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Mission Wizard (alpha) proof of concept
Following PStyle's valuable template threads HERE, and note RedDog's suggestion about some sort of useful mechanism to manipulate mission object templates. Here's a "Mission Wizard" (couldn't think of a name - open to suggestions).
INSTALLING
1. This is a stand-alone exe. Create a folder where you want the exe to be located.
2. Extract the archive file into that folder. If you extracted correctly, you should have two files; MissionWizard.exe and library.ini
3. Run the program (exe). The first time you run it, the wizard will ask you set set the folder for where your mission object templates are located; and the folder where your script templates are located. These folders may have sub-folders for types of templates (unlimited object & script templates allowed).
4. Once you've set the folders for where your template files are located, you will see a tree on the left of the screen showing all your template files.
5. Simply use the arrow buttons to select (or deselect) which objects & scripts you want for your battle.
HOW TO ADD YOUR OWN AIRFIELD OR OBJECT TEMPLATE
1. Simply download a template file (mission file) from wherever you like & put it into a folder of your choice somewhere under your desigated 'objects' root folder.
2. Your template should appear in the wizard screen.
HOW TO ADD YOUR OWN SCRIPT TEMPLATE
1. Simply download a c# script file (*.cs file) from wherever you like & put it into a folder of your choice somewhere under your desigated 'script' root folder.
2. Your script template should appear in the wizard screen.
FEATURES
- Works with all maps. The wizard uses the map associated with the first template file you select for your mission.
- Imports stationary objects from template into your mission file.
- Imports buildings objects from template into your mission file.
- Imports frontmarker objects from template into your mission file.
- Imports AiChiefs (animals/birds etc) objects from template into your mission file.
- Imports spline roads objects from template into your mission file.
- Imports spawn bases objects from template into your mission file.
- Imports local weather front objects from template into your mission file.
- Imports unlimited number of C# scripts into your mission file.
- This is presented 'as-is', I make no guarantees it will suit your mission building & I'm not responsible for any consequences should it present problems.
LIMITATIONS
1. Does not work for 'custom airfield' template files (yet).
Download wizard HERE (107kb) [Ver0.4 beta]
http://i.imgur.com/xHgJhm2.jpg
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Re: Mission Wizard (alpha) proof of concept
This is brilliant! Looking forward to trying this! :thumbsup:
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Re: Mission Wizard (alpha) proof of concept
Great initiative Salmo! :thumbsup:
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Re: Mission Wizard (alpha) proof of concept
Hey Salmo
First, thanks for this, looks promising.
Second, can we add templates besides airfields to this? I feel like this could be a huge help to people who are interested in mission building, thus possibly getting us more missions on ATAG.
Not sure about how mission builders feel about sharing their hard work but this could lead to more missions for us to enjoy by many more creative minds outs there that haven't taken the plunge in mission building because it really is a daunting task at first.
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Re: Mission Wizard (alpha) proof of concept
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Spiritus_Mortem
<snip>Second, can we add templates besides airfields to this? <snip>
The intention is to make it generic enough that users can add template catagories of their choosing. That way they can hold templates of mission objects in a manner that is meaningful to them.
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Re: Mission Wizard (alpha) proof of concept
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Spiritus_Mortem
Second, can we add templates besides airfields to this? I feel like this could be a huge help to people who are interested in mission building, thus possibly getting us more missions on ATAG.
Don't see why not, so long as the templates consist of statics and buildings! So, flak emplacements, harbours... all good! As Salmo explains in the o.p., it's just buildings and statics - no airdromes/spawn areas! But maybe with a bit of fiddling... It'd be great if this could somehow scan a specified .mis file and lift the different sections out automatically. Goodness, I'm lazy!
[Of course, if it could do this, it could perhaps also lift air groups with their waypoints from the .mis file too! Wholesale .mis piracy! = bliss!]
Anyway, I love the enticing ambition of the "Library" sub-menu: submit to online library/ get latest library objects... Wouldn't that be great? I think this is the sort of thing Phil and Reddog (and myself, actually) have been groping towards. Many thanks for these ideas, Salmo.
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1 Attachment(s)
Re: Mission Wizard (alpha) proof of concept
Attachment 9784:thumbsup:
Seems to work as advertised! (When saving the mission, the name will need the .mis bit).
As luck would have it, I've got quite a few statics/buildings templates in our airfield workshop (see sig). Makes this a very straightforward tool to work with.
:)
If this could also include the airdromes and birthplaces sections from the .mis file, it'd be really really really useful (and then perhaps splines, etc...). But even just the statics/buildings is potentially great. For instance, in my squadron, with mission builders of varying amounts of experience and patience, several of us more or less routinely use our airfields (airdromes) and spawn locations (birthplaces) for our own ops missions. But a lot of scenery gets missed out. While my fellow mission builders understand the principles of cutting and pasting, quite often they can't be bothered! So, an idiot-proof tool like Salmo's would be perfect.
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Re: Mission Wizard (alpha) proof of concept
Quote:
Originally Posted by
No601_Swallow
It'd be great if this could somehow scan a specified .mis file and lift the different sections out automatically.
My alpha-design putting mission file sections into a seperate ini file was a bad design. The next interation of this utility is underway & will include the ability to parse-out sections from seperate mission files.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
No601_Swallow
Seems to work as advertised! (When saving the mission, the name will need the .mis bit).
Thanks for feedback.
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3 Attachment(s)
Re: Mission Wizard (alpha) proof of concept
But!
Slightly strange anomaly It seems that when there are both buildings and statics in that section in the library file, the wizard will put them together in the statics section in the .mis file.
For instance, here's a section from the "TP Croydon" part of the library file:
Attachment 9785
And here's the resultant section from the mission file:
Attachment 9786
In the FMB, this results in the fact that while the statics retain their "icons", the buildings appear without theirs:
Attachment 9787
The buildings remain fully selectable and movable and deleteable, but it's a little strange. I haven't seen this before, and it adds further grist to the eternal question: what are buildings anyway? :D
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Re: Mission Wizard (alpha) proof of concept
Quote:
Originally Posted by
No601_Swallow
But!
Slightly strange anomaly It seems that when there are both buildings and statics in that section in the library file, the wizard will put them together in the statics section in the .mis file.... <snip>
Very alpha release to get further ideas & feedback, knocked out in a few hours. This issue will be fixed :salute:
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Re: Mission Wizard (alpha) proof of concept
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Re: Mission Wizard (alpha) proof of concept
Salmo,
If I continue with my set of airfield templates, do you want to add them also?
I guess you can add subsets right? So the philstyle airfield templates could be selected, or templates made/submitted by others?
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Re: Mission Wizard (alpha) proof of concept
In case anyone's interested, and bearing in mind that hopefully things will progress (i.e. Salmo continues to go above and beyond the call...!) and the format may well change, here's the library I put together in about 20 minutes from some of the stuff in our "workshop", just as an experiment. So long as you've got a nice text editor and can Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V with gay abandon, it's easy stuff. The lines of text mount up though: this one's already more than 6000 lines long!
https://app.box.com/s/demrdza9qocnc8aa44zn
(Cluelessly, I tried to add another category of template: "Industrial", along with airfields and harbours. Didn't work, obviously!!)
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Re: Mission Wizard (alpha) proof of concept
Quote:
Originally Posted by
92 Sqn. Philstyle (QJ-P)
Salmo,
If I continue with my set of airfield templates, do you want to add them also?
I guess you can add subsets right? So the philstyle airfield templates could be selected, or templates made/submitted by others?
Phil,
Design has changed. users will be able to use any stand-alone mission-template. They'll be able to load any templet or combinatiuon of templates into a mssion file they're building. So to answer your question, yes, continue single airfield templates. There will be no need for a seperate step to incorporate into this utility. The user can just save the template (mission) file. Then use this utility to select the template to use in their mission.
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Re: Mission Wizard (alpha) proof of concept
can't hear anything over how awesome people are around here...
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Re: Mission Wizard (alpha) proof of concept
Thanks for the feedback everyone. New version released (0.2 alpha). See 1st post for DL link & substancial changes to the utility. :salute:
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Re: Mission Wizard (alpha) proof of concept
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Salmo
Thanks for the feedback everyone. New version released (0.2 alpha). See 1st post for DL link & substancial changes to the utility. :salute:
This is great Lee! Thank you :salute:
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Re: Mission Wizard (alpha) proof of concept
Getting better and better! :thumbsup:
(I've only tested it a couple of times, but so far the generated .mis file has an empty [Stationary] section (i.e. no static objects). The [Buildings] section is fine, as is indeed, the [Frontmarkers] section. It's very possible - likely even - that I'm doing something wrong, though.)
[It'd be super-fandabidozey if a future iteration could repeat the [Frontmarkers] trick with the [Airdromes] and [Birthplaces] sections. But I know that the [Airdromes] section in particular would cause problems, since - as Philstyle has established, each Airdrome has to have it's own name - at least they don't have to be manually renumbered as I'd thought. If there was a clever way of automatically adding, say, the .mis file's title to each Airdrome's name...Erm. Feature creep? Eek!]
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Re: Mission Wizard (alpha) proof of concept
A quite nice feature about the way it works at the moment is that if you've got scenery templates as text lists for statics and buildings (as we have in our forum), you can use a "blank" .mis file as a framework, that is a saved empty map (perhaps named "framework.mis" or some such.).
This, I think, is because the tool will use the first .mis file you include as the "base mission" (I think) and insert the bits of other .mis files into that one. At least, I think that's how it works. Thus, so long as you've saved your texts in your source folder with a .mis extension, they should work nicely. That's pretty cool and pretty flexible. Again, many thanks for trail-blazing, Salmo.
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Re: Mission Wizard (alpha) proof of concept
Quote:
Originally Posted by
No601_Swallow
.... but so far the generated .mis file has an empty [Stationary] section (i.e. no static objects). ....
No-stationarys bug fixed. Download link in 1st post updated. Download wizard again Swalllow.
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Re: Mission Wizard (alpha) proof of concept
Getting shinier! :D (Nice toolbar!)
Many thanks for fixing the statics thing, Salmo! :thumbsup:
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Re: Mission Wizard (alpha) proof of concept
Folks,
I downloaded and managed set up some folders with mis files loaded but when I tried to create a mission by selecting a map and an airfield. I found the generated mis file and opened it thee was the basic map info and a section named Template wheer the mis file names for the map and the airfied sat. So no detail for objects with nothing for CloD to work with. Maybe I mised a step.
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Re: Mission Wizard (alpha) proof of concept
Jacko, if you're using our "partial" templates (renamed as .mis files), you've got to make sure the first mission is a complete one. If I load, say an old ops mission, plus scenery from various airfields (statics and buildings) it compiles everything into a new .mis file fine. I haven't actually tried with two complete .mis files yet, but I wouldn't think it'd be a problem. It doesn't load airfield and spawnpoint data, though.
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Re: Mission Wizard (alpha) proof of concept
Thanks Swallow, I am sure its a basic error on my side, I will try it again tonight
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Re: Mission Wizard (alpha) proof of concept
It might be worth downloading it again. I've been trying out the MissionLibrary.exe. It's prettier than the MissionWizard.exe.
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Re: Mission Wizard (alpha) proof of concept
I think I follow it now, When I used one of Phil's templates it created a mis file with the buildings and statics and not the spawn points. So it will b really neat when that gets implemented
Cheers
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Re: Mission Wizard (alpha) proof of concept
Just use "whole" mission files with this utility guys. The wizard will look at the first file in the list of files you select & use that mission file's map when constrcuting your mission fro the templates. I suggest have one 'blank' mission file for each game map & using that file as the first in your selected list.
Spawn bases, spline roads etc haven't been forgotton. I will get to them as soon as I can.
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Re: Mission Wizard (alpha) proof of concept
First post & DL link updated. Wizard now imports stationary objects, buildings objects, frontmarker objects, AiChiefs (animals/birds etc), spline roads, spawn bases, and local weather front objects from templates. Enjoy. :salute:
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Re: Mission Wizard (alpha) proof of concept
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Re: Mission Wizard (alpha) proof of concept
Quote:
Originally Posted by
nacy
Merci pour le rapport d'erreur nacy. Pardonnez mon google-translation français. Il semble que vous devez aller dans le menu des options et sélectionnez le dossier où se trouvent vos modèles et de scripts.
Thankyou for the error report nacy. Forgive my google-translation French. It looks like you need to go to the options menu and select the folder where your templates and scripts are located.