DML - Mission Creation Toolbox [no Lua required]

[jeni1976]

22 часа назад, DD_Friar сказал:

@Gunslinger52 and @cfrag

I to thought this a cool idea.

To assist I created the attached mission which has a stab at doing what I think you wanted.

The mission starts with vehicles waiting at the end of the runway. You can see that the Humvee is not drive-able at the moment.

We then fly in and land and swap to the tactical commander and how presto, we can now jump in the Humvee and drive away.

I have attached the mission as well for you to have a look at.

Hope this helps.

Cheers

Friar

Fly-Drive.miz 173.62 \u043a\u0411 · 1 загрузка

It turns out cool, it would be interesting to make it so that you can choose one plane at the beginning of the mission, and then when you finish the task and land on the runway, you can choose (board) another plane?

This is what it will look like if, in a single mission, one plane, on assignment, works through the air to destroy enemy aircraft, and the second one will work only on the ground, destroying enemy fortifications, and it will be in the parking lot waiting for me to complete the mission

Edited October 29, 2024 by jeni1976

[DD_Friar]

@jeni1976

You need to have the module called NoGap / NoGapGUI

This places a dummy plane as a place holder for player spawnable planes. Its great for making airfields look populated rather than just the "live" players who have spawned in.

Obviously with eye candy like this you need to think of the processing overheads if having lots and lots of player slots.

[DD_Friar]

@cfrag

Module: Convoy

Question: There does not appear to be the option for convoyTriggerMethod on this module?. Is that correct? Just spawn?

Thanks, this is a neat little unit for adding more randomness and I like the tracking element.

Another question, I assume it is linked to twn module, but I have started a convoy from within the location of Hatay airfield on the Syria map and I get a notification saying that the convoy has started "SE of Akincila" and not Hatay airfield. I guess an airfield is not a town in the database?

null

[cfrag]

11 minutes ago, DD_Friar said:

There does not appear to be the option for convoyTriggerMethod on this module?

Yes - It's trivial to add for me to add if the need arises. 

12 minutes ago, DD_Friar said:

I guess an airfield is not a town in the database?

Yes.

[cfrag]

1 hour ago, Chad Vader said:

Can you let me know though if the behaviour im seeing is intended, in that, receiver zone does not fire its output flat when the cargo is deleted form the zone, only when the cargo touches the ground.

That module is very old, one of the first DML modules when DML wasn't really DML. I'll have a look to see when the output is banged. If autoRemove is enabled, it may be possible that the output fires erroneously, but I have never tested for that. Do you have reason to assume that this is happening?

[DD_Friar]

40 minutes ago, cfrag said:

Yes - It's trivial to add for me to add if the need arises. 

Please may I ask if when you are not doing such updates you may consider adding it. I want to start convoys based on towns being captured so was going to use the ownedby# and set a convoyTriggerMethod value of =2 (blue) of an ownedZone to trigger the convoy.

[cfrag]

1 hour ago, DD_Friar said:

consider adding it.

Will do, certainly. I should be able to have it added by tomorrow, you can then test it  

 

[Chad Vader]

1 hour ago, cfrag said:

That module is very old, one of the first DML modules when DML wasn't really DML. I'll have a look to see when the output is banged. If autoRemove is enabled, it may be possible that the output fires erroneously, but I have never tested for that. Do you have reason to assume that this is happening?

Yes ive been testing my mission and when i slingload cargo in the Huey or the Hook then put it down in my receive cargo zone (even with autoRemove enabled) the cargo is never removed and output flag is banged when the cargo touches the ground.  SO when my mission is played sometimes helos who are struggling to put the cargo down bang the flag multiple times as they bounce the cargo on the floor.

[Gunslinger52]

On 10/28/2024 at 9:38 PM, cfrag said:

That is a really cool idea, but unfortunately current DCS has no provisions to support that. Entering ground units is part of "Combined Arms", a module that (to me) evokes the semblance of being created by an unwilling, sullen, low-ability temp. I deem it being of shoddy quality; it breaks any number of established DCS UX, and it is unworthy of DCS. Worst, it uses non-standard and undocumented API for entering and leaving units.

At this point in time, controlling how and if a player can enter a ground unit cannot be accomplished with scripts. 

 

Hi cfrag,

ahhrr that's dissappointing to hear.  Thanks for that.  Pity.  I'll have to think of something else.

Have a good one.

'52

[Gunslinger52]

On 10/28/2024 at 10:43 PM, DD_Friar said:

Salute @Gunslinger52

Perhaps we need to think a little more "outside the box" due to the constraints that cfrag mentions.

I have not tried this, and it is a "knee-jerk" response, but what about turning the logic around a little.

Are you wanting the same player to jump from the helicopter to the vehicle, or is it another player doing the flying and another doing the driving?

If it is the first, when the player leaves the helicopter to switch it will of course disappear. If you wanted it to remain for eye candy you may have to look at spawning a static but that could lead to the static coming in before the player has left, more thoughts on that later.

I assume you know where the helicopter will be landing?

If which case use the module LZ (landing zone). This has the ability to bang a flag when a plane lands (or departs).

When the helicopter lands in the zone it bangs a flag on the landed! parameter "helicopterlanded" for example.

That could trigger a parameter in the cloneZone module on the clone? parameter  "helicopterlanded" that then spawns the vehicle of your choice.

If you want the vehicle to be sitting there as the helicopter comes in you could have a static (meaning that no one could drive it) and then use wiper or something to clear the space for the new spawn in the same position. Have a go at using the "declutter" parameter set to true on the cloner, that may work.

There may be a "blink" as one disappears and another arrives but that is a s good as it is going to get I think. The player will then go to the F10 map, click on the now drivable vehicle and select drive, so long as they have "Combined Arms" of course. Although the mission can be configured for pilots to control ground units, only players who own the Combined Arm module can actually occupy them.

Hope this helps.

regards

DD_Friar

 

 

Gruezi @DD_Friar

thanks for the great ideas!  My wish was for another player to do the flying. 

So player 1 in a ground vehicle (which is leading a group of similar vehicles (the rest of which are driven by AI for now), gets killed. 

The AI ground vehicle group stays where they are.  Player 1 has to spawn into a non-pilot position in a friendly helicopter. 

When that helicopter is on the ground next to one of the stopped AI friendly ground vehicles, he then can press F10, and jump into the lead vehicle, and off he drives once again. 

His friends chopper flys away. 

Using your ideas, could (when player 1 dies) that spawn a static object.  Then, when the helo lands next to that new static object, the static object is wiped, and a fresh new drivable vehicle is spawned in, for player 1 to jump into?

Thanks again.

'52

On 10/29/2024 at 7:49 AM, DD_Friar said:

@Gunslinger52 and @cfrag

I to thought this a cool idea.

To assist I created the attached mission which has a stab at doing what I think you wanted.

The mission starts with vehicles waiting at the end of the runway. You can see that the Humvee is not drive-able at the moment.

We then fly in and land and swap to the tactical commander and how presto, we can now jump in the Humvee and drive away.

I have attached the mission as well for you to have a look at.

Hope this helps.

Cheers

Friar

Fly-Drive.miz 173.62 kB · 1 download

Wonderful!  (LoL- I read your other post 1st)

Thank you so much.  Geez, there is so much to learn, but it is good fun when it works

Have a good one

'52

Edited October 30, 2024 by Gunslinger52

[cfrag]

14 hours ago, DD_Friar said:

you may consider adding it.

Please see below. Docs:

convoyMethod	DML method that is sent to the output. Defaults to “inc”
convoyTriggerMethod	DML method that triggers the input. Defaults to “change”

 

convoy.lua

[Karuptsock]

17 hours ago, cfrag said:

Now that's an interesting (for me, annoying for you I guess  ) issue that I'd like to get to the bottom of. Before I go too deep into what may be happening to you, please allow me to see hat I understand a hazard a guess that you might check up on:

Here's what I can see / interpret:

You are using CivAir in your mission to create civilian flights between airfields (and perhaps also inbound/outbound zones.

Using civAirConfig, you want 30 flights at max to be active at the same time (maxFlight = 30). At mission start, this will create 15 flights in-air between source and destinations, and spawn 15 further ones, every 25 seconds, randomly picking from the available source airfields.

So what are your source airfields? Well, unless you define a single source, all airfields on the map serve as source, else only the zones that you have designated as a civAir source with a civAir attribute. 

As far as I can see, you only have a single airfield marked civAir, and it also has a value "exclude". That's an edge case I did not forsee: a single defined airfield but that airfield should be excluded.  

Can you add at least two more civAir zones to the map to some other airfields, to allow planes to travel between them, and perhaps lower the number of maxFlights in civAirConfig to 4 to test out if civAir is doing it's thing? After that, ramp up the numbers, but 30 flights with no place to go seems strange to me. Then again, I have only the context of what you kindly shared in your post to go by, so probably there's more to the mission.  

Hello cfrag,

Just got home and will attach files.

Even a clean map , add modules , 3x zones and the bad airport still plane stacks.

Not sure what im missing.

Syria-Base-DML-Civ-Test.miz

[cfrag]

4 hours ago, Karuptsock said:

Not sure what im missing.

I looked at the mission, and HO BOY did I get a nasty surprise. 

I discovered a slight edge case issue that your mission forces and that was easy for me to fix.

And then there was a big surprise: the last update of the Syria map BREAKS CARDINAL DCS RULES:

• it has 120+ airfields that all have the same name (a fundamental no-no in scripting, the map should not even load in DCS nor Mission Editor): "H". No objects in a mission may ever have the same name at the same time. In Syria, there are now more than 120 such items of strategic value that infract on one of DCS's most fundamental principles. This will cause a lot of strance behavior and abends.
• These "H" airfields aren't airfields: they have no runways. They are helicopter bases, and identify as airbase - another violation of DCS ground rules. This will cause bugs with scripts that look at runways or assume an airfield has an runway.

So what happens is that civAir randomly picks an airbase. There's an 80% likelihood that it's one of the "H". Accessing that airfield will yield a nonsense airfield, and trying to get a parking position for a civ flight to start from results in one of the parking slots that you have seen, where the planes then start stacking up. 

I'm patching civAir now to work with Syria, and I'm very unhappy that ED's QC even allowed this to pass to us customers. This will break a lot of scripts that deal with airfields (and since warehouses are linked to airfields, most scripts that deal with airfields by name). This is a TRULY BAD DCS bug. I'm at a loss to explain  how ED have let something of this magnitude slip by - that's troubling to me.

Thank you for alerting me to this.

Edited October 30, 2024 by cfrag

[CidTheViking]

Hello fellow DML users,

I had a question about the cool down function on spawners. I am trying to setup a training range where units should respawn 5 mins after destruction. Does the cool down work in this way or will the cool down only happen at the time of spawn.

Thank you.

[cfrag]

33 minutes ago, CidTheViking said:

I had a question about the cool down function on spawners. I am trying to setup a training range where units should respawn 5 mins after destruction. Does the cool down work in this way or will the cool down only happen at the time of spawn.

I think a simple approach would be to insert a delayFlag module between a cloner's "empty!" output and "clone?" input and set the timeDelay to 300 (5*60 seconds). 

[DD_Friar]

@CidTheViking - cooldown is mainly used for spawners that are requestable (e.g spawning troops to load onto a helicopter). It sets a minimum time gap between requests to stop the troops piling up.

[DD_Friar]

@cfrag

Module: Convoy

Tested and working.

Many thanks as always for your quick response.

Cheers and kind regards

Friar

[CidTheViking]

2 hours ago, cfrag said:

I think a simple approach would be to insert a delayFlag module between a cloner's "empty!" output and "clone?" input and set the timeDelay to 300 (5*60 seconds). 

Thank you, I will use this method.

[jeni1976]

Hello, Guys! Can you please tell me if it is possible to disable or reduce the size of the pop-up window for loading DML modules during the start of a mission so that the modules work and the information is not displayed on the screen, working as if secretly?
Otherwise, every time the trigger (script) is triggered during the mission, it constantly displays information on the screen, interfering with the view in the cockpit and distracting from the process of completing the mission.
Screenshot marked in green:

Edited October 31, 2024 by jeni1976

[cfrag]

3 hours ago, jeni1976 said:

possible to disable or reduce the size of the pop-up window for loading DML modules during the start of a mission so that the modules work and the information is not displayed on the screen, working as if secretly?

Please revisit 4.1.6 "That text in the upper right corner" of the manual to get some step for step instructions.

3 hours ago, jeni1976 said:

it constantly displays information on the screen

If modules constantly display information, there are two possibilities: I goofed up and forgot to remove some diagnostic code. In that case, please provide me with a screenshot so I can try and correct it. Otherwise, that module's (or a zone under its control) 'verbose' attribute is enabled. In that case, set that attribute to 'no' or remove it entirely.

[DD_Friar]

@jeni1976

Another trick I use is at the end of the list of loading modules add a "message to all" from the standard dcs actions.

Leave it as a blank message but make sure you tick the "clearview" box. This clears the screen of all previous messages.

When my modules load you do not even see them at all.

Edited October 31, 2024 by DD_Friar

[jeni1976]

5 минут назад, DD_Friar сказал:

@jeni1976

Another trick I use is at the end of the list of loading modules add a "message to all" from the standard dcs actions.

Leave it as a blank message but make sure you tick the "clearview" box. This clears the screen of all previous messages.

When my modules load you do not even see them at all.

 

Thanks for the advice, I think this is what I need

[cfrag]

On 10/30/2024 at 11:25 AM, Karuptsock said:

Not sure what im missing.

Here's the updated cicAir that works with buggy Syria.

And, wow, Ben Gurion! 

Note that CivAir is currently still a bit chatty, make sure to disable verbosity. The next DML release will probably have a verbally slightly more restrained version. The text you see now is to help in diagnosing other odd stuff Syria/ECS might throw at us.

 

civAir.lua

[Chad Vader]

On 10/29/2024 at 9:04 PM, Chad Vader said:

Yes ive been testing my mission and when i slingload cargo in the Huey or the Hook then put it down in my receive cargo zone (even with autoRemove enabled) the cargo is never removed and output flag is banged when the cargo touches the ground.  SO when my mission is played sometimes helos who are struggling to put the cargo down bang the flag multiple times as they bounce the cargo on the floor.

Any thoughts?

[cfrag]

2 hours ago, Chad Vader said:

SO when my mission is played sometimes helos who are struggling to put the cargo down bang the flag multiple times as they bounce the cargo on the floor.

Isn't that expected behavior (unless autoRemove is set)? The receive would register each time that the cargo is on the ground and lifted again, provided that this happens less often than once per second and ups is set to 1. If autoRemove is active, the cargo should disappear (and no longer be able to land inside the receiver).

And I think I understand what you may be getting at: once put on the ground, the cargo should be removed from cargoManager's inventory. Currently, it's not set up that way so that you can pick up cargos that you have lost, and transfer cargo after you have dropped it into a receiver.  What is your intended use case? Maybe I can figure out something for that.