Two STANDARD feature still absent

[Mig Fulcrum]

Hi, I wish to have in the ME two very standard features present for ages in almost every software.

- Select multiple units or object by dragging the mouse and hold left click (classic drag select)

- Ctrl+z to undo the last action (and Ctrl+Shift+z to re-do)

These two simple commands would have save me hours, i'm not kidding, considering all the missions I've made in all these years.

[Rudel_chw]

2 minutes ago, Mig Fulcrum said:

These two simple commands would have save me hours,

wonder how do you actually know if they are in fact simple to implement, if they were so I’m fairly sure that ED would have added those functions already.

[virgo47]

21 minutes ago, Rudel_chw said:

wonder how do you actually know if they are in fact simple to implement, if they were so I’m fairly sure that ED would have added those functions already.

I guess the undo can be the harder one, but why the "marquee select" does not work is a bit beyond me. I often try to select multiple units only to misclick (which is extremely easy) to lose the whole selection. I wish it was easier to consistently select the units without accidentally deselecting everything.

[TEMPEST.114]

1 hour ago, Mig Fulcrum said:

Hi, I wish to have in the ME two very standard features present for ages in almost every software.

- Select multiple units or object by dragging the mouse and hold left click (classic drag select)

- Ctrl+z to undo the last action (and Ctrl+Shift+z to re-do)

These two simple commands would have save me hours, i'm not kidding, considering all the missions I've made in all these years.

As I keep explaining, in multiple threads. The way the mission editor is written, these are IMPOSSIBLE. 

There is no ability to understand a subset of acceptable parameters that can be modified when group selecting, and there is no way an 'undo manager' can be shoe-horned in because there is no standard construct of what a 'parameter change' is, so it can't be rolled back. 

EVERY TEXT BOX, FIELD, PARAMETER is it's own thing and is handled by it's own code and does it's thing by itself. 

To put an undo manager in would require AN ENTIRE REWRITE of every dialog, every panel, every button, every field. 

It's not going to happen without a rewrite!

 

I've looked at this. I've posted threads on this. 

People need to be better at searching and start asking the better request - give us a proper, modern mission editor and dump this archaic, broken, poorly 'designed' thing we currently have. 

But as many, many have said - it's just about functional and there is no money in it for ED to make a better one. 

 And this was in the first page of this forum... 

 You're not exactly looking for already asked things are you @Mig Fulcrum?

 

 

Edited May 9, 2024 by TEMPEST.114

[Mig Fulcrum]

4 ore fa, TEMPEST.114 ha scritto:

As I keep explaining, in multiple threads. The way the mission editor is written, these are IMPOSSIBLE. 

There is no ability to understand a subset of acceptable parameters that can be modified when group selecting, and there is no way an 'undo manager' can be shoe-horned in because there is no standard construct of what a 'parameter change' is, so it can't be rolled back. 

EVERY TEXT BOX, FIELD, PARAMETER is it's own thing and is handled by it's own code and does it's thing by itself. 

To put an undo manager in would require AN ENTIRE REWRITE of every dialog, every panel, every button, every field. 

It's not going to happen without a rewrite!

 

I've looked at this. I've posted threads on this. 

People need to be better at searching and start asking the better request - give us a proper, modern mission editor and dump this archaic, broken, poorly 'designed' thing we currently have. 

But as many, many have said - it's just about functional and there is no money in it for ED to make a better one. 

 And this was in the first page of this forum... 

 You're not exactly looking for already asked things are you @Mig Fulcrum?

 

 

 

Thanks for the answer!

Honestly I did search, but i used the "search" tab but it didn't end up on anything. Sorry.

But at least I think the more threads are for one topic the higher is the probability ED do something about it. I really hope to see some day a better ME, more user friendly and with less useless complications.

[Tippis]

6 hours ago, TEMPEST.114 said:

As I keep explaining, in multiple threads. The way the mission editor is written, these are IMPOSSIBLE. 

There is no ability to understand a subset of acceptable parameters that can be modified when group selecting

Not only is it not impossible — it's demonstrably possible by virtue of the fact that you already can do group selection, just in the most cumbersome way imaginable.

[cfrag]

7 hours ago, Tippis said:

Not only is it not impossible — it's demonstrably possible

I would tend to agree - there is nothing in the way that missions are structured that would disallow undo or multiple object select. It can be a major pain to implement if your original design for the editor did not provide a solid foundation for operations on objects, i.e. that the engineering that went into building that application did not extend to that. Implementing undo in an object-oriented environment was a mainstay of application design at least since 1985 when Apple released the 'MacApp' framework that showed how to push each change that a user does on a stack, so your application could easily undo and re-do the last action(s). Design-wise doing this isn't difficult and has been with us for almost 40 years - provided your original design was up to date. Now, if your app design lacks that fundamental object layer, then yes, it's going to be painful indeed to put this in after the fact.

Same with multi-object select and change using inheritance and 'factory' methods. If your app lacks the object abstraction layer, you are looking at some painful refactoring. Normally, it's 'just' invoking the generic 'modify' method on all selected objects, and you push that on the stack for undo. if your design lacks that object foundation - painful!

I have no idea how much engineering went into writing ME. So let's assume that the kind people at ED used their skills to create an app that is in line with decades-old best practices and that they merely haven't gotten around to implementing the undo stack and multi-object factory workers and that one fine day in the (hopefully near) future all this will be resolved. Until then, ME is not something I'd put on my résumé.

[TEMPEST.114]

11 hours ago, Tippis said:

Not only is it not impossible — it's demonstrably possible by virtue of the fact that you already can do group selection, just in the most cumbersome way imaginable.

Sigh. It's impossible WITHOUT SIGNIFICANT REWRITING. 

That's the point. 

Sure, they can add it, but it's not quick or easy. Everything in the ME needs rearchitecting. It needs data moved away from the actual boxes and abstracted. This isn't easy or quick. 

If they're going to that amount of effort then it's basically common sense to just write a whole new M.E.

That's what I meant. I thought that was obvious. 

3 hours ago, cfrag said:

I would tend to agree - there is nothing in the way that missions are structured that would disallow undo or multiple object select.

?

That's not even the issue. The issue is there is no abstraction on the M.E. Everything is tightly coupled and locked in. Hell, in the damn panel for the wind it does the scaling for the back end 33 - 1600ft winds IN THE UI LAYER!!!

It wasn't 'designed' to handle group selections - and what i'm talking about here aren't multiple objects of the same type, I'm talking about group selecting different objects - i.e. helos, statics, ships and aircraft, and the UI pairing back to show the common editable elements that are CORRECT for the selection and the selected TYPES.

Saying it can do group selection now, because you can hold down shift and click, isn't the same thing. 

If you're going to add a marquee and not limit the user on what they can select, then you have a much larger problem and the way the M.E. is built, it just can't handle that without so much refactoring and rewriting, it's not worth doing - they're better off writing a whole new one using proper tools architecture and abstracting everything so there is no coupling. 

[cfrag]

3 minutes ago, TEMPEST.114 said:

It's impossible WITHOUT SIGNIFICANT REWRITING. 

Very likely. But we are not suggesting that the kind folk at ED did bad work, we hope that they merely left their oeuvre incomplete, to be finished at a later date. That is the much more polite way, and as a bonus, we also won't get warning points that could get us banned.

[Tippis]

3 hours ago, TEMPEST.114 said:

Sigh. It's impossible WITHOUT SIGNIFICANT REWRITING.

So what? It's the tool that keeps the game alive — every improvement to it is worth any effort put into it.

And it is not even remotely impossible regardless. All you'd want to do with that kind of mixed selection is move it around — i.e. change coordinates.  So why would it require significant rewriting to implement what is essentially “find every conceivable thing with a coordinate within this box; add those coordinates to a stack; if dragged, apply translation equally to all items, possibly checking for illegal placements when the drag is completed”? It's shocking that something as simple and obvious isn't the default behaviour as it is, really. Especially when all the parts are already there.

And that's if you do it the complex way with a clear intended use-case and not just by iterating through potential candidates and checking “can this be added to the list” as it if were automated shift-clicking.

So no, the point is that the notion that something as trivial as that is somehow a monumental feat of programming is… very questionable. I have to wonder what the source for this claim is.

3 hours ago, TEMPEST.114 said:

I'm talking about group selecting different objects - i.e. helos, statics, ships and aircraft, and the UI pairing back to show the common editable elements that are CORRECT for the selection and the selected TYPES.

Still utterly trivial. Everything we'd want to select has coordinates. That's all that really matters with a wide selection. The game already handles the issue of objects not being exactly the same by… well… simply not dealing with it. It just shows whatever is selected last. The game can already do multi-move for specific selections. The game can already mix and match to a high degree.

It's a matter of list management — adding and removing and iterating through referenced items in that list. As horrible as Lua is, that's actually something it can do pretty well.

3 hours ago, TEMPEST.114 said:

Saying it can do group selection now, because you can hold down shift and click, isn't the same thing. 

It most certainly could be, and even if you aimed higher, it would still be an “intern's first day” kind of task.

Edited May 10, 2024 by Tippis

[winghunter]

drag & select is nothing without transform, scale and rotate

 

[virgo47]

14 hours ago, winghunter said:

drag & select is nothing without transform, scale and rotate

It's better with those things, but it's not "nothing". I never wanted to transform scale and rotate, perhaps because I never expected such thing from the current editor, but many times I wanted to move/clone a few selected units - and use marquee select for that.

[winghunter]

3 hours ago, virgo47 said:

It's better with those things, but it's not "nothing". I never wanted to transform scale and rotate, perhaps because I never expected such thing from the current editor, but many times I wanted to move/clone a few selected units - and use marquee select for that.

Well let's say you've created an FOB with ~ 1000 objects carefully placed. You want to re-use that FOB on a different map/location. You will likely need to rotate it.

Or you want to move an airport setup to a different but similar airport. Without transform & rotate you still have to touch every single object.

Edited May 11, 2024 by winghunter

[Tippis]

If we're going to add transformation tools, let's also not forget the classics: align and distribute.

Especially if we're imagining that the selection would also expand into the manipulation of flight plan waypoints and maybe even group nav points.

[killjoy73au]

The amount of times i've spent holding SHIFT + click to select a bunch of units and then lost them all because of not clicking on an icon... The click and drag feature is a must at the very least.

[virgo47]

On 5/18/2024 at 2:21 PM, killjoy73au said:

The amount of times i've spent holding SHIFT + click to select a bunch of units and then lost them all because of not clicking on an icon... The click and drag feature is a must at the very least.

Yeah, not to mention that perhaps a Shift+misclick shouldn't have such a frustrating effect.

[buceador]

I have said this before and I think I was penalised for it but...

I don't see ED doing a rewrite of ME to include the myriad of missing functions in the near (or distant) future.  I think when the DCS Web Editor is released it will be the goto tool for mission creation. 

[virgo47]

3 hours ago, buceador said:

I don't see ED doing a rewrite of ME to include the myriad of missing functions in the near (or distant) future.  I think when the DCS Web Editor is released it will be the goto tool for mission creation. 

Will that be a free tool? I'm a bit confused about the messaging around this... Even as a premium tool - it will still be better than nothing, but that means that except for big fans or people who make money from missions will not benefit from this. Which would leave the current ME in a bit of a sad state.

Edited May 19, 2024 by virgo47

[buceador]

3 minutes ago, virgo47 said:

Will that be a free tool?

My understanding is that yes, it will be free.

[winghunter]

There will be a free version like DCS Web Viewer. It was patreon only at first. But now its free for everyone, even though there is also a patreon edition of DCS Web Viewer with commercial maps.

The same will apply to DCS Web Editor. It all depends how the beta goes but I would say 1-4 months till public release.

Edited May 19, 2024 by winghunter

[killjoy73au]

3 hours ago, buceador said:

I have said this before and I think I was penalised for it but...

I don't see ED doing a rewrite of ME to include the myriad of missing functions in the near (or distant) future.  I think when the DCS Web Editor is released it will be the goto tool for mission creation. 

Just a shame we need to rely on outside tools and modders to implement something that should be a part of the core system.