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[UberDemon]

Working on Form relationship, like appearance, behavior to keep things from getting buggy during execution.  Much to do of course, but slowly progressing.

[UberDemon]

I will be implementing a bulk Coordinate Move routine in the Waypoint Editor to allow mass moving of an entire section.  This would allow for more variations on a mission template.  The Idea is that the map templates will have sections, for example, a Transit to Action area, an Action Area, a Transit Back home.  Each section will have the waypoints which were placed by the template designer.  A Section can be entirely removed, or it can be moved.  The user will be able to move all the coordinates in a section by variations of East/West and North/South, from -1M to +1M.  The user can choose whether to move by meters or Kilometers.  This can be done for each flight group (12 per team).  Clones will be arranged around the location of the original flights, regardless of where they are moved to.

[UberDemon]

Just saying that what I am trying to do is fairly complex, but it is progressing.  When I have something coherent to report I will.  But it is progressing.

I think that making the hard choices now in development will pay off when a test version is out.  I'll probably ask for a few volunteers for some testing so I can fix bugs.

I am actually working on the mission generation engine so much to do.

[RealDarko]

For years (in fact since the original Il-2 was released) I wanted to have a editor similar to the one in European Air War, where you picked your plane, any support flight you fancy, a type of mission (intercept, fighter sweep, interdiction, escort...) the target area and the enemy, and voilà! A different mission every time, it was so fast and so fun!
Your editor will allow me to do that, and a tons more of features, so I can wait a bit more, that's for sure!

A screenshot so you can see how it was...

[UberDemon]

My approach is very different.  But Interestingly enough, my plan for the "Home" Tab is to have a simpler interface to do something like that.  But I am not sure yet.  Let's get the basic engine in gear before I go there.  I think that at this point I have reduced the map template development from say, about a month to about a week.  One day if you have no life.  It is still a labor of love but I think better than before.  We'll see when I actually generate the first mission.

I'll also have to go back and adapt my cloning algorithm to this new version.  The coding is not that hard but the biggest problem is the really bad way that the IL-2 engine uses a set number of units to determine how many aircraft you have in a mission.  That is my biggest criticism of the engine.  Managing that is what makes cloning so hard to implement... tracking all the units.

It would be so much better if we could have a way to make the engine do away with requiring regiments  and just have a semi infinite number of country-based regiments...

Say... for USA, usa000 to usa999 (where the flights would be:

Code: [Select]

usa00000
usa00001
usa00002
usa00003
usa00010
usa00011
usa00012
usa00013
usa00020
usa00021
usa00022
usa00023
usa00030
usa00031
usa00032
usa00033... to

usa99900
usa99901
usa99902
usa99903
usa99910
usa99911
usa99912
usa99913
usa99920
usa99921
usa99922
usa99923
usa99930
usa99931
usa99932
usa99933

And every country would have then an almost infinite number of squadrons... think of a persistent multi-day Coop Arena...  we would keep the original regiments for compatibility but would have the less restrictive units.

This of course could be implemented using the properties and ini files, but would be better if it was done as a MOD...

In Basic, something like this:

Code: [Select]

Dim strCountries() as String = {"aa", "ab", <...etc...>, "zz"} 'where the digraphs are the country codes
Dim strCountryRegs(strCountryRegs.Count, 999) as String '999 is the max index
Dim strLeadingZeros as String

For i = 0 to strCountryRegs.Count - 1
     For j = 0 to 999
          Select Case j
               Case 0 To 9
                     strLeadingZeros = "00"
               Case 10 To 99
                     strLeadingZeros = "0"
               Case Else
                     strLeadingZeros = ""
          End Select
          strCountryRegs(i, j) = strCountries(i) & strLeadingZeros & j
     Next j
Next i

'strCountryRegs has all the programatically generated regiments...

You know, I could create a VB code to generate a "regiments.ini", "regInfo.properties" and "regShort.properties"...
But it is something for another day....

[RealDarko]

The work you do is astonishing! looking forward to first beta.

[UberDemon]

Greetings,

As I am developing the mission generation, I am concentrating first, and of course, on the aircraft.  I started thinking how I will implement the Cloning algorithm.  That in itself is hard enough to sort out because it is based in the, I am just going to say... bad way the IL-2 engine uses regiments to determine number of flights... it would have been easier to have generic country assignments, and then use a feature akin to nose art to place historical unit markings... how cool would that be?  That way skins could be completely clear and then the unit markings could be modded by the talented skinners... anyhoo... nothing I can do about that, but, nevertheless keeping up with what units are used is a pain.  There, I said it.

OK once that nightmare is figured out, which I may adapt form the original code... comes the Clone flight placement.  When I went back to the original code... I noticed that my clone flight placement grows into an Asterisk.  So below, if "00" is the position of the original flight, the clones numbered 01 to NN are placed as follows... with some math to separate them, including vertical separation:

Code: [Select]

UQMG Classic (Asterisk)


                19       18       17

                   11    10    09

                      03 02 01

                20 12 04 00 08 16 24

                      05 06 07

                   13    14    15

                21       22       23

Well I am thinking maybe I can make each of the 24 flight groups have the option of choosing different large formations... say like:

Code: [Select]

Additional UQMG 1946 Max (Outward Spiral Box)

  31 30 29 28 27 26 25

  32 13 12 11 10 09 48

  33 14 03 02 01 24 47

  34 15 04 00 08 23 46

  35 16 05 06 07 22 45

  36 17 18 19 20 21 44

  37 38 39 40 41 42 43

or:

Code: [Select]

Additional UQMG 1946 Max (Widening Wedge & Mirror Wide Surface (Original in back))

25

26 16

27 17 09

28 18 10 04

29 19 11 05 01

30 20 12 06 02 00

31 21 13 07 03

32 22 14 08

33 23 15

34 24

35

or:

Code: [Select]

Additional UQMG 1946 Max (Pointy Wedge & Mirror Wide Surface (Original in back))

25 18

26 19 13 08

27 20 14 09 05 02
 
28 21 15 10 06 03 01 00

29 22 16 11 07 04

30 23 17 12

31 24
and...

Code: [Select]

Additional UQMG 1946 Max (Outward Spiral Diamond)

            29

         30 16 28
     
      31 17 07 15 27

   32 18 08 02 06 14 26

33 19 09 03 00 01 05 13 25

   34 20 10 04 12 24 40

      35 21 11 23 39

         36 22 38

            37
...  Now, this is conceptual, but I think I can write the mathematical equasions to handle the geometry.  We'll see... but it is something I am thinking of.  By this I mean I would have the original form of the UQMG classic and would add the other options.

The way to think is that 00 is the original flight with 1 to 4 planes.  If you add a Clone, then it would be flights 00 and 01 in the Flight Group (FG), in the position shown.  If you had 10 clones... it would be 00 to 10.  Of course if you employ the Clones as waves, things will be different... they will be small version of the formation...  Say if you choose to have 8 clones and you decide to employ them as waves of three every 5 minutes... then you will have:

Flights 00-02 at mission start (if you have 4 planes in the flight that would be 12 planes)
Flights 03-05 spawn at 5 minutes (same number as above... so up to 12 planes)
Flights 06-08 spawn at 10 minutes (same number as above... so up to 12 planes)

With some variations allowed...  I guess I could give the option for waves to appear where they would be in a large formation for some variation or they all could spawn in where they would be... not sure yet.

[raf1659]

Impressive ! 

[Dimlee]

A dream of a mission maker who loves to fill the skies with B-17s and B-24s, I think so. 

[UberDemon]

Nevertheless... I found an obstacle today.  So you cannot reuse a generic spawn point in an SP mission.  Say for example, having two flights using it.  The second flight tumbles in the ground.  That happens even if you spawn later in the mission.  That is a bummer, but not impossible to fix.  There are a few options, for example if we are using waves, I can regenerate the same object with a different name...  It will get dicey if you want to generate clones at the same time in the ground...  I have to think about that.

Oh... also...  I was trying some things to make sure I am covering all options I can make available in UQMG...  I am using a Norway Online map which is really nice... so it is the northeastern Scotland and parts of Norway...  Anyhoo...  I am going to use the middle flight groups, at least in the Red Team, I mean FGs (5-8, of the total 12) to be more maritime focused.  Flight 5 will be in a custom Amphibian base... meaning you can spawn in J2F Duck, then taxi to the ramp, get on the water, use the Airbrake command (I use Alt+B) to retrieve gear, then you are in seaplane mode to complete the taxi then you take off...  One of the problems is that yourAI wingmen are kinda dumb so they keep their gear while they taxi on the water... but hey... they take off and land correctly on floats.

Flight 6 will be purely seaplane... you start in plane one in a hangar.  It took forever to do the spacing right.  Most of these flights work better with one or two planes, but you can use four... sometimes with strange results...  and not evern seaplane works well.  You will have alternate seabases out in sea that may work better.

Anyway... some eye candy... is coming in a few.  Gotta get back to the programming you know?  But developing templates for Max will be more of a fun thing... compared to UQMG classic anyway, and only in my opinion...

Norway Template development in progress:  https://www.sas1946.com/main/index.php/topic,71913.msg784636.html#msg784636

[UberDemon]

Another bit of bad news.  Unfortunately Spawn points (Generic Spawn Point Static Aircraft Objects), although void of any impact boxes or mass, and are invisible, still have cause and effect on AI aircraft.  I mentioned above how they cannot be reused... they cause the next spawn set of aircraft to float over them then they fall and explode.  Funny to watch but not the desired effect.

Well, you cannot place them one on top of the other either... the concept I tried to use is to have a spawn point copy... say the original was 0_Static... and then I would copy that spawn point with the exact same data including coordinates, etc...  and call it 35_Static... well that would seem to work if I was to spawn a copy/clone of the original flight at the exact point 2 minutes later...  but it does not.  The planes get stuck in place, then the next wave arrives and they explode.  If you have them near each other... the same happens.

They all have to be unique objects placed in their own independent place in the map.  This is too much work to implement, and it cannot be done programmatically.  It would exponentially increase the time to develop a map template which is not the intent of a quick mission generator.

So what to do?  Well, I have a solution, and am thinking of creative ways to deal with it.

For waves, of the original flight, the answer is fairly straight forward (and I tested this):
* Original Flight gets to use unique spawn points (Waypoints are not a perfect solution in IL-2 because the planes move straight for a very short distance then they all move towards the first waypoint ignoring landscape or ways (streets, taxiways, runways - the best way to implement them is setting up a "cross" where they all converge in the center.
* Clone Waves will all be lined up to the right of the first aircraft in the first taxi waypoint and will proceed to taxi (this should always work because for the templates I am creating, the first waypoint is located in a place where taxiing will work in that manner... and you can always change the spacing... but sometimes landscape or buildings get in the way depending on spacing).

Where it gets crazy is if you want to start the mission with a bunch of Clones... having all of them taxiing is probably not doable unless the map was a simple plain flat Minecraft-like empty plane.  Some of the ideas are having the original flight Spawn and taxi, then  use waves of 2 minutes at the first taxi point as mentioned above, or having all lineup at the runway, or having the original flight spawn and taxi, and other flights scrambling from runway or lined up, or flying above base...  I'll think about the options.  Of course if all aircraft in the flight group begin in the Air, then they will just appear...

The challenge is really taxiing multitudes of flights at the same time.

[UberDemon]

Sorry for the lack of updates.

Have been travelling for work.  So there are some good news.  I have been able to generate some rudimentary mission scripts with my first template and results are promising, somewhat similar to QMB but with some more advanced features.  Changing the coordinates, altitude per section and removing sections is working.

Very exciting that the taxi to take off feature is working as well.

Some bad news have to do with not UQMG but due to certain incompatibilities which happen in the Mod World.

For example, some aircraft do not behave well in taxi to takeoff situations.  For example, He-112s and some other mods are not able to use the taxi to takeoff feature where aircraft are lined up to the right (TAKEOFF_004), instead they all scramble in chaotic fashion... use a different plane (stock, some larger planes), and all works well.  I imagine this maybe not only due to mod FM adaptation but also gravity points in map takeoff areas.

For these planes you would need to use normal line takeoff (TAKEOFF), scramble (in pairs or line (TAKEOFF_002, _003)), spawn points (_005) (which have limitations explained in two posts above), or they could start in the air (NORMFLY).  A solution would be for original flight to taxi and takeoff from spawn points, and clones start in air... maybe I'll have other options.

In anyway I found a solution to a problem I was having in adding targets to the GATTACK waypoints (or any other type of Waypoint), but that is because this is going to allow much more complex scenarios with a simpler interface (compared to FMB).

I have to workout the kinks, and then implement alternate takeoff routines.  After that I will start working on the cloning piece, although I am already implementing some of the logic in the code.