kneeboards

[DukeAngus]

are player added kneeboard imagines considered unofficial mods?

[Rudel_chw]

1 hour ago, DukeAngus said:

are player added kneeboard imagines considered unofficial mods?

 

Can you clarify what do you consider an unofficial mod?   ... I was under the impression that every Mod is unofficial, since none is endorsed by Eagle Dynamics, but correct me if I'm wrong

[DukeAngus]

@Rudel_chwthat is what i am asking, is any .png placed into a kneeboard folder in the saved games>dcs.openbeta considered a unofficial mod?

But what i should really be asking is there anyway a ,png could mess up dcs?

the reason why i am asking this is  that i recently bought combined arms and now the loading screen into dcs takes at least  5to10 minutes to load. when i go into mission editor or instant game it takes up to 5 minutes in-between loading screens. also dcs randomly goes unresponsive but if i wait long enough it will come back. once i get into a game it seams to run sorta okay, meaning that my frame rate gets cut by 2/3rds. after a day of trying different things, i did the long repair after i took out sound packs, liveries and other files and it still persisted. once i deleted combined arms everything went back to normal. a couple days later i realized i that i forgot to take out the kneeboard folder. and i was reading the "have problems ? read this " post and it said something about unofficial mods, and it got me thinking. since i dont know anything about code, i figured i would ask about kneeboards and come to a conclusion if i want to try to mess with combined arms again.

Edited January 5, 2023 by DukeAngus

[Rudel_chw]

1 hour ago, DukeAngus said:

@Rudel_chwthat is what i am asking, is any .png placed into a kneeboard folder in the saved games>dcs.openbeta considered a unofficial mod?

 

Ok, now the scope of your question is more clear to me .. let me try to explain this in more detail. There used to be a time when, to customize any aspect of DCS you had to either add your own custom files onto the DCS program folder, or modify the files already there ... say, you wanted a custom skin for a Leopard tank, you had to replace the zip file that contained that skin, on the DCS program folder; you wanted an english cockpit for Blackshark, you had to replace the original files with the russian cockpit textures, again, on the DCS program folder.

All these were called "mods", short for "game modification", were you truly were changing the original game files.

Starting around DCS 1.5, Eqgle Dynamics recognized the need to allow a degree of user customization, and then they introduced the concept of mimicking part of the DCS program folder structure, on a safe location .. /Saved games/DCS World/   This allows you to create for example a skin for the Leopard II tank, and place that skin at /Saved Games/DCS World/Liveries/leopard-2/  ... when DCS runs it adds the /Saved Games/ liveries to its own, allowing the user to select whichever skin he wants.... to me this is not strictly a "Mod", as you are no longer modifying game program files, but placing your own on a separate location from DCS ... the skin is now a DCS customization, but without touching the DCS program files.

Same as with the liveries, DCS allows you to place other customizations at /Saved Games/ ... for example, Kneeboard files, Templates, and even whole user-created Modules like the UH-60L helicopter. Again, to me the UH-60L is not a "Mod", but a custom aircraft

 

... however, it is entirely possible that a badly designed custom aircraft can impact on the standard ED Modules, for example by attempting to re-define weapons effects .. the same weapons are shared amongst every Module, so a change made in one module may conflict with the same weapon in another. That's why it is always suggested to disable those User-created Modules when you ar facing a DCS crash, to remove a potential cause and easing the debug process.

 

1 hour ago, DukeAngus said:

But what i should really be asking is there anyway a ,png could mess up dcs?

 

No, I don't think so .. the items that cause trouble usually are programming items, like Lua scripts or DLL softwares.

 

1 hour ago, DukeAngus said:

the reason why i am asking this is  that i recently bought combined arms and now the loading screen into dcs takes at least  5to10 minutes to load. when i go into mission editor or instant game it takes up to 5 minutes in-between loading screens. also dcs randomly goes unresponsive but if i wait long enough it will come back.

 

OK, I have Combined Arms active but not using it at the moment, so I removed it from my DCS (with the Module Manager) and honestly I don't feel any difference in loading times or responsivenes .. so, most likely your issue was caused by something other than CA.

 

1 hour ago, DukeAngus said:

... i figured i would ask about kneeboards and come to a conclusion if i want to try to mess with combined arms again.

 

My personal belief is that a kneeboard producing such effects would be something very unlikely, and it certainly has not happened to me in the many years that I have been flying DCS, and I use Kneeboards a lot, as they are an invaluable tool when one is learning a new aircraft.

[DukeAngus]

thank you for the response.

[DukeAngus]

to follow up on the issue i had that in this thread i went on to explain, im still not 100% sure exactly the file or files that got corrupt, but after i renamed the dcs saved games folder,  all my issues are gone even with combined arms.