This was brought up in another thread but this is something that needs to be focused on. Wing Commander Academy is known to crash when trying to create a level and then hitting the 'execute' command.

Some have suggested to click on "Gauntlet",and then people will be good to go to play a game of Wing Commander. However, that option only activates one mode of the game which you have to destroy an ever increasing difficult waves of enemies. It is not the main mode or focus of the game.

The main mode of the game is the level editor, and ability to create mission objectives. Execute is the command to get you access to your created level.

If execute is causing the game to crash, then most of the game is broken. This is not some minor 'broken' but a main feature of the game, one that is breaking most of the game... This is a severe issue and one that GOG needs to remedy, especially if they are going continue to charge so much for it...

Try comparing CRC32 or MD5 file hashes between the two versions. There's a Windows extension called HashTab that can do it; I think 7-Zip or WinRAR can as well.

That's beyond my knowledge level unfortunately...

Anycase I did a visual comparison and went down the file names...

So far I've noticed that Gog version is missing at least two files;

"AS.2" and "AS.3"

Out of 4 "AS" files. I'm going to try copying these files into the gog version and see if it changes anything.

A couple of other potentially missing files are (but these might be generated once you create a new working mission);

'resource.cfg", "trainer.cfg", and "wca.cfg" although some of these also appear in the main folder.

Alright, making sure that the AS files are in the gamedate folder does seem to 'fix' the problem.

however, I've discovered something else.

These files don't appear to be installed on a fresh install.

instead they appear to be files that are supposed to be 'generated' after you load the game for the first time.

AS.0 generates when you first hit 'execute'. My guess so are the rest of the AS files. But for some reason the GOG version is not generating them.

More tests... Tried to create a mission, messed around hit execute...

For once it worked...

It generated the proper AS.0 through AS.3 files.

Going to now delete those files and try again.

Ok, I think I figured out the problem, and why execute crashes.

When you create a mission, the game doesn't automatically count your mission as being 'loaded'.

So you make sure you first 'save' your mission. Then use the 'load' mission to then load the file.

At this point you should then be able to use execute with no problems.

This should then 'generate' several files into the gamedat folder.

AS.0 through AS.3 (four files total)

After this point as long as those files are in the gamedate, you should not have future crash problems. You will always have at least initial created mission loaded in memory in the game every time you load the game. But you'll need to create a new mission, save it and load it, to be able to access the new mission.

Edit: actually turns out once those AS files are generated, you can create any new mission, and the game will automatically load up your changes without having to use the 'load' command.

Pretty weird, and I don't know why those AS files aren't just installed to begin with?

Thanks, that works! It appears you can also just create empty files called AS.0 to .3, as long as they're there the game works. Could you let GOG support know so they can update the installer?

Good deal. I guess you didn't need the info on HashTab I just PM'd you.

Very good catch.

I have an original version (on CD, so not the VERY first release, mind you!) of this game, and haven't been able to play it for years... the issue being one of horrendous mouse-drift/joystick drift making it impossible to control.

In this case, I'm now running this version using my own version of DOSBox (which I have linked into a front-end called "DOG" which permits me a great deal of GUI-based control over the program and generates shortcuts as well, if desired). The "drift" issue is not an issue on this, while if I use the exact same DOSBox configuration on the original game files, it's an insurmountable issue, so GoG seems to have found a fix I've never come across.

However... until coming across this thread, I was suffering from crashes to desktop upon hitting "execute," as you were. I'm very glad that you figured this out, as now, for the first time in several decades now, I'm able to play this game.

I'd like to suggest that GoG go ahead and create a "default first mission" (and the AS.x files associated with it) as part of your default initial install state. We can always delete that first mission, and doing so will prevent us from having this very-annoying issue (which wasn't ever there in the original release, by the way).

I'm not sure how you modified the game install, but it's overall a major improvement. But... it'd be great to get this into a "proper working" state at the initial install, and this seems like the most obvious way of doing so.