your force feedback joystick in any graphics mode in multiplayer by right clicking to bring up the options menu and choosing joystick.

Note also that the realism options control aircraft torque. This will cause most aircraft to tend to roll to the left. This is normal and not a joystick calibration problem. To verify that your joystick is operating correctly in Red Baron 3D, you may disable torque in the Realism Options." - Sierra Dynamix

Adjusting the number of missions in Red Baron - LeBlaque

Using Notepad, create a file with the following lines:

[campaign]
missions=85

Save the file in your RB root directory as campaign.ini

You can then adjust the missions number (85 in the above case) to a number that suits you. You can thus have longer or shorter campaigns as you see fit. I plan on counting the number of days MvR had a kill, make that my mission number, and see how I do.