PWCG Coop Host and Pilots Discussion

[PatrickAWlson]

I wanted to pull this into its own topic.

 

Yesterday I started writing some code to eliminate the concept of host.  That is largely done. 

 

I was going to change the mechanics of adding a Human user to the coop.  At the moment I have you create users from the main menu and pilots from the campaign.  If you forgot to create the user then you have to stop the pilot creation process, go back to the main menu, create the user, then back to the campaign to create the pilot again.  For coop campaigns I was going to add the ability to create a new user from the create pilot screen.  I will keep the ability to add new users from the main coop admin screen.

 

The pilot records in the coop folder are going away.  I am going to change the user record to include references to all of the pilots associated with that user.

 

I am adding a reference pilot data item to the campaign.  For SP this will be hidden and will always be the active pilot.  For Coop this will be user controlled.  Reference pilot will simply be there to determine the point of view for the UI.  It will not be used in mission generation or anything else.  Change the reference pilot and the UI will switch to the perspective of the newly selected pilot.

 

The last might be challenging.  I have converted most of PWCG away from the idea of a single pilot, but it's 150K lines of code.  Might need some work.

 

Doing this will open the doors to another possibility: multiple active pilots in a single player campaign.  I can definitely see the benefit of being able to switch between pilots.  Want to give your fighter pilot a break and be a Stuka pilot for a day - go for it.  Your main pilot wounded?  Instead of taking leave you can fly as a different pilot fore awhile.

 

 

 

[Varibraun]

1 hour ago, PatrickAWlson said:

Doing this will open the doors to another possibility: multiple active pilots in a single player campaign.  I can definitely see the benefit of being able to switch between pilots.  Want to give your fighter pilot a break and be a Stuka pilot for a day - go for it.  Your main pilot wounded?  Instead of taking leave you can fly as a different pilot fore awhile.

 

PWCG - Making dreams come true - one line of code at a time!!

 

If you are able to make this happen it also will be a really nice complement to the 8.X squadron logs, since you will be able to follow each of your squadron's progress while you are away flying with other squadrons.  I have been really enjoying this feature since 8.0 in FC - I currently have 5 squadrons involved in "SP Coop" giving me the ability to fly 5 different A/C with the immersion PWCG brings.  I am a little over 1 month into the war - with 3 original pilots still active (Esc 3, No 56 & J 11), my Austrian flying with Voss at J 10 is now sitting out for a couple of months due to serious wounds, and my RNAS guys have been really unlucky in the Camel - so on pilot #4 there (some day I will learn how to get that Camel out of a spin).  None of my pilots have made it onto the aces board yet, switching pilots helps keep the scores into some historical perspective I think (I credit my guys 5 missions for each one actually flown, which I think helps too by keeping there flight #s in line with the Sqdrn swapping). 

 

Bringing this multi Pilot/Sdrn function to SP, would make it even better.  Thank you Pat for even considering it! 

[blue_max]

Hi! I started flying with 2 friends a couple of weeks ago. First we were just doing dogfights, but that isn't too much fun with just 3 people. Then we discovered the example coop mission. It was great fun, but obviously we wanted more. Now I discovered this! Amazing! I'm definitely going to start a campaign. Super thank you for putting in the effort to develop this.

 

Maybe a bit of info would be useful for our use case: we are with 3-4 people in total. Probably not everyone joining every time. We're always short on time, so missions that don't take too long would be high on our wish-list, and the ability to fly different airplanes and different mission types.

 

So.. my main question: is there a tutorial somewhere on how to set this up, and should I wait for a new version or can we just jump in now?

 

Cheers,

Benjamin

[Varibraun]

@blue_max There is no reason to wait, while I only use it "SP Coop" mode to have more pilots and squadrons, there are many here who have been using it fine in true MP Coop Pat intended.  I believe they are just requesting some tweaks to make it easier to manage their ongoing campaigns depending on who is available.  Pat has short video tutorials here:

 

 

[blue_max]

thanks!

[PatrickAWlson]

So I pretty much have to keep the reference pilot concept, not just for PWCG but also for BoX.  In 8.4.0 it will be very easy to change the reference pilot.  The mission will be generated from the point of view of the reference pilot, so he will be included.  If the reference pilot is not flying, just change.

 

[PatrickAWlson]

Back with progress.  Almost there.  The reference pilot definitely stays, but the reference pilot is totally disassociated from "Host".  In fact, Host is not even a concept anymore.  You have users, users are associated with personas, one of those personas is the reference persona.  The reference persona can be switched with a couple of clicks.  Changing the reference persona persists, so if you close and reopen PWCG the last selected reference persona will still be active. 

 

So back to "what is a reference persona?".  The reference persona is the person from whose perspective the mission is created and the UI is presented.  That concept is too deeply embedded into PWCG to entirely root out at the moment.  Best I can do is make it easy to change.  That will resolve the use case of somebody other than the campaign host hosting a mission.

[PatrickAWlson]

I just ran a test that shows some of the capabilities of 8.4.0 in single player.

Start with an American single player campaign.

Add a British pilot.

Make the British pilot the reference pilot.

Accept and now I am on the campaign page from the point of view of the British pilot.

Create a mission for the British pilot.  The mission briefing is entirely from the point of view of his flight.

Fly a mission as the British pilot and proceed to get killed.

Return to PWCG and run the AAR.  The AAR is entirely from the point of view of the British pilot.

Return to the main campaign.

- I am still on the British pilot's page.

- He is dead so no more missions are allowed.

i revert control to the American pilot and everything is as it was, except one day later.

- The American pilot is still alive.

- I can generate more missions and move on as normal.

 

This will allow PWCG players in an SP campaign to simultaneously play multiple personas, from any side.

 

 

[Sketch]

Played a bit of coop today with a buddy and...

 

• It seemed to take a longer than normal amount of time to generate a mission.
• I was playing on 8.3.0
  • Also, there wasn't  a "mission generated successfully!" notification (I'm nit picking)
• Our flight leader ai took off right away! There use to be a call from the radio before we took off. It gave me a chance to adjust all my rads, fix my k14 gunsight, grab a coffee, etc etc... What happened to that?
• The game ran kinda choppy for me (as the host) and even more choppy for my buddy.
  • Choppy = Periodic (especially when firing) server hiccups... Not the same as video lag, this is where the server sorta 'stands still' for a second or two and then keeps going. It could be due to the recent patch
  • These were my settings:
    • 
    • Speaking of settings, I wish I understood those settings a little better. What settings can I do to make sure we have a lot of enemy fighters (and a few friendlies too) and still have decent server performance?
• When we took a ground attack mission, we couldn't find anything but aaa to destroy. Is it possible the vehicles spawned inside the forest?
• The patrol mission gave us an in-game 'failed mission'... I assume it's because we did not patrol the entire set of waypoints? The campaign generator didn't say it was a success or failure, only tallied the kills we scored.

Edited April 13, 2020 by Sketch

[PatrickAWlson]

It takes longer to generate a mission because PWCG now creates binary files.  The missions will load in game much faster.

PWCG has never generated a mission successfully created message.  it returns you to the campaign home screen.

Not sure about the flight leader immediately taking off.  I think the delay should be something like 30 seconds.

Choppy play is going to be dependent on a lot of different things.  Nine flights does not seem like too many since all do not usually spawn, but if they did I could see tings getting slow with 30 airplanes in the air.

Things definitely might be in the woods.  Try CTRL-F5 to get a look at enemy ground units.  There might be battles, or trans, or truck convoys moving about.

In game mission success and failure changed on the 1C side.  I used to say that as long as your plane isn't shot down you succeeded.  What I have noticed is that 1C sometimes lists me as shot down - usually when I am behind the lines.  Dunno really, and PWCG doesn't care about the in game message status.  

[Yogiflight]

5 hours ago, Sketch said:

Our flight leader ai took off right away! There use to be a call from the radio before we took off.

I noticed that, too, on saturday, when I started a BOBP campaign, flying the A8. No radio chatter at all. In the other battles it works.

 

4 hours ago, PatrickAWlson said:

  What I have noticed is that 1C sometimes lists me as shot down - usually when I am behind the lines.  Dunno really, and PWCG doesn't care about the in game message status.  

The problem is, the game counts your aircraft as killed, when the engine is off. When this happens over enemy territory, but you can glide back to your own side and land safely, the game counts you as captured by enemy.

[PatrickAWlson]

2 hours ago, Yogiflight said:

I noticed that, too, on saturday, when I started a BOBP campaign, flying the A8. No radio chatter at all. In the other battles it works.

 

The problem is, the game counts your aircraft as killed, when the engine is off. When this happens over enemy territory, but you can glide back to your own side and land safely, the game counts you as captured by enemy.

 

Probably so. PWCG does not.  Fortunately the location where you actually come down seems to be properly recorded in the logs.  This makes the extent of the issue limited to the after mission success or failure, which does not impact your career at all.

[Varibraun]

14 hours ago, PatrickAWlson said:

This will allow PWCG players in an SP campaign to simultaneously play multiple personas, from any side.

 

Thank you - Looking forward to seeing 8.4 in action!

[I/JG7_Momo9508]

Hello everyone,

 

3 of my friends and myself just started a coop campaign in v11.9.1. After the first mission we decided to switch the host because of the his bad internet-quality. Is there a way to properly do this? So far we tried the following: the former host keeps generating the mission, and sent the files to the new host. So far so good, we flew the mission and tried to transfer the new host's log file to the other guy which is managing the PWCG. But this doesnt seem to work. 

So here are my questions:

-is there a way to change host while one specific person will be managing the PWCG?

And if not:

- is there a way to export and import campaigns and share them among the group and continue them without any problems?

 

Thanks for helping.

Momo

[Panzerlang]

I think the only folder you need to share is "User" but the new host might then need to set himself as the "Reference" player.

[PatrickAWlson]

3 hours ago, I/JG7_Momo9508 said:

Hello everyone,

 

3 of my friends and myself just started a coop campaign in v11.9.1. After the first mission we decided to switch the host because of the his bad internet-quality. Is there a way to properly do this? So far we tried the following: the former host keeps generating the mission, and sent the files to the new host. So far so good, we flew the mission and tried to transfer the new host's log file to the other guy which is managing the PWCG. But this doesnt seem to work. 

So here are my questions:

-is there a way to change host while one specific person will be managing the PWCG?

And if not:

- is there a way to export and import campaigns and share them among the group and continue them without any problems?

 

Thanks for helping.

Momo

 

"Report Error" zips the campaign such that it can be transferred.  As @Hetzer-JG51 points out it's really the contents of the user folder.  Just zip that up, email it to the new host, and he sees what the original host sees

[I/JG7_Momo9508]

Thanks a lot that sounds logical. We're quite new to the PWCG, if we had spend a little more time exploring the software itself we propably would have found our answers by our own.

Edited January 28, 2021 by I/JG7_Momo9508