Didn't your A-10C come with training missions? Mine did. This is a qualification campaign. It actually does not contain 'training missions'. Perhaps you should take a closer look before commenting.

I don't mind. It helps them get money. I don't have interest in most of them. If it means they can put out a lot of nice campaigns and in turn lower price of terrian or other content then that would be great. It seems like the KA-50 campaign (3rd party?) was the only bad one so far.

That's how it initially appeared in the Newsletter. I watched the video later and you're correct. But go back and read the email update.

Perhaps you shouldn't get so upset, being that you're a (politically correct descriptor) ED supporter...........LOL

It is clear now why ED was "not able" to develope a dynamic campaign system in 20 years. They have no interest in it. Selling piece-meal scripted missions can serve as a source of continued income, or so they think.

Have long realized that DC isn't good for business. Despite the global triumph of capitalism, this is a tiny one among those that remain unsolved:p
But depends, if leaning towards a bit mass market appeal likely not, but if the target market is SimHQ go-ers or... retro simmers in general why not a DC. The latter won't make as much I reckon.

There I fixed that for you Nate...

All conspiracies about ED's business model aside, I DO find it perplexing that no one (and I mean NO ONE) seems to have been able to develop a dynamic campaign that even comes close to the one that Microprose/Spectrum Holobyte produced for Falcon 4.0 in 1998.

Why is that? Even the "Third Party" dynamic campaigns and the such just fall way short.

Anyone have any ideas on why this is?

Must be really difficult. My guess is that ED can't figure out how to.

Yeah, it's quite the strange thing that. On the one hand they insist on it being "broken", "rubbish", "crap", etc., but on the other hand they are completely unable to make anything comparable themselves...

1. ED prioritized a complex mission editor because its better suited for any defense contract use than a dynamic campaign would ever be. Instructors need to build a reliable scenario with a clear understanding of what could potentially happen and not a gameplay mechanism that generates content for the end user as a means to keep them interested.

2. The way Falcon 4 handles missions is quite a bit different than how ED does it with DCS. As a game it was built from the ground up with integrating into a DC in mind. So for the sake of argument a DC that uses the same sort of concepts found in the F4 campaigns would need ED to make some serious changes to the game in order for it to become a reality.

3. The DCS mission file format is an open format. And as we have seen there are community efforts to create dynamic campaigns either through the use of generating mission files or changing a live mission via the scripting engine. So its not something that is completely closed off and only ED can work toward.

One of the things that bugs me with any DC related discussion is that people tend to ignore the massive differences between DCS and F4 with regard to ground objects. The overall density of map objects is the huge difference. DCS maps have a crazy number of objects and road networks that exist on its maps. For instance the Black Sea map has a little over 26,000 powerlines on it, and its common for other object types to exist in the 1000s range. In terms of roads I wouldn't be shocked if the much smaller Nevada still has 100s of km more roads than any F4 map. It very well might be possible that the city of Tbilisi has more objects in it than the entire Korean theater map in F4 has. Then you have to translate what that means for AI and the overall difference between how the two games handle ground combat. Which to be honest I don't know a whole lot about. In my time playing F4 I never saw 2 ground armies square off in 3d, for DCS that is a different matter.



To be fair I don't think ED have ever come out saying that they are actively working on a dynamic campaign. If they did it would just be added to the list of long term projects that they have talked about and haven't quite become a reality yet. Which would cause much strife and anxiety over the progress of such a project on the forums. I understand the value that some people place on a dynamic campaign, but I'd rather see efforts put toward enhancing scripting engine functionality. In my eyes a DC is just a DC, but new scripting engine features is DC + a bunch of other stuff... Possibly even multiple DC code-bases to choose from.

I defer to Mr Skortch. If anyone knows about the mission editor/game engine interface it's him.

Thanks for the reply.

+1 mrskortch. Thank you for that explanation.

Thanks Skortch, that makes a lot of sense.

I also think that (as far as it goes) the ease of modern multiplayer gives us all the tools (except for maybe time) to create a truly dynamic campaign for ourselves.

Clutch

1. Name one Russian flight sim (there have been many now) that sports a DC?
Otoh name some western flight sims that sports one. There have been quite a few other than flacon4.0. Can you count to ten. There is also one in the works.
My personal thought, this is a "cultural" thing. It could be a bit hard for western ppl to understand, maybe.

2. DC doesn't make as much money. Tis easily understood. But DC would bring more loyal fans/customers I think yes.

PS. 3. Technical difficulties... pffft yeah right. It was done even in the early 90s, I think only the DCS community puts up a mind barrier like that, for a sim that builds entirely without "dynamic" in mind, sure, it would be extremely difficult to change direction!

the engine was already moved to DX11 back in 2012 no doubt earlier maybe 2010, We now have confirmation of a 3rd party releasing the AV-8 however many of us knew of this confirmation back in 2012.

1.5,2.0 or what ever you want to call it was released years ago....
never officially confirmed however it was released https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZZGOZxM-nc is just 1 example

as for DC's, rather than copy and paste years old training missions into 1.5 or 2.0, ed have had many years to actually release a campaign of quality. Why should a user piece one together using a 4th party "mist" when ed who are supported by consumers have had yonks to actually produce something of quality?

Maple flag missions were made as far back as before 1.2.3, long before combined arms was on the arena. If ED can sell 1.5 maps as far back as 2010 it begs belief that they never employed a 3rd party to make a DC long before the years were wasted on Nevada 2.0 or caucus 1.5. Instead now we have bunch of dodgy dev's who couldn't organise a piss up in a brewery

"ED prioritized a complex mission editor because it's better suited for any defense contract use than a dynamic campaign would ever be."

The above is all that needs to be said. The consumer market (i.e.: you and I) comes second to the private/gov't contract market as far as ED is concerned. Oh, and they have no competition in the "hi-fi" modern aerial combat genre.

Been waiting for the F/A-18 for five+ years, and now they've broken SLI with 1.5/2.0 (well, for a good amount of nVidia users).

Hate to admit it but I forget who was working on an independent DC for DCS, but any word on progress?

The point is, as I've said again and again, a Dynamic campaign doesn't mean it has to be a carbon copy of Falcon 4's system! There were many approaches to Dynamic campaigns in previous flightsims, and while they all were different from each other, they all were a hell of a lot better than simply flying canned missions 1-20 that will be the same everytime except for random elements and have no deeper purpose.

To illustrate that to you, here is the deal: Since I got bored with the topic yesterday, I sat down and in 4 hours wrote a force / stockpile / supply logic in lua.

It works like that:

There are five types of assets to the enemy side (I only wrote logic for the enemy side yet):
1. Fighter force (16 planes)
2. Bomber force (8)
3. SAMs (8)
4. Factories (4)
5. Supply / repair trucks (50)

The first three assets have a replenish rate that varies with the number of operating factories. The more factories inactive, the lower the rate. If a factory is taken out, it will be repaired, with the repair rate depending on the number of supply trucks, which also have a replenish rate that again depends on the number of operating factories. The logic is tuned to and works in conjunction with the Random / Fast Mission Generator of DCS.

Since I'm still brand-new to programming and have no idea how to interface the program with DCS, it requires user input. You enter the number of destroyed assets in the mission debrief, and the program will calculate the max assets available to the enemy for the next mission. If the asset number descends below the number the Fast Mission Generator works with on Max Settings, the program will inform you about it, so that for the next mission the user knows how many of the assets he has to delete via the group menu in the next generated mission. "House rules" are that if you want to go after a factory, you have to select the biggest building that is nearest to the default waypoint 1 in the generated mission. Another house rule is that taking out a bridge nearest to waypoint 1 equals 10 truck kills. Since I also have no idea yet how to program a graphical user interface, the program runs in simple CMD.exe.

Now, for anyone more familiar with programming, or the DCS team itself, it would be child's play to interface the logic with DCS itself and register the asset losses directly from the mission debrief log and limit the number of max assets available automaticly for the next mission.

With or without that interface though, the logic results in meaning and purpose for the player when he flies the missions. He will select targets based on what is most appropriate for the current situation in a dynamic environment. It also has a save function when you leave the program (as in Rogue-like RPGs - saving is only available on leaving the program). It also provides much variation and opportunity for different mission profiles and even planes:
Do you want to take down the fighter force first? Go ahead, but be aware that their replenish rate will be high as long as factory production is still high. So, maybe go ahead and strike a factory first if the mission generator puts out a sensible position of waypoint 1 that offers that opportunity. Have taken down 1-2 factories? Keep an eye on their repair status and maybe go after trucks or a bridge the next mission. Get shot down by SAMs a lot while fighting the remaining fighter force? Fly a dedicated SEAD mission!

THAT is what a Dynamic campaign is about. To give purpose and (with the help of the random mission generator) variation to each mission, so that no mission is ever the same.

Here is the code:



Anyone who is interested in programming, go right ahead and improve it or use it as an inspiration and feel free to think about interfacing it or something similar with the DCS program and a GUI. It is just a bare bones program yet (as I said, I came up with it in just a few hours and I'm still new to programming) that serves as a learning opportunity for me and to illustrate the concept.

Anything that gives purpose and meaning to the missions you fly in a continued and dynamic context is better than just a string of scripted missions that are always the same and - at best - just "branch" into different paths, whose number depends on the time the mission designer put in to write some more scripted missions. Flight sims should not be RPGs with branching, scripted "story lines". Flightsims should be about conducting and / or participating in an air campaign that has certain strategic goals, in an environment that changes dynamically according to the performance of the player and / or the participating sides.

Best regards
heartc

P.S. The randomizer I put into there up at the top was just a preparatory measure. It doesn't serve a function yet, but you can picture how to easily randomize the initial stockpile for example to allow for randomized initial conditions for each new campaign. Also, in the header, it says "for MiG21", because I optimized it for a fast mover. You could easily adopt it though for low intensity CAS planes or easily fly the Mirage in it.

You should have a chat with MBot - he's working on a more fully featured Dynamic Campaign Engine for DCS, based on his Guardians of the Caucasus dynamic campaign.

http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=153020

Nate

Thanks Nate, I know about it. He's way above my pay grade though when it comes to programming still and I doubt there is much of anything I could assist him with. I hope his effort sees the light of day soon. Actually, I don't doubt it, since he already proved his ability with the MiG21 Dynamic Campaign. There is one great fear though I harbor for his effort: That ED, via their frequent patching - including changes to the Mission Editor - might screw up his campaign at a later point and render it unfunctional, unless he constantly keeps up with it. It happened before when someone (I think his nick was Doctor something) wrote a Dynamic campaign for Flaming Cliffs, which worked pretty awesome but was rendered totally unfunctional by ED changing the Mission Editor format from the LOMAC concept to the Black Shark concept.

I'm not saying his system won't be awesome, I believe it will totally rock once it's out. On the other hand though, my approach - albeit more out of neccessity than design, since as I said I have no idea yet about interfacing stuff - is totally independent of game changes, as long as there is a random mission generator. You can even adopt my system to other flightsims and sims in general that have any sort of random mission generation and allow editing of those missions. I wrote a similar program for the naval sim "Iron Clads" for example.

All the best,
heartc

That's interesting, I hadn't considered that the MG would be of much use to campaign makers other than to populate a mission. It is a novel approach. Independence of the mission editor does forgo use the in built supply/resource system though, but if it can be done independently, why not.

IMO as long as values/resources/attrition/results from one mission to the next can be carried through I'm happy. That IMO is the leap that needs to be made, I want the mission result to have an effect on the campaign.

Nate