My Fervent Wish For What Comes After Normandy.

[BlitzPig_EL]

A complete rethinking/rebuilding of the Mission Editor.

 

The absurd complexity of the mission building utility has held this title back since it's release.  My hat is off to those few very good and creative folks who have so far been able to make the wonderful campaigns, and missions we have now, but think of how much more content we could have if that one tool was accessible to more players.

 

I have had help from some of the best mission creators, and I thank them profusely for it, but it's still over my pay grade.  It seems that all the folks making missions have their own ways of doing certain operations, that don't match what others are doing, all to get to the same place in the end.  Trying to understand all of this for a non IT/non programmer is beyond frustrating.

 

In the old sim I really enjoyed making missions and seeing my ideas "come to life" in the world of IL2-46, but here I can barely get artillery to shoot at one another, much less have stuff moving around the map, which was a snap in the old sim.

 

Please Jason, make this a priority.

 

Please. 

[Sandmarken]

I tried many times to learn the editor as I had alot of fun making missions in other games/sims like arma. I had no luck as its way too complicated for me to understand even with good and detaild tutorials on youtube and forum?

Maybe it makes it a more powerfull tool to those who master it? ?

[Jaegermeister]

I'll take the bait...

 

We already have the tool for making quick, simple and fun missions. The QMB.

 

Not to take anything away from your statement that the ME has a steep learning curve, if the 1C team simplifies the ME to the point that you can just jump in and knock out a mission in an hour, you can say goodbye to the type of content that is currently being produced. When you say "absurd complexity" you are describing the task of recreating an aerial battle and dropping you, the player into it. How could you do that with a simple tool that has simple options and simple results?

 

The actual task of creating an event in the ME is in fact simple. It takes 1 or 2 minutes to make 1 thing happen. How many things happen on an airstrip in the 5 minutes before you even take off?

 

If you want to propose revising the ME to stabilize it and keep it from crashing, I think you would get 100% support, but that has been beat to death on the MB Forum.

[DD_Crash]

I think we need a simplified builder that can convert missions to the GBS format.

[Bremspropeller]

A new mission-builder would best be paired with a groundbreaking new theater of operations.

 

Say, New Guinea.

[BlitzPig_EL]

5 minutes ago, Jaegermeister said:

I'll take the bait...

 

I assure you sir that this is not a fishing expedition.  The QMB is useless as I want to make multiplayer missions, not single player.  I do use the QMB for testing or when I want to have a quick DF for a small diversion. It's great for that.  

 

However, I want to make missions that my friends and I can fly together.  Nothing beats the comradeship, and fun, of flying together with my mates of 20 years, and working together to achieve a goal, and have some laughs along the way.  

 

That is what I'm asking for.

Why so much resistance to this?

I honestly don't understand.

 

[LuftManu]

Everything that makes things easier and helps the content creators and all users has my upvote. 

Now, I don't know how profitable or how much time would need. And those two, are really important things.

Edited March 2, 2021 by LF_Gallahad

[BlitzPig_EL]

I suspect this is the reason the ME has remained this way from the beginning.

[Gambit21]

El, honestly for your purposes you should simply be able to place groups of logic like legos with no problem by now.

I built a Ju-52 mini-campaign as my first project not knowing a single thing about underlying editor logic - just placing logic groups built by others.

 

Those missions hold up still frankly.

You only need to build a ‘take off’ group one for instance..after that it’s simple modifications.

[Jeronimo83]

I totally support Blitzpig's suggestion. Definately would do the sim good if an easy accessible ME would be available.

[41Sqn_Skipper]

5 hours ago, BlitzPig_EL said:

Trying to understand all of this for a non IT/non programmer is beyond frustrating.

 

 

I'm a software developer so I can understand why the mission editor is what it is. But to be honest I can't convince myself to use it: it's way to complicated to do simple missions and way to time consuming to "build" any complex logic.

 

I my opinion you need 2 layers:

A simple missions need to be easy to build so anyone can do it. More complex missions should be possible by coding triggers and actions as code in a standard programming language. But this needs to be optional.

Cliffs of Dover did exacty this perfectly.

[RedKestrel]

I find most niche professional software has the same issues presented here. 

It is very difficult to make a program that is user friendly and intuitive, but powerful enough to do what needs to be done. Not impossible, but it takes a lot of work, especially around ensuring that newer users can't get themselves into trouble, but experienced users can get themselves into exactly as much trouble as is necessary. 

So for niche software designed for professionals, you often get stuff that has a vertical learning curve, sparse or obtuse documentation, and lots of its functions work in a way different from mainstream software. It assumes a level of technical competency and  knowledge that is well above beginner, and also assumes you are adept at mucking around and figuring things out for yourself. Because the market is small and composed of a (perhaps captive) market of professionals, there is no profit in improving the interface and intuitiveness. Your customers have to use your software, or one of your competitors which is similarly clunky. Most of your customers have learned to instinctively implement the strange logic, or know how to avoid the things that induce instability in the software, and they don't care for ease of use improvements, they want more features. So improvements of that nature rarely happen.
 

[BlitzPig_EL]

Hence the genre gets ever smaller as the ultra hard core user base becomes more and more intolerant of anyone who won't do it their way.

 

Sad really, as I love combat flight simulation.

[Gambit21]

10 minutes ago, BlitzPig_EL said:

Hence the genre gets ever smaller as the ultra hard core user base becomes more and more intolerant of anyone who won't do it their way.

 

I know a handful of hard-core users that far from being intolerant, are happy to answer questions on the mission editor sub-forum.

 

I scanned it and don’t see any recent threads started by you mister.

 

 

 

 

I’ll get on Discord with you any time.

I’m pretty sure I can get you over the “this is how the editor thinks” hump fairly quickly. The base logic is really quite simple.

[BlitzPig_EL]

I appreciate your help sir.

 

Guess I need a Discord account.

 

Do you have Team Speak?

 

I run the BlitzPigs TS server.

[Jaegermeister]

 

8 hours ago, BlitzPig_EL said:

 

I assure you sir that this is not a fishing expedition.  The QMB is useless as I want to make multiplayer missions, not single player.  I do use the QMB for testing or when I want to have a quick DF for a small diversion. It's great for that.  

 

However, I want to make missions that my friends and I can fly together.  Nothing beats the comradeship, and fun, of flying together with my mates of 20 years, and working together to achieve a goal, and have some laughs along the way.  

 

That is what I'm asking for.

Why so much resistance to this?

I honestly don't understand.

 

 

I was only kidding about the baiting thing. You're right, the QMB is useless for online missions. With a few differences like making the missions double sided and setting up spawn points, the single player missions are about the same. 

 

I'm not putting up any resistance to the idea of an easier ME, I just don't see how you can have it both ways. Minimal learning curve and able to do complex things.

 

If you have any issues getting in touch with Gambit21, I'd be happy to give you a hand as well. Most of the tasks are repetitive and tedious as opposed to complicated. I also have a Discord account but I don't have Teamspeak loaded anymore. Shoot me a PM if you are interested.

[BlitzPig_EL]

Thanks, appreciate the offer.

 

Thing is, I don't need too much complication.  Don't need to trigger multimedia stuff (music), don't need, say, a supply train to trigger an offensive push by armored units against a front line if it makes it to it's destination, things like that.  Basically making units, air, sea or land, move and react to each other and the human players would be a good start.

[Gambit21]

1 hour ago, BlitzPig_EL said:

I appreciate your help sir.

 

Guess I need a Discord account.

 

Do you have Team Speak?

 

I run the BlitzPigs TS server.

 

Just Discord - it’s easy to set up.

[Deacon352nd]

As a suggestion to the developers of the Normandy map - would it be possible to make the area that extends beyond the map, level and flat. Also allow us to fly to and from these areas. In this way , we, as mission makers could make additional airfields in England or France, without any additional effort on the developers.

On our current maps there are very large areas that extend beyond the populated areas made by the developers. What difficulty would it be to make these areas flat and level as opposed to the terrain they now have?