FC2 Mission Editor Review

[Grimes]

This review has been written because it needs to be said. Think of it as part review, part purpose request. I would like to add that making a mission with 900 triggers was a major catalyst in choosing to write this.

 

Where to begin?

 

The mission editor as we know of it is essentially the same one that shipped with DCS Black Shark. The fact that it is so similar to Black Shark honestly disappointed me. I hoped that the year of Black Shark being released we might have seen at least a few new features. To their credit the flag limit was essentially removed, thus making it possible to do so much. But I digress, I consider it a massive step up from what we previously had to work with in FC1. I like it, I like it alot. Yet something about it is missing. I could ramble on about the omission of a satellite or 3d view or the limitations of the AI related triggers, but they really aren't the problem. No, something else is missing. What I think is missing is a sense of direction. It doesn't have features that scream to the end user, "hey this bunch of triggers are there to make things easier for a co-op". Rather it has a sense of "Everything is possible, but I don't really care what you want to do." This bothers me greatly. The tools should be there to encourage the user of what is possible.

 

What it does well

 

• Single Serving, Single Player missions. In other words, a mission that isn't directly connected with other missions, lasts for at most an hour, and is pretty straight forward.
  

There should be more bullet points here, but sadly the above statement pretty much sums it up. Don't get me wrong, it does that one thing really, really, really well. I would even go so far to say that to an extent campaigns ought to be a mentioned, and on a mission by mission basis they should be. However strong counter-points exist in the lack of continuity between missions and the dry user experience. Specifically with continuity between missions is there is no "middle" between missions.

 

It is literally: Play Mission A> Get Mission A Kill Debrief> Play Mission B

 

It should be something like: Play Mission A> Get Mission A Kill Debrief>Go to Common page between all missions> Given Narrative Update> Send to next mission> Play Mission B

 

What it *can* do

 

Nearly anything. It is just a factor of how much time you want to spend on a project.

I made this distinction for one important reason, the capability is there, but the implementation of it is where it fails. We *can* do so many crazy things, but it just isn't practical.

 

Just for the sake of comparison, lets look at the pseudo code of creating and using a "player counter" in two different games. A player counter could have a wide range of purposes within Lockon. I've used it in "Capturing Maykop" to determine capture rate. The more players, the fast it goes. Other uses for it in LockOn could be to spawn AI based on the number of players in a server or to display accurate "size of force" status of your ground forces.

 

LockOn Pseudo Code

 

Switched Condition (Add Player A)> If Unit A inside Zone > Set Flag 10
 Switched Condition (Add PlayerB)> If Unit B inside Zone > Set Flag 10
  
 Switched Condition (0+1)> If Flag 10 is True and Flag 100 is True> Set Flag 101 and Clear Flag 10 and Clear Flag 100
 Switched Condition (1 +1)> If Flag 10 is True and Flag 101 is True> Set Flag 102 and Clear Flag 10 and Clear Flag 101

 

Summary: To count up we need a trigger for how much we want to count to. Likewise to count down. To count from 0 to 2 and from 2 to 0 for two aircraft we need 8 triggers! We could use the "OR" text editor hack to require less triggers that "add" or "subtract" players, but since it's just a tad annoying to do and it's not build into the editor, let's pretend it doesn't exist.

Keep in mind all triggers that actually use this information are not listed.

 

Team Fortress 2 (Any Source Engine game) Pseudo Code

 

Place "MATH_Counter" and "LOGIC CASE" and "player grouping" and "trigger capture area" entities in the level
  
 Add Outputs that link "Player grouping" to "trigger capture area" to "math counter" to "logic case".
 OnNumCappersChanged in trigger capture area > Send Value to Math Counter
 OnRecievedValue in math counter > Send new value to Logic case
 On Case01: Do X
 On Case02: Do y

 

Summary: Each of those objects listed above have acceptable inputs and outputs. In other words data gets transferred between them. For instance if the number of players in the trigger capture area change it sends the new value on to the math counter.

 

Aside from me leaving out the LockOn trigger functions of what to do with that data, both systems basically do the same thing. They both count players and can perform actions on that information. The difference is that the only dataset we have in LockOn to work with is binary, while TF2 is alot more advanced. For those who aren't programmers out there, binary is a true/false statement. Yes or no is all it knows. These are "Flags" within LockOn.

 

What is wrong with the editor?

 

The lack of direction and focus cripples the developmental process.

There are no tools to speed up development. You must start with a fresh canvas every time you want to make a new mission. It is such a painful thought of having to create entirely new triggers specific to your current mission. Even adding or removing countries from the coalitions after you start making a mission is a pain in the arse.

 

Collaboration is virtually out of the question. We should be able to create massive scripts that we can share with other mission builders without having to manually re-create their work. In the current editor, even if we do create scripts to share its something that has to be done at the start of mission creations as we can't easily import/export scripts. If I make a player counter that uses 60+ triggers, I should only have to make it once and I should be able to share it will anyone who wants it.

 

Flags. They have their use. When you need to store information that can be true or false for instance. Aside from that, not much purpose. We need more data types. Strings, integers, anything you could think MIGHT be useful, would be useful.

 

It is a Single Serving use. Everything is linear. Spawn AI, they go to point A to Point B. Two conditions stop them, 1. The Bridge is Out. 2. They are dead. I can go on and on about the AI. I might make a "AI Review" post for it even. But the point remains, everything is linear and nothing is connected. I saw a thread where someone was so proud they took out that BUK site in the A-10 campaign, only to be disappointed that it was still alive in the next mission. Being able to connect multiple missions in what is alive and whats dead would be useful in singleplayer. Its usage online however could create unique situations to Lockon multiplayer. The concept of" Air quake" could be replaced by an actual evolving battlefield. We might still play like its airquake, but hey the front lines shift every day, that would have to count for something.

Oh yeah, the user experience

Two games come to mind that have editors that allow custom content creators the ability to add to the user experience. I'm not talking missions/levels, or new models, or mods of any kind I mean the actual user experience. The two games are Starcraft 2 and ARMA. Starcraft 2 isn't out yet, but a quick google search of its world builder and you will understand. But practically speaking, let's think about ARMA.

 

ARMA allows for the implementation of custom Graphics User Interfaces within a mission. It has been used to call in different types of airstrike support, display dynamic information vital to the mission, or to create interfaces for a Role Playing Game that is basically "Cops and Robbers" within a highly realistic military shooter.

Just the thought of having GUI driven triggers gives me goose bumps and insane ideas that I'd want to build.

 

In Conclusion

To be honest, this iteration of the mission editor is a step up, but you took the wrong staircase to begin with. We can do so much with it, yet it takes so much time, and the tools we have to use to create missions are less than ideal.

 

Cheers,

Grimes

[PoleCat]

Good review Grimes. I think most people aren't going anywhere near this deep though. I like the editor alot simply for the improvements it makes over FC 1.12. And as you put it "We can do so much with it, yet it takes so much time". There in lies the trade off I guess. At least we can do so, even if it does take a long time to create excellent complex missions like yours.

 

Out

[coolts]

Well said Mr Grimes! As a newbie to the editor I am simultaneously gripped with possibilities and hamstrung by application deficiencies.

 

Your point below…

 

“Being able to connect multiple missions in what is alive and whats dead would be useful in singleplayer. Its usage online however could create unique situations to Lockon multiplayer. The concept of" Air quake" could be replaced by an actual evolving battlefield. We might still play like its airquake, but hey the front lines shift every day, that would have to count for something”

 

…sums up to me where ED should be thinking of going with this. Surely the fact that their development roadmap is largely driven my military sales, (and the military doesn’t require feature A or B), should be an impetus to their sales guys to be saying, “Would you find this feature useful? Then prodding the programmers for these features to drive further sales).

 

Feature wish list (draft);

 

Persistent Variables, (user defined at that), to be called throughout campaign from any mission step.

If for example, (keeping within the linear .miz progression), a summary of altered variables could be called at the beginning of the next phase, then the designer could work around that. This could mitigate the potential issue where, say, a SAM site destroyed in mission 1 was then removed from mission 2 before it started, but broke the code as there were triggers build round the assumption that the SAM site was still there. This is, I guess one of the reasons why ED hasn’t done this.

 

Macros, and eventually, object oriented scripting.

Once created, the slog of having to re-create everything from scratch for the next mission can only be mitigated by having a huge “template” mission and disabling what you need then wrangling the rest into shape. This could be vastly reduced if we were able to create our own functions from code snippets then call them from a master / header file and pass variable to and from them.

 

Code import

Along with the above, this would progress the development process massively as we could share objects / functions, etc. The Dev community would explode!

 

Editable Priority based AI behaviours

One of my biggest bugbears. Getting unit / group A to do something based on what their orders / role are and what their current situation is. If we could assign weighting to variables controlling behaviours then we could create much more dynamic behaviour.

 

Extendable / moddable mission designer.

IF ED doesn’t have the manpower to upgrade the mission designer, then make it open source and allow the community to add to it in the same way they create missions & videos, etc. Imagine editor modules with GUI / scripts / templates geared towards SEAD, etc. That would be amazing!

 

3D world viewer

So we can really get a grip on how our virtual battlefields will play out and tighten up unit placements, etc. There are workarounds to this as Panzertard has demo-ed, but along with the “replace and with or” workaround you demo-ed, they should be built-in.

 

Create element àflightàpackage templates

There are rudimentary steps toward this functionality in the editor as far as land units go but nothing for aircraft. In a flight simulator! (This is potentially because AI inconsistencies on the ground at 2 miles per hour are going to be magnified massively at Mach 2!)

This would be a massive bonus. Proper escort tasking, (click escort element, chose “escort” tasking dropdown, then chose package element to be assigned escorts from subsequent list).

 

Mission editor tutorials

I have found a wealth of tutorials covering every aspect of this fantastic SIM from F-15 radar modes to Su-25 unguided bombing. There is almost nothing in the way of ME tutorials however. Like most people I have started picking apart ED’s missions as a guideline. This is fine for those of us with a Sherlock Holmes complex but would hinder those who don’t have the time / inclination / stubbornness to persevere, which is a shame. (The GUI manual has some really good reference but it’s not comprehensive enough and its examples could be beefed up considerably).

 

High hopes

I am hoping for a considerably upgraded ME with DCS: A-10 along with documentation / comprehensive help files. The interface is clean and generally helpful and a massive improvement over LOMAC, but the ME needs to be upgraded alongside the development of DCS and follow in its evolutionary wake! The machine is the star, yes, but it’s what you can do with it that maintains your interest. After all, you can’t polish a virtual F-15.:D

 

Cheers

 

Coolts (who really should be working)

**EDIT**

and an undo button!

Edited May 14, 2010 by coolts

[Grimes]

I like the editor alot simply for the improvements it makes over FC 1.12. And as you put it "We can do so much with it, yet it takes so much time".

 

 

One of the things that bothered me greatly is that your statement fits perfectly well for Black Shark and its mission editor. Yet over a year after it was released only two noticeable updates were made.

 

1. In the 1.0.1 patch for Black Shark, more triggers were made multiplayer compatible.

2. The number of flags increased

 

I was hoping for more improvement on that end, however what we got was essentially identical to that of Black Shark. It could have been just a few extra trigger types, maybe the built in inclusion of an "or" statement, but we got nothing. I suppose it was naive to think that we would get the Black Shark editor + a few requested features.

 

You are right most people don't go that far in the mission editors, but the ones that do are capable of creating so much. It continues to amaze me how ARMA has so many complex and unique missions. Its because it has the whole package: Great mission editor, ability to share/modify scripts, and the User Interface options to explain whats going on in the game.

 

I suppose I'm just jealous of what other games are capable of and I just want some added capability. Afterall, a kids game on the PS3 has more functionality.

[EvilBivol-1]

Thanks for your input, Grimes. Although a year may seem like a substantial length of time, it really is not for these products. Consider that FC2 is in general very similar to Black Shark. As a product, FC2 was mainly focused on making the Lock-On flyables availble in the Black Shark game enviroment, with some improvements to the flyables and the environment. Even such seemingly simple design goals take as long as they did. I do agree that many aspects of ED's software are focused on developing technological capability without a specific game experience focus, but this is in part because ED is not ultimately working toward any one game. However, user feedback such as yours is part of the development process and helps shape future features.

 

I think you will find the changes being implemented for A-10C to be much more in-depth and to your liking, albeit certainly not without leaving their own share of wants for the future.

Edited May 14, 2010 by EvilBivol-1

[Moa]

As I've mentioned enough times on these forums I'm working on a mission generator/dynamic campaign. This is of course not something that can be done overnight.

 

I don't think a mission editor will ever be able to live up to all of coolts' wishes. This is because in part because a human operates so much slower than a machine there are limitations on the complexity of inter-relations a human can make between mission elements.

 

Being able to re-use 'templates' would go a large way to speeding things up compared to always operating at an 'atomic level'. Your example was for escorts that should follow their protected asset. My favourite example is that you should be able to tell AWACS 'where' to patrol rather than mucking around with loop beginnings and endings.

 

I think the mission design should still have the existing 'atomic' elements of setting individual waypoints. This gives wonderful flexibility and is a strength of the editor. I just think it should also have some kind of macro elements that can be used to simplify common situations (eg. AWACS orbit, etc).

 

The biggest enhancement would be to define and duplicate such macros. That is, if you defined waypoints for an F-15 you should be able to label that 'macro' action and then clone it so that you can quickly add 5 more F-15s with the same waypoints. From there you might want to 'disable' the cloning to customise each aicraft (eg. payload, skin and tail number) slightly - but at least the bulk of the work would be done for you.

 

Being able to introduce external 'macro' elements would allow the excellent 'merge' functionality of the LO 1 editor. This merging was used to great effect where mission plans developed independently by BLUE and RED teams were merged into a final mission.

 

Like I said, I'm working on a mission generator. I don't intend adapting this to be a mission editor at the moment as there is too much else to do getting the feedback between missions going for a dynamic campaign. The biggest issue I have is not the Mission editor per-se. Instead it is the inconsistency in the mission formats (LockOn 2.0 has some misison options using the BlackShark format, and some using using the new format [which unfortunately has *less* options, eg. engine volume control - which I dearly miss]). I also notice some variables that seem to have integer values (eg. 2) sometimes have floating-point values (eg. 2.0) or string values (eg. "") which means I have to code taking into account all these variations. This is a consequence of the loose-typing of Lua which appears to allow rapid-development but actually lets lots of bugs slip through (the compiler can't help you catch them) and hard to keep the mission format consistent (which makes it hard for integrators like me).

 

Anyway, a published 'rigid' mission format would be handy, and ease adding third-party tools to make up all those little niches where ED can't get to.

[coolts]

I don't think a mission editor will ever be able to live up to all of coolts' wishes. This is because in part because a human operates so much slower than a machine there are limitations on the complexity of inter-relations a human can make between mission elements.

 

 

Heh. To be honest, mine was a bit of an "in an ideal world" scenario as I have yet to find an editor which gives everything. This would be impossible without setting yourself up with MS Visual Studio and creating your own! :smilewink:

 

As a scripter / sometime programmer, I am used to making shortcuts / macros / powershell cmdlts, etc. to take care of repetetive admin tasks, hence my frustration at the "start again from scratch" nature of the current iteration of the FC2.0 ME.

 

I realise that dev work will take time, and think about it like this. At ED the mission designers will have our entire wish list and then some! And they have the added advantage of being in rubber band / paper ball range of the programmers!

 

"I want to be able to name my flags!" --> TWANG!

"Why is there no undo button" -->FWAT!

Edited May 14, 2010 by coolts

[topol-m]

Are there community created missions already? Links? I`d like to try some. :thumbup:

[Renato71]

Grimes, Coolts, Moa - you all made very good points!

As I never played (around) with DCS, this is my first encounter with new editor. And I have to say that I'm very disappointed with it. Things you all have noted above are either confirmations that I'm not spoiled couch potato, or unpleasant surprises. But, I guess that I got used to what is offered, and even more used to dissing my comments, that I gave up to complain about anything.

 

Anyway, current ME is not what I can work with. Many things are either above my had, or I do not have that much of a free time to make a perfect mission. There are many more options, but they feel like old Linux distribution when compared with W95 - it is advertised that you can do much more, but you have to kiss your life goodbye if you want to master it.

 

Mostly, I'm surprised that there are not things that I - as end user - consider simple features, like:

- changing coalition content at any time

- undo

- merging missions/templates

- copy/paste for units/groups

- mousework as in any other editor (left click drag map, right click draw ruler, or alike, but definitely the same as in-game map view!!! I keep clicking with L mouse to move map, and I end up with zillion waypoints, then I accidentally added about 20 sets of S-300 sites when I tried to select last one to delete it!)

- context menu on right click on map (to edit, select, delete...)

- mouse selectable unit (click on unit to select it IMMEDIATELY, not to have R-click on map or click any button)

- mouse selectable multiple units (left click and drag over area)

- tasks filtered per unit chosen, not other way around (when accidentally selecting task which current unit cannot perform, like AWACS or TRANSPORT for Su-25T)

- visual payload editor (have to read carefully for each item, cos half of them look alike)

- highlighted DELETE GROUP button (accidentally deleted big vehicle group that was selected and I wanted to move map and clicked too much to the left)

- assigning targets in logical manner, instead of this

- grown up coloring (instead of gay pride parade)

- new unit name contains the name of the first vehicle in group

- second group of the type numbered as "2", not as "#001", while the first one is not numbered

- map that does not show area that contains nothing (Krim, Turkey...)

- generally, a logical ME, friendly for noobs, not just a graphical interface for geeks

 

And, maybe I'm missing something, but:

- is there any other shape for trigger zones, apart from round ones?

- are there no preset trigger zones like airport zones, so I can select an airport or city for a zone?

- any means to work timetable backwards? Like, I want all units on certain point at the same time.

 

Ehm...

[GGTharos]

The editor itself is about as open and moddable as it can be, but you didn't notice ;)

 

 

Extendable / moddable mission designer.

IF ED doesn’t have the manpower to upgrade the mission designer, then make it open source and allow the community to add to it in the same way they create missions & videos, etc. Imagine editor modules with GUI / scripts / templates geared towards SEAD, etc. That would be amazing!

[Kuky]

I would like to vouch for Grimes to become ED Tester for Mission Editor :)

[104th_Crunch]

Grimes, you are a trigger machine :) I would also like to once again add that the ability to order your triggers, so you can organize them better, would be a good addition as well.

[coolts]

The editor itself is about as open and moddable as it can be, but you didn't notice ;)

 

. :doh: .

Too busy getting my arse shot off by Flankers, (IN MY OWN DAMN MISSION - which somehow makes the ignominy harder to take when I hit the silk)

Edited May 18, 2010 by coolts

[104th_Crunch]

Another thing I would like to repeat and use the opportunity of this thread to do so... a nice simple addition to the mission editor would be a 'respawn in x minutes if destroyed' selection for all objects as well as a 'number of times to repawn' option.

[Grimes]

Sticky wishlist threads are sticky

 

Granted that is technically for Black Shark... but whats the difference?

 

 

GrayGhost, how open and mod able is it? Is it written is a specific language where we could actually add content to it? Or is it all guesswork of what can and can't be modable?

 

If I could do a mod to improve the mission editor I would gladly do it, its just a question of how.

[Case]

If I could do a mod to improve the mission editor I would gladly do it, its just a question of how.

It is not just a question what is possible with the mission editor, but also what is possible within the mission file. We know the mission file is essentially all LUA code, but (for example) if the game doesn't support respawning the same unit multiple times, then there's no use for getting the editor to try to do this.

[Grimes]

True, but you can have multiple copies of the "same unit" that spawn after the first one is dead. Throw in some triggers and you effectively have something that respawns.

 

IMO, we would have more luck assigning AI to "client" aircraft. The humans seem to be able to respawn just fine using client slots. So the question is what makes a player slot different from an AI slot.

[Case]

A question: how to tell some artillery AI to attack enemy ground units? I`m putting a target marker close to the enemy positions with various radius 300m, 3000m... The stupid AI won`t attack them :huh: (or maybe I`m stupid for not being able to work with the editor). Then I tried putting the target`s name (the group name) in the specified field for target`s name. Again of the 10 units of artillery only one fired several times and then stopped, reloading ammo or taking a break for launch??? I want ALL the units to attack, what should I do?

Wrong thread to ask this question in. Find a more appropriate thread and I'll try to help you there.

[topol-m]

Wrong thread to ask this question in. Find a more appropriate thread and I'll try to help you there.

 

You are right. Sorry for OT. Moved to another thread...

[xplight]

+ «stop X time point» for ground units (for colums) and deploy/formed commad for SAM sites.

But the main thing with in ground moving units, is the variety of route depanding on condition/flags/time etc (for example if bridge in point B is destroyed then turn left in route piont 2).