Dynamic Campaign Discussion Thread

[Speed]

You don't need a DC a la Falcon for this.

 

You're exactly right, there's no need for a big Falcon-esque dynamic campaign, not at first at least. That's the beauty, and that's why it's certainly possible a group of modders in the community could create this. Just make a pseudo-persistant world, viewed through a gui, that generates a .miz and launches it with dcs.exe when you hit "fly", with the ability to manually add flights to it through the gui. Once you had that, you could slowly build it into a full DC. The next step after that might be to make it auto-generate flights. But just a dynamic, persistent scenario that only lasts a few days would be a HUGE step forward.

Edited June 27, 2011 by Speed

[GGTharos]

With that I agree. And the first step in already in the A-10C.

[Speed]

Of course, another thing blocking the community-created DC would be ED's stated desire to make a DC themselves. A pseudo-persistent world is a realizable goal, but who wants to spend the huge amount of time required when ED might just come out with something in a few years that makes your work obsolete? Then again, a group of community modders could probably come up with this faster than ED could... and if the community did a good enough job quickly enough, would ED bother spending their time re-making the same feature? I doubt it.

[Speed]

With that I agree. And the first step in already in the A-10C.

 

Are you referring to the ability to edit your waypoints and load out that I think exists in single player (I've never played single player, for anything other than testing missions, so I don't know for sure)? If so, I haven't looked through the code to see if this is defined in Lua. If it's hard coded in C/C++/C#/whatever, then the community doesn't have access to that, obviously.

 

As far as the random mission generator.... it's a step in the right direction, but not very useful overall, at this moment, just IMO. You guys can feel free to disagree, but in my opinion, the missions it generates are just too messy, too short, and too small in scope.

[Conure]

That's true, I never considered the consistency! Good points. I can see how that would agg longevity.

[GGTharos]

I meant the random generator. It's just a first step.

 

Are you referring to the ability to edit your waypoints and load out that I think exists in single player (I've never played single player, for anything other than testing missions, so I don't know for sure)? If so, I haven't looked through the code to see if this is defined in Lua. If it's hard coded in C/C++/C#/whatever, then the community doesn't have access to that, obviously.

 

As far as the random mission generator.... it's a step in the right direction, but not very useful overall, at this moment, just IMO. You guys can feel free to disagree, but in my opinion, the missions it generates are just too messy, too short, and too small in scope.

[Speed]

I meant the random generator. It's just a first step.

 

Yes, I can agree with that, though, in my opinion, this first step, while a good one, doesn't add a large amount of utility for us customers. It’s a decent step for us users, and far from useless (I’ve used it a few times myself) but perhaps it’s a bigger first step for the guys coding the modules than for us customers.

 

If I might brag a little on myself :music_whistling:, what I'd really like to do sometime between “very soon” and “eventually” is to finally implement a mission where all your mission taskings were dynamically generated. I already have quite a bit of the pre-requisite code completed. For example, in the mission I released called "Kashuri CAS", fliers might notice that the friendly ground units will usually start calling for CAS around 1 hour into it. These calls for CAS are all dynamically generated based off enemy units the friendly ground units are capable of seeing (LOS and range checks are done), and the real, actual coordinates of those enemy units, retrieved real-time from the game engine. No "Unit in zone" triggers or anything like that- it's all generated during game runtime. I really hope to release a new scripting library sometime after 1.1.0.9 release that includes these features.

 

So anyway, the idea is that perhaps, after I add a few more ways in which dynamic taskings could occur, I make a mission where there's a bunch of friendly armor and enemy armor, and those armored units are doing their own thing, moving around trying to capture towns, or escorting supply convoys, etc. There will be a bunch of friendly AI aircraft too. I know how to dynamically task AI aircraft, and I know how to output text to the screen to task human pilots. So I just make a scenario like that lasts like 24 hours, pop in the script, and bam- you have a fairly long-lasting dynamic scenario that can be run on a dedicated server. Tasking would be dynamically generated off of battlefield conditions. Eventually, I could program in a “save” feature that would create a .miz based off of current conditions so that you wouldn’t need a dedicated server to see the whole mission.

 

(Minus the save feature, perhaps) this is an objective I should be able to complete well before we get DCS: Most-Likely-F-18C. However, the way Moa's stats mod just got totally screwed gives me pause: why should I pursue such a project if they could just #@$# over all my work during any old random patch? I had some old code myself that worked in similar ways to Moa's mod (though of course, nowhere near as complex), and was considering using it again for a new project- now I can't and that old code is useless. It's mostly not ED's fault when something like that happens though, really- the modders need to communicate what it is they need, and hopefully, ED can provide, and furthermore, these kinds of things happening to mods and modders eventually becomes inevitable in a continuous WIP thing like DCS. However, ED does need to provide a better and more stable Lua interface, and the sooner they do that, the sooner the quality and quantity of mods will increase. Anyway, at some point in the near future I will probably make a topic about this. So I’ll try to fulfill my end of the bargain by telling ED what I need Lua wise, and hope that others are willing to chime in as well.

Edited June 27, 2011 by Speed

[GGTharos]

Maybe you should get in touch with the ME guy ...

[Speed]

Maybe you should get in touch with the ME guy ...

Do you remember what his forum name is by any chance? The only dev I've really had much interactions with has been c0ff- and I really appreciate the help he provided in getting a few annoying Lua scripting problems fixed. It's great that the team is willing to take the time to help the little guys. Anyway, I'll definately want to make a forum topic about getting a stable Lua API/whatever rather than a private message, as I already know of a few people who would like to contribute to that topic.

[Moa]

I meant the random generator. It's just a first step.

 

Well, it's true a journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step.

 

Turns out that the community was 1/3 of the way along the journey (post-battle stats). Although with recent changes they've been taken back to square one (unless we can find a short-cut to get us back where we were).

 

Sure, the community is ponderous in getting places, but with EDs focus currently on patching A-10C, compatibility for Ka-50 and the possibility of a FC3 , then I'd say ED have their hands full for the medium term. The community is likely to get to the finish line first, and do a more comprehensive job (since for some people that would be their principal focus).

 

It's very nice ED have a dynamic campaign in their plans. I for one am not going to be sitting on my hands waiting for it given there is no published road-map of intent.

 

ps. It would be nice to have a stable interface that wasn't LUA, eg. a comprehensive debrief log. LUA is great for scriptlets but for a project the size of a dynamic campaign it is the wrong tool.

 

pps. yeah, c0ff is always very helpful. 'Big Ups' to him.

Edited June 27, 2011 by Moa

[Moa]

Yes, I can agree with that, though, in my opinion, this first step, while a good one, doesn't add a large amount of utility for us customers. It’s a decent step for us users, and far from useless (I’ve used it a few times myself) but perhaps it’s a bigger first step for the guys coding the modules than for us customers.

 

If I might brag a little on myself :music_whistling:, what I'd really like to do sometime between “very soon” and “eventually” is to finally implement a mission where all your mission taskings were dynamically generated. I already have quite a bit of the pre-requisite code completed. For example, in the mission I released called "Kashuri CAS", fliers might notice that the friendly ground units will usually start calling for CAS around 1 hour into it. These calls for CAS are all dynamically generated based off enemy units the friendly ground units are capable of seeing (LOS and range checks are done), and the real, actual coordinates of those enemy units, retrieved real-time from the game engine. No "Unit in zone" triggers or anything like that- it's all generated during game runtime. I really hope to release a new scripting library sometime after 1.1.0.9 release that includes these features.

 

So anyway, the idea is that perhaps, after I add a few more ways in which dynamic taskings could occur, I make a mission where there's a bunch of friendly armor and enemy armor, and those armored units are doing their own thing, moving around trying to capture towns, or escorting supply convoys, etc. There will be a bunch of friendly AI aircraft too. I know how to dynamically task AI aircraft, and I know how to output text to the screen to task human pilots. So I just make a scenario like that lasts like 24 hours, pop in the script, and bam- you have a fairly long-lasting dynamic scenario that can be run on a dedicated server. Tasking would be dynamically generated off of battlefield conditions. Eventually, I could program in a “save” feature that would create a .miz based off of current conditions so that you wouldn’t need a dedicated server to see the whole mission.

 

(Minus the save feature, perhaps) this is an objective I should be able to complete well before we get DCS: Most-Likely-F-18C. However, the way Moa's stats mod just got totally screwed gives me pause: why should I pursue such a project if they could just #@$# over all my work during any old random patch? I had some old code myself that worked in similar ways to Moa's mod (though of course, nowhere near as complex), and was considering using it again for a new project- now I can't and that old code is useless. It's mostly not ED's fault when something like that happens though, really- the modders need to communicate what it is they need, and hopefully, ED can provide, and furthermore, these kinds of things happening to mods and modders eventually becomes inevitable in a continuous WIP thing like DCS. However, ED does need to provide a better and more stable Lua interface, and the sooner they do that, the sooner the quality and quantity of mods will increase. Anyway, at some point in the near future I will probably make a topic about this. So I’ll try to fulfill my end of the bargain by telling ED what I need Lua wise, and hope that others are willing to chime in as well.

 

Just wow! That dynamic in-game engine sounds sublime.

 

Incidentally, the way I was working was to reduce dependence on any changes the ED dev team would make. I mean, to my mind I reduced dependence on the LUA interfaces to the bare minimum and thought, "it's not like going from patch-level 1.1.0.7 to 1.1.0.8 they'd completely break the way they logged stuff, right?". Turns out I was completely wrong. With no warning the logging interface from FC2 onward has changed and the injection of customised data into the log (required since the debrief log is incomplete, without so much as a single callsign) doesn't work (for me; I can inject into the DCS.log but that log is not where I want the entries to go). How can we invest a year of our weekends and free nights into modding when at the end of it everything can change between minor patches, that don't even show up in the changelog?

Edited June 27, 2011 by Moa

[Moa]

Oh yeah, I'm sure most people have seen the community developed dynamic campaign system for IL-2 (principally built by Paul Lowengrin):

 

http://www.lowengrin.com/news.php

 

That campaign generator may not be perfect, but it is still vastly better than what we have now in DCS/FC2 - and doesn't require 20 hours in the mission editor to manually build a decent (non-random) mission.

 

Can we do it (a community-build dynamic campaign system) ?

Yes we can!

 

We clearly have the talent (eg. 16th_Speed) and motivation. What we need is a stable foundation that won't change *radically* between now and the likely release date.

[GGTharos]

I suggest that you guys PM c0ff and ask if he can either help you out or direct you to someone who can.

 

Or if you have very specific specifics, I can also try to put in a bug.

[EtherealN]

but with EDs focus currently on patching A-10C, compatibility for Ka-50 and the possibility of a FC3 , then I'd say ED have their hands full for the medium term. The community is likely to get to the finish line first, and do a more comprehensive job (since for some people that would be their principal focus).

 

I'm not sure I agree there. The fact that they're doing patches and such does not mean that development of new code has ceased. The patches would not require all of everyone's time constantly.

 

I've been suprised before - like with the Mission Planner. There I was saying that well, it would be possible to use the ME engine but that it would be a good bit of work and would probably have to wait until X time.

 

...turned out they had already done it and I had to eat my words a couple days later. :doh:

 

I suspect there's prototype code for quite a lot of the things we want rattling around the offices, just waiting for the go-ahead to move it into production. As for which things and when that'll happen I wouldn't have a clue aside from trying to make semi-educated guesses based on the general direection they've been taking, but I'm optimistic. :)

[genbrien]

IF ED is working on their DC, do you think they could release it for the A-10 or they wont bother until the next DCS release?

[EtherealN]

I'd personally guess on the next one rather than A-10C. As I said they've surprised me before, but this is such a huge thing to do that I doubt they'll surprise me that much. :P

 

That said, I'd also doubt we "suddenly" get a fully fledged DC. A possible mid-step I could see coming (at least, it's probably what I'd do, but I'm not familiar with exactly how the code works) would be something like fleshing out the mission generator a bit more, and expanding the extant campaign system such that instead of launching individual mission files it'll send commands to the generator based on previous performance. Possibly with an option for the campaign designer to specify certain larger objectives or units that should always be present etcetera. (Sort of like, the designer will set the goals, but individual missions are generated.)

 

We'll see what they've got cooking when it's close to being fit for release - I highly doubt they'll come out with specifics until they are practically done with it, due to their understandable aversion to promising features before they know realy good that they can keep them. So could be next product, could be the one after that, who knows. They who live will see. :)

[Murf7413]

Oh, I don't know, maybe people don't want to do 'amazing things ahead of their time' that will bankrupt their company. And in case you haven't heard, the DC creator himself said if he did it a second time, he would have done the DC very, very differently.

 

You guys are holding up an example of business failure as some icon of what flight sims should be like. Guess why no one wants to follow that path?

 

But, I have to question that if Falcon was such a failure... why is it STILL played by a STILL pretty sizable community??

 

Now, I know jack, slash, nothing about programming... but I DO know I liked the dynamic campaign in Falcon better than I do in this sim. I NEVER said... and I don't believe Heller did either... that this sims campaign is BAD... just lacking, and believe it can be better!!!

 

The question I have wondered was WHY nobody has improved on Falcon's dynamic campaign!!! And YES it WAS well ahead of it's time... I have yet to personally see one that has been done better... IN MY OPINION... which is just that... MY Opinion!! I personally DO NOT like scripted campaigns!!

 

Now, perhaps I have misunderstood the tone of your post GG... and it is very easy to do when just in text... and if I have, my apologies... and if I haven't, there is no need for anybody to get to a boiling temp. :thumbup:

Edited June 28, 2011 by Murf7413

[EtherealN]

But, I have to question that if Falcon was such a failure... why is it STILL played by a STILL pretty sizable community??

 

Two things:

1 - It failed because the developer bit off too much. It cost way too much to make it. It could have as much fanboys as it would like; it got delayed so much it had to get released in a shoddy shape, and when it didn't sell the developer had to abandon it and die.

2 - It was popular, in relative terms (compared to a mainstream game it was a total flop), because there simply was not much else out there that really tried to do what it did. (Jane's F/A-18 maybe?)

 

Thus the game ended up abandoned, and it's main prize feature - the DC - is still arguably crap at doing anything realistic after some 10 years of further work.

 

A counter-example: HardWar. Sort of an Elite-wannabe if you're familiar with the type. After the same amount of time it's still played by an active community, and people still tinker with it. But it was an absolute failure, and it took it's developer with it.

 

Another example: let's imagine Duke Nukem Forever was actually good now that it finally got released, and sold like cream. It still took down what used to be an industry giant. That's... Not good. ;)

 

Imagine where Microprose could have been if they didn't bankrupt themselves on overambitious projects like Falcon that they then had to release in crap shape or even just plain abandon? If they had worked calmly and collectedly on a more realistic codebase you could have had something WAAAAAY better than any of the Falcon derivatives now...

 

Commiting fiscal suicide is NEVER a good idea.

 

Now, I know jack, slash, nothing about programming... but I DO know I liked the dynamic campaign in Falcon better than I do in this sim. I NEVER said... and I don't believe Heller did either... that this sims campaign is BAD... just lacking, and believe it can be better!!!

 

There is nothing in the universe that cannot be made better. But I hope you realise that we might take exception to telling ED that commiting corporate suicide is a good thing. And that's what people are doing when they ask the question "why doesn't DCS have that DC"? ED would either have to make a shoddy one, or they'd have to commit suicide. OR... they can work on their technology iteratively and thus give us all what we want in due time.

 

Eagle Dynamics has been making sims since '91. It's still alive, well, and kicking ass. Microprose is not. Think about that. ;)

[J. Heller]

As Sobek said, not to mention the suicidal ATO. Furthermore, please demonstrate how this godlike DC engine can handle scenarios such as having to shoo or escort enemy bombers/recon in a /non/-shooting environment. Can it handle that type of mission?

 

 

 

It took close to a decade to develop the 1998 release of Falcon 4. It was a POS, and so was the DC. It has taken another decade to take it to where it is /now/, and you're calling DCS developers lazy, despite the fact that they keep upgrading the ME and building up the random mission generator so that they can stage things up instead of ending up bankrupt like some other company, so long ago?

 

I suggest that next time you decide to pass judgement like this, that you actually know what it is you're talking about.

 

I never said ED was lazy, obvious fanboy is obvious. Perhaps the DC in F4 was screwed up, but its not neccesarily the execution that made it great so much as the concept. This series is called Digital Combat Simulator, to simulate combat you should create a conflict and then drop the player into it as a very small cog in a large wheel. Falcon4 created a war, not just an aircraft and then some cheesy scripted missions around it. If you cant see the beauty in the F4 DC then, you my friend, are completely blind. I dont mean to be condescending but to have some guy whos probably half my age tell me I dont know what I'm talking about, especially a forum moderator and tester, really makes me wonder if the choices ED is making arent being steered in the wrong direction by the wrong people.

 

Dont get me wrong, DCS is brilliant in its own right but a true DC could only make something this good that much better. That is all. Keep up the good work guys and listen to your community, we write the checks for the guy who writes the checks after all.

[Cali]

I don't play single player, but some of you guys bring up good points. Some things can't be done (or can't be done yet) because of money and time.

[EtherealN]

I never said ED was lazy, obvious fanboy is obvious.

 

Well now...

 

Maybe someday some developer will stop being lazy and give us an updated version of the Falcon4 campaign engine, hopefully it is ED.

 

Your wording indicates that laziness is the reason why no-one has done that. No fanboyism required to take offense at what you wrote right there.

 

This series is called Digital Combat Simulator, to simulate combat you should create a conflict and then drop the player into it as a very small cog in a large wheel.

 

Actually, DCS is borne out of a series of products made for various militaries. They don't care in any way at all about a DC. It's absolutely worthless to their objective of realistically simulating combat for the purpose of pilot training.

 

A DC is a fun thing for a consumer product, yes. But don't fool yourself into thinking it's of any value whatsoever towards realistically simulating combat, because it isn't. What is of value is to have enough control over the training scenario such that you can adequately train the things that you set out to train, and learn what you need to learn. DC's do not offer this. DC's offer immersion, and "immersion" is not the same as "simulation". Now, not to say that immersion is bad, aux contraire, but it has nothing at all to do with "simulation".

 

Falcon4 created a war, not just an aircraft and then some cheesy scripted missions around it.

 

When the united states air force trains A-10C pilots in a simulator, they're not interested in creating "a war". They're interested in training their pilots. Including things that go beyond the pilot is of absolutely no value and only a distraction unless the exercise in question centers on CCC - in which case a dynamic campaign is still worthless.

 

If you cant see the beauty in the F4 DC then, you my friend, are completely blind. I dont mean to be condescending but to have some guy whos probably half my age tell me I dont know what I'm talking about, especially a forum moderator and tester, really makes me wonder if the choices ED is making arent being steered in the wrong direction by the wrong people.

 

I caution you greatly to back off with the attacks.

You have no clue about who he is, what he is, what his background is, but you might want to consider the fact that he is a tester for ED and has been so for a long time. Maybe, just maybe, he knows a thing or two about how these things work? And I'm not just talking about the programming side of it, or the project management side of it, but also the application side of it. He is well qualified to talk the talk and unless you have some very interesting merits to back yourself up I suggest you reduce your attitude. Thankyou.

[winz]

How much work would it be for ED to make the mission editor a lib with documented api (i.e. for the next DCS product), so we could use the editor functionality from another application?

 

Because the way I see it, the process of reverse engineering the mission structure and then creating custom lua serializer for the mission + mirroring all the editor functionality + keeping up with the the patches is a huge pita for some sort of 3rd pary DC engine.

And ED obviously has all the functionality allready implemented, making it accessible would help a lot.

[HerrKaputt]

There is nothing in the universe that cannot be made better. But I hope you realise that we might take exception to telling ED that commiting corporate suicide is a good thing. And that's what people are doing when they ask the question "why doesn't DCS have that DC"? ED would either have to make a shoddy one, or they'd have to commit suicide. OR... they can work on their technology iteratively and thus give us all what we want in due time.

 

(Ethereal, since you are new in this thread I think, my background: I don't own any DCS module, but I own EECH and have briefly looked at the DC code with the goal of improving it, though because of work I dropped that project.)

 

This quote from Ethereal is the main reason I stopped insisting on a DC. I'm pretty sure that, by now, some folks at ED already know that a reasonable portion of the non-military clients would enjoy a DC. It's definitely true that adding a DC would bring additional revenue in the form of more sales.

 

But at what cost? The Dev from Falcon 4 himself admitted that the F4 DC was a huge undertaking and that given the chance to go back he'd do things differently. Let's suppose it takes 10 Dev-years to develop a decent DC (i.e. one Dev working 10 years, or two working 5 years, etc). Assuming a Dev makes, say, $1500 per month, that's $18000 per year, or $180000 total cost for the DC. Unless DCS would sell an additional 4500 copies ($180000 total cost divided by $40, price of each copy), it's not worth it. And I'm assuming that the whole $40 goes to ED for each copy, which is not true even for digital copies.

 

The values I presented might be, and probably are, wrong. But that's not important. What's important is this type of analysis, which we all need to understand. The creators of Falcon 4 either didn't do this analysis, or did it with unrealistic values, and they went bankrupt because of it.

 

ED's decision of relying more on military contracts than consumer sales seems very wise IMO, if for nothing else, then simply because as Ethereal said, they're still here. Of course, us the consumers don't like it.

 

ED's decision of releasing core DCS functionality iteratively with each new aircraft seems like a good compromise between having great ambitions and having your feet on the ground.

[GGTharos]

I see. I'm not sure if something like this exists - actually, I'm pretty sure the whole ME is written in LUA and as such is self-documenting. But anyway, I'll ask.

 

I know for a fact that even now, the ME has been extended a bit.

 

How much work would it be for ED to make the mission editor a lib with documented api (i.e. for the next DCS product), so we could use the editor functionality from another application?

 

Because the way I see it, the process of reverse engineering the mission structure and then creating custom lua serializer for the mission + mirroring all the editor functionality + keeping up with the the patches is a huge pita for some sort of 3rd pary DC engine.

And ED obviously has all the functionality allready implemented, making it accessible would help a lot.

[winz]

I've no experience in lua, so I have hard time reading it. But if it is all writen in lua, then it would be good if someone experienced in it would take a look and say if it's reusable.

I admit that I have no idea how lua scripting works, so I'm shooting blind here :)