Initial Thoughts on the new Mission Editor

[Grimes]

I'll try to keep this as short and to the point as possible.

 

It seems that with the release of recent ED games I have gone through the exact same feelings while experimenting and building scenarios. Its feelings of excitement that is soon followed by intense wishful thinking rage. With Black Shark I never really got hooked on flying the chopper, but I kept a high interest with the mission editor. Once Flaming Cliffs 2 was announced my interest peaked, I pushed my ideas and the editor to the limit due to the excitement of adding the FC aircraft into the mix. Yet I always managed to find something I wished the editor had. Something that while techically possible, it just wasn't logical to attempt to try to build it with triggers. The player counter from Capturing Maykop for instance, so many triggers and flags were poured into addition and subtraction it doesn't feel worthwhile to make a scenario with basic math in it again.

 

With DCS:A-10C's editor the focus my reoccurring feelings are the new group actions. They are so amazingly cool what you can do with them. But. It feels like they barely scratch the surface of their potential and I fear that we won't get to have fun until the next product.... which will probably have some cool new feature that also requires the next product too fully realize.

 

Its a vicious cycle.

 

I look at group actions as this independent system that also sets specific group settings. They are this whole separate system from triggers and contain a little bit of meta-data. The AI can change the targets they engage, their callsigns, their ROE, their current waypoint, and a bunch of other data completely without the input of the trigger system. The trigger system can even force some requirements for changing these details. BUT. The trigger system can't see it these changes. It can't check what a groups current ROE is, it doesn't know what a group is doing. The only way for this to be possible is, that the independent group actions must rely 100% on the trigger system! This renders the purpose of group actions useless!

 

Its like two rooms separated by a 1-way window, you know, like in cop movies with an interrogation room. But sitting in the room that can see into the other is a blind person. The blind person can talk over the PA to the other room and tell someone in there to do something, but they won't know if that person actually follows their directions or is doing something else entirely or if someone is actually in there.

 

For whatever reason, its just really easy for me to look at a trigger, condition, or some other new feature and think of a perfect function that is very similar but just a little bit out of the scope of said item. For group actions, it just seems perfectly obvious that if triggers can control them, they ought to be able to use any group action as a possible condition for a trigger.

 

 

Other stuff that makes me wishful thinking rage

 

"Coalition Score Greater than" is a condition. Why doesn't "Coalitions score lesser than" exist?!

 

While on the subject of coalition score, red and blue coalition scores for whatever reason were broken in FC2. They couldn't be used simultaneously. It was one or the other. Believe it or not its kind of a pain to evaluate the overall score using -99 to +100 instead of Red 0-100 and Blue 0-100.

 

"Group Alive less than" is wonderful to tell if a group took a loss, Once. Why not "group alive changed by" to be used with switch condition trigger to display a message that the group is taking losses and the player better get his butt in gear to help them!

 

"LUA Script" is a condition for group actions. Considering LRM, LEAVU, and Tacview all utilize LUA scripts to accomplish complex and creative tasks. Why isn't LUA Script a condition for triggers?

 

Messages ought to have some markup language that allows for customized information. Such as the BRA of a moving group from a fixed point. JTAC kinda shares the same function, but thats assuming JTAC gets squared away for MP and that they are the ones who detect the target.

 

The A-10C can store 2,050 waypoints and who knows how many waypoint sets, that page from the manual I'm vaguely quoting probably knows. If I want to input a new waypoint set, why do I have to load into the cockpit and do it manually? It should be part of the editor.

 

Why can't we have logical groups?

User assigns units and groups into a "logical group" purely for organization sake.

But wait there is more! Due to your awesome (I really mean that) programming of new land AI pathfinding, in certain formations AI refill their ranks appropriately. Couple this ability with the "Group/Unit AI On/OF" actions we can create self refilling reinforcements with a single group. Instead of having 5 groups of 10 units each, we can have 1 massive group of 50, and disable 40 of them right off the bat. But without logical groups that takes 40 actions to re-enable the AI... not to mention if you want to disable them again.

(Yes this actually does work and its awesome. But having logical groups would make this awesomer. Plus a few other stuff to make it better that currently don't exist, but I'd settle for logical groups.)

 

 

Ok, that was kinda long. But trust me, it was much better written and to the point than my first draft I scrapped.

 

Glad I got that off my chest. Cheers. :thumbup:

[swift]

Interesting thoughts Grimes, 100% support here. IMHO the mission editor is the most important feature of the DCS series. Ultimately, after learning all of the avionics and stuff (months, I know) is what will keep me busy with the Sim. After a while, if all boils down to boring and repetitive missions, you'd get tyred very quickly. But our heroes at ED are doing an Epic work with the ME, arming it with powerful features and evolving in a tool that even the most haxor users can toy with making incredible triggered missions. They got my confidence, until then I'll use my imagination.

[jib]

In respect to interrogating data, and if, then type statements. I do wish the DCS editor was more like the GEM Editor by C1 (Men of War). I recreated the whole first level form Call Of Duty 1 in a few hours, with paratrooper drops, triggers, mortar bombardments, selectable difficulty levels.

The DCS editor is powerful but there are things that make it harder to use than it could be.

[SonofEil]

Ummm. I've been looking for a good thread where I can ask this basic question:

 

Are there any Mission Editor tutorials that you guys could link me with?

 

After two years of DCS:BS, I still can't perform even the simplest tasks in ME, and I'd like to utilize it more now that A-10 is out. I've read the BS manual and spent hours tinkering around in BS editor...and I've been able to accomplish absolutely nothing.

So, yeah, how do you even begin to learn that thing?

[chaos]

It's a lot of trial and error but it does pay off in the end. I read the instructions in the /DOCS folder and the relevant chapters in the BS manual. I've finally managed to get a simple trigger to work.

 

That's the problem with something powerful... it is usually not very user friendly. Keep at it and the Quarter will drop...

[Greb]

Great Post Grimes! It truly is the heart of the Sim.

[Grimes]

Looks like beta 2 added the "Coalition Score less than" trigger condition and some other changes/fixes. There are also a few other pleasant surprises in it that I hope are features and not bugs. The water level on major rivers or lakes that are inland are no longer rendered at sea level anymore. Coincidentally I had an USMC APC drive across one of these rivers... not sure if its a bug or a to be added feature, I hope its the latter.

 

The addition of a new airbase and some of the AI taxi-procedure logic changes are encouraging changes I didn't expect. I hope the editor and AI aren't quite in "feature lock" yet and I look forward to having more of the group logic and Multiplayer functionality to improve.

[Eddie]

Coincidentally I had an USMC APC drive across one of these rivers... not sure if its a bug or a to be added feature, I hope its the latter.

 

It's a feature, amphibious vehicles will now cross bodies of water.