Request - Mission Editor mission test tools

[Exorcet]

Mission making can be a big task and some complex missions can involve a lot of testing. It would be nice to have tools to make that testing easier. Here are some common issues I've faced:

-The need to time accelerate during long missions

-The inability to see flag settings, unit fuel states, radio frequencies, or other mission parameters unless set in the mission beforehand

-The inability to hide/unhide units on the map

-The inability to show labels for testing purposes

-The inability to manually activate triggers

-The inability to set immortality/unlimited fuel mid missions

-The inability to destroy units at will

There can be more than one solution for these problems. A few solutions that I've come up with:

-Allow player to fly AI planes - Simpler flight model means faster time acceleration, also being able to take control of AI units might help understand limitations they face like fuel management and sensors

-In mission GUI that displays flag and trigger information and allows the user to edit them

-In mission GUI that displays unit health, fuel, weapons, visibility settings, and radio settings

-Some way to launch a mission in a test mode that overrides mission settings like labels

There may be better ideas and if so I'd welcome them.

[TEMPEST.114]

5 hours ago, Exorcet said:

Mission making can be a big task and some complex missions can involve a lot of testing. It would be nice to have tools to make that testing easier. Here are some common issues I've faced:

-The need to time accelerate during long missions

-The inability to see flag settings, unit fuel states, radio frequencies, or other mission parameters unless set in the mission beforehand

-The inability to hide/unhide units on the map

-The inability to show labels for testing purposes

-The inability to manually activate triggers

-The inability to set immortality/unlimited fuel mid missions

-The inability to destroy units at will

There can be more than one solution for these problems. A few solutions that I've come up with:

-Allow player to fly AI planes - Simpler flight model means faster time acceleration, also being able to take control of AI units might help understand limitations they face like fuel management and sensors

-In mission GUI that displays flag and trigger information and allows the user to edit them

-In mission GUI that displays unit health, fuel, weapons, visibility settings, and radio settings

-Some way to launch a mission in a test mode that overrides mission settings like labels

There may be better ideas and if so I'd welcome them.

So @Exorcet I know you said you're not big into the scripting engine, but everything you asked (bar faster Time Comp and taking over AI planes) can be done via scripting. I have a logging class that allows me to output to the screen or to the dcs.log virtually all you asked for.

If you'd like help making your own, let me know and I'd be happy to help.

As regards to immortality mid mission, that was something I asked for about 2 years ago. The concept was dogfighting with an ally mid mission and then getting tasked for real ops. Because there was no way to toggle immortality mid mission and there is not 'dummy ACMI' stuff to use mid mission I scrapped the idea. But it would be great.

One line of lua will destroy an object if you wish, inc statics. 

What would REALLY speed up mission/campaign creation time is if the Mission Editor was it's own app and you could SEE FLAG/TRIGGER STATES live and be writing script code whilst the mission is running and then just Shift+R to restart the mission to apply all the new changes. 

Again, asked for two years ago and shot down. 

[Mistermann]

Hey @Exocet check out this awesome set of tools from @cfrag. 

He has an interactive debugger as part of this toolkit.  You can look at variables, change variables and destroy units all from the F10 map.  I use this debugger all the time for the missions I create.  While it won't solve all your needs listed above, it will make some of your wishes a reality instead of just wishing ED updates the ME to be more mission creator friendly.

 

 

[Exorcet]

1 hour ago, Elphaba said:

So @Exorcet I know you said you're not big into the scripting engine, but everything you asked (bar faster Time Comp and taking over AI planes) can be done via scripting. I have a logging class that allows me to output to the screen or to the dcs.log virtually all you asked for.

If you'd like help making your own, let me know and I'd be happy to help.

As regards to immortality mid mission, that was something I asked for about 2 years ago. The concept was dogfighting with an ally mid mission and then getting tasked for real ops. Because there was no way to toggle immortality mid mission and there is not 'dummy ACMI' stuff to use mid mission I scrapped the idea. But it would be great.

One line of lua will destroy an object if you wish, inc statics. 

What would REALLY speed up mission/campaign creation time is if the Mission Editor was it's own app and you could SEE FLAG/TRIGGER STATES live and be writing script code whilst the mission is running and then just Shift+R to restart the mission to apply all the new changes. 

Again, asked for two years ago and shot down. 

I've only scratched the surface of scripting, true, though I do know that some of the things I've requested are possible with lua (and even the built in trigger system). I actually do have a fuel monitor script, a few simple event handlers, a couple of short flag scripts, destroy script, and even a simple AWACS script. Part of my wish here is to have everything in an integrated GUI.

If there are existing scripts for these tasks I'm open to looking at them though.

33 minutes ago, Mistermann said:

Hey @Exocet check out this awesome set of tools from @cfrag. 

He has an interactive debugger as part of this toolkit.  You can look at variables, change variables and destroy units all from the F10 map.  I use this debugger all the time for the missions I create.  While it won't solve all your needs listed above, it will make some of your wishes a reality instead of just wishing ED updates the ME to be more mission creator friendly.

 

 

I've seen DML though I haven't looked into it as a mission monitoring tool. Another idea to consider, thanks.

[Mistermann]

1 minute ago, Exorcet said:

I've seen DML though I haven't looked into it as a mission monitoring tool. Another idea to consider, thanks.

Just so you know, you can use JUST the debugger and not the rest of DML if you don't want.  Shuussh .... don't tell cfrag ... that's what I do.  

Someday I may bring myself to learn more of his tooling.  I'm just set in my ways after many many years of "mastering" the ED ME - 

[cfrag]

9 hours ago, Exorcet said:

If there are existing scripts for these tasks I'm open to looking at them though.

This may be of interest:

https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/files/3324851/

Among other things like monitoring and setting flags, It can spawn and remove units/groups. It's not a panacea, and some DCS-native debugging tool along the lines that you mentioned would be great.

9 hours ago, Mistermann said:

Shuussh .... don't tell cfrag ...

Man, you're lucky I didn't read that, I'd be so disappointed