cfrag

Well, there are many directions to go , and I think we all know that no matter which direction ED take, there will be detractors. To me it is becoming increasingly apparent that a lack of sustained, steady income is eroding the base product - which happens to be the free product. Coincidence? I don't think so, others do. To add my own 2 cents to the heap of unrequested advice: I'd suggest a split approach to start the migration: offer a free DCS for anyone interested to get them hooked. And a 'pro' version, with subscription that enables additional features like Multiplay with more than 4 people, has "save and resume" for missions, and other amenities that slowly trickle down to the free version over time, but are available to 'pro' first. Will that make everyone happy? Hell no. But given the choice of keeping a great game in the future (and pay a subscription fee), or see DCS become more and more obsolete, I will choose the to me more expensive route. One thing is certain: I will continue to play great flight sims in the future. I'm hoping it will be DCS. It's current trajectory sadly is (to me) discouraging.

There is a Unit.getDrawArgumentValue() method on the unit tree that might do what you want. Be advised that all "X-" conditions in mission trigger rules are intended for single-player missions, the values hare hard to come by, there is no guarantee that getDrawArgument is indeed the same X:Cockpit Parameter, and that he mission scripting environment hates you. The rest should be simple

IMHO astutely put. In episode "Birnham Wood" of "West Wing", President Bartlet is trying to broker peace in the Middle East. When negotiations break down over how to handle Jerusalem, Bartlet and his team try a different approach: try and resolve all other, smaller, issues first, and see what happens. He is warned that the issue of Jerusalem must be resolved, or no tangible progress can be achieved, no matter what other successes they may have. Everything else is irrelevant. When it comes to Dynamic Campaigns, a real "Save Game" feature (more precisely: "continue from save") is ED's "Jerusalem", the elephant in the room. Unless ED manage to implement a real save/continue game (not a kinda-sorta save game that could be called that name if you squint real hard, and it semantically puts bytes to storage), anything else in relation to a dynamic campaign is irrelevant. Why? Because without a real save/continue feature (that saves and continues units mid-tasks, with damage and some expended stores, can set time of day, weather, and allows scripts to continue where they left off), no real dynamic campaign is possible. We already have a precursor DC without a real save game that creates new missions based on the results of the current one. That may technically be a dynamic mission, yes, but it is not what the majority expect, and it's not what server owners need to host real, developing dynamic missions. Servers must restart every 8-10 hours to account for DCS's many memory leaks, so not being able to save and continue-from-save a mission would be worthless. And that is how I view the status of dynamic campaigns: DCS's ability to deliver "continue from save". Since this feature can (and should) be delivered independently from a dynamic campaign, we know where on the road to DC we are. Currently we are nowhere. Once we have continue-from-save, I believe ED is in a position to deliver DC within 5 years. Until then, I feel that ED is needlessly embarrassing themselves when they talk about DC without addressing the elephant in the room. Let's be hopeful - "next year in Jerusalem"?

My apologies, I should have been more clear. While the Kiowa's L2MUM video feed shows a potential unit that the drone might be targeting, it is currently unable to show the target that the drone is actually engaging/lasing. It might, by random coincidence, show the correct one. The reason is as simple as incredible, and not the fault of the kind people at PolyChop: there is no way to know the target that a unit Is currently engaging. Yes, the mission scripting environment, after nearly two decades, still does not allow a script to ask a unit what target it is engaging. Some people might think that in a combat environment, that would be relevant information. ED, it seems, are not among those. So the kind folk at Polychop made an educated guess to show off the incredibly cool L2MUM feature: get the nearest enemy group, and then get the first unit in the group. The image that you see on-screen seems to be a simulated camera view from the drone's position to that unit. Should a script then tell the drone to lase another target, the simulated camera has no way to know about that fact, and will continue to show the target that it initially chose - even if that target (or even entire group) was destroyed. So, I'm hoping that ED (not PolyChop) provide the means to know which unit a unit is targeting (more precisely: allow scripts to control and query which unit to lase), and I'm quite certain that a few days later, L2MUM will be updated to correctly synch the video feed with the unit that the drone is currently engaging.

Ah. Indeed. That may be something that I need to look into. What is happening is this: A convoy's units are not persisted, but they may have caused the owned zone to switch side. When the game reloads, the owned zones revert to their original owners (meaning: I'll need to check if they persist their owner). Since convoy units disappear on reload (not persisted), the owned zone may forget and never correct the fact that it was owned by a different faction. Will have to check. If you have a small mission that can demonstrate the issue, so much the better.

It gets even worse should you land a helicopter on a street: even though vehicles do drive through ground units, they smash up a helicopter. So if you are creating a rescue scenario, turn off road traffic, or designate the LZ far away from roads.

Let's not get ahead of ourselves... For a set-back there has to be progress first. I think it would be good to remember that no-one outside ED has seen any progress for a decade or so. All we had were some pretty pictures that allegedly show something-something-mumble campaign, and some breathless commentary form internal sources on how well the developers were progressing... 3-4 years ago. Then again, I heard some positive rumors: ED allegedly managed to hire G. R. R. Martin to write the narrative for the first dynamic campaign, and he'll get to it right after he finishes his current engagement writing that "Thrones" thing.

This is possibly the longest-standing wish of all mission designers, posted over a decade ago, and yet to be fulfilled. So, sadly, not at this time. No. There are no time-of-day related triggers in expansion I'm sure that you have discovered this already, but you may gain additional respect for the Kiowa's abilities when you order a drone over your objective, and carry some laser-homing missiles... How I wish that we could synch the Kiowa's TV to the drone's feed, it could jump the Kiowa to the forefront of all current DCS helos for me.

Version 20241208 - Fog by the menu! Added DCS's new fog capabilities to the mission, so you can try your hand at flying in the soup.

Update 29241207 - Fog by the menu! You now can set the level of fog from the communications->other menu. Want to try your hand at landing the tiger at 'pea soup' visibility? Now you can! Enjoy, -ch

Indeed. Remember that this is DCS, with DCS-style API and UX. Visibility is set in meters, BUT has to be more than 100. If you set visibility to 0, this means full visibility, no fog. No sense? Your call. I just call it terminally bad design.

To not beat about the bush - is it possible that you are using DML's QuickRef to base your mission designs on, and when running into issues you sometimes forget to check the main manual and the demo missions that are (pretty much unless the last DCS release screwed up) known to work? So, do DML's persistence demos work on your DCS installation? It's entirely possible that DCS's last release has thrown a spanner into the mix, or that something else is amiss that I need to fix. I'm happy to do so, and I would love some good examples that I can follow up on.

Oh, come on! Nobody who ejected that way ever complained!

Agreed. The problem is that we no longer live in an environment that is conducive to that kind of business. I would prefer to see ED/DCS to continue, rather than die on the hill of old-school business principles. I saw more than one company go down for "standing their ground on principles" rather than going with the flow, and it'd be sad if DCS goes the way of the Dodo because it can't adapt. We already see the detrimental effect that the current situation has on DCS: the core is increasingly hollowed out, we get increasingly immature modules that can't make it to the finish line within years of them going 'EA', and it takes longer and longer for ED to complete features promised almost a decade ago. I won't really be 'happy' to pay subs, but I'd prefer paying a sub over losing DCS altogether. Looking at DCS core's current state certainly makes me feel uneasy: too many band-aids, too many unfinished or missing features, too many really, really badly implemented functions (look at ME's multi-object selection for a rude awakening of what ED today deem "production worthy"), and a steady flow of unfinished new products. IMHO, without a paradigm shift, DCS is heading for a cliff in the foreseeable future. I'm hoping that will change, that ED re-orients, and I am perfectly willing to pay a price for that.

Agreed. I wish that ED would sidestep the issue entirely and get onto a steady income trajectory. Of course I purchased the "thin" Tiger update, and it again made me think about alternate, more steady sources of income for ED, like having free DCS like it is now, and "Pro" DCS on a subscription (that steadily funds core dev) that has everything DCS has now, plus more, like Vulkan, fog, a much better UX, etc, and the ability host missions (or similar). The point not being what exactly "Pro" would constitute, but providing a steady income for ED (and Nick's own comments be damned) to finance improvements to the aging core. I'd be happy to pay this 9 USD each month if we could get that same volume of change / improvement each month (I'm already spending some 100 each month to host two public servers, so I deem 10% of that a sage investment into the foundation). Who knowns, it may also enable ED to engage someone who actually knows UX design -- the past three additions to DCS (MP faction selection, cargo management and multi-object select) are so abysmally amateurish and bad that it breaks my heart just looking at them.

Bah, you guys are sissies. Sitting in the sledge, getting cozy heat from the jet exhaust! We here in Switzerland use a propeller plane! NO heating for Santa, just like God had intended it.

saveNotification When set to true, each time that the mission is persisted, a text notification is sent to all players. Default is true (notify players when saving) Doesn't that work for you? This usually indicates that something in your DCS setup is non-standard and you may have to use "root", "serverDir" and "saveDir". Please also remember that the data is saved into a directory that has the same name as the mission itself, not at the mission level.

Version 2.10 - Fog Control - 20241206 This update provides support for DCS's new Fog system. Use Communication -> Other to get to the Fog control to get any fog density and remove fog altoghether. Enjoy, -ch

I may have been joking about the Typhoon and Fulda map - but today is St. Niklaus day, and here is something for you DML friends to enjoy: the "fogger" fog module in working, but not completely finished version, along with a simple demo that allows you to change the current fog via the communications->Other menu. Happy Nikolaus! foggy bottoms.miz fogger.lua

Version 2.3.8 - Feature Update - 20241205 You all know the conundrum: there is this one-time event when a player - any player - does this one thing, and this should start something important in your mission. This is especially important if you are designing multiplayer missions that do not pause and wait for players to join, but happily run on the server. DML now provides "Usher", a module that is designed to handle many first-time PLAYER-events -- like player "XYZ" connects for the first time (similar to "Valet", except that Usher only reacts to the very first time), the first player enters a specific unit, the first player joins a particular faction, or the first player to enter a specific aircraft type (e.g. an A-10A) In addition to being able to send out some very crafty special commands, Usher also comes with some (to me at least) QoL abilities to generate dynamic text output with advanced support for wildcards. Other changes include a massive internal overhaul of MX to correct for an unannounced "feature" in DCS that screws with objects when they are killed, that patches into coalition.addGroup() - a significant change that luckily remains completely under the hood. Also, yesterday saw the release of a new DCS version with new Fog abilities, and I'm now looking into providing simple DML support to create fog at the drop of a hat. Below is a sneak peak of that ability, showing the upcoming Typhoon landing in heavy fog at Bamberg airfield (unannounced Fulda Gap map): All changes in detail: Main Usher (new) Usher me to my plane demo (new) Various updates Quick Ref Small updates Demos Usher me to my plane demo (new) Modules - cfxMX 3.0.0 - patch coalition.addGroup to be able to rececord all spawns - read all objects and reference them by name - new reference functions to backtrace statics to their original dynamics - convoy 1.3.0 - start & arrive messages only when wpupdates are enabled - new "listOwn" attribute - dcsCommon 3.1.4 - better wildcard support - fireFX 2.1.0 - rnd support for fire size - better support for persistence - playerScore 5.0.0 - completely rewrote logic for detecting kill - supports penalties for neutral kills - reconMode 2.4.0 - improved SALT, naval units - no optimization for naval checks - new optimization for groups that have been spotted - bearing and distance from pilot added - usher 1.0.0 - initial release - valet 1.1.2 - new wildcards <u>, <p> and <g> to harmonize with usher

This appears to be a common, known intermittend DCS multiplayer bug. I've reported it a couple of months ago, and there is some hope left that ED eventually get around to fixing it. Maybe this is something to report in the Kiowa forums, I have no affiliation with Polychop other than that I own their models and like the Kiowa.

Huh. The good: there now is a kinda-sorta multiple object select in ME. From an UX perspective it’s an almost comically inept implementation. if it wasn’t so sad, that is. Seems to me that interface design and DCS simply don’t mix.

Huh. Now, don't I look like a shave-tail louie. Thank you, @Flappie --indeed, I didn't notice 'player' instead of client! Cheers, -ch

I recently noticed the following odd behavior when spawning player aircraft that seems different from jet versus warbirds, that can be easily re-produced. Create a miz, add a client each for a frogfoot Su-25T and a TF-51 cold from ground (see enclosed ref miz) Start the miz. Enter Frogfoot. Note no other plane in sight Re-slot to the '51 Note that the Frogfoot is gone (expected behavior) Re-slot from the 51 to the Frogfoot. Note that the '51 briefly disappears (expected) From the Frogfoot's cockpit, note that an AI TF-51 has spawned hot, and starts taxiing. (UNEXPECTED WORRISOME BEHAVIOR) Why is that? Is this new behavior? I usually don't create miz with warbirds, so this is the first time that I have noticed this. It is very odd and (to me) disconcerting behavior when de-spawned player aircraft exhibit fundamentally different behavior and (much worse) client aircraft re-spawn as AI aircraft. Or am I simply doing something wrong? My thanks to anyone who can shed some light into this ( @Flappie - you seem to be quite knowledgeable in DCS's deep waters?) strange spawns.miz

Indeed. People "doing their own research", thinking they are "special", and that they are privy to some "secret" knowledge that is somehow suppressed by "orthodoxy", suppressed by "them". You know: Anti-Vaxxers, Flat-Earthers, Q, Sov-Cits, you name it. That's why I prefer to withdraw when these people show up in a thread.