ME dynamic map drawings scripting

ienatom · May 22, 2023

5 minutes ago, Kanelbolle said:
Probably the the ID of the shape you are trying to change that is not correct.

Try to Hard code it:
local myzoneid = 1005
local dzvars = 
		 {
			id = myzoneid,
		 ignoreColor = true,
		 markForCoa = "all", 
		 color = {1,1,0,1},
		 fillColor = {255,255,0,.2},
		 lineType = 2,
		 readOnly = true,

		 }

mist.marker.drawZone("zonename", dzvars)
trigger.action.setMarkupColor(myzoneid , {0, 128, 255, .2} )
Not sure you can use the 12 in "{0, 128, 255, 12}"
As far as i know it is a value between 0 and 1

Yeah but then if I want to hard code the ID of the shape I need to know the one of the existing shape, which I don't right? Or is that script saying "hey, assign id 1005 to the shape named "zonename"?

I changed the value to decimal now

Kanelbolle · May 22, 2023

43 minutes ago, ienatom said:

Yeah but then if I want to hard code the ID of the shape I need to know the one of the existing shape, which I don't right? Or is that script saying "hey, assign id 1005 to the shape named "zonename"?

I changed the value to decimal now

There are many ways to solve this. You can example make a table of all your zones and ID's.

zonesTbl = {} -- global table



local myzoneid = 1005 -- unique id
local myzonename = "CYPRUS NORTH" -- Zone name
local tmpzoneTbl = {} -- temporary table to store values
tmpzoneTbl.zonename = myzonename
tmpzoneTbl.markid = myzoneid
tmpzoneTbl.someotherinfo = "something"

local dzvars = 
		 {
			id = myzoneid,
		 ignoreColor = true,
		 markForCoa = "all", 
		 color = {1,1,0,1},
		 fillColor = {255,255,0,.2},
		 lineType = 2,
		 readOnly = true,

		 }

mist.marker.drawZone(tmpzoneTbl.zonename, dzvars)

zonesTbl[tmpzoneTbl.zonename] = tmpzoneTbl

Then if you want to change that marker for the zone later:

if (zonesTbl["CYPRUS NORTH"]) then -- check if the table has the KEY before trying to use a value from it.
trigger.action.setMarkupColor(zonesTbl["CYPRUS NORTH"].markid , {0, 128, 255, .2} )
end

This is just an example how you can do it.

Edited May 22, 2023 by Kanelbolle

ienatom · May 22, 2023

19 minutes ago, Kanelbolle said:

There are many ways to solve this. You can example make a table of all your zones and ID's.

zonesTbl = {} -- global table



local myzoneid = 1005 -- unique id
local myzonename = "CYPRUS NORTH" -- Zone name
local tmpzoneTbl = {} -- temporary table to store values
tmpzoneTbl.zonename = myzonename
tmpzoneTbl.markid = myzoneid
tmpzoneTbl.someotherinfo = "something"

local dzvars = 
		 {
			id = myzoneid,
		 ignoreColor = true,
		 markForCoa = "all", 
		 color = {1,1,0,1},
		 fillColor = {255,255,0,.2},
		 lineType = 2,
		 readOnly = true,

		 }

mist.marker.drawZone(tmpzoneTbl.zonename, dzvars)

zonesTbl[tmpzoneTbl.zonename] = tmpzoneTbl

Then if you want to change that marker for the zone later:

if (zonesTbl["CYPRUS NORTH"]) then -- check if the table has the KEY before trying to use a value from it.
trigger.action.setMarkupColor(zonesTbl["CYPRUS NORTH"].markid , {0, 128, 255, .2} )
end

This is just an example how you can do it.

I tried forcing for example id 1005 but nothing is happening (as you suggested in your previuous reply). I also tried with various zoom levels on F10 and changing slot. I am losing hope

Kanelbolle · May 22, 2023

5 minutes ago, ienatom said:

I tried forcing for example id 1005 but nothing is happening (as you suggested in your previuous reply). I also tried with various zoom levels on F10 and changing slot. I am losing hope

I might have an error in the code, have not tested it or am able to now.

But you can download my example mission here, it should work:

ienatom · May 22, 2023

Just now, Kanelbolle said:

I might have an error in the code, have not tested it or am able to now.

But you can download my example mission here, it should work:

I had a look at your but it's creating a circle from scratch and not using an existing circle already drawn in the editor if I'm not mistaken. Also, I'm trying to use an existing free form shape instead. It will be very useful for other things I plan to do so thanks!

By the way, absolutely no worries if you cannot test it! I am glad you are taking the time to help me so again, thank you for the help.

Kanelbolle · May 22, 2023

22 minutes ago, ienatom said:

I had a look at your but it's creating a circle from scratch and not using an existing circle already drawn in the editor if I'm not mistaken. Also, I'm trying to use an existing free form shape instead. It will be very useful for other things I plan to do so thanks!

By the way, absolutely no worries if you cannot test it! I am glad you are taking the time to help me so again, thank you for the help.

Glad i can help.

If you open the .miz file as a .ZIP file you can open the "mission" file inside. It will contain all your drawings and it's id's. Don't have an example to find it, but they are in there somewhere.

Or you can open the MIST script and find the function "mist.marker.getNextId()" and see how it checks for the next id. But this is hard if you don't know scripting.

But think you can get them all out with :

for key,value in pairs(mist.DBs.markList) do
   trigger.action.outText('- Mark ID: ' .. key , 120) -- To text window
   env.info('- Mark ID: ' .. key ) --To LOG file
end

Edited May 22, 2023 by Kanelbolle

ienatom · May 22, 2023

7 minutes ago, Kanelbolle said:
Glad i can help.

If you open the .miz file as a .ZIP file you can open the "mission" file inside. It will contain all your drawings and it's id's. Don't have an example to find it, but they are in there somewhere.

Or you can open the MIST script and find the function "mist.marker.getNextId()" and see how it checks for the next id. But this is hard if you don't know scripting.

But think you can get them all out with :
for key,value in pairs(mist.DBs.markList) do
   trigger.action.outText('- Mark ID: ' .. key , 120) -- To text window
   env.info('- Mark ID: ' .. key ) --To LOG file
end

I'll have a look at that then!

In the meantime I tried what @cfrag suggested and it works well, although it's not ideal if you have a lot of polygons with a lot of vertices as you need to add A LOT of trigger points for your shapes.

cfrag · May 22, 2023

10 minutes ago, ienatom said:

although it's not ideal if you have a lot of polygons with a lot of vertices as you need to add A LOT of trigger points for your shapes

This may be a naïve question: you seem to use one trigger zone per vertex point. Wouldn't it be easier if you assembled your polys from quad zones - i.e. use multiple quad zones (four vertex points per trigger zone) to assemble more complex areas? It may not look as good, but it sure as heck would be much easier to maintain.

ienatom · May 22, 2023

Had a look in the mission file and here is an example of a shape with it's ID

                    [61] = 
                    {
                        ["visible"] = true,
                        ["mapY"] = -377006.59612449,
                        ["primitiveType"] = "Polygon",
                        ["polygonMode"] = "free",
                        ["thickness"] = 10,
                        ["colorString"] = "0xff00007d",
                        ["name"] = "CYPRUS SOUTH",
                        ["mapX"] = -232028.82264409,
                        ["fillColorString"] = "0xff000014",
                        ["points"] = 
                        {
                            [6] = 
                            {
                                ["y"] = 15224.170096805,
                                ["x"] = 271638.47032932,
                            }, -- end of [6]
                            [2] = 
                            {
                                ["y"] = -1149.6427492402,
                                ["x"] = -1061.2086916062,
                            }, -- end of [2]
                            [3] = 
                            {
                                ["y"] = 86076.385372972,
                                ["x"] = -50729.000034843,
                            }, -- end of [3]
                            [1] = 
                            {
                                ["y"] = -1149.6427492402,
                                ["x"] = -1149.6427492402,
                            }, -- end of [1]
                            [4] = 
                            {
                                ["y"] = 202233.60168,
                                ["x"] = 106390.48659608,
                            }, -- end of [4]
                            [5] = 
                            {
                                ["y"] = 227612.13615673,
                                ["x"] = 217329.21873408,
                            }, -- end of [5]
                            [7] = 
                            {
                                ["y"] = -1149.6427492402,
                                ["x"] = -1149.6427492402,
                            }, -- end of [7]
                        }, -- end of ["points"]
                        ["layerName"] = "Common",
                        ["style"] = "dot",
                    }, -- end of [61]

It would be great if the coords of the shape could be called in the script instead of using 10000 trigger zones

cfrag · May 22, 2023

2 minutes ago, ienatom said:

It would be great if the coords of the shape could be called in the script instead of using 10000 trigger zones

That would be even better. I did not check - can these shapes be easily accessed (i.e. can you identify them from ME)? If so, the rest should be rather simple.

ienatom · May 22, 2023

4 minutes ago, cfrag said:

That would be even better. I did not check - can these shapes be easily accessed (i.e. can you identify them from ME)? If so, the rest should be rather simple.

Yes all the shapes I inserted have a unique name and as you can see from my previous message, the ID can be identified opening the mission file inside the miz. At this point the question becomes: how do i define markupToAll so that it uses an existing shape as a "template"?

cfrag · May 22, 2023

Just now, ienatom said:

At this point the question becomes: how do i define markupToAll so that it uses an existing shape as a "template"?

Ah. Let me see if I can come up with a quick and dirty script that does that for you. Should be doable

ienatom · May 22, 2023

1 minute ago, cfrag said:

Ah. Let me see if I can come up with a quick and dirty script that does that for you. Should be doable

Thank man, if you want you can use that shape that I shared as a reference

Kanelbolle · May 22, 2023

Mist already stores this in : mist.DBs.drawingByName["nameofdrawing"]

Points seam to be stored as .points[u]

If you open MIST and go to line 138, you will see how it stores all the info on drawings.

Edited May 22, 2023 by Kanelbolle

cfrag · May 22, 2023

Well, that wasn't that difficult. Enclosed please find a small script that grabs a poly named polyName from a layer named layerName. Can return absolute map locations (default), or relative (point 1 based, as in mission).

Demo mission included.

null

Script to grab poly points (very verbose to catch errors):

Spoiler

mxObjects = {}

function mxObjects.getObjectFreePoly(layerName, polyName, rel) -- omit rel to get absolute points, else pass 'true' to get relative to first point.
   if not rel then rel = false end -- relative or absolute
   if not env.mission.drawings then
       trigger.action.outText("+++mxO: Mission has no drawings.", 30)
       return {}
   end

   local drawings = env.mission.drawings
   local layers = drawings["layers"]
   if not layers then
       trigger.action.outText("+++mxO: Mission has no layers in drawing", 30)
       return {}
   end
   local theLayer = nil
   for idx, aLayer in pairs(layers) do
       if aLayer.name == layerName then
           theLayer = aLayer
       end
   end
   if not theLayer then
       trigger.action.outText("+++mxO: No layer named <" .. layerName .. "> in Mission", 30)
       return {}
   end

   local objects = theLayer.objects
   if not objects then
       trigger.action.outText("+++mxO: No objects in layer <" .. layerName .. ">", 30)
       return {}
   end
   -- scan objects for a "free" mode poly with name polyName
   for idx, theObject in pairs(objects) do
       if theObject.polygonMode == "free" and theObject.name == polyName then
           local poly = {}
           for idp, thePoint in pairs(theObject.points) do
               local p = {}
               p.x = thePoint.x
               p.y = thePoint.y
               if not rel then
                   p.x = p.x + theObject.mapX
                   p.y = p.y + theObject.mapY
               end
               poly[idp] = p
           end
           return poly
       end
   end

   trigger.action.outText("+++mxO: no polygon named <" .. polyName .. "> in layer <" ..layerName .. ">", 30)
   return {}
end

script to query a polygon and print out all points

Spoiler

local points = mxObjects.getObjectFreePoly("Author", "ThisBPolygon")
trigger.action.outText("Points collected from poly:", 30)
for i=1, #points do
trigger.action.outText("Point " .. i .. ": x=" .. points[i].x .. ", y = " .. points[i].y, 30)
end

demo mission

Freeform Polygon.miz

ienatom · May 22, 2023

34 minutes ago, cfrag said:

Well, that wasn't that difficult. Enclosed please find a small script that grabs a poly named polyName from a layer named layerName. Can return absolute map locations (default), or relative (point 1 based, as in mission).

Demo mission included.

null

Script to grab poly points (very verbose to catch errors):

Hide contents

mxObjects = {}

function mxObjects.getObjectFreePoly(layerName, polyName, rel) -- omit rel to get absolute points, else pass 'true' to get relative to first point.
   if not rel then rel = false end -- relative or absolute
   if not env.mission.drawings then
       trigger.action.outText("+++mxO: Mission has no drawings.", 30)
       return {}
   end

   local drawings = env.mission.drawings
   local layers = drawings["layers"]
   if not layers then
       trigger.action.outText("+++mxO: Mission has no layers in drawing", 30)
       return {}
   end
   local theLayer = nil
   for idx, aLayer in pairs(layers) do
       if aLayer.name == layerName then
           theLayer = aLayer
       end
   end
   if not theLayer then
       trigger.action.outText("+++mxO: No layer named <" .. layerName .. "> in Mission", 30)
       return {}
   end

   local objects = theLayer.objects
   if not objects then
       trigger.action.outText("+++mxO: No objects in layer <" .. layerName .. ">", 30)
       return {}
   end
   -- scan objects for a "free" mode poly with name polyName
   for idx, theObject in pairs(objects) do
       if theObject.polygonMode == "free" and theObject.name == polyName then
           local poly = {}
           for idp, thePoint in pairs(theObject.points) do
               local p = {}
               p.x = thePoint.x
               p.y = thePoint.y
               if not rel then
                   p.x = p.x + theObject.mapX
                   p.y = p.y + theObject.mapY
               end
               poly[idp] = p
           end
           return poly
       end
   end

   trigger.action.outText("+++mxO: no polygon named <" .. polyName .. "> in layer <" ..layerName .. ">", 30)
   return {}
end

script to query a polygon and print out all points

Hide contents

local points = mxObjects.getObjectFreePoly("Author", "ThisBPolygon")
trigger.action.outText("Points collected from poly:", 30)
for i=1, #points do
   trigger.action.outText("Point " .. i .. ": x=" .. points[i].x .. ", y = " .. points[i].y, 30)
end

demo mission

Freeform Polygon.miz 11.55 kB · 1 download

Fantastic! So using this you could get absolute x and y positions for each polygon and insert them instead of triggers.

Is it also getting any other polygons and keep them "in store" so that you could call their position easily instead of writing point by point? Like:
local Polygon1points: {coordinates from your script}
And then
trigger.action.markupToAll(7, -1, 1001, Polygon1points, {1, 0, 0, 0.5}, {1, 0, 0, 0.07}, 3)

Edited May 22, 2023 by ienatom

cfrag · May 22, 2023

2 minutes ago, ienatom said:

Is it also getting any other polygons and keep them "in store" so that you could call their position easily instead of writing point by point? Like:
local Polygon1points: {coordinates from your script}
And then
trigger.action.markupToAll(7, -1, 1001, Polygon1points, {1, 0, 0, 0.5}, {1, 0, 0, 0.07}, 3)

Wouldn't that be nice. No, this is DCS, code engineering must wait outside. If I read the docs on markupToAll correct, you need to write out the parameters, meaning that you need to write a separate invocation for 3, 4, 5, 6, ... vertex polygons, probably along the lines of

if #Polygon1Points = 3 then
	trigger.action.markupToAll(7, -1, id, Polygon1Points[1], Polygon1Points[2], Polygon1Points[3], lCol, fCol, 1)
elseif #Polygon1Points = 4 then 
	trigger.action.markupToAll(7, -1, id, Polygon1Points[1], Polygon1Points[2], Polygon1Points[3], Polygon1Points[4], lCol, fCol, 1)
elseif #Polygon1Points = 5 then 
	trigger.action.markupToAll(7, -1, id, Polygon1Points[1], Polygon1Points[2], Polygon1Points[3], Polygon1Points[4], Polygon1Points[5], lCol, fCol, 1)
elseif 
	...

The entire markup API looks a bit ad-hoc-assembled to me. Shudder. Of course, I'd be happy to be corrected.

ienatom · May 22, 2023

1 minute ago, cfrag said:
Wouldn't that be nice. No, this is DCS, code engineering must wait outside. If I read the docs on markupToAll correct, you need to write out the parameters, meaning that you need to write a separate invocation for 3, 4, 5, 6, ... vertex polygons, probably along the lines of
if #Polygon1Points = 3 then
	trigger.action.markupToAll(7, -1, id, Polygon1Points[1], Polygon1Points[2], Polygon1Points[3], lCol, fCol, 1)
elseif #Polygon1Points = 4 then 
	trigger.action.markupToAll(7, -1, id, Polygon1Points[1], Polygon1Points[2], Polygon1Points[3], Polygon1Points[4], lCol, fCol, 1)
elseif #Polygon1Points = 5 then 
	trigger.action.markupToAll(7, -1, id, Polygon1Points[1], Polygon1Points[2], Polygon1Points[3], Polygon1Points[4], Polygon1Points[5], lCol, fCol, 1)
elseif 
	...
The entire markup API looks a bit ad-hoc-assembled to me. Shudder. Of course, I'd be happy to be corrected.

It would be nice indeed Thanks for the help man, at this point it would probably be easier to use trigger points, although the coords thing could be useful!

2 hours ago, cfrag said:

This may be a naïve question: you seem to use one trigger zone per vertex point. Wouldn't it be easier if you assembled your polys from quad zones - i.e. use multiple quad zones (four vertex points per trigger zone) to assemble more complex areas? It may not look as good, but it sure as heck would be much easier to maintain.

Regarding this, do you think you could use more than 1 quad zone to make up for a shaped polygon with a lot of vertices?

ienatom · May 23, 2023

Funny enough, for some reason now it doesn't fill all the shapes with the specified colors

Edited May 23, 2023 by ienatom

cfrag · May 23, 2023

3 hours ago, ienatom said:

Funny enough, for some reason now it doesn't fill all the shapes with the specified colors

That's a classic thing that nobody explains to you and simply expects you to know: it's a winding issue with polygons, to see if they are facing you or not. It's from 3D, and why it's applied here, nobody knows. Upshot is: if it's not filled, reverse the order of the vertices, so it's wound the other way around.

If your vertex points were given a, b, c, d, e to the poly draw method, re-order them to e, d, c, b, a and they should now be filled in correctly. I suspect this to be another instance of haphazard coding, the mission stuff not being designed but slapped together, maybe even copied from sources not fully understood (note: not knowing the details, I'm not accusing ED here of shoddy workmanship, I merely voice my opinion that some parts of DCS look that way).

So, reverse order, and with some luck, thou shalt see the innards of thine poly

Edited May 23, 2023 by cfrag

ienatom · May 23, 2023

8 minutes ago, cfrag said:

That's a classic thing that nobody explains to you and simply expects you to know: it's a winding issue with polygons, to see if they are facing you or not. It's from 3D, and why it's applied here, nobody knows. Upshot is: if it's not filled, reverse the order of the vertices, so it's wound the other way around.

If your vertex points were given a, b, c, d, e to the poly draw method, re-order them to e, d, c, b, a and they should now be filled in correctly. I suspect this to be another instance of haphazard coding, the mission stuff not being designed but slapped together, maybe even copied from sources not fully understood (note: not knowing the details, I'm not accusing ED here of shoddy workmanship, I merely voice my opinion that some parts of DCS look that way).

So, reverse order, and with some luck, thou shalt see the innards of thine poly

Thanks man This kind of things just make me laugh at this point.

I will reverse all the order but I guess if that's it the issue is now solved and the script works flawlessly. Thank you both for the help guys, really appreciated!

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ME dynamic map drawings scripting

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