cfrag

Yes. We all hope

It's a callback, as I arranged with @Special K. Since it's nothing that has an open API, there is no documentation.

Oh, I think the concept is relevant all right. I fly them, they are fantastic modules, and I personally love the 'steam gauges' over glass. Trainers simply aren't popular in DCS because outside of enthusiasts, they have no purpose. Most people want to blow stuff up, and trainers are boring compared to fighters; directly training on a fighter poses no downsides in a game. Also, trainers - when used as trainers - always require two people: a trainer and a student, i.e. it is a multiplayer session. The DCS population is some 90% single-player, and anyone who has arranged an occasional MP DCS session with a new player knows how user-hostile, unintuitive and plain bad the MP UX for that game is. A definite turn-off. So, you arrange a meeting with a friend to teach you some flying skills, and you synchronize your quality time, maybe 2 hours. That can be fun; however, it is often not a stellar experience, and if your instructor doesn't know their stuff, or their syllabus conflicts with your own playing expectations, or the (prepared) mission doesn't work, it is going to be a crap experience. So I assert (without proof) that some 9 times out of 10, trainers are a great concept, and they only translate to a fine experience for that last 10 percent. So, yeah, I own them all and love them. And I'm very, very alone in my group. Trying to combat a G3 or G4 plane in a trainer is absurd, even if you go up against a neophyte, so on most servers, they don't even have slots. So - great concept, very little purpose, and still fun (to me).

ED entirely do know that they are selling a game: Since ED also sell a commercial, military version (to defence forces around the world) of DCS, this should not come as a surprise. That software isn't a game, and the difference is easy to see: you get paid for operating it. But I think I know what you mean: there are people who believe DCS to be a more 'serious' game than others, and for those who do believe that they are more 'seriously playing a game' than others, selling a trainer aircraft may be a winning proposal to those people. For entertainment DCS is just fine, and can indeed be anything to anybody. Trainers will only interest a small subset, and I think of them as edge cases (even though I own all, love them, and fly them). In my group, I'm the only one flying them, the odd one out. And I do not regard myself as a realism-obsessed rivet-counter. I'm just odd .

Version 20250506 (workaround for show-stopping DCS bug, fog, some QoL) Changes in detail - hardening against multiple DCS bugs - work-around against show-stopping DCS bug - scribe update (better time tracking) - code base update - fog, fog menu And, whatever you do, DO NOT USE DCS' "SAVE MISSION" FEATURE. THAT WILL FUBAR THIS MISSION.

One big fly in the ointment is that trainer aircraft do not translate to computer games, and there is no real need, nor overwhelming desire. Trainer aircraft are something for enthusiasts like me (I own each and every trainer aircraft in DCS, love them all). No average player wants to sit through boring lessons, performaing 2 minute turns. They want to blow stuff up, and fly the mighty fighters of Maverick et al, not a dinky trainer that can barely fight. I've tried with some friends, even springing for the trainer aircraft. Result: they never fly the trainer even though it was free (to them), and they learned flying with the (much cheaper) FC Eagle. There are no downsides in games to start with the real deal. Trainers simply aren't "sexy" enough. So even if ED invested the required funds (significant investment), I think it will be a dud. What I would like to see is if ED invested in tech that allows two people to fly the same plane (provided they both own it), so an expert can sit with a tyro, and talk them through or even set up the plane and they then can hand off to each other. But an actual trainer? With apologies for the cheap pun: won't fly.

I'm not sure what you mean by Dynamic Spawns. Dynamic PLAYER spawns, or the units that are spawned by spawnZones or cloners? When it comes to player spawns, that is all DCS's domain and can'f be controlled by DML. Cloners and Spawn Zones provide mission designers with methods to control spawn names. Spawn Zones use a simple 'baseName' attribute and append a unique count. Cloners provide an advanced nameScheme attribute that supports wildcards and more options than you can shake an alphabet at. Both (spawner and cloner naming) should be described in the docs.

I strongly suspect that these are not related. The bug that is discussed in that thread is that DCS.getMissionName in single-player erroneously returns the name "tempMission" instead of the correct mission file name. It does not mean that DCS is accessing a temp folder, just that the name of the mission is incorrect. That bug does not implicate any locations on your storage.

Version 2025050 (removes show-stopping DCS bug, adds more quality of life features) Changes in detail: - hardening against show-stopping DCS bug - better smoke handling for CSAR - small cosmetic upgrades to all helicopters - map shows cities slightly better - fog control And, whatever you do, DO NOT USE DCS' "SAVE MISSION" FEATURE. THAT WILL FUBAR THIS MISSION.

Some more detail: it seems that this bug affects single player, while at least ad-hoc mp seems to work (not exhaustively tested).

Version 1.75 - MANDATORY UPDATE, works around show-stopping DCS bug Another DCS release, another bad (show-stopping) bug to work around. v1.75 Changes • worked around a show-stopping DCS bug in persistence • improvements to CSAR mission • slight improvements to reaper drones • better airfield logic integration • PlayerScore integration with SpecialK's server mods • Airdrop ability for helo troops And, whatever you do, DO NOT USE DCS' "SAVE MISSION" FEATURE. THAT WILL FUBAR THIS MISSION.

Well, at least here I can help: DML's bank hasn't officially opened yet - that module is still experimental and hasn't yet received an UI part

Unfortunately, DCS itself isn't compatible with the "Save Mission" feature. Meaning: any mission that you save using that feature is so broken, that you can't really continue it. To me, that feature appears as a low-effort attempt to shoehorn something onto DCS that was never designed with save & continue. To me it also seems evident, that very little, if any engineering has gone into this. Should ED continue with the present-day architecture of this feature it won't ever become a "Save & Continue" feature that we are hoping for. All we will have is a (very) cheap & dirty solution for a non-existing problem. So is Expansion compatible with "Save Mission"? No. Currently DCS does not meet the requirements for such a feature. I'm thinking about bringing Expansion to other maps, yes. The stunning deterioration of quality in DCS's core gives me pause, though, and I'm currently scaling back my efforts.

Until DCS offers commands to units, it's always single-player groups, yes.

Well, I can always take a look at the miz - if you send me a (mods stripped) version of the miz.

Just to be sure that you are not as stupid as I was a few weeks ago when I encountered something similar, please try the following - remove the action that loads scribe Create a new DO SCRIPT action, and paste the scribe source inside I accidentally pasted another module twice (to make it worse, I managed to do it across different actions). Maybe that is the issue?

Version 20250502 - DCS Bug fixes, minor cosmetic updates This update works around a show-stopping bug introduced with the past DCS release. And, whatever you do, DO NOT USE DCS' "SAVE MISSION" FEATURE. THAT WILL FUBAR THIS MISSION. Changes in Detail: - hardening against many show-stopping DCS bugs - small optical enhancements

Version 20250502 - DCS Bug fixes, minor cosmetic updates This update works around a show-stopping bug introduced with the past DCS release. And, whatever you do, DO NOT USE DCS' "SAVE MISSION" FEATURE. THAT WILL FUBAR THIS MISSION. Changes in Detail: - code hardening against DCS bugs (a lot!) - smoke zones upgrade - fireCtrl, airTank - minor scenery alignment - minor optical tweaks (Hips) - persistence DCS show-stopping bug hardening

Ah. Thank you for the additional information. Please try the following: look for, and delete the folder "tempMission (data)" in your Missions/ folder. Restart the Mission. Does it work now? If so, remember that you now (until ED fix the bug that causes this) must supply a saveDir and saveFileName attribute with some nice names in the persistenceConfig zone.

I'm having difficulties re-producing the issue. Can I trouble you to do the following: download the demo mission from DML (updated for current DML), see attached Run as SP, go to communication->Other and choose the option to spawn the CSAR via flag 100. The CSAR mission should spawn. Do the same in MP. Is there any difference for you? Note that - unless you configured DCS differently - when you run local server, the mission starts paused, so in order to be able to spawn the CSAR, you must un-pause the mission first. Do SP and MP give different results on your DCS? They seem to work the same on my DCS (which may mean nothing ) demo - CSAR of Georgia.miz

Thank you. Can you elaborate what "working" means? Put differently: what does "does not work in MP" mean specifically? Can you describe a situation in detail as it happens correctly in SP, and how that happens incorrectly (and how that seems incorrect) in MP?

Up until recently, invoking DCS.getMissionName() would return the name of the mission currently running. Now it ALWAYS returns the same constant 'tempMission' Simply run this script in any mission -- say my mission name local mn = net.dostring_in("gui", "return DCS.getMissionName()") trigger.action.outText("Hi, my mission name is <" .. mn .. ">", 30) it now ALWAYS returns "tempMission", which is wrong This breaks a lot of functionality, especially for missions that need to know their name (e.g. any mission that wants to use some kind of homegrown persistance). Dear @Flappie, may I enlist your help in directing this to the attention of someone who can help? Thank you, -ch Oh, I've attached a mission to reproduce the issue, as described above say my name.miz

CRAP!!!! It seems that the kind (if not, as it seems, very talented) people at ED have f*(%ed up the Mission Scripting Environment with the last release. Yeah, as a result it has taken down DML's persistence. The only workaround at this point in time is to use both saveDir and saveFileName in your persistenceConfig, else it will always save (and overwrite) to this stupid "tempMission" folder/file. saveDir A folder (allocated if it doesn’t exist) inside serverDir where persistence will save the mission data into a separate file. You can use this to pool multiple missions’ data into the same folder. Defaults to “<mission name> (Data)” (see note below) <-- NO LONGER WORKS, MUST BE SET IMPORTANT NOTE If you completely omit persistence’s config zone, it reverts to simplified save mode, and defaults saveDir to “” (empty string), saving the mission’s data file directly into the serverDir. saveFileName The name for the data (plain text in JSON format, can be edited with any text editor) file inside saveDir. Defaults to “<mission name> Data.txt” <-- NO LONGER WORKS, MUST BE SET Thank you @Recluse for alerting me to this. And WFT ED????? Yes all missions that use DML's persistence now need an overhaul. This includes all my missions (Expansion, all Angels, and 20+ others that I have published). So, which bunch of clowns at ED thought it a good idea the screw with the internals so that DCS.getMissionName( ) now always returns "tempMission()", and which band of jokers did not regression test this before releasing it to production? Franky, you know that I work in the industry, and where I work people are getting fired for less. I can take a lot amateurism from a game company, but I think you should draw the line somewhere before it reaches the clownishly absurd. Does DCS Mission Creation really have to be such a clown show?

How did you notice that? In other words, how did you set up csarManager, what did it do in SP (single-player) that it did not do in multi-player? I'm sure that we can get to the bottom of this quickly. As a general rule, DML does not differentiate between SP and MP, and works the same for both.

Why do you think they can't?