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Pixelnaut152

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Registered: 2015-08-10

Posts: 2

Question about installing Xpacks...

Hi,

Hopefully you guys can point me in the right direction. I'm using the Origin version, if it matters. Initially, I installed the Simple exe and 1942 worked and all is well.

I then installed the Xpacks & New Maps pack from this site and it put a separate icon for each on the desktop, but now, whether I start BF from Origin or the icon the browser doesn't work?

What am I doing wrong?

Thanks.

(BB)DinkW

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Registered: 2012-08-06

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Re: Question about installing Xpacks...

Hi Pixelnaut152

Your Origin installation for Battlefield will be in C:\Program Files\Origin Games\Battlefield 1942 and I suspect, although I am only guessing, your XPacks are in C:\Program Files\EA Games\Battlefield 1942 and the two cant actually see each other.  In other words the game cant see the expansions because they are not in the correct place.

This may help you:

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/s … ?t=3005394

Download the reg fixes, use the one relating to your system 32 or 64bit, and reinstall expansions.  It should fix it

tuia

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Registered: 2012-02-20

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Re: Question about installing Xpacks...

Hello Pixelnaut152,

After you install Xpacks, you should run Battlefield 1942 GameSpy patch v1.61 to get the in-game server browser working. Xpacks installation replace BF1942.exe with an outdated one, which still points to master.gamespy.com.

Catpain_Blackadder

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Registered: 2015-06-28

Posts: 554

Re: Question about installing Xpacks...

For anyone who doesn't feel comfortable patching/modifying their BF1942.EXE file, there is another way to fix this problem.  You can edit your HOSTS file so that when BF1942 tries to connect to the old server browser at master.gamespy.com it will be directed instead to the new site.  To do this just edit the file c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts, and add the following line to the end of the file:

109.71.69.254 master.gamespy.com

You would do this on each Windows computer you use to play BF1942.  If you happen to run your own DNS server (if you don't know what that is then you almost certainly don't), you can add an entry for the above, and only have to do it once if your computers already use your DNS server.

That should be all the information you need to get it going, but for those unfamiliar with DNS and/or interested in the technical details, every computer on the Internet has at least one address, which is a series of four numbers 1-254 separated by dots, e.g. 109.71.69.254.  Normally we address these machines by their text names, i.e. master.gamespy.com, so there exist DNS servers (most Internet service providers have at least one available) that translate that name into the proper number.

So normally what would happen when we wanted to find an on-line game was that BF1942 had to connect to the server browser, master.gamespy.com, so it needed to query the DNS server the computer uses and get the numeric address to use to connect to that server.  Well, that server no longer exists, so DNS doesn't return an address for it, so BF1942 can't get a list of servers.  This makes the game appear to freeze.

To fix this someone has set up a replacement server browser at the address 109.71.69.254.  I assume they just weren't allowed to use the name master.gamespy.com, so the remaining problem for each BF1942 player is to get BF1942, which is looking for master.gamespy.com, to look instead for 109.71.69.254.  That is what the GameSpy patch does, although I'm not sure how they went about it.  The alternate method I'm describing doesn't modify BF1942.  Instead it adds an entry to the system HOSTS file.  The HOSTS file comes from the Unix and Linux file /etc/hosts, which has the same purpose as DNS, to translate text names for computers into numeric network addresses.  The way this works on both Linux and Windows systems is that when a network address needs to be translated, the operating system first looks for the entry in the hosts file; if it doesn't find it there it queries DNS (which is actually the preferred way to resolve the name).  Since DNS no longer has an entry for master.gamespy.com, though, putting one into our hosts file works around this problem.

Trench

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Registered: 2014-05-05

Posts: 221

Re: Question about installing Xpacks...

For anyone who doesn't feel comfortable patching/modifying their BF1942.EXE file, there is another way to fix this problem.

Fair enough, but someone would really be missing out by not replacing their BF1942.EXE file.  The replacement GameSpy master server change being "built in" is only one of the latest improvements made in this replacement BF1942.EXE.

You also get "real" widescreen video support, with the in-game video menu able to show all your graphics card's actual supported resolutions.  And you get "no CD" or "no Origin" support, eliminating the requirement to have the game CD in the drive, and/or to launch the Origin client before being able to play.  Finally, although perhaps most importantly, you get at least a couple local game crash and issue fixes that have been patched into this .EXE.  Which doesn't eliminate all Battlefield 1942's issues, but is at least better than still having the original BF1942.EXE.

You can always keep your original BF1942.EXE and put it back whenever you like, and the installer tuia provided already does that for you automatically too.  (Keeps the original BF1942.EXE for you in case you want to put it back.)

If someone did still want to just adjust their HOSTS file, note the helper program that s[sk] provided at http://master.bf1942.sk/ might be the easiest way to achieve it, since editing the HOSTS file directly on Windows requires jumping through some hoops with the default security posture of Windows Vista and later.

-Trench