[HOUNDS] CptTrips

OK. You changed my mind. ;o) Didn't really have a desire to run a Discord, but I'd be crazy to pass up the free voice channels. A lot of people might prefer that over SRS. So now we have both. <S> https://discord.gg/Gz4BqnG7

Kallio, out of curiosity, were you on MP and using external view occasionally when you had your crash? <S>

I stand corrected. I thought I had seen that, but now I remember showing a base could be captured with a static orca whale object.

FYI Also, density sometimes depends on overlap or how much of the zone hangs off into the water. If half my zone hangs off the water on a coast, the defensive units have to be packed into the remaining usable zone area over land. So that will be a higher density per square mile than on a zone without overlaps and not hanging over water. I also don't place defensive units in the overlap between two zones because that causes undesired behavior with the zone alert system. So if there is a big overlap, the units have to fit in what's left. <S>

Hey Machinegun, Sorry for the late reply. I've been held hostage in customer meetings all day. Thanks for trying the server. I was checking the log last night and saw your activity. I’m ashamed at how giddy I was. Look! Two people are actually giving my server a try! Lol. First, did you run into any bugs? How was your performance? Yeah, I can see it would be difficult with just two people. Those zone were meant to start out heavily defended and be whittled down until you can reach the owning FARP\Field. I was assuming there would be more than just two people. At least I didn’t sprinkle manpads around like crazy. ;o) There actually is some layering of defenses. There will be sparser density the further to the zone edge. Close to the zone edge is mostly recon level vehicles. Closer to the center lean more toward tanks and heavier stuff. But yeah, I was expecting it to take a team of people and several sorties. That said in the end I will probably have to start culling defensive units for performance once we get more than 3 people. Lol. There are like 2000 units on the map not counting players, though only half of those are live at any one time. But I’d prefer the driver to be performance. Trim as need to achieve desired performance at hoped for populations but no more. But things might change as we go forward. Code isn’t chiseled in stone for a reason. If you can piggy back on one of the air strikes it will help you. The air strike will try and attack everything within the SupplyCaptureZone. If you can cut a path through the rest you can sneak in a team of commandos. Yeah, calling them commandos is stupid. I just giggle every time I say that word. Indulge me. ;o) It’s hard to design something that works equally well for 2 players as it does for 40. Bring more friends. LoL. Honestly I’m not sure I want to start a discord. I’m not a people person. The thought of having to run a discord and deal with toxic whack-jobs and endless purse-fights just gives me the sweats. I really just want to write code and fly whirlybirds. Besides, not much need yet with just 3 of us. You can always just DM me. ;o) Let me ponder it more. Glad you had fun!

That's interesting stuff. It has to be armed ground units, right? I don't think trucks will capture. I could be wrong.

Added Black Shark III.

Fellow pilots, I’ve written a helo-centric MP server that I need to get some testing on to work out all the initial bugs. It should be considered Alpha software. There will be bugs and some features not yet complete, but it needs to be exercised from this point. Gameplay is basic Conquest\Capture the Flag. With CTLD and CSAR. Huey, Apache, Gazelle, Hind, Mighty-8 Black Shark (Kiowa and Chinook when added.) There are AI ground units. There is AI air-strikes that will be hitting ground targets only. The first map is Cyprus. Server name: Helo-Ops (Alpha) IP address: 207.32.218.164 Port: 10308 SRS: 207.32.218.164:5002 You should review the users guide: http://helo-ops.net/UsersGuide Thanks in advance for your help. You can ping me here if you have questions. Regards, [16AGR] CptTrips

I am using Pikey's MPSG on a current project. Works like a champ for what I need and was zero effort to setup. If all you need is to prevent slots spawning as bases they don't own, MPSG couldn't be easier. $0.02.

Well only the mission designed can turn off external views, but I was suggesting just not using them. I can't prove it, but I was suspecting it was kicking off a different kind of texture caching once you start jumping around in external view.

Just as a test, if you aren't ready to buy more mem, you might try not going to external views and see if you have less of a problem. I was testing something on a MP server I am working on and I was using a lot of external view and memory was going crazy. Since I disabled external view, I hadn't seen that occur. That's not proof of anything, but might be worth a try.

Out of curiosity, were you on a server that allowed external views? Has you been using external views?

I would love that. There are a lot of roadblocks to WWII though. The plane-set has a lot of gaps. The AI asset pack has a lot of gaps. You not only have to buy a WWII map, but you must also buy the asset pack for an additional cost. That made sense at one point, but at this point the WWII asset should have been folded into the base game or should come with any WWII map or plane purchase . Having to buy airplanes and WWII maps is reasonable. I really think WWII would be a productive genre for ED. They dominate modern and helo. WWII is still green fields for them. The airplanes lack electronics so should be easier to develop. There should be plenty of documentation available with little chance of security concerns unlike modern stuff. ED dominates modern and helo. Surly that market reaching saturation. They DO NOT yet dominate WWII market so there are a lot of players filling that need elsewhere. Why not lure those to your ecosystem . A still untapped market for ED. Provide a better WWII product and you have an army of ready-made customers. Once in your ecosystem for WWII, who knows what else they might decide to buy on a seasonal sale? $0.02.

OK. Glad I am not crazy. I'm trying to write a long lived MP server that reboots every 12 hours. I have setup zones and RemoveJunk timers. In testing on a local Dedicated Server I have been getting periodic crashes. It appeared to be RemoveJunk was the prime suspect. Sometimes it crashed in 2 hours, sometimes 10 hours. I'm putting some more logging it to prove it better. But the intermittent nature makes it impossible to make a track of the event and not much of anything in the log it just stops. In my Windows Event View I did see the event for the crash last night (Server was only running 2 hours at time of crash). Faulting application name: DCS.exe, version: 2.8.7.42718, time stamp: 0x64c27fbc Faulting module name: ntdll.dll, version: 10.0.22621.1928, time stamp: 0x7dd9e350 Exception code: 0xc0000374 Fault offset: 0x000000000010c1f9 Faulting process id: 0x0xBB4 Faulting application start time: 0x0x1D9CB3D6FB94F85 Faulting application path: C:\Program Files\Eagle Dynamics\DCS World OpenBeta Server\bin\DCS.exe Faulting module path: C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\ntdll.dll Report Id: c9bc7c60-875d-4c96-9417-9c5037ef3632 Faulting package full name: Faulting package-relative application ID: I think it happened in SP testing on that mission as well. That's a pity. I might have to disable that for now. Which has it's own separate risks. I assume this RemoveJunk crashing problem has been reported? Sigh. [EDIT] I believe this was a crash in SP while testing earlier that day: Faulting application name: DCS.exe, version: 2.8.7.42718, time stamp: 0x64c28218 Faulting module name: ntdll.dll, version: 10.0.22621.1928, time stamp: 0x7dd9e350 Exception code: 0xc0000374 Fault offset: 0x000000000010c1f9 Faulting process id: 0x0x3028 Faulting application start time: 0x0x1D9CAFB7C1856BD Faulting application path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\DCSWorld\bin-mt\DCS.exe Faulting module path: C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\ntdll.dll Report Id: bae23700-83cb-4519-8bc3-b30eca35d6cf Faulting package full name: Faulting package-relative application ID:

Yeah. I had the same reaction at first. That type of text would naturally suggest something disabled based on most Windows apps.

Non-default added action are always grey aren't they?

I ran into a glitch on a project I am working on. It appears that on Dedicated Server running 2.8.7.42718 I won’t be able to see FARP icons on the first slot I pick. Client(MT)\server ver 2.8.7.42718 Map option “Allies Only”, no external views. In this test miz I have set up 3 FARPs for each coalition to test different initial conditions. Circles are drawn around them for reference. Top FARPS are initially Neutral but a placed armed ground vehicle captures them right off. Middle FARPS were set to coalition in ME. Bottom FARPS start neutral but then an armed ground vehicle moves into their zone and captures them. Run this miz in Dedicated Server. Spawn in as blue helo. Check F10 map. I expected to see my blue FARPS and not see the red FARPS. What I see is none of my FARP icons are visible. No amount of waiting fixes it. No amount of switching back and forth from cockpit to F10 map fixes it. *Note: I am not seeing my blue FARP objects nor the FARP icons. If I then switch to red helo and check F10 map, the red FARP icons are showing as expected. *Note: I am now seeing my red FARP objects and the FARP icons on top. Not seeing the blue FARP objects. (Intended?) If I then switch to back to blue helo and check F10 map, the blue FARP icons are now showing as expected. *Note: I am now seeing my blue FARP objects and the FARP icons on top, but now I also see the red FARP objects but not the red FARP icon. (Intended?) It appears the FARP objects\icons are not rendered properly on the first slot spawned. Not sure if the visible enemy FARP objects in the last picture are correct. I did not test MP server through Client as I am only interested in the Dedicated Server behavior. *Note: I didn’t attack log or track because I believe it is easily reproducible so you should try it yourself. If you can’t repro then I will go create those. (See attached miz.) FARPTest.miz

Then don't enable it on your server.

Also consider how much more approachable this makes MP for new customers. I find it pretty intimidating going on MP servers. Not so much because I worry about getting killed. I worry about screwing up and team killing due to noobness. I don't want to piss experience players off and I don't want to get banned and have to go crawling on hands and knees to beg forgiveness. If I died from killshooter I'd smack my forehead and respawn at least knowing no harm to others occurred and I didn't make enemies. I played another online MP game for over 20 years (off and on) that had this exact feature. It is tried and true. I assure you it works quite well. And lowering the intimidation factor might increase DCS MP numbers which quite shockingly lag total units sold. And it is optional. So those that prefer the increased power and flexibility of a custom script can go that route and server admins that currently use SLMod and other scripts like yours can continue to do so uninterrupted.

Except that doesn't protect the innocent player from a team kill. That is only half the benefit of what I suggested. SLMod has team kill punishment too. But some people don't want to have to deal with custom 3rd party scripts. And then deal with scripts breaking with new versions. An average player who wants to throw up a server should have some basic griefer protection easily available from the provided interface. They shouldn't have to go look on the internet to find a custom script to do something that probably should be provided built-in and figure out how to load it and update it when new DCS versions break it. I'm not saying this couldn't be accomplished with custom scripts. I'm saying a simpler, easier approach could be provided natively that would probably cover the 90% case.

You've made your point and I disagree. At this point you are just trying to be a troll. I've been meaning to put you and Draconus on Block for a while. This just reminded me. Buh bye.

I doubt it would be that hard. Games from 20 years ago had it. They already track who owns each deployed weapon. They already know who is being hit. They already know which coalition each is on. When a weapon hit occurs, if they are on the on the same coalition, send a damage event back to the initiator, discard the damage to the target. It doesn't even have to be detailed. Just a basic damage level based on type of weapon. It shouldn't be too hard to discard to damage to the target. The code already understands how to make things invulnerable. So it would just be a conditional form of the invulnerable setting. Invulnerable to friendly fire and send the damage message back to the initiator. But I'll let ED decide how difficult that would be. You should too. If it wasn't a potential problem, the people who spent time writing SLMod wouldn't have bothered. But pulling in 3rd party Lua scripts is something not all players want to deal with. And as a server owner, I wouldn't want to have to deal with noobs begging to be unbanned and having to review track files to determine if it is justified. This solution would just be much simpler. Easy. UI based. No third party Lua scripting necessary. Hands-off.

That should be up to the server owner to decide if they want that. If they want that, they can decline to enable the setting. It isn't being forced on them. SLmod already allows setting of rules to punish team kills for server owners who wish to do so. This would just be a simpler UI based way of doing that without resorting to 3rd party Lua scripts. And I maintain that killshooter is probably a better solution than banning for noobs.

And there will be cases where I don't want to ban a noob, but I don't want them continually shooting friendlies even if by accident. Killshooter would solve that problem instantly. The innocent players would be instantly protected and the noob should figure it out eventually when they die each time. But they are not banned, so they can improve from there. Save the server admin from having to adjudicate bans and decide if players deserve to be unbanned. It would just make everything simpler. And it would be optional to the server. If you don't like it, don't enable it.

There is UI to kick\ban a player from the player list on the server UI. But I don't see any way to set rules. A server owner can not necessarily spend every second of the day babysitting their server. Should a griefer be free to ruin a server for hours? Since this would be a voluntary setting, I really don't see what your problem is.