ED, give work to your public mission designers!

ED … give work to your public mission designers.

If you have a strong presence on this forum and the community, you are aware that a common complaint with DCS is not the quality of the simulation or the aircraft availability, but rather the gameplay content itself.

Most of the newcomers will show up, buy a new plane and get few buggy missions with it. Than they would look for some inexistent “start new campaign” button, which was vastly covered in other threads under the Dynamic Campaign subject. The stronger one will stick around, while many will leave after few playing session (I know few of them myself).

Being a big player of Arma 3 myself (like many of you), I can sincerely say that the area of DCS that lack polishing is the mission edition features. If you compare what you could do in let’s say Arma vs DCS, you quickly realize that DCS is rather limited in the area, condemning the DCS mission writer to be limited at placing units to destroy.

ED could, with a very small effort, give the mission designers some feature to see the quality of the missions showing online exploding exponentially.

Here are some that comes to my head:

1. Provide the scripting API to control cameras, which would let the mission designers create movies in their missions to set strong mood in. Clips in mission can make them unforgettable and set a game mood that is far beyond going to an area to boom a unit. It would insert an artistic side to the game, which is non existent as we speak.

2. Provide an API to place labels on the UI while playing, offering different locations, fonts and size. Again this could be used to set mood or provide information to the player in a prettier way than using the blend top right screen string. This could be done for images as well.

3. Provide scripting method to “FadeInFromBlack” and “FadeOutToBlack” to offer scene transitions for movies or scenes.

4. Let the mission designers be able to play more than one sound simultaneously. This limitation kills any chance to get dynamic event playing sounds. As it is, a triggered sound always kill the previous one. I could not believe that mission designer are limited to work with this, while a fix for that is probably REALLY easy to do.

5. Put more civilian presence in the objects. ED could even organize a public contest asking to provide a bundle of 50 civilian’s objects while giving guidelines (cars, trucks, planes, man, women…) and offering 2 free modules to the winner. Then they could include those objects in the next release. One of the strength of DCS is its community and I am sure people would love helping that simulation getting to an ole new level for free.

6. Let the possibility to change the rotation axis of the static object as well as their position. It would let the designers create great scenes for the missions. As it is, you can simply drop an object on the ground and wish for the best. As an example you could create a train crash scene with containers all over the place in all kind of angles piled on each other. The potential for creation would be huge.

7. Fix the “User Download” section on the web page. Anyone who posted there knows that this interface is completely broken. Every time you update your mission/file, you lose all rankings, comments and need to deal with the infamous <\BR> bug. I could not believe how frustrating that bug is when I posted my first mission. People are offering that work for free, please take two hours to fix this thing to make them less miserable.

Those are the first few one that came to my head. You will agree that all those things would not require a major effort at all. But all those things would significantly raise the quality of the mission designed by the player to an ole new level.

Add your ideas, but please stay in the mind of mission editing features only that should require small effort. Asking for a new plane here or a game-play feature would be out of context.

I am a team lead senior developer myself and know that the DCS guys are working like crazy. However, those points pointed out would be categorized as “QUICK AND EASY WIN”. Spending few days polishing that area would have a strong return on investment short term. The quality of the missions would raise dramatically, attracting new players to the arena.

I know that new planes and animated carriers are nice features, but game content polishing is more than required at this point. We need to remember that time invested in this area, will trigger thousands of hours of work invested by the community, which is ...again ... a HUGE return on investment. Let us do something crazy with those nice aircraft :)

+1

I would add:

- simplified Voice Overs method , as for now you have to trigger a flag and create X tasks for every X VOs with the TIME SINCE FLAG condition ...

I have another suggestion if you will... how about providing a stand alone mission/campaign editor for the designers and aspiring designers? Give the mission builders some extra tools.

I understand why it's built in, but providing a stand alone may give you some benefits for collaboration and testing.

I do support the general idea here, if not specifics of your list.

But I think we should be less judging. Using terms like "...is probably REALLY easy to do", "...would not require a major effort at all" and "QUICK AND EASY WIN" presume that they are not working on an old code-base. For what we know the code base could be from the 90's at this point! And as I get the impression that DCS development is mainly driven by engineers, and not marketing. I interpret the sequence of updates as them re-doing/refactoring those old frameworks from the ground up, one big chunk at a time.

So I'd assume that the mission editor will get a big overhaul, at some point, and that they are saving their time until they can do it properly, instead of going in and shoehorning in improvements that will have to be trashed once they do the "Big Overhaul".

At least, this is how I see it to be able to keep my sanity over the years I've been following DCS.

2. Provide an API to place labels on the UI while playing, offering different locations, fonts and size. Again this could be used to set mood or provide information to the player in a prettier way than using the blend top right screen string. This could be done for images as well.

This would be nice.

Btw, while retesting an old demo mission I made last year, I noticed that a new message UI has been added recently (either that or I've simply ignored its existence for years :lol:)

Basically, damage & kill status messages kept coming up (mid-left side of the screen), as I attacked and destroyed ground units.

Perhaps the people at ED are already working on the UI?

Civilian people and objects ?

I think there are years that I ask that to ED ( since the release of the Huey in fact), but until today, absolutly no answer of ED about that.

Civilian people and objects ?

 

I think there are years that I ask that to ED ( since the release of the Huey in fact), but until today, absolutly no answer of ED about that.

Yeah we have good mods out there about that ... but we would like those to be included in the game.

The modders of this community could join together and donate a large bunch of objects to ED for a better game. That would be awesome.

I do support the general idea here, if not specifics of your list.

 

But I think we should be less judging. Using terms like "...is probably REALLY easy to do", "...would not require a major effort at all" and "QUICK AND EASY WIN" presume that they are not working on an old code-base. For what we know the code base could be from the 90's at this point! And as I get the impression that DCS development is mainly driven by engineers, and not marketing. I interpret the sequence of updates as them re-doing/refactoring those old frameworks from the ground up, one big chunk at a time.

 

So I'd assume that the mission editor will get a big overhaul, at some point, and that they are saving their time until they can do it properly, instead of going in and shoehorning in improvements that will have to be trashed once they do the "Big Overhaul".

 

At least, this is how I see it to be able to keep my sanity over the years I've been following DCS.

Ask a Game Dev has an excellent post about this issue:

http://askagamedev.tumblr.com/post/130141223936/how-do-you-tell-the-difference-between-critique

When you boil a critique down to its very core, you really end up with only three parts to it. Practically any critique can be broken down into something like this:

 

 

In my experience, the usefulness of a critique is inversely proportional to the ambiguity of the feature and reason blocks above...

 

You may have noted that I haven’t really mentioned the armchair portion. I almost never need the part marked armchair because it is my job to figure out how to address the issue. The only time that an armchair proposal is really taken into consideration is when it’s from another team member cognizant of the constraints involved.

It's worth reading the full post, I've only excerpted a few lines here, but she explains what sort of aspects are useful for critiques from people who are not members of the dev team, and what aspects of a critique really are not helpful.

+1

 

 

Especially the fourth point regarding playing sound files simultaneously.

They are already able to do this. You can play a radio message broadcast and a sound file at the same time .... but not two sound files. This is a simple script limitation.

I think you guys do not get the point so I guess I was not clear enough. ALL the points listed there are things that they already have, but are not exposed to the scripting API. So exposing code to scripting is not major code like writing a fully blown aircraft. Let's check the points.

1. Provide the scripting API to control cameras, which would let the mission designers create movies in their missions to set strong mood in. Clips in mission can make them unforgettable and set a game mood that is far beyond going to an area to boom a unit. It would insert an artistic side to the game, which is non existent as we speak.

They already have the functionalities attached to keys and it is quite a strong system. They would simply need to wrap it in the LUA API.

2. Provide an API to place labels on the UI while playing, offering different locations, fonts and size. Again this could be used to set mood or provide information to the player in a prettier way than using the blend top right screen string. This could be done for images as well.

This one is a feature indeed.

3. Provide scripting method to “FadeInFromBlack” and “FadeOutToBlack” to offer scene transitions for movies or scenes.

They already have the effect with the G blackout. Need to wrap it in the API.

4. Let the mission designers be able to play more than one sound simultaneously. This limitation kills any chance to get dynamic event playing sounds. As it is, a triggered sound always kill the previous one. I could not believe that mission designer are limited to work with this, while a fix for that is probably REALLY easy to do.

This is a scripting bug for sure, as I said the engine already let us do this if we use radio broadcast.

5. Put more civilian presence in the objects. ED could even organize a public contest asking to provide a bundle of 50 civilian’s objects while giving guidelines (cars, trucks, planes, man, women…) and offering 2 free modules to the winner. Then they could include those objects in the next release. One of the strength of DCS is its community and I am sure people would love helping that simulation getting to an ole new level for free.

Would be done by the community, would simply be integrated by the Dev when the package would be delivered

6. Let the possibility to change the rotation axis of the static object as well as their position. It would let the designers create great scenes for the missions. As it is, you can simply drop an object on the ground and wish for the best. As an example you could create a train crash scene with containers all over the place in all kind of angles piled on each other. The potential for creation would be huge.

All those values are already there, they are simply not exposed in the mission editor.

7. Fix the “User Download” section on the web page. Anyone who posted there knows that this interface is completely broken. Every time you update your mission/file, you lose all rankings, comments and need to deal with the infamous <\BR> bug. I could not believe how frustrating that bug is when I posted my first mission. People are offering that work for free, please take two hours to fix this thing to make them less miserable.

Not in DCS but a web page issue. Cannot take more than half a day to resolve. This is a minor server side issue with handling strings. To this day I am still surprised this was not fixed and haunt the community.

Point being, without a dynamic campaign, those are minor things that would make the quality of the missions offered online to explode in the meantime. There is nothing new here ... just a bit of exposing and polishing. Not new stuff.

Frag, excellent !

+1

Yeah, my bad. I get you now.

Yeah we have good mods out there about that ... but we would like those to be included in the game.

I know mods like the excellent "civilian objects" or the "VPC_Airfield equipment" but for the moment, the first haven't civilian people in it and the second has just military people.

If you know mods having civilian people in it,tell me where please.

I know mods like the excellent "civilian objects" or the "VPC_Airfield equipment" but for the moment, the first haven't civilian people in it and the second has just military people.

 

 

If you know mods having civilian people in it,tell me where please.

Wonder if those guys would donate their object to ED for the good of the community (if both agree for sure).

It would be nice to be able to copy and paste triggers and trigger zones so I can easily move my work from one theater to another without having to redo everything.

Ho another simple one here that had a rough impact on me few times. Beeing able to edit (add/remove/switch) countries from coalitions AFTER the initial "new mission" dialog.

There is a mod doing that (it simply edit an XML file).

7. Fix the “User Download” section on the web page. Anyone who posted there knows that this interface is completely broken. Every time you update your mission/file, you lose all rankings, comments and need to deal with the infamous <\BR> bug. I could not believe how frustrating that bug is when I posted my first mission. People are offering that work for free, please take two hours to fix this thing to make them less miserable.

Also, for the love of god, add sorting on "Most downloads" and "Highest Voted. :) That data is already there on each file!!!

7. Fix the “User Download” section on the web page. Anyone who posted there knows that this interface is completely broken. Every time you update your mission/file, you lose all rankings, comments and need to deal with the infamous <\BR> bug. I could not believe how frustrating that bug is when I posted my first mission. People are offering that work for free, please take two hours to fix this thing to make them less miserable.

I would love to have an in-game interface to search, download, and manage missions/campaigns. It would be great to have this aspect consolidated into one space, the space where game content should reside - in game!

I don't like having to search high and low for content for DCS in a variety of places, all outside of game, looking for compatibility, also having to manage the files. I think having downloadable content that is easily accessible in-game and ever growing would improve the current feeling of DCS having a lack of content and would be an improved way to promote newly created content for designers.

In the Briefing Panel of the mission editor. Let the user select a sound file that would be played during the briefing presentation of the mission (before the user click "Start"). Again, all to add a nice atmosphere to the missions.