In other news- BoS is to have more advanced QM with mission save feature.

[ShamrockOneFive]

Big downside for me of the RoF FMB is how tiresome it is to test a mission. You have to close the game, boot up the FMB (which takes a while), then setup the mission and hope your triggers are alright (no way to check), then boot the game (takes another while...) and launch the mission. Overall the RoF FMB is quite capable, but it's just very time consuming.

That was one of the things that horrified me when I was investigating the FMB for RoF. The FMB should be implemented so that its easy to start up a test run, play it out, jump back, modify and repeat. Triggers are a powerful feature in many mission builders that I've used but I find that they really should be setup so that the mission just works and then you implement triggers on specific items that you need to happen. Mission building is quite a bit of art and making it more like a programming tool definitely limits the creativity that the community can pump out.

 

IL-2s FMB might be a bit quirky... but its deadly simple to get a mission cranked out and running. I remember my first hour with it and I had P-51s over Normandy escorting B-17s and dropping bombs. It needs to be that easy with the power in behind it.

[BlitzPig_EL]

Couldn't agree more IceFire.

 

Even a computer numpty like me can make very satisfying missions, with lots of events taking place, with the IL2 FMB.

I'm just finishing a Spanish Civil War scenario using HSFX V6 and it's northern Spain map.  While not intended to portray a specific event, (I firmly believe you cannot do that in a simulator) it is designed to portray the

overall feel of the air and ground war of that time.  I have bombers attacking airfields and factory areas, fighters patrolling, ground units advancing on, and defending Bilbao, and the Basque Auxiliary Navy has sortied two of it's

destroyers to counter the Nationalist cruiser that is trying to intercept a freighter and it's three light escorts bringing supplies from a French port.

 

There was no way I could do anything like this in the RoF FMB.  Honestly, I could barely place a friendly base on the map and have it work in RoF.

[Requiem]

One thing of the QMB in IL-2 which annoys me quite a bit, is being unable to setup the spawning location of the planes. That's actually better in the RoF QMB. There you atleast have multiple areas to choose from (not nearly enough though). But in IL-2 you can quickly set ground targets or the objective of that QM (airfield bombing or whatever). So that's a plus.

 

Big downside for me of the RoF FMB is how tiresome it is to test a mission. You have to close the game, boot up the FMB (which takes a while), then setup the mission and hope your triggers are alright (no way to check), then boot the game (takes another while...) and launch the mission. Overall the RoF FMB is quite capable, but it's just very time consuming.

Matt, all you need to do is have them both open at the same time. When testing missions I run RoF in windowed mode along with having the ME open. To do this I start RoF, load my mission, and then I start the ME and begin editing the mission (ignore the warning message about graphical errors, it will only occur in the ME if your mission is already loaded in RoF). This way, whenever you want to test any changes you have made just save it in the ME and restart the mission in RoF. This process saves a LOT of time.

 

The only downside to this is that the ground surface in the ME (from top down view) will be completely black, but provided you have already done all of the object placement it's not an issue because by that point all you are testing is mission logic. Doing this makes checking it so much faster, using the above method I can test any changes I make in a RoF mission in about 15-30 seconds.

[RAF74_Winger]

I use the same method as Requiem, with one addition: I use a laptop to edit the missions and save to the RoF mission directory on my desktop machine. This avoids any graphical problems and makes the process quicker still.

 

W.

[leitmotiv]

One thing of the QMB in IL-2 which annoys me quite a bit, is being unable to setup the spawning location of the planes...

 

You can do this with no problems in IL2, i edit almost all QMB as i wont them, you need to open the quick mission in FMB, youll see AI airplanes ploted the one that is Squadron 1 Flight 1 is your flight and you can move it where you wont, and you can edit rest of them also, just be careful to select correct mission as its sett in QMB (blue or red, none, scramble or airbase, neutral, disadvantage or advantage and so on), but its not as easy as in RoF, and RoF has only one map, no wonder there is more starting points by defaiult