I know this probably doesn't belong on the general forum, but no one will see it otherwise. This game has been broken for years and no one could get it working, it seems. It has been pulled off the store until the gog wizards can fix it.

I've stumbled on a solution, which could probably be refined a lot, but it works well. I posted this on the game's forum as well. Feel free to delete this if it doesn't belong here but I think at least a few people will appreciate if a game on their shelf is no longer useless.


I've just managed to make the game work. Tested on a few missions, appears to work perfectly. This is what I did.

1) I downloaded the open source program DXWND from https://sourceforge.net/projects/dxwnd/

2) Make sure you run DXWnd as an administrator

3) Go to file -> Import, open the "Exports" folder in your DXWnd directory and open the F-16 Agressor file

4) Right click on the F-16 Agressor icon now in the screen and choose modify. Rename the file and set "Path" and "Launch" to the F18.exe file in your game folder

5) Untick "Run in window" and tick "fullscreen only"

6) Click on "Try..."

It's messy but it works.

I'd really like to know if it works for anyone else too.

Thanks for the tutorial, PMIK!

While I can't confirm anything about F/A18E Super Hornet, I can confirm that DXWND has helped me with several old DirectX games.

Failing that, there's also D3DWindower which performs a similar function.

Still doesn't work? Download PCem and install your own 1990s copy of Windows to the emulator and the game will think it's native!

Alternately, you could try your hand at Linux/Wine. The community is helpful, as long as you are willing and patient. It might even look/work better!

Great news, thanks!! I'll test this later!
+1

Curious...

I'm suddenly reminded of pulling up and playing Fury 3, and getting Windows 95 to run on DosBox... That was fun... Though no hardware acceleration...

No luck for me, I'm afraid. The game goes full-screen and then immediately throws the "F18.exe has stopped working" error. Windows 7 64bit.

Rats! I was hoping it would be an easy fix for everyone. I am running windows 10 64bit and I have F18.exe running in "Win98/ME" compatibility mode. Has anyone else got it running through DXWND? PCem looks great! Thanks for the link! I was thinking only recently that there must be something like that around. I still have my Win 95 and XP CDs lying around but haven't been able to install them on anything. I tried XP mode through the windows virtual machine but it still uses my "real" hardware and there are too many incompatibilities

I'll have to try PCem when I get the chance.

Yes, there are many Windows games that are working great on Linux but not on Windows anymore. Linux is a great platform!

necro

Confirming - the game runs without problems on Arch Linux!