PWCG 10.0.0 Beta 2 Is Available

[PatrickAWlson]

PWCG 10.0.0 Beta is up at the PWCG web site.

 

I have been working on UI changes for the past week.  Lots of code changes were needed as well as graphics.  The new UI will be simpler but more details.  Things will be on a wall, on a table, or on a desk.  Many of the images will be png files allowing for shading and a more natural look.

 

I will work with @John_Yossarian to make sure his mods are supported.  I have some ideas that should make modifications much easier.

 

 

 

Some screens will be customized per nation.  I use GIMP.  xcf files are now going to be in the download so people can have the images with all of the layers separated.  Below is the German pilot's desk without the log book or medal box.

 

 

Edited June 29, 2020 by PatrickAWlson

[Varibraun]

Thank you for adding the new aces buttons!!

[PatrickAWlson]

PWCG 10.0.0 Beta is up at the PWCG web site.  As usual it installs in a beta directory so it does not overwrite your existing PWCG install.  It is backwards compatible with your version 9 campaigns so you can copy your campaign and coop folder into the beta.

 

Looking for feedback.

 

Bug #1 I noticed just after upload: the plaque image is not displayed on the campaign page ... edit fixed locally.  You will see it in the next drop.

Edited June 28, 2020 by PatrickAWlson

[Dutch2]

I do prefer more this kind of style, as it is for me its much better to read in VRmode. I must admit making the text letters more darker would be even better. 

[Almenas]

Looks good, much clearer. One small note: The sheet is a bit too short at skin management.

[Dutch2]

14 minutes ago, Almenas said:

Looks good, much clearer. One small note: The sheet is a bit too short at skin management.

 

Good point, but if have a lot of skins then this would be filling one monitor screen. 

 

But hooking on the skin wagon;  would it not an idea, if selecting a skins for all your squadron members, you get an notification that the selected skin is already in use by another squadron mate. Or maybe more simpler to program; at the pilots overview there is also an remark on what selected skins they use. 

Right now I’m flying the Yak1 69 & 127 in the Normandie Niemes squadron, it would be great if the replacement or transferred pilot does get another personal skin that is not being used by other active squadron members, so I would not see two of the same skins in my flight.  

 

[Cybermat47]

@PatrickAWlson looks great! Just a heads up though, forum rules say that the last image should be in a spoiler box due to the swastika.

[vonGraf]

Good news!

I made myself already a partly customized UI but maybe now there's no need for that anymore. I'll try it out.

[Guest deleted@210880]

5 hours ago, Dutch2 said:

I do prefer more this kind of style, as it is for me its much better to read in VRmode. I must admit making the text letters more darker would be even better. 

 

I'll be updating my mod to fit with Pat's new set-up, wll post it as soon as it is done.

[Guest deleted@210880]

I think there is a bug with the non-themed desk top image. i.e. a US pilot. If it reads an RAF, VVS or Luftwafe theme the desktop is fine.

 

Actually, seems ok, ignore me.

Edited June 28, 2020 by deleted@210880

[Nadelbaum]

For some reason I can't generate a mission with 10.0.0 beta. Here's the logs/files:

 

Bf109_JG52202006281806510.zip

PWCGErrorLog.txt

 

 

[PatrickAWlson]

32 minutes ago, Nadelbaum said:

For some reason I can't generate a mission with 10.0.0 beta. Here's the logs/files:

 

Bf109_JG52202006281806510.zip 639.06 kB · 0 downloads

PWCGErrorLog.txt 6.21 kB · 0 downloads

 

 

 

Is this consistent for you?  I pulled your campaign and generated three missions without a problem.  When I looked at the error log that you posted the error is happening on AI flight creation, so it is not related to your flight.  That makes it more difficult to reproduce if it won't happen every time.  I was curious if this was intermittent for you or happened every time.

 

More specifically what happened is it tried to pull a crew from the list of unassigned crews for an AI squadron, but there were no unassigned crew available.  Depleted squadrons are not even supposed to be available to fly ... some wires got crossed.  

 

Update - recreated it on attempt 10 ... let's see if I can put the pieces together.

 

Update: Short version: got it fixed. 

 

Long version: If an AI squadron was depleted and if that AI squadron had an ace then the ace would be considered in the initial count of available pilots but not included in the selection process.  Solution is to make sure AI aces are included in the selection process as well so that the expectations of one part of the code match the other ... and you probably don't care  

 

Last note: that was not introduced in the new version.  Been there for a very long time.  Takes a very specific set of circumstances to happen so would be quite rare.

Edited June 28, 2020 by PatrickAWlson

[Nadelbaum]

42 minutes ago, PatrickAWlson said:

 

Last note: that was not introduced in the new version.  Been there for a very long time.  Takes a very specific set of circumstances to happen so would be quite rare.

Nice! Glad to be of help and by the way, the new GUI looks fantastic!

 

By the way, if you check the squadron log in that campaign you'll see that Hptm Gunther Rall keeps getting transferred to the squadron all over again even if he's been with us since the beginning...

Edited June 28, 2020 by Nadelbaum
Added comment about Gunther Rall

[Nadelbaum]

Here's another report, missing medal descriptions on two medals:

 

Spoiler

 

 

Edited June 28, 2020 by Nadelbaum
Added another missing medal description

[Guest deleted@210880]

Not sure if a bug or as intended. The assigned status info on the main campaign screen is not showing the plaque image under it, (over the brick wall background.)

Noticed you've picked this up already.

 

Edited June 28, 2020 by deleted@210880

[Dutch2]

9 hours ago, John_Yossarian said:

 

I'll be updating my mod to fit with Pat's new set-up, wll post it as soon as it is done.

 

How did you change the color of the text? 

[Guest deleted@210880]

39 minutes ago, Dutch2 said:

 

How did you change the color of the text? 

 

I haven't changed the text colour, I just change the background images on things. My updated mod that works on the beta is listed in my thread for it if you want to check it out.

[vonGraf]

Had two minor things:

In the briefing map I've got stuck in this picture when scrolling/resizing by mousewheel after I enabled the paths of the other squadrons.Going a page/forth back didn't help. 

But the mission was binarized and created at the end, I still have to fly it.

 

 

 

In the AAReport there was this small frame on almost every page.

[PatrickAWlson]

That small frame is the Java Swing tab frame.  It will be on every screen that has tabs.  Don't know how to get rid of it yet but I will try (it's not as easy as one would think it should be)

 

 

[PatrickAWlson]

PWCG 10.0.0 Beta 2 Released
 

Changed campaign home page a bit
Added capability to replace many screens by configuration - for modders of PWCG
Fixed map scrolling, resize and refresh issues
Fixed no plaque displayed
Removed text from medals
Fixed existing issue where missions might fail to generate
 

[DD_Arthur]

Thank you very much Pat!

[Nadelbaum]

Trying to look at my medals I get the following error (with 10.0.0 beta 2):

 

PWCGErrorLog.txt

 

Campaign attached as well:

 

Bf109_JG52202006300906223.zip

[PatrickAWlson]

5 hours ago, Nadelbaum said:

Trying to look at my medals I get the following error (with 10.0.0 beta 2):

 

PWCGErrorLog.txt 3.05 kB · 2 downloads

 

Campaign attached as well:

 

Bf109_JG52202006300906223.zip 520.26 kB · 0 downloads

 

I messed up placement of the medal box.  I have that fixed locally.  You can correct it by moving one file (OpenMedalBox.png ).  Go going to PWCGBoS\BoSData\images\medals - find OpenMedalBox.png cut it and paste it into PWCGBoS\BoSData\images\misc

[vonGraf]

I had a Russian AA battery placed inside a river or too close on the banks, that happened in the v.9 versions at few times as well to me.

Thought first they're small ships having AA capability. 

 

Fallobst202006302106509.zip

 

 

 

[PatrickAWlson]

15 minutes ago, vonGraf said:

I had a Russian AA battery placed inside a river or too close on the banks, that happened in the v.9 versions at few times as well to me.

Thought first they're small ships having AA capability. 

 

Fallobst202006302106509.zip 183.22 kB · 0 downloads

 

 

 

 

They are new pontoon AA guns.  You moor them in the river.  Just a quick tow to the next bridge.

 

More serious: stuff in the river is a long standing PWCG issue.  PWCG does not know anything about the underlying terrain, so stuff ends up in the water.

[Yogiflight]

Wait for our subs, to torpedo them.

[vonGraf]

9 hours ago, PatrickAWlson said:

..so stuff ends up in the water.

 

So far I never played PWCG on the Bodenplatte/Kuban map but there are a parts of costal waters depicted, I hope they don't count as terrain too. 

[PatrickAWlson]

5 hours ago, vonGraf said:

 

So far I never played PWCG on the Bodenplatte/Kuban map but there are a parts of costal waters depicted, I hope they don't count as terrain too. 

 

Really large bodies of water I can and do map out as sea lanes.  It's all of the little, meandering streams and rivers that are not mapped out.

[Nadelbaum]

On 7/1/2020 at 2:53 PM, PatrickAWlson said:

 

Really large bodies of water I can and do map out as sea lanes.  It's all of the little, meandering streams and rivers that are not mapped out.

Is there anything we, the users, can do to help you with this? Digitise the water bodies in some way for you to plug in to PWCG? 

[PatrickAWlson]

29 minutes ago, Nadelbaum said:

Is there anything we, the users, can do to help you with this? Digitise the water bodies in some way for you to plug in to PWCG? 

 

@[Pb]Kappa_ did digitize the map so I do have something.  It is a lot of work, however to go from there to placement algorithms in PWCG. 

 

One concern is resources.  The files are enormous and they must be used in real time.  How do I make the files available for download?  How do I load the files into PWCG without blasting the top off of my memory heap?  How do I perform look ups for each unit without making it take 10 minutes to generate a mission? 

 

The human eye processes visuals in an amazing way.  Trying to emulate that in software is really difficult.  With respect to water, it has an irregular path and irregular geometry. 

 

In the end I do not believe that I can ship and use the raw data in its current form.  That means I have to write my own software to analyze and distill the data into a form consumable by PWCG.  Not sure how to go about that just yet.

 

 

 

[Varibraun]

Based on that explanation - your idea of "pontoons" works fine for me...now if you could just focus on Tank Crew 

[PatrickAWlson]

22 minutes ago, Varibraun said:

Based on that explanation - your idea of "pontoons" works fine for me...now if you could just focus on Tank Crew 

 

If I can't keep AA out of rivers because of terrain handling how am I going to make vehicles realistically move across terrain  ?

 

 

[Varibraun]

Sorry Pat, that was my attempt at a joke - I have seen what you have written about doing TC.  Thanks again for all you do!!

[PatrickAWlson]

51 minutes ago, Varibraun said:

Sorry Pat, that was my attempt at a joke - I have seen what you have written about doing TC.  Thanks again for all you do!!

 

I was trying to make a joke in reply.  Hope it came off that way.

[coconut]

4 hours ago, PatrickAWlson said:

One concern is resources.  The files are enormous and they must be used in real time.  How do I make the files available for download?  How do I load the files into PWCG without blasting the top off of my memory heap?  How do I perform look ups for each unit without making it take 10 minutes to generate a mission? 

 

/Tech jargon warning/

What I've done is build a quad tree using Kappa's digitization, set it so that the max depth leads to a reasonable compromise between space and precision (max depth of 10 seems OK).

Then build the complement of that, i.e. retain the empty nodes, throw away the points and save the binary serialization of that. I'd think Java has decent binary serializers (aka picklers).

Loading the digitization, building the tree and saving the data can take some time, like 10min to 1hour, but once the result is saved, loading and querying is sub-second.

 

The "complement quad tree" is basically a quad tree where each node is a square that contains no obstacles. Iterating over the squares, starting from the leaves and moving towards the root, I check if a) the square is in the region where I want to place a group of AA (for example), and b) if the bounding convex polygon of the group fits within the box. Build a list of up to e.g. 10 such squares, and pick the center of a random one as the position of the group.

 

The links are to my code. If that's too arcane, you can also simply use a commandline tool I've made that wraps all that (after I update it to work with Kappa's latest digitizations). See this usage info.

[Hoots]

16 minutes ago, coconut said:

 

/Tech jargon warning/

What I've done is build a quad tree using Kappa's digitization, set it so that the max depth leads to a reasonable compromise between space and precision (max depth of 10 seems OK).

Then build the complement of that, i.e. retain the empty nodes, throw away the points and save the binary serialization of that. I'd think Java has decent binary serializers (aka picklers).

Loading the digitization, building the tree and saving the data can take some time, like 10min to 1hour, but once the result is saved, loading and querying is sub-second.

 

The "complement quad tree" is basically a quad tree where each node is a square that contains no obstacles. Iterating over the squares, starting from the leaves and moving towards the root, I check if a) the square is in the region where I want to place a group of AA (for example), and b) if the bounding convex polygon of the group fits within the box. Build a list of up to e.g. 10 such squares, and pick the center of a random one as the position of the group.

 

The links are to my code. If that's too arcane, you can also simply use a commandline tool I've made that wraps all that (after I update it to work with Kappa's latest digitizations). See this usage info.

 

My brain hurts. You guys are amazing.

[Varibraun]

2 hours ago, PatrickAWlson said:

I was trying to make a joke in reply.  Hope it came off that way.

 

Yes, but I just wanted to be certain you didn't think it was another of my actual crazy requests...many of which you actually granted.

[coconut]

I've now updated my area-fitting app: https://1drv.ms/u/s!AtoivprUAORRxx6m_zTqtNZxQC4f?e=Id9EEE

It works for the WWII maps, the Aras map wasn't digitized by Kappa.

Requires to have .net core 3.1 installed, which I guess can be a problem. @PatrickAWlson let me know if you plan on using this, otherwise I probably won't put more effort into it. My own stuff doesn't use this EXE, it's linked directly with the lib instead.

[PatrickAWlson]

15 minutes ago, coconut said:

I've now updated my area-fitting app: https://1drv.ms/u/s!AtoivprUAORRxx6m_zTqtNZxQC4f?e=Id9EEE

It works for the WWII maps, the Aras map wasn't digitized by Kappa.

Requires to have .net core 3.1 installed, which I guess can be a problem. @PatrickAWlson let me know if you plan on using this, otherwise I probably won't put more effort into it. My own stuff doesn't use this EXE, it's linked directly with the lib instead.

 

Appreciate the effort.  It's not on the radar right now, so don't take time just for me.  it is something that I want to get to in the not too distant future.  Can I reconnect then?

[coconut]

2 hours ago, PatrickAWlson said:

Can I reconnect then?

Sure, no problem.