For the love of all that is holy. Multi object Select and click Drag functionality

[Shrike88]

Seriously guys.  With the utmost respect.  Its 2022,  is it really that difficult to add such a simple feature to select multiple objects in the mission editor with a simple click drag ability.  This has been super new technology since 1995.  The Left shift + Click gets pretty old after having to repeat after an incorrect click in the wrong position on an object in the ME reverts to a deselect all. 

The lack of quality user content with missions is not surprising after coming back to after a year of mission making hiatus and see that some of the most basic and most requested features are still not implemented.  Some development capital really needs to be invested in the mission editor and the GUI/interface and the tools we have available. 

-Click dag, multi select ability for objects regardless of vehicle, aircraft or object type.   
- Selection filters for Click and drag selection criteria.
-Ability to create and save static object templates.

-Ability to merge two .miz files together seamlessly with auto rename function for similar named objects.
-Ability to edit and filter warehouse and loadout easier 

[Antix70]

And while you're adding that, UNDO and REDO, please. Accidentally deleting an object and having to recreate it from scratch is a PITA.

[sirrah]

On 3/31/2022 at 12:03 AM, Antix70 said:

And while you're adding that, UNDO and REDO, please. Accidentally deleting an object and having to recreate it from scratch is a PITA.

Yep indeed, and that's the other wish that also is as old as the existence of the ME itself 

[EagleEye.DCS]

I really understand this is what we need in ME. Moving many objects will be very easy if there is this feature.

[Rick50]

Hmm, food for thought. 

I wonder about creating templates, pick a group of vehicles that work as a formation, make the template. Then, when creating new missions or scenarios, or an entire battlefield, just grab this SAM site template and drop into the map, edit slightly as needed. Then go grab another template, say an armored spearhead, with many MBT's and IFV's and a few forward anti-aircraft units like Avengers Gepards or Tunguskas. And then a third template for a supply convoy, with many cargo carriers with food and munitions, and a whole bunch of diesel tankers. A fancy complex FARP or SAM site too.

Maybe that's already being done well and I don't know of it, but it's little functionality  like this that can really enhance mission editors and what you can do with them.

Reminds me of the first time I played Command and Conquer... selecting a bunch of tanks and guys, send them around a ridgeline to wait in ambush at the edge!

Edited April 2, 2022 by Rick50

[winghunter]

edit: I've re-built a new mission editor with select & drag

Edited April 23, 2024 by winghunter
update

[Scaley]

This has been one of the most requested ME features for over 5 years. I have never seen any evidence that anyone in the DCS team does ANYTHING in the ME because it's requested by the community. The ME development priorities appear to be solely internally driven. I never heard of anyone requesting the ability to draw lines, but we got that instead of loads of really basic functions like drag-to-select, a proper unit list that can be pinned, moveable toolbars, etc.

I would hazard a guess there is a long term plan to have a new ME with data cartridge functionality as a new integrated system, and no one at ED is going to spend development time on updating the ancient ME code we currently have. This is probably a very sensible decision since the ME should be something that can be re-coded in it's entirety without affecting the rest of the sim. It would be great if someone from ED could give us some idea of where the ME is heading because from my POV a lot of people give up making/editing missions because the ME is simply so incredibly outdated.  

[Shrike88]

On 5/9/2022 at 12:17 PM, Scaley said:

This has been one of the most requested ME features for over 5 years. I have never seen any evidence that anyone in the DCS team does ANYTHING in the ME because it's requested by the community. The ME development priorities appear to be solely internally driven. I never heard of anyone requesting the ability to draw lines, but we got that instead of loads of really basic functions like drag-to-select, a proper unit list that can be pinned, moveable toolbars, etc.

I would hazard a guess there is a long term plan to have a new ME with data cartridge functionality as a new integrated system, and no one at ED is going to spend development time on updating the ancient ME code we currently have. This is probably a very sensible decision since the ME should be something that can be re-coded in it's entirety without affecting the rest of the sim. It would be great if someone from ED could give us some idea of where the ME is heading because from my POV a lot of people give up making/editing missions because the ME is simply so incredibly outdated.  

100% agree. Very well said. 
 

chicken or the egg. I think for this reason exactly you see a very low amount of quality content (less great paid campaigns and other select missions) when it comes to missions and community made items. 
The lack of development and neglect to the mission editor over the last better part of a decade is really disappointing as much of the small quality of life additions would make a large impact. 
 

Oh well, the lack of ME development will continue to foster a lack of participation in the community and lack of quality content. 

[notproplayer3]

My metric for mission editors being the arma 3 Eden editor, not only am I sad to see how inferior the DCS ME is to the one arma has but it is also straight up driving me nuts that such basic features such as drag select and unde/redo aren't yet implemented, yet alone other quality of life improvements.

I hope their silence in this thread isn't hinting at the fact they don't care about the DCS ME, because it very much looks that way to me, being stuck with a mission editor that looks and functions like it hasn't been updated since 1995.

Edited July 4, 2022 by notproplayer3

[Focha]

What is the status on this one?

[TEMPEST.114]

11 hours ago, Focha said:

What is the status on this one?

2 weeks...

[Hairdo1-1]

Yeah I’m pretty sure they’ve lost interest in the editor. I’ve tried to reach out many times to nineline and bignewy but nothing about the editor. It’s cray cray 

[Shrike88]

12 hours ago, Hairdo1-1 said:

Yeah I’m pretty sure they’ve lost interest in the editor. I’ve tried to reach out many times to nineline and bignewy but nothing about the editor. It’s cray cray 

Agreed.  The snail like changes in development, and the antiquated and archaic setup we currently have reminiscent of windows 98.  I think very much for this reason we see such an alarming lack of content for DCS when it comes to quality missions and campaigns, when against the backdrop of how long these modules have been out.  some for several years but only maybe 1 or 2 campaigns, and a handful of approved creators.  First hand I can account the insane amount of work it takes just to make one mission set, and upkeep to keep then running and functioning every successive update.  

The ME and a Dynamic campaign system are really the elephant in the room imo that need to be addressed to curb the module burnout and interest plateau.   That's part of the reason why we see the "ED Gib us this _____ as the next aircraft module", as there is such a lack of content / campaigns / MP campaigns of quality that really keep people engaged, so they want to jump to the next shiny new thing as a way to bridge the gap. 

Shrike. 

[Focha]

For some years I have used the ME to set up the aircraft and a few ground units just to fly and shoot. In fact, that burns out quickly. 

Several weeks ago, I have started to create multiplayer missions, or... at least, I have tried to create multiplayer missions. 

The simple fact that we cannot select multiple units and delete those, or move, etc... with the inability of undo or redo... started to give me so much frustration that I am about to quick the effort.

There were in fact some minor improvements, but these above, are one of the most important features.

Sure it may be really complex to do a Mission Editor, but... as the OP said, it is in fact one of the more important features to create content to community/servers.

But, there is any expectation of having improvements on this?

[TEMPEST.114]

DCS uses ‘dxgui’ to render its UI and the mission editor. Does anyone know if this is proprietary or if there is somewhere out there with reference materials?

I spent 4 hours today looking at implementing drag to multi select and undo/redo. 
 

The way this is working, the multi select and multi operations done on them seems to be very hard to implement based on how they’ve set this up. Undo *might* be possible in a limited sense i.e. delete / undelete operations, but changes to text boxes and unit selections might be significantly harder. 

Edited November 10, 2022 by Elphaba

[Focha]

Yes. It probably as to do with the way the whole UI is structured.

I guess that if the task to implement that was easy, and the fact that it is a hugely important feature, should already be done.

It is really frustrating to build a mission, particularly when it starts to get more complex.

[TEMPEST.114]

On 12/1/2022 at 11:44 PM, Focha said:

Yes. It probably as to do with the way the whole UI is structured.

I guess that if the task to implement that was easy, and the fact that it is a hugely important feature, should already be done.

It is really frustrating to build a mission, particularly when it starts to get more complex.

 

DXGui is a flavour of ImAGui for DirectX I believe after a bit more poking about. I know NOTHING about DX programming - windows graphics apis are a dark art and I have nowhere near enough chickens...

I've spent over a day looking at the code.

Trying to shoe-horn in any form of undo/redo/group selection/group edit is impossible without such a significant re-write and re-architecture that you'd be better off starting again and doing it properly.

I've made a few comments / posts about what would need to change and why but fundamentally there is no understanding of atomic operations and collective operations between multiple units. It's just not possible with how all of this has been engineered to insert any form of 'group' editing. 

Unless ED decide to do the right thing - throw this primitive ME away and build one for the 21st Century using sound engineering principles, by people who know how to build game engine TOOLS - then this is never going to happen. Which means it will never happen.

None of the text boxes or dialogs are capable of being 'trimmed down' to common editable fields based on a number of units being selected at once and what should be editable for a 'group' vs 'single unit'.

And UNDO/REDO manager would have largely similar issues too because of the way there is no way to capture the context of the change and reapply it.

 

 

Edited April 22, 2024 by Elphaba

[Pizzicato]

@Elphaba You're probably already aware of this, but it looks like it could be the answer to a whole load of mission creation/editor issues (including multi-select, click and drag, and undo/redo). As ever, it's left to the community to do the unglamorous but foundationally critical work that ED never seems willing to prioritise. 

https://www.patreon.com/DcsWebEditor

 

[TEMPEST.114]

On 4/23/2024 at 1:29 AM, Pizzicato said:

@Elphaba You're probably already aware of this, but it looks like it could be the answer to a whole load of mission creation/editor issues (including multi-select, click and drag, and undo/redo). As ever, it's left to the community to do the unglamorous but foundationally critical work that ED never seems willing to prioritise. 

https://www.patreon.com/DcsWebEditor

 

Thanks but I get told about this with EVERY post I make about the M.E. Their hype and publicity machine is really working for them.

So, yes, I'm aware of it. 

But Web Apps have never been a good solution for anything.

And it's 3rd party; which means when DCS changes the .miz structure or does some behind the scenes - not mentioned in the release notes - this will break and people will be stuck waiting for an update. It will be at the mercy of those who built it to maintain it; we've all seen historically and recently what happens when they lose interest or get frustrated with ED/DCS...

So 3rd party isn't the solution. 

If it was, then all the amazing mods that add SO MUCH to DCS wouldn't be ignored by most creators as too much of a headache to enforce compliance or worry about changes to DCS breaking the game because 3rd party mods were enabled.

 

So this project is not the solution; not unless ED buy it and take it over. 

All this project is doing, aside from raising a large amount of monthly cash for it's devs and causing potential compatibility issues in the future - is demonstrating to ED that if they won't do what needs to be done, they never have to because frustrated people will take matters into their own hands, even if it's a poor-persons solution. 

We shouldn't be telling ED that they don't need to address the mission editor and the scripting environment; we need to be putting pressure on them to rewrite the darn thing and do it properly in-house - or let a talented team of C++ / Lua tool engineers do it and sell it to them.

 

Edited April 24, 2024 by Elphaba

[Ogma]

Well I have a news for you:

Now we just have to wait another decade to get an undo/ redo button and we may finally have a mission editor that will be on par with the industry standard of the early 2000s.

If we are very lucky we may even get it before the 10 year anniversary of Arma's Eden editor (wishful thinking, I know, it's my optimist side resurfacing) .

[cfrag]

I just recovered from my encounter with the "multi-object selection tool" to trust myself enough to not use too colorful language.

In a nutshell: I find it to be really, really bad interface-wise, with marginal added value for real-life mission creation. A squandered opportunity with obvious (but buried) potential.

It's as if some alien, with little human GUI experience, and who had never used an object oriented editor, heard about "band selection", and went on to implement something from what little they understood. Whoever implemented what they thought they understood from the requirements does not, so it seems, regularly create missions. Otherwise, I think that tool would work much, much differently.

Let's begin with the "Why": Why are mission creators looking for band selection? To quickly select multiple objects, and apply a change to that selection.

What did we get? Some modal (impedes workflow) selection thingy, with overly complex handling, non-standard, difficult and unintuitive de-/selection schemes (plural!): something that is ill suited to quickly perform the most common tasks. To engage band selection, you have to activate band selection! For crying out loud, why modality, why the need to activate 'band selection mode'? Look at PowerPoint, any RTS, heck look at the icon display in windows Explorer to see how this most basic interface metaphor works! Band selection activates and deactivates automatically, driven by context -- it is not modal. This isn't 1990 any more. People know how to use a GUI, and they expect standard behavior. Implementing against expectation is sure to create a negative experience, and create worse results. Adding and removing objects to/from the selection is positively alien, convoluted, unpredictable (!) and breaks your workflow (you have to de-/activate more strange modes). Whatever happened to simple, universally-known "shift-clicking" to add/remove from a selection??? Calling this design "Amateurish" would IMHO be unkind to Amateurs.

Worse: what is one of the most common use case for multi-object select during real-world mission creation? Change the coalition of the selection. Can we do that? No. That option does not exist. How about a base-name change (like it already happens automatically with copy/paste)? No again. How about moving the selection? Yes, but you first have to engage move mode (another mode within a mode), or press a modifier key. Look at established practice in any object editor to see how it is done, and what everyone expects.

And then we have a non-standard, complex group rotation around a new, difficult to understand interface element "anchor" that has little to no additional value. When you select multiple objects, it would be much better to go the established way: draw an outline frame, and rotate around the (marked) center. That's all we need, and it's orders of magnitude easier to use. With introduction of this silly anchor metaphor, I also note that this is yet another UX-breaking non-standard way to rotate objects in ME, after that line art silliness from last year. You did know that you can interactively rotate some line art, right? Not all, and it's just almost non-discoverable, and completely non-standard, and seldom works the way that you expect. Yeah, some, but not all line art in ME switches to rotation mode (instead of resize/reposition) on every other click into the object. Not on the first click, and not the third, but on second, fourth, sixth, ... click. Really, really bad design, yes.

IMHO, this entire multi-select thing has complete non-sense UX, it goes against any and all UX best practices published in the last two decades, violates most norms, and it makes ME more difficult to use, not better. 

Please, please, please let someone with real UX expertise review (better: design) ME interface-related elements before publishing them. 

And, yes, I'm happy to provide deeper feedback- I wish the kind folk at ED would ask people who have experience in UX design, or showcase their designs before they go live with them.

This kind of feedback is trivial to obtain, and I would doubt that the current implementation would have passed muster even for first-year interface design students. And yes, I believe the need for better UX talent at ED is becoming urgent. The MP join dialogs are already really bad UI design, the Hook's cargo dialog abysmal, and now this....? A really bad trend.

Please, a quality product like DCS should also have a quality experience to match. 

Edited December 28, 2024 by cfrag

[waterman]

1 hour ago, cfrag said:

It's as if some alien, with little human GUI experience, and who had never used an object oriented editor heard about "band selection", and went on to implement something from what little they understood. Whoever implemented what they thought they understood from the requirements does not, so it seems, regularly create missions. Otherwise, I think that tool would work much, much differently.

For me the tool is clunky but i still find it useful.

Talking about bad decisions -

The programmers had to reinvent the wheel !

Someone thought the Trains would be better without the arg8 enabled in MT so the wheels dont turn and animations no longer work.

Trains wont deactivate either.

I spent Years building all my own animated Locomotives and rolling stock.

Good job i did not release them imagine all the complaint emails about wheels and animations i would have got.

Very nearly chucked the lot in the recycle bin !

However I now have them all happily running great in the Russian Sim.

Told DCS about all the problems loads of times !

What a total waste of time that was !!!

Edited December 28, 2024 by waterman

[cfrag]

4 minutes ago, waterman said:

For me the tool is clunky but i still find it useful.

Yeah. Like a chainsaw can be used to open beer bottles - one way or the other. Neither elegant, nor efficient, nor very useful. Not really usable, but use-able to a certain extend. "Functional Design" is something that may have to be rediscovered for ME realm.

Here's to hoping.