DML - Mission Creation Toolbox [no Lua required]

[cfrag]

34 minutes ago, Recluse said:

the client aircraft are in a group

Until DCS offers commands to units, it's always single-player groups, yes.

[Recluse]

On 5/1/2025 at 10:56 AM, Recluse said:

@cfrag Hate to pile more on your already overflowing plate... but if you have some spare cycles, could you look at Reaper.lua?

I am having very variable results, where it seems that it should be lasing but weapons don't guide.  I know it is possible for them to lose lock, but I don't get that message.

I have locked an AGM-65E onto a spot and it plummets right into the ground.  Likewise I have dropped a GBU-12 and it falls ballistically without guiding.  If I turn on my own laser, they guide fine, so I know the code is right and all the fuzing etc. is good.  Odd thing is sometimes they guide perfectly. Maybe just a case of momentary target loss, but my LST shows a lock on the spot throughout the engagement.

Just following up:

Based on limited testing, (LOL N=1) I believe that my Reaper issues may also have stemmed from using a client that was part of a multi unit group (even though only 1 was active). When I switched to single unit aircraft groups,  the laser targeting seemed to be working better.  My little brain can't quite figure out how this could occur, and I will continue to test....

Edit: Sadly N=2 showed same behavior. Reaper laser sometimes does not guide weapons correctly,

Meanwhile, I have a couple of QOL suggestions for the Reaper module:

- Add a flag or UI item to allow the player to release the Reaper from use once all targets have been destroyed

and/or

- Add a time parameter to allow the mission builder to  give the Reaper finite Playtime, so after (e.g. 30 minutes) the Reaper "departs"

Not having infinite Reaper time would make the bank account more important (if a mission is using that function).

Speaking of the bank, I couldn't seem to find a way to retrieve the current bank balance (other than buying something (pretty much only the Reaper at this point) and seeing the balance.

Edited May 3 by Recluse

[cfrag]

7 hours ago, Recluse said:

Speaking of the bank, I couldn't seem to find a way to retrieve the current bank balance

Well, at least here I can help: DML's bank hasn't officially opened yet  - that module is still experimental and hasn't yet received an UI part

[Nishiyandcs4]

On 5/2/2025 at 12:46 AM, cfrag said:

Ah. Thank you for the additional information. Please try the following: look for, and delete the folder "tempMission (data)" in your Missions/ folder. 

Restart the Mission. Does it work now? If so, remember that you now (until ED fix the bug that causes this) must supply a saveDir and saveFileName attribute with some nice names in the persistenceConfig zone.

 

@cfrag
Ah, I finally found the cause.
My dedicated server also uses Slmod, and I had set saveDir to the DCS default directory..

When I changed saveDir to Slmod, both CSAR & persistence started working properly.

Ofcourse, I also saveDir & saveFileName.

sorry for this fuss, I learned something new from this!

thank you

 

[Recluse]

@cfrag et al.,

Wondering how DCS treats Unit names for Dynamic Spawns (both in the case of Templated spawns and non-templated spawns).

Pondering the possibility to apply moving (clone) zones to Dynamically spawned aircraft e.g. to have a spawnable Escort, or even opposition flight in the vicinity of a particular Player unit at some given time.

Edited May 5 by Recluse

[cfrag]

11 minutes ago, Recluse said:

Unit names for Dynamic Spawns

I'm not sure what you mean by Dynamic Spawns. Dynamic PLAYER spawns, or the units that are spawned by spawnZones or cloners? When it comes to player spawns, that is all DCS's domain and can'f be controlled by DML.

Cloners and Spawn Zones provide mission designers with methods to control spawn names. Spawn Zones use a simple 'baseName' attribute and append a unique count.

Cloners provide an advanced nameScheme attribute that supports wildcards and more options than you can shake an alphabet at. Both (spawner and cloner naming) should be described in the docs.

 

Edited May 5 by cfrag

[Recluse]

8 minutes ago, cfrag said:

 When it comes to player spawns, that is all DCS's domain and can'f be controlled by DML.

 

 

 

Yep, that is what I meant, and the answer I expected

Similar to the Demo mission on BFM using moving clone zones linked to a Player Unit, but wondering if it was in any way possible to link to a Dynamically spawned (DCS Multiplayer Dynamic Spawn) player when, of course, you didn't have a UNIT NAME for the linkedUnit parameter.

 

Edited May 5 by Recluse

[Penfold-88]

@cfrag is there any documentation on how the link to @Special K bot works 

[cfrag]

18 minutes ago, Penfold-88 said:

is there any documentation on how the link to @Special K bot works 

It's a callback, as I arranged with @Special K. Since it's nothing that has an open API, there is no documentation.

[Penfold-88]

so it just works based on the scores set in the configs of dml triggers out the box so to speak

[cfrag]

9 minutes ago, Penfold-88 said:

so it just works based on the scores set in the configs of dml triggers out the box so to speak

Yes. We all hope  

[Penfold-88]

me to the squad will kill me if i wipe there scores from the bot i only want to use dml scores for the csar atm and maybe buildings 

[cfrag]

1 hour ago, Penfold-88 said:

me to the squad will kill me

Watch out for the pitchforks and torches. That's how my squad tells me that they aren't amused when I accidentally zero their scores.

[cfrag]

Version 2.4.9 - 20250508 - Update 

Another DCS patch, another hot mess. Somehow, the kind people at ED managed to FU a longstanding method that chugged along nicely for a decade, and broke with the last release. As I spent time to conduct more testing, it seems to mostly affect single-player, with at least local hosted missions being in the clear, and dedicated server hopefully also being unaffected (I'm still running tests on that, but testing dedicated server can be tricky).
Bug Description: DCS currently cannot correctly ascertain the name of the mission that is running. The bug makes DCS always return "tempMission" as the name of the running mission. I've reported this bug to ED.
Upshot: the bug affects at least the 'persistence' module in single-player, and if you are using persistence with SP currently, you MUST use the "saveDir" and "saveFileName" attributes. If you do not, persistence will not fail in SP, but it will silently write all information into a folder named "tempMission (data)" and inside that foldeer a file called "tempMission Data.txt", potentially overwriting another mission's data that wrote to this folder because it, too, believes that its name is "tempMission".

I've spent a lot of time updating some of my more popular missions on UserFiles to work around the bug, yet, judging from my inbox, a lot of damage is already done (meaning: some save games got overwritten). The updated version help avoid this happening in the future, and may allow some servers to revert to an older version that was saved before the bug hit.

Other than that, there was very little time to work on DML. All changes:

Changes
Documentation
    Manual 
        - general persistence note and how persistence relates to "save state"
        
    QuickRef
    
Demos
    - CSAR of Georgia: update 
    
Modules
    - airtank 1.0.3 
        - new 'chatty' attribute 
        
    - CSAR Manager 4.5.2
        - remove smoke when mission times out 
        
    - FARP Zones 2.4.1 
        - better zone redaw on start-up 
    
    - Reaper 1.3.2 
        - corrected typo in code (bug) 
        
    - SSBClient 5.0.1
        - reduced verbosity 
    
    - valet 2.0.0 
        - new 'groundonly' attribute 
        - migration to dmlZones 
 

Enjoy,

-ch

Edited May 8 by cfrag

[Nishiyandcs4]

hello @cfrag,
Last week, I posted that CSAR could not be excutedvia Flag when using Persistence, and reported that it worked fine after I reconfigured Persistence, but after a few days, I checked and found that it was not actuallyworking.
It works with 'autoTrigger', but does not work when changing Flag with trigger.

I think there is some code missing after 'then' on line 1486 in the Lua code of the CSAR Manager module, is this line correct?

If it is correct, then my problem lies elsewhere, but when Presistence is running on a Dedicated server, no matter what I do, I cannot run CSAR via Flag.
I know you may busy fixing API changes made by ED, but could you please take a lokk at line 1486 of CSARManager module. 
Thank you ＆I appreciate your contributions to DML in DCSWorld.

[cfrag]

43 minutes ago, Nishiyandcs4 said:

I think there is some code missing after 'then' on line 1486 in the Lua code of the CSAR Manager module, is this line correct?

Yes, that line merely ensures that all required modules for csarManager have loaded, and csarManager will bitterly complain if not:

	if not dcsCommon.libCheck("cfx CSAR", csarManager.requiredLibs) then 
		trigger.action.outText("cf/x CSAR aborted: missing libraries", 30)
		return false 
	end

That block is complete.

[cfrag]

58 minutes ago, Nishiyandcs4 said:

If it is correct, then my problem lies elsewhere, but when Presistence is running on a Dedicated server, no matter what I do, I cannot run CSAR via Flag.

Perhaps you can isolate the issue into a simple miz: add only the required modules, and use radioMenu to generate the CSAR flag event. If the issue continues to appear on a dedi, we can try and look into this deeper. Else, if the mission isn't too bit, and you remove all mods, I could have a look if you want me to.

[Nishiyandcs4]

On 5/9/2025 at 11:33 PM, cfrag said:

Perhaps you can isolate the issue into a simple miz: add only the required modules, and use radioMenu to generate the CSAR flag event. If the issue continues to appear on a dedi, we can try and look into this deeper. Else, if the mission isn't too bit, and you remove all mods, I could have a look if you want me to.

I'm sorry again,,This is DEMO_Miz that I tested.
This is simply DML's CSAR Demo Miz with Persistence added.

In SP, the M4 soldier spawns without any problem when the FLAG=100 trigger is triggered,
but on a dedicated server running persistence, even in the same situation with FLAG=100, the text 
'HELP! Someone killed my Chopper!'
pop up, but the M4 soldier does not appear.

Of course, if I remove the Persistence module it works fine on the same server.

...Am I forgetting something in the Persistence settings?

Modified_demo - CSAR of Georgia.miz

[cfrag]

8 hours ago, Nishiyandcs4 said:

In SP, the M4 soldier spawns without any problem when the FLAG=100 trigger is triggered, but on a dedicated server running persistence [] the text 'HELP! Someone killed my Chopper!' pop up, but the M4 soldier does not appear.

This had me stumped for a while. I finally found the issue related to a dangling 'else' in csarManager that I unfortunately misplaced when I introduced the "autoTrigger" attribute, and the issue is much more likely to happen if persistence is added to the mix. It is not a persistence issue, it's a plain stupid bug I added to csarManager. Below please find the updated module.

 

csarManager2.lua

[Panthir]

Dear Cfrag,

In the following simple mission I spawn a static object (Tech Combine). Is there any way via DML when the spawned static object is destroyed to bang a flag?

Random Tech Combine.miz

[cfrag]

38 minutes ago, Panthir said:

I spawn a static object (Tech Combine). Is there any way via DML when the spawned static object is destroyed to bang a flag?

Use cloners.

 

Random Tech Combine.miz

[Panthir]

2 minutes ago, cfrag said:

Use cloners.

 

Random Tech Combine.miz 206.53 kB · 0 downloads

 

2 minutes ago, cfrag said:

Use cloners.

 

Random Tech Combine.miz 206.53 kB · 0 downloads

Do you mean clone zone module?

[Panthir]

Does it work with static objects?

nullnull

Edited May 11 by Panthir

[cfrag]

48 minutes ago, Panthir said:

Does it work with static objects?

Please check out the demo I included before. It is using the "empty!" output that fires when all objects from the last clone cycle are destroyed, and it seems that was what you are looking for. 

Below is an updated demo that also uses radioMenus and groundexplosion to force destruction. The empty signal "boom" is sent when any of the combines is destroyed.

 

 

Random Tech Combine.miz

[Panthir]

1 hour ago, cfrag said:

Please check out the demo I included before. It is using the "empty!" output that fires when all objects from the last clone cycle are destroyed, and it seems that was what you are looking for. 

Below is an updated demo that also uses radioMenus and groundexplosion to force destruction. The empty signal "boom" is sent when any of the combines is destroyed.

 

 

Random Tech Combine.miz 230.81 kB · 0 downloads

Thanks I will check right now