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Liveries open for all factions


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I would like to add my input and request on an issue regarding liveries being locked to specific factions, and whether or not this is possible to address the presented issue in a better way.

 

 

Overview (The way I understand):

Currently, ED- and user-created liveries have varying entries in the .lua files inside the livery folder to specify which country the livery "belongs" to. Some are defined in the .lua with a country specific livery entry - for example "countries = {"USA", "NOR"}", (From a downloaded RNoAF F-5E3 livery), while other entries in the .lua file specify the abbreviations to all factions in the game (a long list of nations). In some .lua files the entry is absent. It is the artist choice to add or to not include this entry.

 

Specifying the country in the entry exclude the possibility of choosing the livery in the ME if you should choose to fly the plane but with a different country than specified in the .lua. Removing the entry enables the livery to all factions in game.

 

 

The issue:

With the addition of the Combined Joint Task Force Blue/Red factions, liveries with a country specific .lua entry are ignored and only default liveries are available to choose from and/or the ones without a country-specific entry in the .lua file. 

 

In other words; if you want to use a specific livery under the CJTF factions, you have to edit the .lua file and remove the "country=_" entry.

 

 

Why is this really an issue?:

Say you are editing a mission (ie. DCS Liberation Campaign generator, or any other "massive" user-created mission). You want to have a varied selection of planes so you choose the CJTF Blue and CJTF Red as the involved factions. I want to represent a NATO coalition campaign against a combined red faction. I want the participating nations of the CJTF to show [through liveries] USA, Great Britain, Sweden, Netherlands, Ukraine and Norway. The opposing force should be for example Russia, China and Syria. I have downloaded textures for each country, but they all have the "country=_" entry in the livery .lua-file. To be able to edit them in the mission editor, I would first have to edit each .lua file in the respective livery folder, then select them individually in the ME. This is time consuming and at times frustrating when the number of individual liveries are many.

 

For example, if I want to represent the Syrian air force in the mission, ie. different Su's, mig's, IL's, An's and Mi's. Textures would have to be downloaded since there's a lack of Syrian liveries created by ED. I will then have to edit the .lua file of each aircraft since the artist of the livery have included the country entry: countries = {"SYR", "RUS"}, meaning you can only choose the livery if you fly the module as Syrian or Russian factions, not CJTF Red.

 

 

My request/wish is therefore two parted:

1. For Eagle Dynamics: Is it possible to design a new way to add liveries to the game and to choose them ingame to avoid making the user edit each individual .lua-file to make them work with a specific faction? Also, what is the reason for the entry? It seems to me that the entry is restrictive in a way that is unproportioned to whatever the user want to use the livery for.

 

-If it's for information about which country the livery belongs to, the user will most likely know this from before.

-If it's to restrict what liveries should be available in a mission, the mission editor will have this privilege anyway.

-If it's to restrict what liveries should be available to a faction in multiplayer, the livery will not show to other users anyways, unless they have the same livery - which adds the question, is this also a proportionate restriction to enforce all users of downloaded liveries in DCS with the entry in general? Could the entry instead be used as a way for server admins to - on their own terms and wishes - restrict what textures are available in the mission?

 

2. To the livery-creating community: Would it be reasonable to question the addition of the "country=_" entry in the .lua file for the livery you're making? I am struggling to see the pro's of having this enabled, other than information to the user. With the entry disabled you will still be able to find the livery, and you will also know what country it is supposed to belong to (what you want the plane to represent through the livery). Having it enabled restricts the use of the livery to - in my opinion - unreasonable extent, in regards to the work that needs to be done to make it available under the mentioned conditions.

 

Thank you for your time

 

(And I cannot stress enough how much I enjoy flying in DCS!)

 

 

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Okay, so I disagree with a fair amount of this but I agree with some aspects.

 

 

For me, it's a matter of filtering, one of the reasons why countries should exist in the first place, is to have stuff that's specific to that country, including the liveries.

 

Same with having the historical mode, yes I could look stuff up, but it's a lot more convenient if I want to restrict availability based on year.

 

Given that we have countries already (though I would much prefer the 'side' system of CMANO), if stuff isn't specific to them, then doesn't it kinda defeat the point of having them in the first place? You might as well just have BLUFOR, REDFOR and NEUTRAL and leave it at that, who you're flying for is just a matter of the equipment and livery you choose. There is of course the logbook but that's completely separate to mission editing and who you fly for in missions.

 

The other thing is what I guess I'll call 'cleanliness'. 

 

The MiG-21 for instance has a tonne of liveries for a tonne of different countries (probably the most comprehensive set there is, 67 come with it as of DCS 2.7). However, apart from by name, they aren't sorted at all (some do have the country it belongs to included in the livery name, but if it was just sorted in the first place you wouldn't need to do that - IMO it just makes the livery name longer than it needs to be). 

 

It means I have to go through a big list to get to the one I want, it's hardly a showstopper but if I'm going to pick specific countries, I'd rather only have stuff that's available for those countries.

 

For instance, let's say I want to make a Cold War mission, and I want to pretend I'm in Germany. I'd want to have NATO (further broken down to the FRG/West Germany (using Germany as a stand-in), the US, UK, France, the Netherlands, Belgium and Denmark) and the WARPAC (further broken down to the USSR, the GDR/East Germany and maybe the PPR (Polish People's Republic - using Poland as a stand-in).

 

For each of those individual nations, I only want equipment and liveries available to them. If I'm placing a GDR MiG-21bis, I only want liveries appropriate to the GDR, it's just for the sake of convenience - I don't need to scroll through the other 66 other liveries when I'm only after the one.

 

Normally, I'm usually pretty happy to just go into the .luas and rename (some names I change for my own convenience - for American aircraft they often are named after the squadron and have the tail code in parentheses, - I'd much rather include what airbase they're based at because I can see the tailcode directly in the loadout editor, but I might not know what airbase the tailcode refers to) and edit the countries as I see fit, but in the MiG-21s case, they're now compressed and I can't get it to work properly - and for 67 liveries that's going to be a royal pain in the backside. 

 

If I'm making a mission where I want to leave it open, then I'll edit my missions accordingly, in which case I'll either assign all of the countries in a mission so players can choose which one they're after; or I'll use the CJTFs, where is basically up to you what the compose of, and as such yes, all liveries should be available for the CJTFs.

 

It might be better if all liveries had the countries line so that they include the CJTFs.


Edited by Northstar98
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Modules I own: F-14A/B, Mi-24P, AV-8B N/A, AJS 37, F-5E-3, MiG-21bis, F-16CM, F/A-18C, Supercarrier, Mi-8MTV2, UH-1H, Mirage 2000C, FC3, MiG-15bis, Ka-50, A-10C (+ A-10C II), P-47D, P-51D, C-101, Yak-52, WWII Assets, CA, NS430, Hawk.

Terrains I own: South Atlantic, Syria, The Channel, SoH/PG, Marianas.

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Peripherals: VKB Gunfighter Mk.II w. MCG Pro, MFG Crosswind V3 Graphite, Logitech Extreme 3D Pro.

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35 minutes ago, Northstar98 said:

For me, it's a matter of filtering ...

 

+1

 

.. it is much easier to edit a Mission when the liveries are filtered by country. I have even edited the LUA of a lot of my liveries (actually not mine, as they belong to each skin author), to have them their proper countries .. If I add a German Bf-109 then I don't want to see skins for captured or axis allied aircrafts, cluttering the skin list.

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44 minutes ago, Northstar98 said:

Okay, so I disagree with a fair amount of this but I agree with some aspects.

 

For me, it's a matter of filtering, one of the reasons why countries should exist in the first place, is to have stuff that's specific to that country, including the liveries.

 

If stuff isn't specific to countries, then it kinda defeats the point of having it broken down into countries in the first place - you might as well just have BLUFOR, REDFOR and NEUTRAL and leave it at that, who you're flying for is just a matter of the equipment and livery you choose.

 

The other thing is what I guess I'll call 'cleanliness'. 

 

The MiG-21 for instance has a tonne of liveries for a tonne of different countries (probably the most comprehensive set there is). However, apart from by name, they aren't sorted at all (some do have the country it belongs to before hand - which also makes the livery name IMO longer than it needs to be if it were sorted). This means I have to go through a big list to get to the one I want, whereas if I pick a specific country, I'd rather only have stuff that's available for that country.

 

For example, If I explicitly put down the USSR in one of my missions, I only want to see stuff specific to the USSR, be they aircraft, ground units, ships, weapons and liveries. Liveries might not specify that it's a Soviet or a Russian livery, so I'd rather it be filtered, which also saves time.

 

If I'm making a mission where I want to leave it open, then I'll edit my missions accordingly.

 

However, for the CJTFs it doesn't make sense to restrict at all, seeing as it's up to us what  - all of the liveries should be available for it. So it might be better if all liveries had the countries line so that they include the CJTFs.

 

I see what you're saying, I don't disagree. However, my point with the post is to raise a question if it's possible to make the livery-bit of DCS easier to manage. Adding CJTF to all liveries demands all or at least most artist to add that line on their own initiative (which already is very varied and also lacking). It will still also force a lot of work to add the line with already published liveries in the user-files missing this entry. Alternatively you still need to edit all the files and remove the entry, which is time consuming as well. So, the way it is as of now, your stuck with doing the job either way as long as you want to use CJTF factions, which is highly relevant for example with DCS Liberation dynamic campaign generator.

 

So, I do not disagree with your point in the need to separate livery-rich modules into countries, but is there a way to make it easier to manage liveries so that the need for somewhat extensive editing of the .lua files can be avoided/not needed? If not, we place the responsibility to the artists to put in the entry what should be there, and we all know this is not probable to achieve.


Edited by NightstalkerNOR
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1 minute ago, NightstalkerNOR said:

I see what you're saying, I don't disagree. However, my point with the post is to raise a question if it's possible to make the livery-bit of DCS easier to manage. Adding CJTF to all liveries demands all or at least most artist to add that line on their own initiative (which already is very varied and also lacking).

 

I mean, yes. But then isn't the better solution to advise texture artists to set-up their countries appropriately?

 

And it's not just with livery rich modules that aren't sorted it goes for everything - I'd simply much rather have them sorted - I only run into issues where a livery isn't available for the country it's supposed to represent (this has been fixed with 2 modules though - the L-39C had a GDR livery, but it was only available for Germany, same with the Yak-52 but with a USSR DOSAAF livery, which was available for Russia, but not the USSR.

Modules I own: F-14A/B, Mi-24P, AV-8B N/A, AJS 37, F-5E-3, MiG-21bis, F-16CM, F/A-18C, Supercarrier, Mi-8MTV2, UH-1H, Mirage 2000C, FC3, MiG-15bis, Ka-50, A-10C (+ A-10C II), P-47D, P-51D, C-101, Yak-52, WWII Assets, CA, NS430, Hawk.

Terrains I own: South Atlantic, Syria, The Channel, SoH/PG, Marianas.

System:

GIGABYTE B650 AORUS ELITE AX, AMD Ryzen 5 7600, Corsair Vengeance DDR5-5200 32 GB, Western Digital Black SN850X 1 TB (DCS dedicated) & 2 TB NVMe SSDs, Corsair RM850X 850 W, NZXT H7 Flow, MSI G274CV.

Peripherals: VKB Gunfighter Mk.II w. MCG Pro, MFG Crosswind V3 Graphite, Logitech Extreme 3D Pro.

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Maybe a suggestion would be to make all liveries added to DCS available to CJTF factions whatever other values in the "countries=_" there is? 

4 minutes ago, Northstar98 said:

 

I mean, yes. But then isn't the better solution to advise texture artists to set-up their countries appropriately?

 

Indeed, but I don't think this is probable to achieve. Yes, texture artists could be encouraged to add all appropriate inputs, but I believe it would be a utopia to expect this to happen with most artist. But this is one of my "hopes", as mentioned in my original post with request #2.


Edited by NightstalkerNOR
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As a member of the "livery creating community", my answer is that it is not reasonable to ask your #2.

 

the option to add the CJTF countries is already available. the lua simply needs to include "BLUE" or "RED" in the countries line for the respective CJTF.

 

The country filter provides flexibility for varying scenarios (ex. putting different countries into a "coalition"), as well as allowing livery artists to limit say a French squadron to France. Also, some people have 100's of liveries for each airframe. Having them filtered by country makes things much easier than scrolling thru a long list.

 

If you want to change YOUR install, then you can just run a batch edit on all your livery lua's to fit your individual needs (ie. remove the country filter, or add the "RED" or "BLUE" JTF's) - that is the benefit of the country filter in the lua, you can modify it to fit everyone's individual needs.

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7 minutes ago, prccowboy said:

1: As a member of the "livery creating community", my answer is that it is not reasonable to ask your #2.

 

2: the option to add the CJTF countries is already available. the lua simply needs to include "BLUE" or "RED" in the countries line for the respective CJTF.

 

3: The country filter provides flexibility for varying scenarios (ex. putting different countries into a "coalition"), as well as allowing livery artists to limit say a French squadron to France. Also, some people have 100's of liveries for each airframe. Having them filtered by country makes things much easier than scrolling thru a long list.

 

4: If you want to change YOUR install, then you can just run a batch edit on all your livery lua's to fit your individual needs (ie. remove the country filter, or add the "RED" or "BLUE" JTF's) - that is the benefit of the country filter in the lua, you can modify it to fit everyone's individual needs.

Thanks for you input prccowboy. I took the liberty of adding numbers to your quote, so to address them more appropriately.

 

1: I thought so, and I agree. It would not be possible to expect this from the "livery creating community".

 

2: Understand. I was unaware that "Blue" or "Red" could be added. However my point still stands, that this will take a lot of effort from the end user to insert in the already public liveries, and also the coming ones where the artist have not inserted it. I have downloaded 100's of liveries from the user files section of the DCS homepage, but never seen those words in a "countries=" entry.

I also checked most of the liveries included in most of the modules available for DCS. Either the entry contains country specific values, or there's a long list including many different countries. I was unable to find either "blue" or "red" anywhere. This tells me that I have to manually add the words to each livery I want to have available in CJTF. In a large mission with CJTF-factions, with units representing different nations (need for different liveries), the job of making the liveries available is quite extensive.

 

3-4: I agree. The filtering is indeed a very much needed tool, and I too like this option. However, this does not address my question 100%. I am trying to separate CJTF factions blue and red from specific countries.

 

For example, I agree, that if I'm flying a Norwegian faction F-16, but I want to use a US livery for it, I would expect to make an effort myself editing that part in the .lua. I cannot expect you - for instance - to do that for me when you make the livery. It wouldn't make sense, and you most likely would not think of that combo. It would also be terribly unreasonable for me to make such a request. 🙂

 

However, flying for CJTF which utilizes all of the modules but as standard only contain one default livery, I believe the amount of work to make liveries available to CJTF is so extensive that a solution should be looked at by ED, without touching the filtering. For instance, none of the ED-modules, Harrier or F14, to mention some, have liveries with the "blue" and "red" inserted into the countries entry. That means I would have to manually input the "blue"/"red" into each individual .lua file to use inside CJTF.

Why shouldn't the ED-made liveries be available to CJTF? There are quite alot of them, but only one available to CJTF for each module.

 

Is it possible to get the best of two worlds, both filtering of liveries and liveries for CJTF without extensive .lua file editing?

 

Again, maybe a suggestion would be to make all installed liveries for any module available for CJTF factions?

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11 minutes ago, NightstalkerNOR said:

2: Understand. I was unaware that "Blue" or "Red" could be added. However my point still stands, that this will take a lot of effort from the end user to insert in the already public

 

maybe someone here can help you with a regex expression that you can use in Notepad++ to batch edit all your lua's at once (not my expertise)

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