Hopefully this won't make the hard core crowd frown upon my noob-ness and lack of skills, but there's one thing i hated about DCS: BS (and most other hard core esims) and that's that you literally had to memorize what every single button and keyboard command did. There was no in-game keyboard layout (as far as i remember, it's been a while since i played) and there was no easy way to know what each clickable cockpit button did in game since there was no tool tip or anything. You just had to click stuff and try to see what it did (which wasn't always immediately obvious). Basically, the game was sadistically user-unfriendly. So to make your game easier on the noobs like myself i would like to suggest a rather small feature that i think would help IMMENSELY in learning how to play and ease new players in.


In addition to having all the different keyboard commands, and in addition to (hopefully) fully clickable 3d cockpits, how about if there was some simple graphical user interface with tool tips that the user could use to manipulate all the different features of "da choppa". Like for example you press the middle mouse button or something, and a table of various icons show up that you can click on. Each icon represents a different area of the aircraft. So for example, one icon would be the radar icon. You click on it, and then a separate menu for the air and ground radar shows up. From there you can access all the functions of both the radars like changing the range, the sweep cone, turning it on or off, setting single or continous sweeps and so on. Each icon would be a simple graphical representation of what it actually did, and would have a simple tool tip explaining its function. If this is too much work, you could always strip it down to whatever you feel is an acceptable amount of time to put into something like this. But my point is that i would love something that eased the burden of remembering what every single cockpit button/keyboard command does and not forcing players to keep alt-tabbing out to look at the quick reference card all the time. I'm sure a lot of the more cerebrally challenged players like myself who LOVE hard core sims but have nightmares about the almost insurmountable learning curves would be eternally grateful for something like this.


And just to be clear, i am in no way pushing for the dumbing down of the game. I really do want EVERY single system, from the wind screen wipers to the cup holders to the ice cube dispensers to be implemented and realistically simulated. I just cry like a girl at the thought of having to remember what every single key on the keyboard, or clickable button in the cockpit, does.

So what say the rest of you? Good idea? Bad? Should i be heaped with praise or publically flogged for daring to suggest this feature?

Keyboard overlay would be the answer.

I would vote for a floating tooltip above every switch/knob/button, which is vsisible only if you hold down a certain key combo (for example shift+alt).
This would speed up the learning process, without stopping the game.
If we need further explanaiton, a simple help system popping up when pressing F1 would do while pausing the game world. (good example are the microsoft simulations or DID F22 TAW)
Honestly, if the manual is accesssable ingame without alt-tabbing, its already an achievement compared to may past experiences with some sims.

Serben, on DCS:BS if you go into the OPTIONS, and click on the GAMEPLAY tab, on the left side under "Difficulties" there is a selectable option called "Tool Tips". Select that, and ensure Cockpit Language is set to English, and whenever you hover your mouse over a switch, it will give you that switche's name (i.e. "Battery 1"). If you already know this, then sorry, but it took me awhile to figure that out myself. Of course, some switches you still need to know, in general, what they do, but this might help a little.

As for this game...Flexman, who is one of the programmers, indicated on here a while ago that for their first release, the avionics package will be relatively basic. I'll let him describe what exactly that means, but even the real Apache's MPD's are relatively easy to navigate within a few minutes of familiarization. Compared to the Ka-50, the AH-64 has a relatively clean and intuitive cockpit...the only thing that I forsee giving people headaches are all the switches and buttons on the CPG's grips on each side of the center display.

But I kinda like your idea about the middle mouse button. I remember a lot of first-person shooters having that (I think they call them "Radial menus" in the FPS genre). I've never thought about that in a flight sim. Not sure if it would work out or not, but definitely an interesting idea. Maybe a way to enable/disable it in the OPTIONS menu would be feasible for those hard-core simmers, lol.

Just to follow up on what Raptor said, and thank you Serben for your interesting post, jumping in to play is something we spent time looking at. Early on I forced myself to use an XBOX joypad for development.

Radial menus are something I'm trying with the joypad input. The challenge was to take core systems, FCR, TADS, crew command menu and flight controls and cram them onto minimal control setup. Radials work well with thumb gaming on the iPhone and thumb stick controllers.

I hope we'll have a game that will take minutes to learn and a few months to master. The Apache Longbow is a very pilot friendly aircraft, a lot of it is automated. From battery on to APU start, wait, and then adjust displays to your preference.

The intro mission should provide everyone with the very basics you'll need to get you up to speed with flight controls, commands and targeting.

I can see how it might be useful to have some form of cockpit familiarisation. The Apache cockpit is fairly intuitive and by default only a few commands will be mapped to keys, that I leave as an exercise to the user. I'm terrible and remembering key presses. it's much easier to use a TrackIR and click a control.

On the whole I'd rather not do tooltips since not many would be mapped, also it means adding a relationship in the cockpit data with the control input name, cockpit message command name, and cockpit switch name. Something I didn't anticipate but should have. Seems obvious now.


As Raptor said, the difficulty might come with functions tied to the grips, those are the ones that mostly mapped to control inputs anyway. You'll learn early on that INS, DEL, HOME, END will change between FCR, TADS, HMD and LINK. PGUP and PGDN will cycle ranges/fov for that selected mode.

I guess some things are not so obvious that are not covered in the tutorial, canopy for example, CTRL D. A popup checklist or something might be an idea. Problem with keyboard overlays is that they change. Icons I'm not a big fan off, they are things that need to be drawn and if they art style needs to change they all need to be re-done.

The cockpit knobs use left/right mouse buttons for counter/clockwise rotation. Middle mouse tends to double as the ENTER key (select current highlighted option). I think the main thing you might be interested in is learning the MPD menus and where some of the more obscure features are. I promise you though, there's nothing buried in there that is vital if you just want to dive in and play.

If you're familiar with Longbow 2, you'll probably feel at home very early on.

Welcome to the forum Serben.

Are you a long time lurker or did you arrive here by following a link on a site related to Combat Helo?

Either way it's good to see people signing up to discuss CH!

Cheers

To AD: As you can see by the date that i registered, i'm a long time lurker. I initially registered here to read all the noob tips for DCS: BS when i bought it. Never got around to posting though.


Flexman: The icons thing was just a suggestion. I would personally be very happy with even the crappiest looking and crudely implemented text based menu, as i'm sure every other noob who's button challenged like me. As long as i have an easily navigable menu that clearly states what each thing is/does. As long as i have SOMETHING that eases the astronomical learning curve. It doesn't have to be fancy or anything. The reason for this is that it that i find it extremely difficult both to remember individual keyboard commands, but also where individual buttons in the cockpit are located and what they do (in the cade of DCS: BS). I would really like a system where i have a menu, with clickable buttons that perform the commands as soon as i click on them, rather than having to remember which cockpit button does what and then click on it, or remember a keyboard command. I will naturally still buy this awesome looking game either way (the dynamic campaign alone gives me a hard on) but i'm sure this small addition to help ease users in will be greatly appreciated by many.