Livery selection

As topic suggests, I'd like an option added to select from available liveries in-game.

An extra option in the Left Alt ' window would be really nice :thumbup:

I knew someone would have brought it up... I'm in with this as well. ME could still limit which were available (if desired)- but generally we all have our favourite skins... even out of the stock selection.

I agree completely. I and some of my squadmates have personalized skins of the default squadrons, and being able to select these in a multiplayer mission without having to design it as a squad mission from the ground up would be great.

The other thing I would like to see (though it would require some coding) is the ability of DCS World to identify a skin as a personalized variant of a base skin. I would implement this by requiring a particular unambiguous nomenclature in the livery folder such as <skin name>_|_<callsign>. Then if the players callsign (single player logbook or multiplayer callsign) matches one of the livery callsign entries of the skin selected for that mission, then the personalized variant of skin is enabled by default. Everybody who has that personalized skin in their livery (i.e. squadmates) would see the skin, and those who don't have the personalized skin will see the base skin.

Along the same lines with a personalized variant (though more convenient than critical), having the engine search the base skin livery folder when the texture is set to "true" in description.lua would allow a single set of textures in the livery without having to either duplicate textures or put them all into one of the "path" folders.

How hard is it to do that kind of coding for a person who knows what they're about?

I've been thinking of a variety of solutions- from having "slots" for our regulars set aside with their desired skin setup... Mostly this would be limited to the stock supply. This could be supplemented with their particular desired (TAD) ID as the last two digits of the nose number. (We've been talking about that in another thread over in SimHQ).

But if these could be linked by default as you're saying... it's a lot less work in the ME! I don't have ANY clue how it would be done so I'm assuming if I REALLY want to do it right now I'll be limited to setting the client slots up as I've mentioned.

Additionally, the thought was to compile a group of liveries from the regulars into one folder that other regulars could load so that the custom skins would all be visible to those with the files installed.

Just thinking out loud- hoping someone has a better idea.

How hard is it to do that kind of coding for a person who knows what they're about?

I could easily do a Visual Basic routine that splits a filename into separate variables, so long as there is a unique separator, which is where _|_ is useful (since this combination is unlikely to be used in any standard naming convention). If there's a trick to it, it would be parsing the mission for the selected skins (which is done anyway), parsing the individual livery folders for the applicable skin entries with _|_ (compare the prefix with the selected skin, and then for each matching prefix, collect the suffix), and then assigning the results to an array to compare with clients/players (slightly more challenging, but still essentially a string compare with a do or for/next loop).

I've been thinking of a variety of solutions- from having "slots" for our regulars set aside with their desired skin setup... Mostly this would be limited to the stock supply. This could be supplemented with their particular desired (TAD) ID as the last two digits of the nose number. (We've been talking about that in another thread over in SimHQ).

 

But if these could be linked by default as you're saying... it's a lot less work in the ME! I don't have ANY clue how it would be done so I'm assuming if I REALLY want to do it right now I'll be limited to setting the client slots up as I've mentioned.

I tried to do this on a force on force mission I was playing with, but it becomes so unwieldy when you have limited parking spots at a base. The other factor is that if you use the group not in trigger zone trigger to spawn an AI plane if a client doesn't join, then setting personalized slots aside makes for absolutely hellish trigger logic (assuming you have more personalized slots than are intended to actually fly the mission).

The other factor is that if you use the group not in trigger zone trigger to spawn an AI plane if a client doesn't join, then setting personalized slots aside makes for absolutely hellish trigger logic (assuming you have more personalized slots than are intended to actually fly the mission).

Yeah, very good point. All the more reason why it would be nice if the player could just select his own and the setting was exported through the server (somehow) and distributed to the individual clients.

This hasn't been an option in ANY DCS platforms I don't think- maybe I'm wrong... perhaps it's a code limitation or just not a priority. It'd be nice to find out which-

Have a player Icon/Avatar... that is automatically placed on Aircraft, as a Icon would be less bandwidth intensive then trying transmit a new large BMP everytime someone connects.

Good point- so how do we do that smart guy? (Get that implemented)

;)

Heck, at this point I'm not even worried about transmitting textures, especially with skins coming in at 40Mb a pop. That's why my thoughts were that if the client already has the personalized skin (i.e. every virtual squadmate should have every other pilot's skin) it will show up, but somebody who doesn't have the personalized skin sees the default non-personalized version of that skin. If they don't have the basic skin at all, then just use the existing routine to select another skin.

As topic suggests, I'd like an option added to select from available liveries in-game.

 

An extra option in the Left Alt ' window would be really nice :thumbup:

This sir, is a good idea. It would also allow squadrons to function more effectively in game as well as create a distinctive look.