Make the ME standalone and open up the API

[Hairdo1-1]

With the release of 2.8, there were NO improvements to the editor. As it’s clear ED doesn’t care about content creators, or for that matter the their customers who want content for the modules they buy (ie missions and campaigns) just split it off from the main game and let the community improve the editor. Why does ED insist on keeping elements of DCS that it has long since forgotten locked down and left to die

[Rudel_chw]

1 hour ago, Hairdo1-1 said:

Why does ED insist on keeping elements of DCS that it has long since forgotten locked down and left to die

 

That's just not true .. the Mission Editor has been updated several times with new features, you are too new to have witnesed those changes, but I've edited missions for the last 5 years and does not seem a dying product to me. In fact, what you are proposing is ripping off the intellectual property and development man-hours of a private company and give it for free to the "community", yeah, it's easy to take things away from others, isnt it?   

Instead, create your own superior Mission Editor, after all the format of the MIZ files is fairly well known, it shouldnt be too hard to program a new Editor that uses that format 

[XCNuse]

33 minutes ago, Hairdo1-1 said:

there were NO improvements to the editor.

There... were quite a lot? actually...

 

It should be worth mentioning that the ME actually requires the graphics engine to be running; so it cannot possibly be made as an external program.... certainly not the way it currently exists; maybe in some rudimentary format? But... it does require the game to be operating.

Don't believe me? Look closer at your GPU stats.

Still don't believe me? Turn up the wind and zoom in on the trees.

[Hairdo1-1]

32 minutes ago, XCNuse said:

There... were quite a lot? actually...

 

It should be worth mentioning that the ME actually requires the graphics engine to be running; so it cannot possibly be made as an external program.... certainly not the way it currently exists; maybe in some rudimentary format? But... it does require the game to be operating.

Don't believe me? Look closer at your GPU stats.

Still don't believe me? Turn up the wind and zoom in on the trees.

I am happy to be proven wrong, can you please give me one feature/improvement they have added in the last 6-12 months. The last I remember is the draw tool which is buggy (text zoom anyone). They also added new callsigns but never recorded the voice so the radio just blanks out when they are used. 

[Rudel_chw]

1 hour ago, Hairdo1-1 said:

can you please give me one feature/improvement they have added in the last 6-12 months.

 

- Added WW2 Static and Unit Templates.

- Added new smoke and flame effects.

- Added new clouds presets

- Added quad-point trigger zones

- Added named Flags in addition to the traditional Flag 1, 2,3 etc.

- You can now display pictures within a Mission.

- Added new aircraft ground start types.

 

[XCNuse]

these are just the ones off the top of my head so excuse me anyone else for me missing anything

-drawing

-ability to separately display threat and search rings

-ability to set vehicle ammo (2.8)

-compass rose (2.8)

-magnetic declination (2.8)

-ability to set custom default tasks

-possibly mistaken but I believe many new trigger types have been added

-autosave

-flags can have names

-importable/exportable tasks to make into templates

-convert measurements (2.8)

 

I feel like I'm still missing a handful of things

Edited October 29, 2022 by XCNuse

[Beirut]

1 hour ago, Hairdo1-1 said:

With the release of 2.8, there were NO improvements to the editor. As it’s clear ED doesn’t care about content creators . . . 

 

100% of my flights are through the mission editor. I don't fly quick missions or campaigns. I make every single flight, and your statement is patently false. If find the DCS ME both simple enough to create an enjoable flight in a minute flat, and complicated enough to be past my mental snack bracket. In short, it's just fine.

 

1 hour ago, Hairdo1-1 said:

just split it off from the main game and let the community improve the editor.

 

That would be disastrous. It would end up being a convoluted junkheap like the other sim's mission editor - which is actually a developer's tool, not an ME - where you have to shut the game off, start the ME, then build something, then shut off the ME, then start the game back up just to see what you did. That would be a massive step backwards and thank god no one at ED is deranged enough to do that.

[Hairdo1-1]

13 minutes ago, XCNuse said:

these are just the ones off the top of my head so excuse me anyone else for me missing anything

-drawing

-ability to separately display threat and search rings

-ability to set vehicle ammo (2.8)

-compass rose (2.8)

-magnetic declination (2.8)

-ability to set custom default tasks

-possibly mistaken but I believe many new trigger types have been added

-autosave

-flags can have names

-importable/exportable tasks to make into templates

-convert measurements (2.8)

 

I feel like I'm still missing a handful of things

 

Wow. A compass rose and the ability to turn on and off red and yellow circles. Ground breaking. I think you’re making my point for me with this list. 

[Hairdo1-1]

17 minutes ago, Beirut said:

 

100% of my flights are through the mission editor. I don't fly quick missions or campaigns. I make every single flight, and your statement is patently false. If find the DCS ME both simple enough to create an enjoable flight in a minute flat, and complicated enough to be past my mental snack bracket. In short, it's just fine.

 

 

That would be disastrous. It would end up being a convoluted junkheap like the other sim's mission editor - which is actually a developer's tool, not an ME - where you have to shut the game off, start the ME, then build something, then shut off the ME, then start the game back up just to see what you did. That would be a massive step backwards and thank god no one at ED is deranged enough to do that.

I’m honestly not REALLY advocating for this. What I actually want them to do is treat the ME with the importance and urgency it deserves. Without the editor all they have is a cockpit simulator. The change log should have an entire section for fixes and features and it’s barely mentioned.

[Beirut]

1 minute ago, Hairdo1-1 said:

Without the editor all they have is a cockpit simulator. 

 

That kind of obviously false oversimplification does nothing to forward your point(s).

 

Now your argument may have merit on some level, but you are stating it with such constructed hyperbole that it comes off as little more than noise for the sake of being negative.

[Rudel_chw]

 

12 minutes ago, Hairdo1-1 said:

Wow. A compass rose and the ability to turn on and off red and yellow circles. Ground breaking. I think you’re making my point for me with this list. 

 
Well, so much for "happy to be proven wrong"  … clearly there is no point on debating with you, will have to ignore you from now on.

[cfrag]

10 hours ago, Hairdo1-1 said:

As it’s clear ED doesn’t care about content creators,

While this is clearly hyperbole (and 2.8 did bring some changes - for example they moved the name of the currently open mission from the bottom to the top of the screen  ), progress in ME is excruciatingly slow, and hit people who spend the lion's share of DCS time inside ME especially hard. Yes, ME's design is near-abysmal (the icon palette running down the left side looks to be implemented by someone who read about icon palettes but has no clue about Interface Design - example: the most easily hit target is the upper left corner and should be occupied by the most important (most often used) ME function. In ME that is... 'New File'! Yeah. How often do we click that during a normal ME session? Never. So Interface design is abysmal, many important functions that make a good editor (band select, undo) are MIA, and many functions are... quirky. 

But at least we have a ME.

And @Hairdo1-1 makes a good point in the subject that they sadly didn't follow up on the OP: Please ED, open up ME's API. I'd love to extend some of the functionality (especially for Trigger Zones) so I can write quick extensions that integrate with other frameworks - pre-populate attributes for Trigger Zones, validate attributes, create specific summaries on-demand etc. 

Edited October 29, 2022 by cfrag

[OzDeaDMeaT]

Opening up the API can ONLY be a good thing for DCS. I dont agree with the make the mission editor stand alone, sounds like more code that would need to be managed to me. But I am 100% behind making more features from the Mission Editor more accessible from the Mission Scripting Environment (MSE) API. They did some good work recently adding a bunch of the Net API stuff to the MSE.

[Grimes]

I believe some clarification is needed. The mission editor is written entirely in lua and can be modified. There are some things you can't change, specifically creating AI tasks and triggers, but that is more in line with how the game interprets the contents of a mission file. You could make some new AI task but the game would just crash or ignore it entirely. Case in point flags have supported using string values since the first iterations of the scripting engine, however until recently the mission editor UI was never modified to account for that. In several circumstances the editor is overly restrictive as a protection measure of sorts. Its why you can't set AI to attack a friendly unit or search for certain target attributes even though both can be done via scripting. 

The problem is its not really an API, its a UI that is the means to an end of modifying the giant lua tables within a .miz file. There are a ton of usability changes that can be modified in but you have to contend with modifying existing files that get updated/replaced when DCS itself gets updated, thus the mod breaks. Also its just a PITA because you have to constantly restart the game for changes to apply. I've done it a few times mostly out of self annoyance with the status quo because what you might think of as important enough to spend time on isn't necessarily what ED think. For instance editing the coalitions after the mission was created started out as a mod I made. Recently I dived back in because I wanted to easily apply default loadouts and weapon restrictions to aircraft within a group or all of that type in a large MP mission. I haven't gotten around to fixing it since 2.8 came out. 

 

[Hairdo1-1]

54 minutes ago, Grimes said:

I believe some clarification is needed. The mission editor is written entirely in lua and can be modified. There are some things you can't change, specifically creating AI tasks and triggers, but that is more in line with how the game interprets the contents of a mission file. You could make some new AI task but the game would just crash or ignore it entirely. Case in point flags have supported using string values since the first iterations of the scripting engine, however until recently the mission editor UI was never modified to account for that. In several circumstances the editor is overly restrictive as a protection measure of sorts. Its why you can't set AI to attack a friendly unit or search for certain target attributes even though both can be done via scripting. 

The problem is its not really an API, its a UI that is the means to an end of modifying the giant lua tables within a .miz file. There are a ton of usability changes that can be modified in but you have to contend with modifying existing files that get updated/replaced when DCS itself gets updated, thus the mod breaks. Also its just a PITA because you have to constantly restart the game for changes to apply. I've done it a few times mostly out of self annoyance with the status quo because what you might think of as important enough to spend time on isn't necessarily what ED think. For instance editing the coalitions after the mission was created started out as a mod I made. Recently I dived back in because I wanted to easily apply default loadouts and weapon restrictions to aircraft within a group or all of that type in a large MP mission. I haven't gotten around to fixing it since 2.8 came out. 

 

For me it’s way less complicated than this. There are just so many things that could incrementally improve the ME. Drag to select, static templates that aren’t tied to a .miz to save. Hell I’ve wanted a “part of coalition in/out of moving zone” as a small improvement or a engage in zone option for air defenses. These are things that already exist they just have to expand them to other areas a bit and yet we see NOTHING. I’d be so happy if every patch we saw a section just dedicated to the editor and fixes/improvements but it’s been years since we’ve seen any really focus. Let me ask a simple question.  What would have a more profound effect on how people use and enjoY DCS? Moving clouds or more engaging, dynamic and creative missions that are made possible by a more Robust feature set that allows more people to access mission building?

[TEMPEST.114]

On 11/5/2022 at 12:42 AM, Grimes said:

I believe some clarification is needed. The mission editor is written entirely in lua and can be modified. There are some things you can't change, specifically creating AI tasks and triggers, but that is more in line with how the game interprets the contents of a mission file. You could make some new AI task but the game would just crash or ignore it entirely. Case in point flags have supported using string values since the first iterations of the scripting engine, however until recently the mission editor UI was never modified to account for that. In several circumstances the editor is overly restrictive as a protection measure of sorts. Its why you can't set AI to attack a friendly unit or search for certain target attributes even though both can be done via scripting. 

The problem is its not really an API, its a UI that is the means to an end of modifying the giant lua tables within a .miz file. There are a ton of usability changes that can be modified in but you have to contend with modifying existing files that get updated/replaced when DCS itself gets updated, thus the mod breaks. Also its just a PITA because you have to constantly restart the game for changes to apply. I've done it a few times mostly out of self annoyance with the status quo because what you might think of as important enough to spend time on isn't necessarily what ED think. For instance editing the coalitions after the mission was created started out as a mod I made. Recently I dived back in because I wanted to easily apply default loadouts and weapon restrictions to aircraft within a group or all of that type in a large MP mission. I haven't gotten around to fixing it since 2.8 came out. 

 

@Grimes Is dxgui an ED proprietary tech or is there some open source documentation on how to use/extend it?

Edited November 12, 2022 by Elphaba

[OzDeaDMeaT]

On 11/5/2022 at 11:42 AM, Grimes said:

Case in point flags have supported using string values since the first iterations of the scripting engine, however until recently the mission editor UI was never modified to account for that.

@GrimesHow do I pass a flag a string value?

[Grimes]

trigger.action.setUserFlag("Whatever", true)

[Rudel_chw]

1 hour ago, Grimes said:

trigger.action.setUserFlag("Whatever", true)

 

He meant how to assign a string value to a flag, not using a string as its name.

[Grimes]

Meant the flag name.