Save mission while active... why so useful

[chromium]

Hi all,

 

a lot of people hope in a dynamic campaign. Everyone (almost) has understand that at current situation a real complex dynamic campaign mission is not possible (and I understand :) ).

 

But, if could be possibile to save a mission in a certain time while it's going on (save mission state, to be clear) will be extremely useful for mission designer to create a new mission starting from a precise istant of the mission in progress.

 

I believe that it's not needed to retain a lot of information, but unit alive/dead, active/not active, unit/groups positions, waypoints will be great.

 

This will give the mission designer the possibility to save a mission just ended, and create the next one starting on the end situation.

 

Is it possible?

[Dodgeza]

Also if you don't have time to complete your 3 hour sortie and have to shoot off after the kids/dog/patient/work. That'd be great too :-D

 

Good idea otherwise.

[SmokeyTheLung]

At the moment you can sort of do this yourself with a load mission trigger that's dependent on a list of objectives that need to be accomplished.

 

Let's say that the victory condition of mission one is; Russian command post destroyed. You would create a load mission trigger (multi player only) and create a new mission with those included units starting out dead.

 

I know that's not exactly what your getting at, and a definite +1 on your request. This might be a suitable work around for you in the mean time

[chromium]

At the moment you can sort of do this yourself with a load mission trigger that's dependent on a list of objectives that need to be accomplished.

 

Let's say that the victory condition of mission one is; Russian command post destroyed. You would create a load mission trigger (multi player only) and create a new mission with those included units starting out dead.

 

I know that's not exactly what your getting at, and a definite +1 on your request. This might be a suitable work around for you in the mean time

 

It's far different (already used): imagine to destroy a SA-11 site in one place, or 2 t-80 groups on the frontline... than obtain the mission load condition... these groups? will be alive, or dead? can you create 120 version of mission for every mission load trigger to be reliable on what really happen on the mission just done?

 

This obstacle led me to create an external man-lead dynamic campaign environment in access.... but this is also not perfect and require a lot of data-entry work at the end of any mission, and also in mission design situation.

 

If will be a way to save an ongoing mission, will be a great leap foward... at least for these applications.

[Jona33]

Also if you don't have time to complete your 3 hour sortie and have to shoot off after the kids/dog/patient/work. That'd be great too :-D

 

Good idea otherwise.

 

That would be handy. +1

[SmokeyTheLung]

Agreed on all of the above.

 

At the moment we only have the tools available to us, with a little imagination we can make the best of them!

Edited July 6, 2011 by SmokeyTheLung

[chromium]

I agree... i'm just hoping to se this feature.

 

I want to make clear that i'm not talking about a single mission saved for the pilot, but about save a mission situation to be opened in the mission editor, even without all the exact information but only with a "picture" of the saving istant. Maybe is simpler that reproduce everything as saving ongoing mission to be loaded after.

 

I see the tacview acmi or the track, and I think that the movement/action/state logging is already done... if only could be saved...

[SmokeyTheLung]

It would be an awesome feature for sure.

 

I suspect that it would already be implemented if it was an easy task.

Perhaps in the next module we will see something around these lines.

 

 

This got me thinking, slightly off topic of course :),

What if I fly a mission and save the track, then edit the track to add another player/client aircraft. Can I fly as my own wingman? :D

[LostOblivion]

+1 for this.

[snwboardn]

I agree with you, if tacview can recreate the entire mission for playback in their own 3rd party software there has to be a way to take that information and plug it back into the mission editor; or at least get the x, y coordinates of the units last position and upload it to the mission gen as static objects.

 

One could assume that you should also be able to regen those units with the same name as well.

[EtherealN]

Minor technicality: uploading as "static objects" would not help you, they're literally static and have no AI code and no simulation code running. That's nitpicking though, I think I know what you mean.

 

My suspicion on why this isn't implemented is that there's some architectural problem in how various entities work that make it hard to just "save their mindstate" and load it back in. Remember that things like TacView and replays do not save anything like that - they just record actions made, not anything about WHY those actions were made. But that's a guess.

[snwboardn]

Minor technicality: uploading as "static objects" would not help you, they're literally static and have no AI code and no simulation code running. That's nitpicking though, I think I know what you mean.

 

My suspicion on why this isn't implemented is that there's some architectural problem in how various entities work that make it hard to just "save their mindstate" and load it back in. Remember that things like TacView and replays do not save anything like that - they just record actions made, not anything about WHY those actions were made. But that's a guess.

 

Yea one thing about the IT world is you better say exactly what it is called or else you get one of those ;)

 

Well unless I misunderstood you, why would you need the information of "why and how" the units ended up there? I thought you just wanted the fact that at XX:XX:X (hour:minutes:day) the player quit, and these are the positions of units that are still active at that particular moment.

[chromium]

Yes, mission history isn't needed. It will be sufficient to have ending state (live/dead) and position (coordinates). It will be really good if waypoint or routes are stored also... but I believe it should be difficoult, cause in some way you have to tell the system which waypoint gone and which not... or if a unit it's looping etc etc.

[EtherealN]

Yes, mission history isn't needed. It will be sufficient to have ending state (live/dead) and position (coordinates).

 

My point is that this makes assumptions about how things work "under the hood". It might be that the nuts and bolts prohibit this feature or just make it too difficult to make. Again though - that's me making guesses. I don't know if that's the hold-up, but I've learned that things in software engineering are often way more complex than they appear to be from the outside. ;)

[Druid_]

I believe that it is all possible but you will have to utilize lua scripting to be able to do it. I already have a long CAS mission (waiting on patch .09 to release) that has a LOAD & SAVE option. However the kind of mission I have lends itself to this as after each CAS task is complete its state is saved to a lua table.

 

It is possible to do likewise with a larger mission as the position of each unit is known and accessible through scripting. Each units state can be saved via scripting again whenever it is damaged or destroyed. Buildings are a little more complicated to do but not impossible.

 

When you LOAD a mission you will have to wait whilst all the buildings & units etc are destroyed and again the fires allowed to still burn or put out depending on the timeline (again not easy). Then you have to log the weapons count and .... etc etc. Lots to think about here & no small task & not one I have the time to dig deeper into let alone the scripting expertise to enable me to do so. However, I believe there are a bunch of clever chaps over at ED who are able to. Probably a few on the forums too but its a large task for 1 person alone.