DCS Features Wish List

[jj_pt]

I respect the developers decision in not placing a Dynamic Campaign in the game, but what is the meaning of the sentence:

 

(...) and feel that the dynamic campaign technology is not mature enough

 

Are you saying that Falcon 4, EECH and others that I do not remember the name, don't have a developed Dynamic Campaign?

They seemed quite good to me. No mission was exactly the same.

 

Note: I'm not starting a flame war, just trying to understand the statement.

[Nate--IRL--]

I think they mean ED's technology isn't mature enough yet. AFAIK a Dynamic campaign is a long tern goal for ED, but you will not get a real-time campaign ala F4 or EECH in my opinion.

 

Nate

[GGTharos]

Dynamic campaigns are very complex things. They can work within some context, but they are very prone to problems. I believe this is what they meant.

 

In any case, you cannot just slap a DC on top of a game and call it good. The DC itself is but part of a number of technical/software layers that must all work together, and right now DCS is simply not there yet, though it is laying the ground-work.

[GhostDog]

I wouldn't be opposed to some graphical upgrades, but as joey pointed out, those are hollywood gasoline and fireworks explosions. If the graphical design is going to draw inspiration from anything, I'd much prefer it draw on a game like T-72 Balkans on Fire for terrain, or ARMA II for the natural world. In fact, just two basic things would tremendously enhance immersion for me. Particle effects for the smoke from an explosion and rendered grass.

Edited August 12, 2010 by GhostDog

[DaWu]

I rather play the single missions in black shark than the phased campaign.

 

playing 20x the same mission and by failure being thrown back into the previous phase just to play again the same old missions just sucks. plain and simple.

 

ed could skyrocket their sales by introducing a dynamic campaign. and dont tell me about complexity. I am a software developer myself. and though its complex and needs some work its far from impossible.

[GGTharos]

Um, ok ... who said it was impossible?

 

ed could skyrocket their sales by introducing a dynamic campaign. and dont tell me about complexity. I am a software developer myself. and though its complex and needs some work its far from impossible.

[davek1979]

Hi guys and girls..

Are there any girls around ? Honestly ? In this forums. Active users. Girls ? Females ? Eh ? I wonder how many females fly these sims...

[davek1979]

... and rendered grass.

You are not exactly in love with your CPU are you ? :-)

[GhostDog]

T-72 BoF does it by just rendering the grass in the driver's field of view. It doesn't place a particularly heavy load on the CPU. I imagine BS and FC could do something similar by having grass appear only at a certain height and within a certain radius of the aircraft. That would be far better than pixelated ground textures.

[Glowing_Amraam]

The explosion effect of Mav's hitting tanks etc, has been updated, and looks alot better.

 

But i agree, getting better and reworked effects wouldnt hurt the sim.

[EtherealN]

More than you think, but less than I'd wish. :P

 

Ask yourself how most nerds react to females, and you'll understand why many females decide to not let everyone know they are female. Also, how often do you go about telling everyone that you are male? Why would the females do so? I wouldn't be surprised if many regulars here are actually females but since no-one asked them they didn't tell. ;)

 

That said, it is a sad fact that women are very under-represented in this hobby.

[Moa]

> ed could skyrocket their sales by introducing a dynamic campaign. and dont tell me about complexity. I am a software developer myself. and though its complex and needs some work its far from impossible.

 

Not impossible, but very hard to do except in LUA. I've trying to build stats and a dynamic campaign in Java (I want strong typing to catch bugs, good free tools, and to use all the cores of my CPU - LUA is a dog in this regard) but the logs produced by ED are not self-contained enough to do this without a significant amount of extra (and IMHO, unnecessary) work to correlate events in different logs and the mission file. In the end you must modify LockOn itself to achieve this (I just had a big rant about how poorly thought out the DCS/LockOn logs are on the 104th forums where my work will be used for a real-time player stats page).

 

So, not impossible, but made unnecessarily complex by information (or lack thereof) being placed in the logs.

 

Once you can do stats you use that to modify the database of units in theater as the mission progresses. Then you need a mission generator to determine the progress of the war and create the next mission for players. Straightforward (once you're out of the Lua quagmire) but still a large amount of work.

 

The 'campaign' system in LockOn at the moment is a very low fidelity war simulator and very labor intensive (all mission variants must be generated manually - which is exceedingly time consuming). Machine generated campaigns with realistic scenarios are what is needed.

Edited August 12, 2010 by Moa

[sobek]

Being able to create a mission in the aftermath of the preceeding mission would already be a large step in the right direction. It could complement/replace the phased campaign system to a large degree (i don't think todays machines are able to host a mission with all units featured in a campaign being present).

[gazcrowbar]

I too think effects need much reworking, just makes the experience feel like its the actual thing, obviously not HAWKS/Ace combat effects!

Look at the end of this video at the amount of smoke and time that the smoke remains: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Iz5MwPsfyo&feature=related

Edited August 12, 2010 by gazcrowbar

[RichardG]

A good mission generator is just as good as a dynamic campaign. And they'r making one of those.

[Rambler91]

Well, mission generator is a step towards dynamic campaign.. And i think that is better to take things slow and steady, than just to drop unfinished product full of bugs..

Thirdwire (Wings Over...) included the dynamic campaing and ended up in a fiasco.. What ever you do, things are always same..

 

So, my vote goes to the mission generator..

[71st_Mastiff]

I cuncur. Just look at the stuff for IL2 sturmovik recently released new DCG 3.45 v is now available.

 

http://allaircraftsimulations.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=93&sid=5e297deab2f44a52adcaaa524d698592

 

> ed could skyrocket their sales by introducing a dynamic campaign. and dont tell me about complexity. I am a software developer myself. and though its complex and needs some work its far from impossible.

 

Not impossible, but very hard to do except in LUA. I've trying to build stats and a dynamic campaign in Java (I want strong typing to catch bugs, good free tools, and to use all the cores of my CPU - LUA is a dog in this regard) but the logs produced by ED are not self-contained enough to do this without a significant amount of extra (and IMHO, unnecessary) work to correlate events in different logs and the mission file. In the end you must modify LockOn itself to achieve this (I just had a big rant about how poorly thought out the DCS/LockOn logs are on the 104th forums where my work will be used for a real-time player stats page).

 

So, not impossible, but made unnecessarily complex by information (or lack thereof) being placed in the logs.

 

Once you can do stats you use that to modify the database of units in theater as the mission progresses. Then you need a mission generator to determine the progress of the war and create the next mission for players. Straightforward (once you're out of the Lua quagmire) but still a large amount of work.

 

The 'campaign' system in LockOn at the moment is a very low fidelity war simulator and very labor intensive (all mission variants must be generated manually - which is exceedingly time consuming). Machine generated campaigns with realistic scenarios are what is needed.

[Grimes]

There are different aspects of dynamic missions and dynamic campaigns that are still possible with the current DCS mission editor. Is it truely dynamic? Not anywhere close. But dynamic play is achievable through creative implementation. The big issue is at the moment is that each mission is its own entity. If we were able to directly link one mission to another so that data can be shared between the two would go a long way to improving the "dynamics" of things.

 

A proper dynamic campaign would be nice, so would a mission generator that creates "baked" levels based off of statistical data. But we don't really need that stuff until the AI can think on its feet to actually utilize such features. I always think of a dynamic campaign as a glorified and kick ass RTS game. Something that you can get involved in the combat where you are just a pawn. The thing about RTS games is if the AI suck (pathfinding, attacking, or whatever) then its not exactly fun. Think of how much suck if the units in Starcraft could only be given one movement order at the start of the round.

 

In the current system of things I could think of half a dozen features to add to the mission editor that could be used to create a dynamic setting everyones been craving for.

[davek1979]

I too think effects need much reworking, just makes the experience feel like its the actual thing, obviously not HAWKS/Ace combat effects!

Look at the end of this video at the amount of smoke and time that the smoke remains: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Iz5MwPsfyo&feature=related

It's not only the smoke itself rather the dry and dusty terrain and debris pulverized into smithereens by the pressure -> dust in the air. Wouldn't expect this amount of dust in snow-covered northern Europe with high humidity.

And of course, I'd have this effect pretty much switched off, don't want my FPS to suffer for 30 mins before the dust settles. Especially if in multiplayer where everyone is blowing stuff up.

[AndyHill]

It would be a good improvement for campaign creators if there was a comprehensive eventlog created from all the missions. I actually enjoyed the BS campaign more than I thought I would, but unfortunately it doesn't work online.

[EvilBivol-1]

Andy, this is something we've discussed on the forum on a few occasions. It's certainly not ultra-convenient, but a combination of debrief and lua export data per mission should be enough to create a simulated wold-state transfer between missions at least to some degree.

Edited August 13, 2010 by EvilBivol-1

[Cyb0rg]

Are there any girls around ? Honestly ? In this forums. Active users. Girls ? Females ? Eh ? I wonder how many females fly these sims...

LOL, wth!!! Are you looking for date? loooool :D

 

Or a Dynamic campaing? haha!

 

Jeeeeez

Edited August 13, 2010 by Cyb0rg

[CAT_101st]

Wish

 

Is their a way to put wind socks on the air bases??:huh:

Just an idea :thumbup:

[sweinhart3]

LOL, wth!!! Are you looking for date? loooool :D

 

Or a Dynamic campaing? haha!

 

Jeeeeez

 

always lol

[Moa]

Andy, this is something we've discussed on the forum on a few occasions. It's certainly not ultra-convenient, but a combination of debrief and lua export data per mission should be enough to create a simulated wold-state transfer between missions at least to some degree.

 

Hi EvilBivol,

In my earlier post I said the logs were inadequate as they were not self contained. Consider the following log from stallturn, that I've been working hard to make into a real-time stats system (and thence to dynamic campaign):

 

{t=27217.660, type='takeoff', initiatorID=16863745, initiator="Pilot #41", initiator_country=2, place="Batumi", place_id=5000023,},

 

So, we have:

1) time since midnight. Useful so we know daylight conditions, but no reference to absolute time (required for coordinating stats from multiple servers, and correlating events in the network and debrief logs). Would be nice if we had an ISO 8601 timestamp *as well* (and UTC is best).

 

2) initiatorID: some non-deterministic number depending on when you entered the mission. Slightly useful to determine when a player joined an aircraft for a particular sortie (that is, distinguish between uses of "Pilot #41" by different pilots that occupy the aircraft at different times).

 

3) initiator: Pilot #41. Hopefully unique within a mission (I think this is enforced). However, is isn't the useful value, which is a player's callsign, although it is useful if bot stats are tracked (good for simulation statistics where bots fight bots). You can determine the callsign by either modifying LockOn (the net scripts) which means you now must parse the debrief and network logs and correlate entries) or by parsing the complex mission file. Breaks if a mission is altered and then saved with the same name (quite common for small adjustments).

 

4) place="Batumi". Just what is needed. But where is the information about whether Batumi is a friendly or hostile airbase relative to the player? The side of the player is known (by parsing the complex mission file as well as the debrief log) but the side of places can change due to triggers. If a player lands at an enemy airbase they should be considered captured and penalised for giving the enemy a working aircraft. This case can only be determined by modifying the net LUA to place a marker in the debrief log.

 

So, stuff can be fixed, but only by correlating three files (even though by default there is no correlation timestamp common to all) and modifying LockOn scripts. This is not a good situation IMHO.

 

This is only the tip of the iceberg of the problems I've found while parsing the logs. I have a lot more I'm willing to share if you would like to hear.

 

Is this a problem? well, consider a lot of players independently made stats systems for FC1.12 yet there is only a single very simple system in use for FC2 (by RAF I think, which probably counts events as they come in), and there are only very simple ones for BlackShark. My own system adapted from FC1.12 is taking a lot longer solely because of the problems introduced into the logs in DCS. Proper statistics requires being able to correlate multiple events to determine the order things happened in to distinguish between cases - but as I've said, that correlation value is not in the unmodified logs.

 

However, the FC2 logs do have better information than FC1, it just requires parsing the network file, debrief log, and mission and modifying LockOn to try piece the missing information together (even though the debrief log and network log use different time stamps; one relative to midnight, the other to mission start, which can be arbitrarily different).

 

As I said, if you would like a PM stating what could be improved in the logs from an integrators point-of-view please just say the word. Otherwise, "begin with the end in mind" would go a long way - try using the logs yourself to get statistics (without modifying LockOn/DCS in any way since integrators should not be required to do that!) and you'll quickly see what I mean.

Edited August 14, 2010 by Moa