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Browser-Based Multiplayer Mission Planner for DCS: World


FSFIan

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Download latest release: v0.0.1-rc2

See also: DCS Mission Planner on GitHub | Issue Tracker on GitHub | Try it online!

 

For information on how to use the current version, please refer to the instructions included with the software itself.

Original post below; please note that not everything described there applies to the current version.

 

 

--

 

 

This software was inspired by the mission planning phase in Falcon: BMS. It doesn't do much at the moment, but I think it does enough to be useful, so I might as well release it now.

 

What is this?

 

Technically, it's a multiplayer mission editor for DCS: World that only allows you to edit the waypoints of playable aircraft of a specific coalition (red/blue).

 

See the attached screenshot for how this looks like.

 

It also does one thing that the DCS Mission Editor cannot do to my knowledge: you can copy the route of one aircraft to another with the "Pull Route" function. That might be useful for mission makers.

 

Download the .zip file from the link above, extract anywhere, open "planner_client.html" and read the instructions to get started. It should work in recent versions of Chrome, Firefox and Internet Explorer.

 

 

Overview of the intended use case

 

Assume your squad has met up on TeamSpeak and wants to play some DCS. Before starting the mission, the host can select the mission file and create a new "instance".

 

An instance stores waypoint data of a mission and is identified by an instance ID. It has a login password to see and edit waypoints of the red coalition, a login password to see and edit waypoints for the blue coalition, and an admin password to download the results.

 

Once the instance is created, everyone opens the Mission Planner (open planner_client.html in a browser) and logs in using the instance ID and the password for red or blue. Each side can edit the waypoints of their playable aircraft; changes by other players should show up in real time.

 

You can also draw circles on the map :)

 

Using the "Pull Route" feature, you can plan the waypoints for a single aircraft and then quickly copy them over to the other aircrafts in the flight.

 

When everyone has come up with a plan of attack, the host uses the admin password to download the modified waypoint data and generate a modified mission file, which he can copy to his "Missions" folder and use to start the DCS Server.

 

 

Suggestions and Feedback

 

Please use this thread to suggest improvements, tell me what works and what does not, and ask questions when the user interface is confusing (it was, after all, designed by a programmer :music_whistling:)

 

You can also send me a pull request on GitHub.

mission-planner-screenshot.thumb.png.6a36835250662b6f0bf4443e64700f06.png


Edited by [FSF]Ian
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Does this really work ?

 

Wow. I was dreaming about this... :thumbup:

 

Yes, it really does work :)

 

In other news, thanks to the awesomeness that is GitHub project pages, you can now try it online!

 

If you want to use the DCS: World map (which I recommend), you will still need to download it to put the map files next to the mission planner; otherwise, there is no difference in features (the online version is served directly from the source code repository).

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Ian;2006992']It also does one thing that the DCS Mission Editor cannot do to my knowledge: you can copy the route of one aircraft to another with the "Pull Route" function. That might be useful for mission makers.

 

This is a fantastic work Ian, and I'm going to report it in my squad to understand it's capability.

 

PS:

 

you can't copy the route of an aircraft.. but you can copy the aircraft (CTRL-C -> CTRL-V) with route, equipment, advanced wpt actions, triggered actions etc etc... but i'm sure you already knew that :).

ChromiumDis.png

Author of DSMC, mod to enable scenario persistency and save updated miz file

Stable version & site: https://dsmcfordcs.wordpress.com/

Openbeta: https://github.com/Chromium18/DSMC

 

The thing is, helicopters are different from planes. An airplane by it's nature wants to fly, and if not interfered with too strongly by unusual events or by a deliberately incompetent pilot, it will fly. A helicopter does not want to fly. It is maintained in the air by a variety of forces in opposition to each other, and if there is any disturbance in this delicate balance the helicopter stops flying; immediately and disastrously.

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This is a fantastic work Ian, and I'm going to report it in my squad to understand it's capability.

 

Thanks!

 

Should you test it with multiple people, please report back what worked well and where you think additional features would help with mission planning. As it is technically a mission editor, it could access everything the DCS Mission Editor does.

I wonder if it could export annotations made on the map to the ABRIS of a Ka-50...

 

In theory, I could build a multiplayer capable version of the DCS mission editor. In practice, that would never be completed and the UI would be too complicated for mission planning anyway, so I need to know what to focus on.

 

you can't copy the route of an aircraft.. but you can copy the aircraft (CTRL-C -> CTRL-V) with route, equipment, advanced wpt actions, triggered actions etc etc... but i'm sure you already knew that :).

 

If two aircraft start on ramps that are 100 meters away from each other, all their waypoints will differ by 100 meters after copy&paste in the ME. But advanced waypoint actions are a good point -- the Mission Planner will recreate the waypoints when saving, thus deleting all the extra info (it will never touch the initial waypoint of a plane, though). As it is currently implemented, the "Pull Route" feature is only useful in a mission making context if all the "special setup" is done on "Waypoint 0" of the aircraft, which I think is the case for playable aircrafts; on AI aircraft groups, I think you can have multiple planes in the same group, which avoids the problem in the first place.

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Can't get it to work.

Tried several times but nothing happens!

The Server stops at "reading file...."

and the client stops at ""establishing connection...."

 

:(

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This is great! A good planning tool for squad flights have really been missed. Ok there are some spreadsheet planners available but nothing graphical like this! It reminds me of the ATC (advanced Tactical Center) board that I used to plan PvP fights on CoD ;)

 

EDIT: For design tip check out ATC http://www.playprepared.com/


Edited by HiJack
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Wow!

We need this so much for planning missions in a campaign.

 

The only thing we miss is mission saving now.

 

Ian, I'm going to send you a PM about the save mission script I've been working on... Maybe you can help finish it and integrate it into your mod.

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Can't get it to work.

Tried several times but nothing happens!

The Server stops at "reading file...."

and the client stops at ""establishing connection...."

 

:(

 

My first guess would be that it is incompatible with your browser (I only tested IE 11, Chrome 33 and Firefox 27). What exact version of which browser are you using? Does it work in another browser?

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my fault,

updated my browser (Firefox) and it is working now.

Thanks for the hint :music_whistling:

CPU: Intel i7-5820K 3,3GHz

Motherboard: ASUS X99-A

Grafik Card: NVIDIA Geforce GTX1080 Ti 337.50

RAM: 32GB

PIMAX 5k+ BE

Hotas Warthog with Simped Pedals

WIN 10 64bit

DirctX 11.0

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Great program, Ian.

 

My recommendations:

 

  • Since the routes are identified by callsign, have something that identifies the aircraft type ,e.g. Hawg 1-1 (A-10C).
  • Sort the entries by callsign (i.e. Hawgs stay together) and allow the option to sort by aircraft type as well.
  • An additional option when clicking on a waypoint to get the specific details of that waypoint (i.e. tasks). Not critical for client aircraft, but more important with my next recommendation.
  • Add the ability to view friendly AI flights. Perhaps disallow edits and put them in a different color, but have them show up regardless.
  • While allowing different shape annotations is obviously in the works, please consider allowing different colors for different annotations, and the ability to tie a line of text to the annotation.

Thanks for putting together this package. The potential is amazing.

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Ian,

 

Thanks for the tests tonight, I've done some additional tests and it seems the new prototype is working excellent with the save mission script, except for the things we discussed.

 

Looking forward to your next release :thumbup:

 

 

 

To all you guys who run missions on your servers, with the mission save script addition, you can now run on going campaigns!!!

Units last ground positions are saved and destroyed units are removed.

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I have released v0.0.1-beta3.

Thanks to xcom for meeting up on TS to test this stuff.

 

The mission planner now includes a feature to save the state of a mission (more precisely: the position of all alive ground units and the list of dead ground units). For more information, see this issue on GitHub.

 

I will now use the GitHub issue tracker to track bugs and feature requests.

 

You can still report bugs and request features in this thread, but I strongly encourage you to use GitHub, because it is a lot easier to keep different issues separate over there.

 

 

 

Call for Participation

Given infinite time and resources, I would like to bring the dynamic campaign from Falcon BMS to DCS: World. Unfortunately, I have neither.

 

By developing this as an open-source project, I hope we can at least come close to that goal.

The client side is licensed under GPLv3, the server part will be released under AGPL in a few days.

If you want to help, here are some things you can do:

  • simply use the tool and report back what works, what does not and what is confusing
  • create missions intended to be used with this tool
  • test the mission planner in real-world multiplayer scenarios and report your results
  • help with programming (most of the client side is implemented in JavaScript, some parts are in Lua; the server is implemented in Python)
  • If you have experience with the DCS Lua scripting environment or mission editing in general, help with developing new features like exporting annotations to the Ka-50 ABRIS
  • Create tutorials on how to use certain features in text or video form

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thank's for your Work ; I test now and I have a Pb , I arrive to change route of aeronef

I make save mission , but when I open it in editor DCS , all routes are lost :(

an idea ?

 

I test to reload mission modifier with planner client and no good also


Edited by gillesdrone
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thank's for your Work ; I test now and I have a Pb , I arrive to change route of aeronef

I make save mission , but when I open it in editor DCS , all routes are lost :(

an idea ?

 

I test to reload mission modifier with planner client and no good also

 

Sorry, your post does not make a lot of sense. "Pb" is the chemical symbol for lead (I assume you have a "problem"?) What's an "aeronef"?

 

When you save the mission, you need to download it and copy it to your mission directory. In Firefox and Chrome, you get a download link, Internet Explorer will ask you if you want to save the file using a small bar at the bottom. My best guess is that you missed this step.

 

Because the admin tool runs in a browser, it cannot modify the file you opened in the first step; you must explicitly download a result (because you wouldn't want to have random web sites modifying your data willy-nilly).

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For anyone who might be interested, the server part is now available on GitHub.

 

EDIT: Please note that you do not need to set up your own server to use the mission planner. I will not provide support for running your own server (if you are a software developer or sysadmin, you should be able to figure it out and I am happy to point you in the right directions if you have questions). I put the server on GitHub to ensure that all parts of the software are publically available under an open-source license.

 

During development, shift+click the connect button in the client to use "localhost" as the server.

 

If you want to run your own public server, you will need to patch the client to use another URL for the WebSocket.

As long as the "official" server is not overloaded, I do not plan to add such a feature to the client, because it increases the complexity of the user interface, and confused users mean more support requests ;)


Edited by [FSF]Ian
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Ian;2008610']Sorry, your post does not make a lot of sense. "Pb" is the chemical symbol for lead (I assume you have a "problem"?) What's an "aeronef"?

 

When you save the mission, you need to download it and copy it to your mission directory. In Firefox and Chrome, you get a download link, Internet Explorer will ask you if you want to save the file using a small bar at the bottom. My best guess is that you missed this step.

 

Because the admin tool runs in a browser, it cannot modify the file you opened in the first step; you must explicitly download a result (because you wouldn't want to have random web sites modifying your data willy-nilly).

 

Thank's for your answer : Pb is " problem " exuse me for that syntax ;)

 

I have always the problem but I follow your tutorial , and I see the modified mission in mY download folder , I copy it in my mission Folder and in editor DCS I load it and is there no route for all planes :cry:

 

I use Google Chrome

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What version of Chrome are you using? (Type chrome://chrome/ in your address bar to find out.) It works for me on the current version (33.0.1750.117 m).

 

Are you using the online version of the planner or did you download it?

 

Can you provide me with the mission file (both "before" and "after")? Did you try another mission?

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