My personal ME project: Ace Combat 5 missions.

[Gausser Yyormes]

I've been looking for Ace Combat related missions for some time now, but sadly there is not a whole lot of Ace Combat content in the form of missions.

I've also taken a very long time before trying the mission editor, which is amazing and allows the creators to make cool missions easily. Recently I designed my first mission, although it is very simple, it is also fun.

So, in order to have more Ace Combat content and also practise with the ME, I'm going to start this personal project of making Ace Combat 5 missions. As much of them as I can. This post will collect all of them in order for future reference.

The game's missions will be adapted to the simulator to make them a little more realistic and they will have the soundrack in all the missions I can insert it. Due to the fact that I've still not have permission from the original soundtrack composer at day 2-Sept-2023, from now on I'll use the CC-BY 4.0 tracks made by Scott Buckley, an amazing composer that publish free to use tracks for this kind of purpose. You can check his art here: https://www.scottbuckley.com.au/

Feel free to comment the bugs you find, criticism or reviews are also welcome as I'm learning a lot by trial and error but learning from experienced people is way more efficient.

The next list compiles the missions I've done and the ones I'm working on:

Mission 1 - "Shorebirds" - For Belsimtek's F-5E - Completed.

Mission 2 - "Open War" - For Belsimtek's F-5E - Completed.

Mission 3 - "Narrow margin" - For Belsimtek's F-5E - Completed.

Mission 4 - "First flight" - For Belsimtek's F-5E - Completed.

Mission 5 - "Rendezvous" - For Magnitude 3 LLC's MiG-21bis & Persian Gulf - Completed.

Mission 6 - "White bird part I" - For Magnitude 3 LLC's MiG-21bis & Sinai - Completed.

Mission 7 - "Front Line" - For MiG-29S - Completed.

Mission 8 - "Handful of Hope" - For Magnitude 3 LLC's MiG-21bis & Sinai - Completed.

Mission 9 - "Lit Fuse" - For A-10A & Kola map - Completed.

Mission 10 - "Blind Spot" - For F-15C & Kola map - Completed.

Mission 11A - "Chain Reaction" - For J-11A & Syria map - Completed.

Mission 11B - "Reprisal" - For Mirage 2000 & Syria map - Completed.

Mission 12A - "Powder Keg" - For A-10A & Caucasus - Completed.

Mission 12B - "Four Horsemen" - For A-10A & Caucasus - Completed.

Mission 13 - "Demons of Razgriz" - For J-11A & Kola Map - Completed.

Mission 14 - "Ice Cage" - For J-11A & Kola - Completed.

Mission 15 - "White Noise" - For Belsimtek F-5E & Kola (extra version for Heatblur's F-4E) - Completed.

Mission 16A/B - On hiatus because of the insane work it will take. I preffer to work in the rest of the missions, which are way simpler in the term of number of dialogue lines.

Mission 17 - "Journey Home" - For F-15C and Sinai - Completed.

Mission 18 - "Fortress" - For A-10A & Kola - Completed.

Mission 18+ -"8492" - For A-10A & Kola - Completed.

Mission 19 - "Final Option" - For VNAO T-45C Goshawk (extra version for FC2024 Sabre)- Completed.

Mission 20 - "Ancient Walls" - For Su-33 & The Channel - Completed.

Mission 21 - "Solitaire" - For Magnitude 3 LLC's MiG-21bis & Kola - Completed.

Mission 22 - "Closure" - For ??? & Kola - I'm gonna take a rest and keep this project on hiatus before I return to finish it.

Edited August 24, 2024 by Gausser Yyormes
Mission 21 finished

[cfrag]

15 hours ago, Gausser Yyormes said:

I'm going to start this personal project of making Ace Combat 5 missions

This is a great idea - IMHO DCS can always use more casual missions (although I'm sure that it will make the resident rivet-counter's blood boil  )

15 hours ago, Gausser Yyormes said:

and they will have the soundrack in all the missions I can insert it

I strongly advise against including art unless you outright own the rights or have a license to do so. There are few shorter ways into legal troubles than digital copyright infringement. I have no knowledge if Namco have released the soundtrack (or artwork) into the public domain, and if not, you are asking for trouble if you include other people's work into your works without their consent. And this also extends to voice actors, so ripping and including dialogues from a game is a bad idea... There's usually ample sufficiently similar artwork available for free (or low price - or, if you are gifted (unlike me) maybe even perform your own music or voice acting), so that you can still capture the mood without treading on somebody else's rights.

Good luck, I'm looking forward to seeing your missions.

Edited November 23, 2022 by cfrag

[Gausser Yyormes]

9 hours ago, cfrag said:

I strongly advise against including art unless you outright own the rights or have a license to do so. There are few shorter ways into legal troubles than digital copyright infringement. I have no knowledge if Namco have released the soundtrack (or artwork) into the public domain, and if not, you are asking for trouble if you include other people's work into your works without their consent. And this also extends to voice actors, so ripping and including dialogues from a game is a bad idea... There's usually ample sufficiently similar artwork available for free (or low price - or, if you are gifted (unlike me) maybe even perform your own music or voice acting), so that you can still capture the mood without treading on somebody else's rights.

This hits right into my soul. Do you get in legal trouble from using their soundtrack and voice acting from a 2005 game even if you don't get any kind of profit? The PS2 itself has even stoped from producing. I'd like to know more about this. Otherwise I'll keep that versions for myself and release tts + copyright free music for the missions I post. Or maybe I can ask the original soundtrack designer: Keiki kobayashi. That would be huge.

Thanks for the heads up, I also wish you have fun with my missions, means a lot to me coming from the person who taught me the A-10A!

[cfrag]

6 hours ago, Gausser Yyormes said:

Do you get in legal trouble from using their soundtrack and voice acting from a 2005 game even if you don't get any kind of profit?

It entirely depends on the rights owners, and (outside of fair use) it's immaterial if you gain anything from infringement or not (it seems that Namco last published AC5 in 2019 as part of AC7 for the PS4, so it's fairly recent). The problem for copyright owners is that if they don't defend against a known infringement, that could be a precedent and they could lose their rights, therefore most companies will defend if they notice your infringement.

That being said, DCS missions are a tiny target, and your missions may escape attention. However: imagine your missions are a huge success (which I hope they will be) and they become popular. Many people play them, and then rave about them online. Some may even use them (and the material in the missions) to build their own missions. Then ED (not you) will get a DCMA notice for hosting infringing material. Then they have little choice. Best case scenario: ED delete your content, sign some agreement to the effect that they will forthwith prevent reoccurrence - and you are most probably banned from their servers. Nobody wants that, and you are being punished simply for trying to do something that you intended as a good thing for the community. 

In a nutshell: if you create a mission that is going to be popular, you should make sure that you own the rights to all material that you use. Otherwise, popularity will get you in trouble, and that is working against your own goals.

Edited November 24, 2022 by cfrag

[TEMPEST.114]

22 hours ago, cfrag said:

This is a great idea - IMHO DCS can always use more casual missions (although I'm sure that it will make the resident rivet-counter's blood boil  )

I'm feeling called out...

[Gausser Yyormes]

Mission 4 is now live!

Observation for the future: setting a big radio emission area with minimum power (1W) allows to transmit the soundtrack of the mission while being able to transmit messages to the squadron/AWACS. This problem looks like a solution for all the missions with soundtrack. I'll have to use that for improving the previous missions.

Edited August 28, 2023 by Gausser Yyormes

[Gausser Yyormes]

Mission 5 uploaded!

A easy and fun mission about killing some harrier waves that want to destroy your carriers. This is the first mission to play with a plane other than the F-5E. The MiG-21bis is the one to fly here. That makes an upgrade from two to six missiles for every Wardog Squadron member including you. After defending the carriers, you will be on the receiving end of a pair of burst missiles launched fom the Scinfaxi, a submarine-carrier that will appear in a later mission.

I made the wings to keep it silent so the player can listen to the soundtrack. That means they won't be spaming his engagement dialogues but they still receive and engage on your orders.

Have fun!

[Gausser Yyormes]

Mission 7 and 11/A uploaded!

Changes on other missions: I'm using what I've learned to fix some problems in previous missions.

Mission 4: Updated @ 17 sept 2023: Improved some mission triggers. Silenced all the squadrons so the soundtrack can be listened.

Mission 1, 2 and 3: Updated @ 17 sept 2023: Improved some mission triggers. Silenced all the squadrons so the music can be listened. Soundtrack is now adjusted to the same radio as squadron comms and AWACS, so no need to change the radio to their channel and the music channel as both are on the same channel.

Edited September 17, 2023 by Gausser Yyormes

[Gausser Yyormes]

Mission 9 uploaded!

Important note for reference: the command "hold" doesn't seem to stop its action unless you put a condition in the same "hold" options/stop condition. That means, it cannot be deactivated through a triggered action or that's how it worked for me. This is how I managed to get it working.

Picture added to show what I'm talking about:

 

[Gausser Yyormes]

Upgraded missions.

I've just discovered MIST and EWR Script and I decided to use it in all my future missions. For the old ones I updated the ones with non-Flaming Cliffs, so the following ones are upgraded with EWRS:

Missions 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8 and 15.

Future missions will have EWRS as the standard AWACS.

It seems like the script Unit.getByName('Pilotname'):destroy() will despawn the unit without needing to create a trigger to explode it, which is useful. I still need to learn more about LUA scripting.