I see a lot of people wondering how to make Staged Missions work offline. This is especially true for people using the current, latest/greatest version of Aces High.
It's true that things have changed a bit, and if a mission has been written and compiled for an older version of Aces High, you will need to modify the way you install it, and you will probably need to take some extra steps to get it configured for best use with the latest Aces High version.
I want to help.
I've made a YouTube video recording, showing EXACTLY how I found, downloaded, installed, configured, and flew my "PacMix01" mission using Aces High version 2.31.3 (the current version at the time of this writing in September of 2013).
Here's the link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPvnYIQGWKMThat video lasts 20 minutes. The first 10 minutes show EXACTLY what I did to get the mission working, and the last 10 minutes record the mission itself, with my voice-over narration pointing out things beginners might want to know.
I hope this helps beginners.
Note that this video shows ONLY WHAT WORKED FOR ME, and ONLY FOR THIS SPECIFIC MISSION. It's oriented toward people that do not yet have a subscription to Aces High, and who are therefore isolated from other ways to download and use an offline mission resource. If you want to try this with my mission, I think it will work for you, but you may need to adapt a bit (for example, you may have stored your Aces High files in a different location of your filesystem).
If you want to try this with some other mission, the pattern may be quite different. I've found that older missions, compiled for prior versions of Aces High, may or may not work. In general, missions compiled more recently are more likely to work and will exhibit fewer frustrations. Furthermore, missions compiled for older versions of Aces High generally do not include the extra 3 files that may be necessary in order to preconfigure field ownership and available aircraft.
If you watch the video to the end on a Windows-based PC, you will see that I've added some YouTube "Annotations" at the end, with direct links to the various resources within my main website that are referenced. I can add more annotations if necessary,at any point in the video, and I might do so if I learn ways to make this video more useful to more people in more situations. Please let me know your observations, as that input will help me annotate for the community.
