Question regarding the Ar234 photo recon equipment

[ACG_Bussard]

In the notes to Update 4.706 from mid of June 2022 the Arado 234 was described as a jet powered single-seat twin-engine reconnaissance bomber. Since the photo recon equipment (modification 18) is still empty, I would like to know if and when this feature will be implemented.

 

Any update on this matter would be great. Or did i miss anything in the past months?

[Wardog5711]

I just got this back from Regingrave:

Hi! It's not empty, recon equipment is there, empty payload simply means that there will be no bombs or weapons on board (though, the gunpod can be installed).

And, recon logic is already available in the mission editor and can be used by any player to create your own recon missions.

[ACG_Bussard]

Thank you Wardog for the quick clarification! Now I know what to do.

[AEthelraedUnraed]

1 hour ago, Wardog5711 said:

And, recon logic is already available in the mission editor and can be used by any player to create your own recon missions.

Could you/@Regingrave perhaps explain how this works? I see neither a separate "Command:Recon" MCU nor any applicable option in the Translator:Complex Trigger MCU.

 

Obviously, I know how to detect when a plane enters a certain region, but how do I detect whether a player actually makes a photo using the recon equipment at the right time?

Edited February 15, 2023 by AEthelraedUnraed

[Jaegermeister]

23 hours ago, AEthelraedUnraed said:

Could you/@Regingrave perhaps explain how this works? I see neither a separate "Command:Recon" MCU nor any applicable option in the Translator:Complex Trigger MCU.

 

Obviously, I know how to detect when a plane enters a certain region, but how do I detect whether a player actually makes a photo using the recon equipment at the right time?

 

The recon photo feature is a Flash extension. You trigger it with a media player MCU like this...

 

.

I have used a Checkzone when the player enters the marked recon area to trigger a Media Operator. You have to press WIN+F1 (LWin+1) while the media operator is running as specified in the screenshot above to enable the on screen trigger. At that point you get a photo camera icon displayed on screen in the bottom right corner. When you left click on the camera icon with your mouse pointer, you get a shutter animation, it stops the media player and the icon closes. You can then use the "OnMediaStopped" event to trigger another media player with the image you want to display of the "recon photo" or a message saying whatever you want. 

 

Hopefully you will understand from this brief explanation, but if not not let me know. I think there will be more information shared in a discussion in the Mission Making forum before long when some additional upcoming mission content is released.

 

Edit... You also have to open the bomb bay doors on the Arado 234 for the recon camera to work as 2 of them were arranged in the bomb bays. I haven't tested any other aircraft with it yet, but it can be done.

 

Also there was a bug in the recon feature which prevented it from operating correctly. I believe that bug has been corrected in the current public release version, but if not it should be with the next update.

 

Edited February 16, 2023 by Jaegermeister

[ACG_Bussard]

Well, this looks more complicated than I hoped.

 

What does the publisher do with the customers who are not editor specialists and do not have as much experience as Jaegermeister, AEthelraedUnraed etc.?

Are there any chances that reconnaissance missions for the Ar 234 will be added as single mission or via the AQMB in the future?

[Regingrave-]

2 часа назад, 2./JG3_Bussard* сказал:

Are there any chances that reconnaissance missions for the Ar 234 will be added as single mission or via the AQMB in the future?

Can't say for sure, but I guess that it is certainly one of the goals of adding recon mission logics to the game, as well as photo equipment modifications. ?

[AEthelraedUnraed]

2 hours ago, 2./JG3_Bussard* said:

Well, this looks more complicated than I hoped.

 

What does the publisher do with the customers who are not editor specialists and do not have as much experience as Jaegermeister, AEthelraedUnraed etc.?

Are there any chances that reconnaissance missions for the Ar 234 will be added as single mission or via the AQMB in the future?

Don't despair, it's actually not too hard The only important part of that screenshot is the selected Translator:Media MCU. Setting its Media Type to "Flash" and linking it to main.gfx inside data\swf\extensions\photorecon is enough to make it show up. Then simply link its OnMediaStopped event* as in the example to whatever you want to do after the picture is taken. All the other logic is just meant to make sure that the player is actually inside the recon area when he clicks the button.

 

* I believe the OnFlashDialogAction00 is the intended way to accomplish this, as the Media might presumably be stopped by other means than pressing the button, e.g. by a timeout (its Base Time property) or a Stop Media event.

 

13 hours ago, Jaegermeister said:

 

The recon photo feature is a Flash extension. You trigger it with a media player MCU like this...

 

.

I have used a Checkzone when the player enters the marked recon area to trigger a Media Operator. You have to press WIN+F1 while the media operator is running as specified in the screenshot above to enable the on screen trigger. At that point you get a photo camera icon displayed on screen in the bottom right corner. When you left click on the camera icon with your mouse pointer, you get a shutter animation, it stops the media player and the icon closes. You can then use the "OnMediaStopped" event to trigger another media player with the image you want to display of the "recon photo" or a message saying whatever you want. 

 

Hopefully you will understand from this brief explanation, but if not not let me know. I think there will be more information shared in a discussion in the Mission Making forum before long when some additional upcoming mission content is released.

 

Edit... You also have to open the bomb bay doors on the Arado 234 for the recon camera to work as 2 of them were arranged in the bomb bays. I haven't tested any other aircraft with it yet, but it can be done.

 

Also there was a bug in the recon feature which prevented it from operating correctly. I believe that bug has been corrected in the current public release version, but if not it should be with the next update.

 

The implications of this are grand! Huge! Humongous!

It means that we have a way to implement custom GUI interactions with the player! There's no need anymore for complex flare logic to trigger certain actions ("shoot one flare for X, 2 flares for Y, 28 flares for Z"). You can simply add a couple of buttons on screen. I knew there were some residual RoF flash files with similar logic, but I was never able to get one working. Having a working flash file for IL2 changes the whole situation though!

 

As a simple proof of concept, I made a small mission where the player controls, besides its own tank, another "tank platoon" (actually a single tank ) that can either move up to the enemy, or suppress it. When suppressed, it reduces the AI skill of the enemy and hence its accuracy. (Of course there are other ways to accomplish similar things, e.g. target-link the other tank to the player tank and then use the radio commands to tell it to fire at the enemy, but it's just meant as a proof of concept.)

 

Choice menu:

 

After choosing A:

 

After choosing B:

 

You can download the proof of concept from the attached zip file. No worries, it doesn't overwrite the recon logic.

CustomEvents.zip

Edited February 16, 2023 by AEthelraedUnraed

[Juri_JS]

19 hours ago, Wardog5711 said:

And, recon logic is already available in the mission editor and can be used by any player to create your own recon missions.

 

13 hours ago, Jaegermeister said:

Also there was a bug in the recon feature which prevented it from operating correctly. I believe that bug has been corrected in the current public release version, but if not it should be with the next update.

Unfortunately the photo recon logic is still not working correctly. At the moment it won't work when AI ground units are part of the mission.

[Wardog5711]

Quote

Unfortunately the photo recon logic is still not working correctly. At the moment it won't work when AI ground units are part of the mission.

 

We're working on it to fix it in the next update, we've added it to the task tracker, so we're keeping an eye on the problem.

 

 

[1PL-Husar-1Esk]

1 hour ago, Wardog5711 said:

 

We're working on it to fix it in the next update, we've added it to the task tracker, so we're keeping an eye on the problem.

 

 

When new update will be available, raw estimation, spring maybe or earlier?

[Wardog5711]

It is planned for the Spring update.  But the actual date is TBD.

[Jaegermeister]

5 hours ago, AEthelraedUnraed said:

 

* I believe the OnFlashDialogAction00 is the intended way to accomplish this, as the Media might presumably be stopped by other means than pressing the button, e.g. by a timeout (its Base Time property) or a Stop Media event.

 

 

 

It's still a work in progress and the other logic is not final yet, but you get the idea anyway. Also I made a typo, the command to trigger the camera event in LWin+1. It displays on screen so you probably figured that out already.

[AEthelraedUnraed]

@Regingrave, is there any chance of getting some kind of reference manual for the various ActionScript classes and functions used in the flash files, even if in Russian? I've got a couple of rather cool ideas (if I say so myself ), but I'm not quite sure how to proceed given the lack of documentation.

Edited February 17, 2023 by AEthelraedUnraed

[Regingrave-]

17.02.2023 в 13:10, AEthelraedUnraed сказал:

@Regingrave, is there any chance of getting some kind of reference manual for the various ActionScript classes and functions used in the flash files, even if in Russian? I've got a couple of rather cool ideas (if I say so myself ), but I'm not quite sure how to proceed given the lack of documentation.

I'll ask the team about that, first I need to know whether we ourselves have such manual. ?

[AEthelraedUnraed]

6 hours ago, Regingrave said:

I'll ask the team about that, first I need to know whether we ourselves have such manual. ?

Oh don't go out of your way for it. Basically the usual comments in the various sim.api.X files would be enough. Right now, all I have is the decompiled flash file. While some functions or properties are self-explanatory, others not so much. For instance, what does IExtensionConnector.getWorldObjects() return? All world objects? Only Linked entities? Only aircraft? Only ground vehicles? Likely the original files have comments describing things like that; that's all that I need

[ITAF_Airone1989]

On 2/16/2023 at 12:09 AM, Jaegermeister said:

 

The recon photo feature is a Flash extension. You trigger it with a media player MCU like this...

 

.

I have used a Checkzone when the player enters the marked recon area to trigger a Media Operator. You have to press WIN+F1 (LWin+1) while the media operator is running as specified in the screenshot above to enable the on screen trigger. At that point you get a photo camera icon displayed on screen in the bottom right corner. When you left click on the camera icon with your mouse pointer, you get a shutter animation, it stops the media player and the icon closes. You can then use the "OnMediaStopped" event to trigger another media player with the image you want to display of the "recon photo" or a message saying whatever you want. 

 

Hopefully you will understand from this brief explanation, but if not not let me know. I think there will be more information shared in a discussion in the Mission Making forum before long when some additional upcoming mission content is released.

 

Edit... You also have to open the bomb bay doors on the Arado 234 for the recon camera to work as 2 of them were arranged in the bomb bays. I haven't tested any other aircraft with it yet, but it can be done.

 

Also there was a bug in the recon feature which prevented it from operating correctly. I believe that bug has been corrected in the current public release version, but if not it should be with the next update.

 

Nice!!!

Does it work just in single player or also in multiplayer?

 

[AEthelraedUnraed]

On 2/20/2023 at 9:32 AM, Regingrave said:

I'll ask the team about that, first I need to know whether we ourselves have such manual. ?

I kinda figured out how most things work, with *lots* of testing. Although it has quite a few quirks, this is an incredibly powerful tool!

 

Just as an example of what can be accomplished, straight from the RLM's testing site in Rechlin, I present to you the following:

 

It doesn't work entirely satisfactorily yet, and even when it does, it'll probably still take me months to flesh it out for release, but at the very least it underlines why I called this flash script thingy humongously important.

[1PL-Husar-1Esk]

@Wardog5711

Hello. I have couple of questions about new mission types.

Do aerial recon future work in multiplayer, and if so it's possible to reward player with points after he land on airfield and finishes the mission (or is this task logged with player data on the server log file)? One more question it is true that mission text regarding the recon action do appears for other players which are not doing the task in multiplayer, possibly even players in opposite team  ?

[Wardog5711]

I will need to check on the mission text. I'll let you know what I find out.

[ITAF_Airone1989]

Do you have any idea why I can't take the recon photo? The camera that appears in the right corner has a red X on it, and if I try to click on it does nothing

Edited April 28, 2023 by ITAF_Airone1989

[ITAF_Airone1989]

Got it. (I was too low.)

[ITAF_Airone1989]

@AEthelraedUnraed
A question for you: How can I create a picture (like your A+B) to have 4 options?
The idea was that the player should be able to select North, West, East or South option...

[Jaegermeister]

On 4/15/2023 at 7:13 AM, 1PL-Husar-1Esk said:

@Wardog5711

Hello. I have couple of questions about new mission types.

Do aerial recon future work in multiplayer, and if so it's possible to reward player with points after he land on airfield and finishes the mission (or is this task logged with player data on the server log file)? One more question it is true that mission text regarding the recon action do appears for other players which are not doing the task in multiplayer, possibly even players in opposite team  ?

 

Subtitle text is displayed to whichever factions are selected in the Subtitle dialogue box when the message is set up in the ME