Step by step mission design part 2

Ok like the title says step by step mission building. What I want to know is the steps by steps number and task for building part a everything prior to hitting the mission editor. Part b will be found there.

Step1:________

Step2:________

Ok let’s get started and see how complete we can get it.

The end result will be a pdf on how to build a miss step by step and I will give it away once servers review it. It’s a two part the pre me stuff and the me stuff.

Please build this document and I’ll go through and singularitize multi ideas of the same step mixing and doing what I think is the best of the best so if we have 10 ways of selecting the mission goal I’ll go through a see the ways I like best . One mights get used in a simple mission while option b is better suited for a more advance mission. I’m thinking if I get the support I’ll do 5 simble missions 5 medium missions and 5 advance missions and if there is a mission or two Thayer are really advance those will get included also.

So now the time to add steps for molding a mission. Answers here ore for mission editor steps and what to use how to use it go here. The non me stuff goes in the post on a similar topic in the dcs world 2.5 forum.

I don't really understand it yet - shall we describe how we do it or how it should be done theoretically or how it would be done derived from a finsihed mission?

Step 1 - set down, drink a beer and imagine a combat scenario

Step 2 - open mission editor, set time of the day and weather conditions

Step 3 - add all needed units on the map - set all waypoints and weapons

Step 4 - add necessary tasks (or en-route tasks) for each unit

Step 5 - start to add triggers/conditions/actions - to fit your scenario

Step 6 - check all the settings and triggers and save the work

Step 7 - open another beer and start the mission

Enjoy it (or not) :)

I've got step 1,2 and 7 done, not sure about about the rest. For example how do you set a cap, a tanker orbit, a ground alert, how many 'things' make up a SAM site (that works)? Things like that would be useful. :thumbup:

This needed a lot of thought because it's 9 years worth of experience.

Day 1 - Come up with an amazing concept that no one thought of. Start your ME experience after knowing you "Can do it better". Flashpoint scripting was a breeze, right? Bush administration ends, Barrack Obama just got sworn is as president. Hopeful days.

Week 2 - Nearing 25% done on the masterpeice, there's a snag with one of the switched triggers you made. Try to make a script that deletes destroyed vehicles. DCS versions flick by. Gonna have two planes soon.

Week 4 - Discover the dream wasn't achievable due to Bug #46347 in DCS and down tools on the concept. Besides FSF Ians Witchcraft stopped working and you can't place objects at a rate faster than one per 10 minutes (5 mission restarts to get that last 1 degree rotation)

Year 2 - Redefine your amazing dream with some new scripting someone posted online. Believe. Just look at what you have acheived with Advanced action waypoints!!! DCS A-10C has been followed by a P-51D! Yes!! Two planes.

Year 2, week 24 - Give up again. Like child birth, people forget the pain, given enough time and drunken Fridays. Osama Bin Laden is caught.

Year 4, week 10 - Now the ZEN MASTER of switched triggers, your giddy heights of success know no bounds and you look at this MIST malarky as the next phase in your evolution. LUA predicate is KING!

Year 6 - You held your masterpeice, a 12 consecutive week continuously running story campaign for 12 players on DCS 1.2 using DAWS save game and some basic MIST scripting. You are a genius. DCS 1.5 released. Lua Predicate breaks. You can no longer access destroyed vehicles for tidying up. Things look bad.

Year 7, week 50 - Learn LUA. There's no other way you can get what you want. And it's Christmas break soon so you have the time. Replace Obutto racing chair with a ... desk? DIscover that knowing LUA doesn't matter a jot when it comes to tidying up dead vehicles.

Year 8 - Year of the MOOSE. Write a great campaign over 3 months and get disheartened when you never got to play it because people were bored waiting. It sits unused. Saved state and all the things.

Year 9, week 12 - DCS 2.5 is out, back to the Hornet Campaign you started 18 months before it went to EA. Notice your sons voice broke and you missed it whilst engrossed in your new hobby of scripting. Trump is sworn in as 45th president.

Now - You're answering questions on the MOOSE Discord like a BOSS and contributing to the codebase and you can't work out how or when this happened. Some of the friends you showed mission design to are now on the Razbam team. You can only write a simple LUA tables to disk and are limited to small talk with Funky Franky to discern why an event handler isn't working on a SET and he needs the group object from the Spawn to get the EventData using "if EventData.IniGroupName == HeloSpawn.GroupName then...". DCS made the 2D editor feature and you ponder how many months you spent guessing in the last 9 years.

At least that's how the last 9 years messing with it went for me. True story. If I can share anything, just one thing to prospective learners of this tiny dark art. Just one peice of useful information for all the budding Mission Designers then its...

This needed a lot of thought because it's 9 years worth of experience....

Even tough it taxed my non-native english (I have a hard time distinguishing between sarcasm, irony and witty story telling), I must say that I've greatly enjoyed your tale :D

Cheers!

I love that months in you still think someone's going to be able to write this stuff down for you in a general way that gets you what you want. :lol:

You've been given construction materials. You're asking "please give me a step by step instruction on how to build a building"

Okay...what kind of building?

What is the building's purpose?

How many people does the building need to accommodate?

The answers are different depending on your goals, and there are multiple ways to do just about everything. The guide for "how to build a backyard playground" isn't going to do a damn bit of good to the guy who wants to build a courtroom, or an office building.

As I've said time and again, you've just got to get in there and experiment. Basic concepts like what a flag is, and the difference between the types of triggers can be explained (and have been.) Specific questions like "how do I make a tanker orbit" or "how do I set a TACAN" can be answered (and have been) but you're never going to get a comprehensive guide that explains everything because "everything" is too much information.

I think Pikey has the jist of it. :lol:

This needed a lot of thought because it's 9 years worth of experience.

This is GOLDEN. I'm glad I jumped in at year 8 and saved myself 6 years of grief. But now I've got two years of grief under my belt. Does that count for anything??!!

Well I thought there might be a good practice to follow and was going to compile the responses for future mission builder s but some are above it.

Lol , pikey, that was brilliant mate

It's not that we're "above it" it's just that what you're asking is to condense huge amounts of information into a unrealistically small package...either that or you're asking someone to write a thousand page long manual to cover every conceivable scenario (which no one will read because it's a thousand pages long.) Most people can't be bothered to read the existing materials.

Decide what you want the mission to be about. K.I.S.S. method is recommended i.e. "I want to escort a convoy" or "I want to hunt for a SAM" or "I want to perform a SAR operation"

Decide where you want this to happen.

Place your units. Check paths for anything you want to move before you get too deep into the design because the farther in you are the bigger the PITA it is when you discover you've scripted half the mission and your little trucks get stuck on a hillside at X location that necessitates a redesign of the entire route.

When you're ready to get into triggers, open the trigger menu and just take a moment to look at every condition and every triggered action. For the most part, they are very clear in their purpose. The combinations of flags and the built in types, conditions, and actions are extremely powerful even without external scripting solutions like MiST and MOOSE.

I'd recommend the last step even without a mission in mind. You mind find that examining those lists inspires an idea, as has happened to me on more than one occasion.

Ask a specific question and people are more than happy to help out, but general "please write down everything" requests are not likely to produce any meaningful result.

Here's how I went about making Operation Titan Angel:

Step 1. Place aircraft with weapons. Make sure it's client.

Step 2. Place Russian tank a bit away.

Step 3. Write some code.

Then it was done.

I wanted the different venues to use as different tutorials in the doc I wanted to start with the simple and build upon it making each mission more elaborate and detailed. I’ll see what happens with this topic if the data is there I’ll do the document if not I’ll let it drop now plus the other part isn’t getting any support at all

On 7/17/2018 at 7:39 PM, Pikey said:

This needed a lot of thought because it's 9 years worth of experience.

 

Day 1 - Come up with an amazing concept that no one thought of. Start your ME experience after knowing you "Can do it better". Flashpoint scripting was a breeze, right? Bush administration ends, Barrack Obama just got sworn is as president. Hopeful days.

 

Week 2 - Nearing 25% done on the masterpeice, there's a snag with one of the switched triggers you made. Try to make a script that deletes destroyed vehicles. DCS versions flick by. Gonna have two planes soon.

 

Week 4 - Discover the dream wasn't achievable due to Bug #46347 in DCS and down tools on the concept. Besides FSF Ians Witchcraft stopped working and you can't place objects at a rate faster than one per 10 minutes (5 mission restarts to get that last 1 degree rotation)

 

Year 2 - Redefine your amazing dream with some new scripting someone posted online. Believe. Just look at what you have acheived with Advanced action waypoints!!! DCS A-10C has been followed by a P-51D! Yes!! Two planes.

 

Year 2, week 24 - Give up again. Like child birth, people forget the pain, given enough time and drunken Fridays. Osama Bin Laden is caught.

 

Year 4, week 10 - Now the ZEN MASTER of switched triggers, your giddy heights of success know no bounds and you look at this MIST malarky as the next phase in your evolution. LUA predicate is KING!

 

Year 6 - You held your masterpeice, a 12 consecutive week continuously running story campaign for 12 players on DCS 1.2 using DAWS save game and some basic MIST scripting. You are a genius. DCS 1.5 released. Lua Predicate breaks. You can no longer access destroyed vehicles for tidying up. Things look bad.

 

Year 7, week 50 - Learn LUA. There's no other way you can get what you want. And it's Christmas break soon so you have the time. Replace Obutto racing chair with a ... desk? DIscover that knowing LUA doesn't matter a jot when it comes to tidying up dead vehicles.

 

Year 8 - Year of the MOOSE. Write a great campaign over 3 months and get disheartened when you never got to play it because people were bored waiting. It sits unused. Saved state and all the things.

 

Year 9, week 12 - DCS 2.5 is out, back to the Hornet Campaign you started 18 months before it went to EA. Notice your sons voice broke and you missed it whilst engrossed in your new hobby of scripting. Trump is sworn in as 45th president.

 

Now - You're answering questions on the MOOSE Discord like a BOSS and contributing to the codebase and you can't work out how or when this happened. Some of the friends you showed mission design to are now on the Razbam team. You can only write a simple LUA tables to disk and are limited to small talk with Funky Franky to discern why an event handler isn't working on a SET and he needs the group object from the Spawn to get the EventData using "if EventData.IniGroupName == HeloSpawn.GroupName then...". DCS made the 2D editor feature and you ponder how many months you spent guessing in the last 9 years.

 

At least that's how the last 9 years messing with it went for me. True story. If I can share anything, just one thing to prospective learners of this tiny dark art. Just one peice of useful information for all the budding Mission Designers then its...

 

 

 

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Do not go down this very deep rabbit hole.

 

I started trying to make a dday mission 2 weeks ago ... right now I'm in hell ... why didn't i see this before ... whhhyyyyy ??? XD 

On 7/26/2023 at 7:53 PM, Walshtimothy said:

I started trying to make a dday mission 2 weeks ago ... right now I'm in hell ... why didn't i see this before ... whhhyyyyy ??? XD 

Damn that's five years ago. A lot has changed. And a lot hasn't.

'A degree or ten years relevant work experience'

On 8/1/2023 at 7:23 AM, Pikey said:

Damn that's five years ago. A lot has changed. And a lot hasn't.

'A degree or ten years relevant work experience'

LOL