homepage Forums Air Combat & Civil Aviation DCS World Eno's Firehouse and Crew's Hollo Pointe Server Lounge

The Hollo Pointe server will pretty much always be serving on a official release, and not on a beta version. Also, the only mod I run is Slmod.

WC

I've been running the open beta client for the last few months and it seems to let me connect to either server. I may be wrong but I think at the moment the open beta is the same version as the official release, but I know in the past when they were different I could still join any server. And the opposite was true too, in that an official release client could join an open beta server.

Its probably not supposed to be like that...

The current open beta is 127.24040 and release version is 127.183xx. It would be nice to have the groups segregated for stability but clearly they don't think it will matter.

I saw this posted on another forum regarding Beach's GRAD EX mission --



... which is the basic reason why I don't want my missions out there on other servers besides Hollo Pointe. If it could be done I would lock my missions with a password to prevent further editing, and then I may be willing to release them for hosting elsewhere. I just don't want any changes made to my story lines.

---

I modified The Highway last weekend. Took out all of the Feet Wet jet slots. Now all jets must start up at the top of The Highway and make it down to the coast. There are still helicopters in Feet Wet slots along the coast, but the heli slots that were up around Krasnodar are also removed. Back to the basics for this mission.

I was receiving too many complaints re the Feet Wet slots. lol I got another complaint after taking them out, can't please everyone...

WC

WC - If you don't mind me asking, why are you so against people editing your missions? I've never understood why many people (you, Eno, many others) are so against having your missions edited and hosted elsewhere. And I don't mean that in a derogatory way at all. I am genuinely curious and want to understand your point of view.

Eno feel free to jump in and answer too!

On my end I just like to be able to provide unique missions for the folks that come on my server... If everyone is just canning up missions that other people create- why would anyone come to the firehouse? Certainly, we have a really great crowd of folks and I think that in itself is one good reason that people come out- however there is a lot that goes into maintaining a server, not to mention the costs associated with the plan that gives me the upload bandwidth that I need to ensure a smooth experience for the clients... I like to see butts in the seats and I think having custom missions helps add to that.


So maybe it's just me hanging onto old habits- and now isn't really a great time to start trying to justify things because the MP stability up until recent patches has been a miserable companion- but I want to try and give enthusiasts a different mission to fly when they come in... Unfortunately, even that hasn't really helped lately since just about every mission made is broken on just about every patch... so then I'm forced to run the "old faithfuls" so often that suddenly it's not a unique experience anymore.

Anyway Snipor- some people understand and others don't... but that's my process.

I'm neither Wreck nor Eno, but here's my two cents:

^ This

A *LOT* of very hard work goes into making a mission file for DCS, especially those with the fidelity and attention to detail like the missions Wreck and Eno produce. An insane amount of work. Hours and hours of experimentation and iteration unit placement. They becomes a work of art (the missions, not Wreck and Eno), and are much much more than a mere mission file that anybody else can just hack.

It is not at all flattering for someone else to take all that work and then nonchalantly tweak it to fit their own interests. I find it insulting and presumptuous.

If a new user makes the mission worse, or destroys the key principles that the original creator held dear, the mission becomes a deformity, a freak, a stain in the community that could be mistakenly tied back to the original creator - at least in the mind of the creator.

If a new user makes some improvements to the mission, it cheapens all the work that the original creator did, as if that extra 10 minutes you spent tidying up the waypoints was more of a contribution than the many late nights put into making the original product.

I also wish there was some way to protect mission files so they could only be hosted on authorized machines. I would fully support this feature.

That makes a lot of sense. I understand now. Thanks!

I'd also add that someone who isn't as technically proficient as these guys could make a small change that could change the whole flow of the mission. For instance, they might tweak a unit or placement that puts it within a trigger zone or something that is buried deeply in the intricacies of the mission design and then suddenly scripts don't happen as they are supposed to, or mission goals are never realized. Then, the author's name is still on the mission and people will associate the broken mission with the original author.

TL;DR: It's like a fan of Queen hearing Ice Ice Baby on the radio.

BeachAV8R

I'm planning on being on tonight (~8pm PDT) and experimenting with TARS, if anybody wants to join me.

http://www.excessiveheadspace.com/tars/

This is likely a direction the firehouse is going so I highly recommend!

I might be there if I'm back from Chuck E. Cheese. <groan>

Hey sniporbob,
Your question was well answered by the others, and I don't mind you asking, here is my answer... (sniporbob -- check your PMs).

Each mission is a story. Some are scripted from beginning to end (Ants, Thunder Of Kojori, Nuke Plant, Back To School) while others start as a concept and evolve as the design progresses (iShot The Shilka, Huey Apocalypse, Witches Hollo). In general each one takes a month to make, followed by weeks more of playing and tweaking to get it right (there's no substitute for being in the mission to observe what actually happens). I have a five-mission campaign that took five months to make. Witches Hollo has a single structure in it that took me three days to build. With some two dozen missions now, that is a lot of time invested.

I am quite particular about soo many aspects of every mission. The client slots and a/c descriptions, BORT numbers, radio callsigns, mission briefing, weather, Blue and Red AI placement, COOP and H2H considerations all go into what I refer to as the 'balance'. Also considered -- is a mission open ended, should it time-out, what are victory conditions for both sides, how to inform the players of their progress and what goals are left to destroy or defend.

It takes a lot of event/trigger work to get the results just right. And now with LUA scripting capabilities, many advanced mission features are now 'hidden' in a code layer that many people would probably never look for if they decide to make arbitrary changes. Adding helicopters to a mission that never considered them in the event work could break the concept behind a mission objective, or it very well could add overwhelming firepower to a coalition that ends up making short work of the original goals of the mission designer in terms of balance and mission time.

Oh, for sure, I have strayed from an original concept in favor of making a mission more 'favorable' to players including adding in newly released aircraft -- The Highway is my example of changes that went too far.

There are also DCS World version changes that can break a mission, subtly or even completely. For a year in 2010-2011 ships were broken. Missile effectiveness can and has changed (TORs did not used to be able to shoot down Mavs, BUKs have gotten less capable and then more capable). Tanker a/c refueling stops working, JTACs don't respond properly. These influences have to be addressed to keep a mission running well under the 'current conditions'.


Pretty early on with DCS A-10C in 2010, I realized that all missions cannot be locked down to prevent them from being modified by anyone. Plus, and I don't like advertising this, any Client gets a copy of the mission on their computer -- and they can grab that file and use it any way they would like to. I have seen my missions and 104th_Moa's hosted on other multiplayer servers when those missions were never publicly posted, nor was permission ever given. That really bothers me, but I am happy to say I haven't seen this again in the past two years. If I do see this again I will take every step I politely can to get the offender to quit hosting the mission.


A finished mission, IMHO, is like a book or a movie. If someone were to take that work and rewrite a chapter, scene, or even a paragraph then it wouldn't be the same anymore. If that was done w/o permission, where does that leave the original designer? As one answer above said it, the original mission designer is associated with the modified mission that is no longer aligned with the original concept. And I have very little hope that someone who modified a mission would adhere to the same 'rules' for slot identifications, waypoints and their descriptions, the impact to the briefing and the mission name and version numbering, let alone the event logic and flags.


One more thing, my missions are available on Hollo Pointe where I can enjoy the fruits of my labor, and also to ensure that everything works the right way. Because the missions cannot be locked from editing, all the reasons above are why I don't want my missions hosted elsewhere. Eno's Firehouse is the only other server that has my permission to host my missions.

Wrecking Crew

On a previous note regarding this latest beta update... it doesn't appear to have anything to do with gameplay and seems focused more on some administrative level code fixes (or something like that.)


Give the nature of the beta update I'm taking down my beta mission and going back to ol' faithful...

I had been working on something only to find that presently the trigger actions (AI_TASK_SET) and (AI_TASK_PUSH) currently DO NOT work for fixed wings - but do for helicopters..... So whenever that gets fixed I'll have to change things. Any mission made with that in use will likely not function in this release. It's a known bug. -- Just for a up-to-date example of patches breaking things.

Gaak -- don't tell me that! ^^^

A couple of months ago there was a discussion in DCS Mission Builders forum about AI Task SET and that supposedly wasn't working, or wasn't understood, but AI Task Push did work. I can't get to DCS forums right now so I'll look for the link tonight.

--> edit I took a few minutes this morning to search for the post but haven't found it yet.

WC

*Sharp breath intake through teeth while frowning*
Ouch. That is just the perfect mental image. Point taken. I'll NEVER edit anyone's mission.
EVER.

They serve beer there.

It helps.

Einstein and a couple others were in doing some workups on TARS and encountered a few problems but I think I can fix it on my end. Snoopy from the 476th has offered to help out with getting it properly configured and I think it's a great opportunity to put this in play.

I'm at work for the week so I'm not going to be available- however can those interested chime in? If there aren't many who can make it maybe we can plan another time?


EDIT: I made the necessary changes to the server side Teamspeak.

I'll be doing some more testing tonight, probably setup my own temporary TS3 server to muck with. Any volunteers? Hop onto SimHQ TS3 at around 8pm MST/PDT and be prepared to hear a lot of "check","check", "check", "check".