let me try again: zero points for missions I design

[wolle]

Hi,

 

Since noone could help me with my previous post, I'll try it again. This time I attach two screen shots as proof of my problem.

 

I have been trying to design my own missions using the mission editor. I start with simple missions, and then make them more and more complex. At various stages I test fly the missions, and get some non-zero score for destroying enemy units. So far so good, but from some moment in time on I keep getting a zero score. So, I thought maybe the last addition of complexity to the mission messed up the scoring system, so I delete the new part and fly it again. I again get a zero score. From that moment on I can delete whatever I want from the mission, no matter what I get a zero score for flying the mission.

 

I attached two screenshots, one showing the score card during the mission (I took this some time in the middle of the mission, but the one at the end of the mission looks very similar), and one the score card at debriefing, where I am awarded no points and no time logged.

 

What is wrong? I want to find out, because I don't want to upload missions to the User Files for which people get a zero score for flying them.

 

Any help would be greatly appreciated. What are possible reasons why you would get a zero score while destroying enemy units? (I do not destroy any friendly units, of course).

[PeterP]

How about attaching your mission? (instead opening one thread after another)

...just a idea...

-or send the *.miz to others after they PM'ed you?!

[wolle]

Sorry about opening that 2nd thread, I was worried if I don't it'll just get overlooked..

 

It happens in all the missions I have tried to design, two examples are attached.

 

What does to PM someone mean???

AttackOnGali.miz

Bridge.miz

[PeterP]

PM = Private Message (via this forum)

[Spectre_USA]

I have seen the zero point missions for over a year.

 

I have tried to figure out what it is that makes a difference between campaign

missions, flied as single missions, and any other type.

 

The former give credit, where the latter only add hours. No kills, no points,

not even number of landings show up in the log.

 

My winging over the months has fallen on deaf ears, or is seen as too trivial

to address, it would seem...

[Cholerix]

If I see this right you have a score while flying the mission but in the debriefing your score is zero.

The game and the debriefing are two seperate programs. Sometimes when the game crashes I get the debriefing from the previous game. Therefore I think that the data is stored in C:\Users\<yourname>\Saved Games\DCS Warthog\Logs\debrief.log

However currently I can't test if the score is saved in there.

[wolle]

Hi Cholerix,

 

You make an interesting point. I replayed one mission where I do get the correct score, and one mission where I get zero score even though the score card I can display during the mission gives me a non-zero score. I compared the various log files between the two, but there are so many lines I can't make much sense of it. One thing I noticed, though, is that the file me.log for the non-zero score mission contains the lines

 

06503.063 DEBUG main: flight hours, sec 3382 [night, sec: 0 day, sec: 3382]

06503.063 DEBUG main: hours: 15.276991666667

06504.887 DEBUG main: mission score 40

 

whereas the me.log file for the zero score mission does not contain such lines.

 

I guess what I am saying is: what do I need to pay attention to in the log files to sort out the reason why I get no score in some missions?

[wolle]

Dear forum,

 

In my desparation I will try to find an answer to my problem one more time. My problem is that as I design missions, and they grow in complexity, suddenly, from a certain complexity on, I get zero points for flying the mission and zero logged time no matter what I do (see start of thread).

 

I have now narrowed down the problem some more: As I add .wav files to the mission one by one, suddenly the time it takes to save the mission file jumps noticably. When I unzip the .miz file I see that the file format has changed, and it now contains sub-directories, called "Config", "Scripts", "track" and "track-data", whereas prior to the increase in complexity of the mission it did not contain any subdirectories. It is precisely from the moment the subdirectories get created, that I start to get zero points and zero logged time for my missions. Deleting these subdirectories, or deleting elements from the mission does not help unfortunately, once this strange effect occurs there seems to be no way to undo it.

 

Anyone, help please :helpsmilie:

[BIGNEWY]

I might be wrong, but I dont use .wav files in my missions

 

Shouldnt you be using .oog ?

[Inseckt]

you mean .ogg? Anyway, DCS has been compatible with .wav since BS1 (at least), and I would guess it still is, allthough since .ogg is it's native filetype, it might perform better.

[WildFire]

Dont use wav's, compress to ogg. The wave file sizes are huge and a mission can go from a few kb's to 8Mb's pretty quick. Which WILL break the engine.

[Speed]

Dont use wav's, compress to ogg. The wave file sizes are huge and a mission can go from a few kb's to 8Mb's pretty quick. Which WILL break the engine.

 

This is not universally true, in fact, it is FAR from universally true. You're judging .wav harshly due to the very high bit-rate PCM .wav codec. The PCM .wav codec is most common, but it is NOT the only .wav codec. The GSM 6.10 codec for .wavs is at least in the neighborhood as small as .ogg, in fact, using AVS audio converter and the GSM 6.10 .wav format, I can actually get about an entire hour of .wav sounds packed into an 8MB mission. I can't remember the exact numbers, but at a sample rate of 22 kHz, I think I remember that I can get about 10 minutes of sound into each megabyte using the GSM 6.10 codec. I haven't found settings in AVS audio converter to get .oggs this small, in fact, so all my sounds in all my missions are in .wav format. A "service" I provide for people sometimes is I will take their mission and downsize it:

 

Step 1) Unzip the mission

 

Step 2) Convert all sounds (.ogg or .wav) into .wav PCM codec @ 22kHz sample rate - this will downsize most people's .oggs by a factor of 4 or more, with very little distortion/aliasing.

 

Step 3) Convert any/all pictures to .jpeg, 75% quality (a 100% quality jpeg is huge- putting it to 75% will reduce the quality almost imperceptibly and make the file size something on the order of 10 times smaller, or more).

 

Step 4) Open the "mission" file in Notepad ++. Search and replace ".png" (if there were .png pics) with ".jpg", and search and replace ".ogg" with ".wav".

 

Step 5) Recompress all files into a .miz again.

 

I think I did this for deephouse, as a demonstration, on one of his missions he claimed he couldn't make any larger because "the file size is too big". IIRC, I took it from 4 MB to 1.5MB. I donno if he ever did anything with it though, hell, I don't even know where deephouse ran off to :(

 

You can go to an even lower sample rate with the GSM 6.10 codec, but it sounds aweful. This might be alright for simple radio comms, and if you used this even lower codec, you can easily get a couple hours of continuous sound into your mission.

 

I will do this voluntarily for people, but several times I've just done it as a demonstration because I just get a little frustrated at people bashing .wav all the time :D

Edited March 8, 2012 by Speed

[Speed]

Oh yes, I just remembered what it was I found out recently that would allow .ogg to compete with GSM 6.10 at the 22 kHz sample rate. GSM 6.10 is naturally mono channel (I think), but .ogg files are often stereo, and stereo doubles the bit rate. There was an off-the-beaten-path option I found to convert my .ogg files to mono channel, and that reduced the bit rate to the point where the most highly compressed, lowest sample rate .ogg was competitive with .wav GSM 6.10 @ fs = 22 kHz. That said, .wav GSM 6.10 can go to even lower sample rates than 22 kHz, and thus, while the sound quality is not that great, nothing will be able to beat it in that regime, at least, not if limits of .ogg represented in AVS audio converter are the true limits of .ogg, AND assuming I'm even remembering the lower limits of the .ogg format correctly.

 

Anyway, I'm tired of doing this all from memory... perhaps in the next day or so I could put together a little table of how the two different formats stack up at the lowest bit rate settings. Would be useful for future reference.