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[SAS~Bombsaway]

I am running a UP 2.01 with QMB Pro Pal and if there is a # in the name it will kill your QMB Pro Pal. Here is the explanation CirX found when I told him I lost two installs over this. ???

This is "caused" by QMB Pro PAL   , but really, it is caused by bad skin names. What happens is that QMBPro writes a LastMission.quick file when you fly a QMB mission. It saves it in the maingame Quicks/ directory. In it it saves even your skin setting of your last QMB flight. (this is one of the features of QMBProPAL that is so awesome!)

The problem is this, IL2, and especially this Lastmission.quick file, does not like the # character. If the skins are named like, " # 302 Kokutai YoD-106.bmp " and so on, it will be a problem.

So everything you leave QMB, and then try to re-enter it, QMB tries to read the LastMission.quick file, but it only reads it up the the #, and then it can go no further, and an error (crash) occurs...actually it is more like a freeze. A lock out.

To get out of it you have to ctrl alt del.

To solve it, go to your LastMission.quick file, and delete it before re-starting the game. (QMBpro will recreate it when you again fly in QMB)

To stop the crash from happening again, remove the # characters from all the skin names in your skins folder.

This crash will happen no matter where in the skin name the # appears. I could re-create the same crash with some F86's using the skin
F-86F-25-NH #51-13468 Blue Diamonds.bmp for example.

[max_thehitman]

Yes. I agree with he just informed.
SKIN NAMES SHOULD NOT HAVE... # ...or ....$... or ...%... or... @... or other characters.

I personally ALWAYS re-write all downloaded skins to have ONLY LETTERS AND NUMBERS, AND ONLY USING A "_" to separate the words.

 Any other characters might bring in conflicts with other stuff on your pc or game.
I remember a few years back someone mentioning the same thing happening to their
computer game crashing due to skins being named using strange characters not often used.

ALL IL-2 skins should be in BMP format and be NO MORE, or NO LESS than 1,00 MB.
Anything other than this will not work properly and should be deleted from your PC as
soon as possible.
Also advise the skinner to write a proper name on them next time too.
Keep the skin names simple and easy to write with simple letters.

[PDelaney]

Oops...

Sorry - I didn't know that...

I'll rename the bitmaps with a J7W1 instead of a hash and reupload the zip file straight away -

as in "J7W1_302_Kokutai_YoD-106.bmp"

Thankfully I've only posted the download here...

John

[Fusek]

Whats with the $ with some skins? Dont they override the markings or something like that?

[SAS~highlander_262]

The "$" just brings it to the front of the list and for me is just a small sig. Didn't realise it caused this so I won't be doing it in future. Thanks for the heads up

[SAS~Malone]

good catch there, Mark. i wasn't even aware of this issue....
wow, now how many reinstalls have i done because of this, without knowing what it was.....geeeez. thanks for the headsup. maybe this should be stickied here in the skins section...

[Phas3e]

by rights a $ means the aircraft wont have in game markings applied, its ment to be for the 'aces' aircraft but I find it handy for my own personal skins.

It causes no issues

[Knochenlutscher]

Good point to pin that topic, as truely I was amongst those bastards to put such characters in my Skinnames.
I apologize for the trouble it may caused to many people, me including, ??? (thousands?).
Stone, tar and feather me, I'm guilty. Cut my tongue, pick my eyes.

Rework of the crippled files is on the way, this will be stickied in the next weeks, as I had trouble with the bright Plugin, a crash jamming my pc, what makes it necessary to rework all my ever produced skins. Will take care to point over this topic in the next update and/or release.

[Mr._JustAGuy]

Thanks for the heads-up.  I haven't published any skins (or even finished any... yet), but still, it's good to know what not to put in the filename.

I also found that if a skin has an "accented" character (like "ü") in the filename, IL-2 will skip over that skin. So if you have a skin named, say, "Bf 109 Jürgen" — instead of "Bf 109 Juergen" — the skin won't show up on the a/c.

[greybeard]

I would add a couple of recommendations:

1). Never leave spaces (blanks) in skin name: they cannot be read by DGen!

2). Never use squared brackets []: they are read by DGen as header markers. For instance, "MC200_desert[NM].bmp" generates following error: Error - [Planes] header was expected

Thanks to all skinners!

[Knochenlutscher]

"Bf 109 Jürgen" — is possible

The blank Square Characters point to unused Glyph in Font.
Default IL-2 Font is creating that trouble and most 0815 Free or low bracket Fonts.

Default IL-2 Arial is a stripped off odd Arial version.

I built a self Arial from an ArialUnicode, mine thus displays most weirdo Characters, weighs 1,82mb!