[sp / CO-OP MP] EXPANSION - a Dynamic Mission and Sandbox (all aircraft)

[DD_Friar]

Salute @cfrag

I am currently trying to dissect how the "Expansion" mission works with a view of trying to build my own on another map, Syria for example, using your excellent technology .

I have tested the vanilla mission and can see that although blue aircraft at currently owned red bases do appear in the list of available planes to pick, when clicking on them you are not able to select them (something better than the "foothold" version which lets you select the aircraft but then when going to the mission tells you its not available).

My question is how is this facilitated? I assume it utilizes the slot-blocking server script but how? I am not looking for a detailed explanation just a nudge to the way the module zones work.

For example Baslan airfield, I have taken the liberty of changing the zone names to identify what they are for (something I do in my missions to make it easier to remember what they are for).

Could you give a brief explanation of which zone does what (excluding the cloners and spawners of course as I am comfortable with those) in the food chain please? Once I have this I will use the knowledge to go back to mission and translate it to what I see.

Many thanks for this, we played the older version of this technology on the Syria map last night and had a real good time with the concept. We will be playing your version very soon.

Regards

DD_Friar

null

[cfrag]

2 hours ago, DD_Friar said:

I have tested the vanilla mission and can see that although blue aircraft at currently owned red bases do appear in the list of available planes to pick, when clicking on them you are not able to select them (something better than the "foothold" version which lets you select the aircraft but then when going to the mission tells you its not available).

My question is how is this facilitated? I assume it utilizes the slot-blocking server script but how?

There are two pieces to this: as you correctly assume, the server side is covered by SSB. The mission side is taken care of by cfxSSBClient, a standard DML module. Note that this only works when you run the mission as multiplayer, even when single-playing it I believe Pretense uses a very similar method (with a tiny script called 'slotblok' that must be installed on the server) and Pretense even may have an extension to that that works in single-player (I was not successful in reliably replicating this, so please take with a grain of salt. But with SSB and cfxSSBClient any mission that you create automatically blocks slots on airfields and FARPS that do not belong to the same side (you can enable starting from neutral as an option)

2 hours ago, DD_Friar said:

Could you give a brief explanation of which zone does what (excluding the cloners and spawners of course as I am comfortable with those) in the food chain please? Once I have this I will use the knowledge to go back to mission and translate it to what I see.

98% of XP is DML, albeit with a host of new modules that I've not yet come around to document. They facilitate some of the new abilities: The 'camp' module pulls together a couple of other modules to allow zones to be reinforced, the 'bank' module works together with 'income' to facilitate funds management. The milWing and milHelo modules create military mission profile flights for helos and fixed wing. And finally, 'launchPlatform' launches volleys of cruise missiles from any place on the map. All still undocumented. The plan is to finish XP, and then update DML once the raw modules are production worthy.

One bit I have left out: the xpStrat script - that heavily relies on DML, but is not a classic DML script. It's the mission's 'Admiral AI'. Since I can rely on DML for doing all of the cool stuff, it's short, and my plans are to expand on it pending feedback. 

[DD_Friar]

@cfrag Thank you for taking the time out to reply. I have started building my own mission. The first thing I have done is to replicate all of the modules you have used so that I know from the start I have all of the correct building blocks in place.

I am then going to start very simply looking at each feature of this brilliant scenario bit by bit until I have built up an understanding of how it all clicks together.

Thanks again for you time and efforts in building this technology.

Friar

[cfrag]

On 5/14/2024 at 3:19 PM, DD_Friar said:

I have tested the vanilla mission and can see that although blue aircraft at currently owned red bases do appear in the list of available planes to pick, when clicking on them you are not able to select them (something better than the "foothold" version which lets you select the aircraft but then when going to the mission tells you its not available).

It took some time, and a *lot* of hitting myself over the head, but finally I got it to work: slot-blocking for single-player in Expansion. As so often, Dz showed a possible way, but I found his approach a bit risky so I did not pursue it. I now revisited the idea (thanks to @mimamema kicking me), and after some (in hindsight obvious) changes, I can now make the full 'Expansion' experience available to single-player without them having to local host the mission. Moreover, installing SSB on the host is no longer required - it merely makes the experience a bit nicer: you aren't permitted to slot in with SSB in multiplayer, while without you are told after the fact that your choice was not permitted and you are standing just around without a plane, looking silly  

I'm putting the final touches on Expansion 1.2, stress-testing this new feature.

And yes, this new SSB-compatible 'SSB-without-SSB' feature will come to DML as the new *tiny* module "Slotty", probably next week, so everyone will be able to create working capture-the-airfield missions for single player.

Edited May 16, 2024 by cfrag

[DD_Friar]

Many thanks @cfrag, so can I confirm my understanding, this new method will also work for a hosted multiplayer server and I can remove the SSB script from the hooks folder?

Regards

Friar

[cfrag]

Just now, DD_Friar said:

this new method will also work for a hosted multiplayer server and I can remove the SSB script from the hooks folder?

Yes, although SSB will give your players a slightly better player experience: with SSB active on the server, the players are told that they can't slot into a blocked aircraft. With client-side blocking, they are denied their plane after entering it (they are kicked out of the plane after 1/10 second). Server-side SSB is a somewhat smoother experience.

[DD_Friar]

@cfrag, Sir, I wonder if I may trouble you for some assistance (again...). As I have stated before I am trying to have  ago at building my own extended mission using DML. Using your Expansion 1.11 as a guide I have created my first, starting point airfield however I am getting a couple of errors that I do not understand. I have built the airfield using the same zones and modules that you used for the home airfield but I am obviously missing something.

I have included the mission and screen shots and was hoping you may be able to spare me a few minutes of your time to take a quick look to see what I have over looked or not understood correctly.

DD_Friar Dynamic Syria Using DML V1.miz

[Grindmetal]

1 hour ago, DD_Friar said:

@cfrag, Sir, I wonder if I may trouble you for some assistance (again...). As I have stated before I am trying to have  ago at building my own extended mission using DML. Using your Expansion 1.11 as a guide I have created my first, starting point airfield however I am getting a couple of errors that I do not understand. I have built the airfield using the same zones and modules that you used for the home airfield but I am obviously missing something.

I have included the mission and screen shots and was hoping you may be able to spare me a few minutes of your time to take a quick look to see what I have over looked or not understood correctly.

DD_Friar Dynamic Syria Using DML V1.miz 494.59 kB · 2 downloads

 

This happened to me, I deleted the save game, but I believe this is not your case due to persistence being disabled

[cfrag]

1 hour ago, DD_Friar said:

Using your Expansion 1.11 as a guide I have created my first, starting point airfield however I am getting a couple of errors that I do not understand.

You are getting those errors because you are mixing and matching versions that aren't compatible. Please understand that I am not yet prepared to support the new modules milWing, milHelo, milGround, camp, launchplatform, bank, income etc. They require new versions of Zones and Common (you have them in the version of XP that you are using as template, so if you really want to play with that, use those). Just know that I'm still not done with those modules, and they may change without notice. 

 

[mimamema]

On 5/16/2024 at 4:30 PM, cfrag said:

It took some time, and a *lot* of hitting myself over the head, but finally I got it to work: slot-blocking for single-player in Expansion. As so often, Dz showed a possible way, but I found his approach a bit risky so I did not pursue it. I now revisited the idea (thanks to @mimamema kicking me), and after some (in hindsight obvious) changes, I can now make the full 'Expansion' experience available to single-player without them having to local host the mission. Moreover, installing SSB on the host is no longer required - it merely makes the experience a bit nicer: you aren't permitted to slot in with SSB in multiplayer, while without you are told after the fact that your choice was not permitted and you are standing just around without a plane, looking silly  

I'm putting the final touches on Expansion 1.2, stress-testing this new feature.

And yes, this new SSB-compatible 'SSB-without-SSB' feature will come to DML as the new *tiny* module "Slotty", probably next week, so everyone will be able to create working capture-the-airfield missions for single player.

 

Glad to kick you anytime is necessary , and happy to see that is working as you intended. 

Edited May 17, 2024 by mimamema

[DD_Friar]

@cfrag - Thank you for your reply. I will park my idea for now until you are more happy that your solution is nearer completed.

[cfrag]

Version 1.20 - Update 20240518 "single-player slot blocking & Tomahawks"

Changes:

•    now supports slot-blocking in single-player
•    now supports slot-blocking on servers that aren’t running SSB 
•    fixed a cosmetic bug that appeared after winning the mission 
•    upgraded Mineralnye's defenders 
•    added Tomahawk missile capability 
•    smart tomahawk target res points 
•    insertions now deduct their price from funds 
•    Tomahawk strikes can be ordered for all primary objectives 
•    added some eye candy to the Washington 
•    completing an objective nets §1000 
•    an AWACS is available on-demand, once per hour, free.
 

[DD_Friar]

Salute @cfrag, I wonder if I might ask a quick (I hope that it is, if not, no worries) favour.

I am trying to build a mission using the warehouse resources and cargo loads for re-supply for the Hercules mod. My issue is that some weapons (e.g. Apache Hellfires) are not listed as potential cargo. I have posted in the Hercules mod thread but am not sure if this receives any more development views / updates.

My request is with your scripting skills would it be possible for you to extract a list of the missiles with their id's? Let me explain.

I am doing the digging myself to find how to add the missing items. I believe that I have found the correct .lua file (see below Hercules_loadout.lua) and have tried to add one of the types that are missing (AGM-114K used on the Apache). 

I copied the top line and changed it for the AGM-114K but I think the last item -  wstype = {4,4, 8, 77}}) the "77" seems to be a code, but I have no way of identifying the codes.

I appreciate that this is a bit of a cheeky request with every thing else you have going on, but any assistance you could give would be very much appreciated.

Regards

DD_Friar

null

Edited May 18, 2024 by DD_Friar

[Grindmetal]

I started again after a while a lot of messages appeared like this
It's a new save

[cfrag]

1 hour ago, Grindmetal said:

I started again after a while a lot of messages appeared like this
It's a new save

That looks strange indeed, even though I suspect that these messages will appear only once during load. If you don't mind, some questions

• which version of XP is that?
• did that version start a new playthrough (i.e. you deleted the "Expansions (data)" folder before you started 
• How much time elapsed before your restart?

Thank you so much, 

-ch

 

2 hours ago, DD_Friar said:

I wonder if I might ask a quick (I hope that it is, if not, no worries) favour.

Sure, no problem at all. Can I trouble you to PM with the "Message" feature so we can keep this separate from the Expansion Mission thread?

Cheers,

-ch

 

[Grindmetal]

yes, I deleted the two folders DMLshared and Expapansion
It only happened once and then they disappeared

Yes, but through the folder it is saving persistence without any problems

Maybe I should change it from 5 minutes Save to every 3 minutes

[cfrag]

13 hours ago, Grindmetal said:

I started again after a while a lot of messages appeared like this

I tracked down this one. As so often with my goldfish brain, it's a cosmetic issue that I forgot to remove when I was done with testing. The info text is correct, informative, and annoying when it appears during save (it should only appear if you enable verbosity for debugging, and I forgot to guard this function for helicopters). I've updated the mission to suppress this message and will post the fix asap. 

Thanks for the heads-up!

Edited May 19, 2024 by cfrag

[Grindmetal]

Spoiler

024-05-22 17:44:01.925 ERROR   SCRIPTING (Main): Mission script error: [string "-- cfxCommander - issue dcs commands to groups etc..."]:122: Group doesn't exist
stack traceback:
    [C]: ?
    [C]: in function 'getController'
    [string "-- cfxCommander - issue dcs commands to groups etc..."]:122: in function <[string "-- cfxCommander - issue dcs commands to groups etc..."]:116>
2024-05-22 17:46:11.984 WARNING LOG (5732): 6 duplicate message(s) skipped.

simply this new ED update broke the mission but not just yours but several others here that I tested gave problems

 

EDIT
:

I think this error was due to the MODs, I removed them all, the error apparently stopped from the other missions, the EXP only occurred during operation randomly, the others didn't even load, I removed all Mods A4 UH etc... it stopped the errors

Edited May 23, 2024 by Grindmetal

[cfrag]

5 hours ago, Grindmetal said:

I think this error was due to the MODs,

It's still a good catch, though - thank you! I've hardened the Commander module to be even more vigilant if a group suddenly disappears or has no controller attached. Will be rolled into the next update scheduled for the week-end where I'll also add the Phantom "Bomb Truck" as player-drivable crates.

[cfrag]

Version 1.22 "The Phantom's Menace" - 20240525

Changes:

• added the Phantom to all 4 airfields
• under-the-hood code hardening
• inserted units can move at line abreast formation
• inserted troops can move to secure the next neutral or enemy-owned zone and then stay there
• made Cruise Missile launches less verbose
• non-SSB slot blocking: now frees illegitimately slotted aircraft for re-slotting
• Insertion troops picked up from Nalchik use a more advanced (experimental) capture strategy

Enjoy,

-ch

Edited May 25, 2024 by cfrag

[Grindmetal]

nullSometimes AI stops taking off, do you know the fact that this happens?

[cfrag]

5 hours ago, Grindmetal said:

Sometimes AI stops taking off, do you know the fact that this happens

Yes, and there is already code in the mission that tries to mitigate this. The root cause is a DCS AI bug where sometimes, debris falls onto the runway or taxi ways. AI aircraft are unable to drive around or choose another route, and simply give us their rendition of "Waiting for Godot". The code that I created watches the runways, and I may now look into expanding it to the taxiways. The problem is that this code can be really expensive (in terms of performance), so I'll see what I can do.

One thing that helps is quitting and restarting the mission, you'll lose 5 minutes at most.

Edited May 29, 2024 by cfrag

[Grindmetal]

8 hours ago, cfrag said:

Yes, and there is already code in the mission that tries to mitigate this. The root cause is a DCS AI bug where sometimes, debris falls onto the runway or taxi ways. AI aircraft are unable to drive around or choose another route, and simply give us their rendition of "Waiting for Godot". The code that I created watches the runways, and I may now look into expanding it to the taxiways. The problem is that this code can be really expensive (in terms of performance), so I'll see what I can do.

One thing that helps is quitting and restarting the mission, you'll lose 5 minutes at most.

 

would not have any function in the despawn DML
similar to the pretense Groupmonitor, it kind of validates that the vehicle or plane is not moving and despawns.

 

edit 

Disregard what I said, I understand the problem is something else as you said

Edited May 29, 2024 by Grindmetal

[Grindmetal]

@cfrag w8 Expansion Syria s2 hahaha

[mcfleck]

Hey cfrag.

Had the chance to try your mission with a couple of friends on a dedicated server.

Unfortunately we ran into an error (stackoverflow) twice in a row.

Circumstances:

I picked up an infantry group with my UH1 from Nalchik and deployed them to Wasp factory. It might have contributed to the error. (see log and screenshot)

Greetings and thanks for providing this cool mission.

 

Btw:

I changed the AI loadouts a bit. The CAP F18 were equiped with a datalink pod instead of a fuel tank for example.

 

dcs.log

Edited June 4, 2024 by mcfleck
added dcs.log file