Greetings mates. For those of you familiar with the UberQuick Mission Generator (UQMG) I developed starting over 20 years ago, well, I have put a lot of thought as to what I would like to do next. Let’s face it, VB6.0 will eventually just die, and it is an antiquated interface. It would cost a couple of thousand pounds to convert (I had a company specializing in that kind of work give me a quote), because there is so much in the code. It is complex and I hate how I made it so draconian to create templates, and make updates… at least when there is such a huge modding community.
Back in 2013 I tried to write a new, more streamlined version of UQMG, but I went through so many professional life changes and moves that it just died. That was in VB2010.NET, one of the first versions to be (finally) released for free to Hobbyists, students and Individual developers. It lacked some of the sophisticated elements of an enterprise version, but still, pretty darn good. Although I have programmed in Assembly, Fortran, every version of C/C++ and Java, VB was just something fun to use especially for developing modding tools.
I made some progress porting that version to the newer versions of VB, currently the VB2022 Community Edition, but it is limited in .NET support because of how I wrote it. Moreover, I felt victim of “making it pretty”, so because it has so many controls, it behaves like a beast with over-a-thousand aircraft in multiple controllers it is super slow. So, I decided to jump with both heads and feet into a new project.
The good thing is that the work I used in the UQCT (UberQuick Conversion Tool) which allowed UQMG to be compatible with BAT WAW 4.1, will be used in my new project. Basically I want to use as much of the work from SAS to make updating a little easier. Even updating UQCT is hard because I keep on running into problems converting everything to the old UQMG classic format. Forget ever being able to create new map templates. It is too complex and crazy because of how I developed it.
So, well… TADA…, this is the first concept of the new UQMG I’ll be working on… UQMG 1946 Max is the name. I have been doing a lot of discovery with some of the more modern features of IL-2 BAT so that I can start writing a program that can capitalize on the newer features. It will be hard; it will take time, but… I am in a point of my life (having retired from at least one of my careers), that I want to get back into the fray… not in an obsessive manner, just for fun. I already started taking creating documents with my plans, so that is good-ish. And I am working in native VB2022.NET. Dot Net is great because for the most part, you can write applications which pretty much work the same because they all use the same compilation engine… so C# and VB produce similar results… again, for the most part.
I know this does not look too impressive, but my concept is that I will have multiple forms to do the work, and I want to avoid the program working as slow as some of my other failed attempts.
Here are some basics:
- In the main Flight Interface, you will have a summary of the mission features (more to come, including reference)
Total Number of Flights per Team: In general 4, with the capability for 8 unique flights per team, so 8 different types of planes per team… which is not too bad - Clone Engine to make copies… so even though you have the potential for 8 unique flights for each team, in truth you could have hundreds or thousands of planes
- My plan is to include advanced features, such as a Taxiing to takeoff. I am still thinking of how my mission templates will fit that, but that is part of the challenge
- Advanced datasets (for time based scenarios)
- Same concept as UQMG classic, when you generate a mission, 3 versions will be made, one of SP, one for DF and one for Coop
- A new concept in Composite flights:
- This UQMG will no longer have the special flights as pre-sets… takes way too long to setup. Instead, there will be a relationship between flights in each team. 1 to C1, 2 to C2, 3 to C3, and 4 to C4. You can setup the type of behavior between those flights.
- This is how you can have up to 8 unique flights in each team. If you do not use any composite combinations, you can have two separate flights which have unique planes and have a sort of relationship, for example, two flights with different planes like Bf-109G-2 and Ju-87D-3s who are flying together… you can even have the 109s escorting the Stukas… AND, with Cloning… you could have larges formations… say 9 Stukas (3x3) being escorted by 8 109s (4x2)… using only two of your 8 total flights in the team. By escorting, I mean that would be a mission parameter, not just flying close by. But you could also have, say, a combination of Bf-109s and Fw-190, for exemple, or P-51s escorting B-17s, all this would be done very quickly when creating a mission.
- For Composite Flights, you will be able to setup behavior to allow features such as: Historical Ace flights with only one Ace, Tug+Glider, V-1 and Baka Carriers, ZVENO, Flying from Dirigibles, Refueling, and setting up Clones/copies
Don’t get me wrong, programming all this is hard, but that is the plan, slow and steady
Well, this is it. Hopefully this will work out, but it will take a while to develop the engine. I won’t be able to do much until I successfully create all the Forms to use the Data from IL-2, basically a fully working GUI before I can work the mission creation engine, which will be more complex but better than the original UQMG.
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Topic: UQMG 1946 Max - Development Log & Updates (7 Apr 2024 - Update 2) (Read 10606 times)
