Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Seaside]

Hi: Just getting back into IL2 after quite some time and was pleasantly surprised to see CUP _ Great job !!
I've updated to CUP 15 and would like to use Lowengrins DCG.
I know you can manually add aircraft to DCG but its a bit of a process and there are now a huge number of aircraft etc. available.
Is there a version of DCG anywhere that has all the aircraft/ships added for CUP -xx ?
(Sorry if its right under my nose somewhere - can't seem to find this anywhere)

Thanks

Mark

[vonofterdingen]

It is too much of a moving target at this time. I have updated only the aircraft and payloads DCG files that I need for individual campaigns so far. You can find the class and payload files in the Cup campaign thread (see War Over Italy, Battle of Hankow, and Siege of Rabaul so far). To do so for all planes in CUP would be a huge undertaking that would be obsolete in weeks if not days.

[WindWpn]

Hmmm, wonder if an auto generator could be built to auto populate the necessary DCG files based on a read of given set of il2 ini files?!

[sniperton]

Allpayloads and squad IDs could be generated in an automatic way, but all the rest would require massive human input as DCG has to be fed with further data not found in the ini files (availability date, cruise speed, preferred flight altitude, etc).

What seems feasible is to auto-generate a complete list of currently available planes (with their correct internal and skin folder names), as well as ground units, ships, and maps. These you could use as a reference when building your respective DCG database file, but you still should arrange and amend them manually.

One problem is that DCG uses some hard-coded patterns to identify special feature units. E.g. a ship not having 'CV' in its name won't be recognized as a carrier, etc, etc. Implementing a new unit in DCG always involves a lot of 'try and error' testing, and no automation is smart enough to do it for you.

BTW, the bigger the DCG database, the slower the mission generates. I guess a big enough database (covering all CUP units) would bring DCG on its knees.

Anyway, it would be great to have a script which parses the ini files and creates complete lists of planes and units in a DCG-friendly format. Where human input is needed is marked in red.

allpayloads:

A_20G                                    B 2x5004x300
A_20G                                    B 2x5002x500
A5M4                                     D 1xdt
A6M2                                     D 1xdt

gunits:

Vehicles.JapanCarsColumnC 2
Trains.USSR_FuelTrain/AA 1

gobjects:

Armor.1-Coelian                                       2 0 0 0 0 0 0  Armor.1-Wirbelwind
Vehicles.GAZ67                                        1 0 0 0 0 0 0  None

armor:

4-IS2             1 194401 194612 none              08/09
3-SU-76M          1 194208 194406 3-SU-85           01/02

class:

A_20G                          A-20 G                              us 1 4 1 194212 194612 none                           A-20G                               A_20C                          3000 Meters 360.00 kph  Default     360.00 kph 
A5M4                           A5M4 Claude                         in 2 1 0 193902 194012 A6M2                           A5M4                                none                           3500 Meters 300.00 kph  Default     300.00 kph

[Seaside]

Thanks for the answers guys.
Its much more involved than I realised

Mark

[WindWpn]

Yea, guess back to the idea of simply creating small "custom" dcg core files based on the unique campaign.  Thus if producing a European theater campaign, no pacific theater units/AC would be needed, or vis versa. 

One other wish from DCG would be to recognize other countries.  I had a nice 1948 Arab/Israeli war campaign underway, with some interesting timeline factors such as British flying for Egypt and lots of spits against each other; however, realized that DCG only supports the mainline WWII actors.  This limitation can be worked around using custom skins, but the immersion factor takes a hit when u see pilot name references that do not match their nationality in campaign.  Guess there may be work arounds there too, but have been off the project for some time.  Perhaps will pick it back up this winter?!

Additionally, will revise to be CUP based!

~S~
wind

[sniperton]

Yea, guess back to the idea of simply creating small "custom" dcg core files based on the unique campaign.  Thus if producing a European theater campaign, no pacific theater units/AC would be needed, or vis versa.   

Yep, that's the way to go. 

however, realized that DCG only supports the mainline WWII actors.  This limitation can be worked around using custom skins, but the immersion factor takes a hit when u see pilot name references that do not match their nationality in campaign.

Theoretically, it should be still possible. Remember that what you see ingame is based on what DCG generates. DCG doesn't specify the country, it only specifies the side and the squad.

[MAIN]
  MAP FinsGulf/load_w.ini
  TIME 8.0
  CloudType 0
  CloudHeight 3450
  player LeLv3400
  army 2
  playerNum 0

Now if you include some Israeli squads (recognized by CUP) among the Romanian ones in Squadids, DCG will create missions for Romania with Israeli squads. And if you replace the Romanian names with Israeli ones in DGEN/Romanians.dat, you'll get Israeli pilot names; and if you replace 'Romanian' with 'Israeli' in DCG/Data/messages.dcg, you'll also have 'Israeli' instead of 'Romanian' in the briefings.

The trick is that you can create a Polish vs Romanian campaign with Egyptian vs Israeli content. Dunno whether it really works, but it's worth a try.

Anyway, salute, and Happy New Year! 

[JG7_X_Man]

I think this the one area Oleg and his team just didn't make user friendly. Lowengrin really did a great job with DCG but as the "Wiz Kids" of Modders that we have continue to push IL-2 to the limit, it has become too much of a task to update DCG's file system which isn't designed for the number of objects we have now. Just on the aircraft name limitation space alone is the 1st obstacle. Also some aircraft like the Fw 190T and a few others have their armament built into the model and don't show up in the weapons.ini and then the shear number of maps...

I was hoping the guys that brought us missionPro, Mission QMB, DGEM MOD and other mission making tools can come together and create an app that can run outside of IL-2 but can read the necessary flies and point and click GUI.