All-Aircraft-Simulations

thanks a ton for the prompt answer. i had already figured (by late this afternoon) that it was the Army number that needed reassigning...but didn't know WHICH army number to use. i found the ARMYS listed in the DCG message folder and had a brainstorm to count them, but kept coming up wrong. what it was was that i didn't know that the program was using the FIRST army as a ZERO. lol... thanks to your prompt answer i knew then to count starting from Zero...so knew that American was number 2 and Japan was number 11... viola! that did it instantly!

many thanks for your timely answer and help on this.

at present...working at a feverish pace (lol) i have one of the new maps well in progress for DCG. based on what i learned by disecting an old campaign and your good help here, i have it working IN GAME fairly well already. i need to adjust several options, the starting front line for instance, and add some more firepower and a few other odds and ends, but otherwise it's coming along very well and seems to be working pretty good.

i've completed the PRD and am currently attempting to get it working in game... i am sure i'll probably need some help as i start to ensure it's working properly.

again, thanks for this. :wink:

Beowolff

No problem! If you want some help I can offer what I know. I am pretty good at troubleshooting problems with getting maps to display correctly. I also think now you are starting to see what a ridiculously daunting task it is going to be to add ALL of the new maps as well as redoing some stock ones. Quite a chore huh?

Definitely let me know if you hit any more snags, I am here to help

Scharnhorst1943 Wrote:No problem! If you want some help I can offer what I know. I am pretty good at troubleshooting problems with getting maps to display correctly. I also think now you are starting to see what a ridiculously daunting task it is going to be to add ALL of the new maps as well as redoing some stock ones. Quite a chore huh?

Definitely let me know if you hit any more snags, I am here to help

you bet it's a daunting task! hock: anybody that thinks a single map can be knocked out in DCG in an hour or two has no idea of what it actually takes to construct a campaign in DCG!

not counting my 'learn' time where i studied everything i could find on DCG, researched hundreds of forum posts on dozens of sites for important 'little known' information tidbits and "how to's" and also de-engineered and reconstructed a couple of campaigns to see their inner workings... i've still spent near a week on my actual trial, 'new map' campaign and am STILL not done! :?

for me, it's not the actual campaign construction that's the hardest...heck, after all of my research and planning, i knocked out a 'semi-working' basic campaign in one night... (roughly eight hours) however, what's the hardest for me is polishing it up and making EVERYTHING in it work like you want it to.

making a good campaign (i think) is a whole lot more than just getting a plane in the game, flying around a bit and maybe shooting an enemy down...landing...repeat. to me it all has to have some excitement...and it all has to make sense, ie be pretty believeable. and 'that' is hard (again at least for me,) because DCG is pretty darn picky and unforgiving of basic HUMAN ERRORS. ---the sort of errors that i seem to make on a regular and recurring basis!

:x

i can't tell you how many times i thought everything was going pretty good...then changed some small something...and BROKE my campaign! then spent hours trying to find out what...and all of the testing and retesting that it took to eventually find a small 'dot' out of place or a wrong space or bottom slash or waypoint or whatever! just dumb mistakes i made but costly ones as far as effort and time goes.

:?

anyway, it's bumbling along pretty nice for now...not perfect and probably never will be...but i hope to have it ready for a couple of Beta Testers (volunteers PM me) by early or mid-comming week. i need 'additional' eyes to take a look at it and tell me what's good and what's bad or whatever as i've looked at it so much it's ALL beginning to look the same. lol!

anyway...i've STILL got to get the prd/patrol box ships working. hope to do that today or tonight. thanks for your kind help and encouragement on this.

salute!

I have got another tip for you. This might save you LOADS of time with PRD's.

A PRD has to be square or rectangular. The best way to do this is only put the two opposite corners, and copy the waypts accordingly. Otherwise when you place in the FMB there is NO way to get it perfect. That might help stop an error.

Also, prd's have to be at least 50nm appart, or 1/2 of the 100x100 blocks in the map builder.

thanks! got the SRD working well finally and also the PRD working good. had a spot of trouble getting the carriers into the Patrol Box, at first. lol! the blighters wanted to tag along with the transports in the SRD sea routes! :? i put the carriers ABOVE the transports in the mission file, and also made sure my PRD box routes were all good, still they persisted despite my efforts. i searched high and low for an answer and then it hit me---even though i had updated my .mis file to SHOW the carriers above the transports (which would or rather should have put them in the PRD) the .mis file was STILL showing them (when opened with notepad) BELOW the transports thus making them follow the SRD or transport routes instead! d'oh! :oops:

i manually cut and pasted the carriers (in notepad) ABOVE the transport ships and VIOLA! instant fix! now a happy camper as my carriers (both Japanese and American) were finally in their proper patrol boxes and happily steaming around the Pacific looking for trouble. lol!

next problem was assigning aircraft directly to the carriers. both Japanese and American planes/squadrons kept wanting to automatically TRANSFER to the closest landbase whenever i'd start the campaign over for testing. d'oh! even though they were assigned in the FMB properly to their proper carriers. i never have got them to just START on their carriers. only by using te DCG gui and manually transfering them via the Squadron editing controls did i finally solve that problem. however, i'd STILL like to know if or how they can be assigned to their carriers BEFORE starting a campaign and stay there (without using the Squadron edit feature.)

is this possible? if so, could you kindly pass that info along to me?

many thanks.

Beo

Beowolff Wrote:thanks! got the SRD working well finally and also the PRD working good. had a spot of trouble getting the carriers into the Patrol Box, at first. lol! the blighters wanted to tag along with the transports in the SRD sea routes! :? i put the carriers ABOVE the transports in the mission file, and also made sure my PRD box routes were all good, still they persisted despite my efforts. i searched high and low for an answer and then it hit me---even though i had updated my .mis file to SHOW the carriers above the transports (which would or rather should have put them in the PRD) the .mis file was STILL showing them (when opened with notepad) BELOW the transports thus making them follow the SRD or transport routes instead! d'oh! :oops:

i manually cut and pasted the carriers (in notepad) ABOVE the transport ships and VIOLA! instant fix! now a happy camper as my carriers (both Japanese and American) were finally in their proper patrol boxes and happily steaming around the Pacific looking for trouble. lol!

next problem was assigning aircraft directly to the carriers. both Japanese and American planes/squadrons kept wanting to automatically TRANSFER to the closest landbase whenever i'd start the campaign over for testing. d'oh! even though they were assigned in the FMB properly to their proper carriers. i never have got them to just START on their carriers. only by using te DCG gui and manually transfering them via the Squadron editing controls did i finally solve that problem. however, i'd STILL like to know if or how they can be assigned to their carriers BEFORE starting a campaign and stay there (without using the Squadron edit feature.)

is this possible? if so, could you kindly pass that info along to me?

many thanks.

Beo

Actually, now that you fixed the first problem, it should have fixed the second problem. You see, when carriers follow srd waypts, they transfer their squadrons to land airfields. But if they are in a patrol box they stay on the carrier. So if the problem is still there there are two things you might try ...

1) delete all of your squadrons and remake them and reassign them to your carriers now that they are properly following prd wypts.

2) Make sure all of the squadrons are naval squadrons. For example. If you have US Airforce squadron assigned to a carrier ... it will transfer off reguardless. Same for japanese. Make sure you are using navy squadrons (which should be at the bottom of the list, or towards the bottom), and same for the US.

Try that and see if it helps. (Obviously #2 is going to be easier than #1)

thanks for that tip about carriers transferring aircraft to a land base Scharnhorst1943. I always wondered why they did it in the couple of dcg missions I have added carriers to

yeah, i ended up having to actually "delete" my carrier squadron guys and "remake" them. i tried everything else...but in doing that, it fixed the problem. they were in the right place and connected properly, but evidently on occasion (just like the PRD files) something just does not get updated correctly after you make changes. once deleted and redone, they worked perfectly on campaign start. thanks again.

Beo

I had a couple of other glitches with DCG and carriers, mainly DCG placing the carriers on land!

hmmm... any idea why dcg (or IL2) would just "end" the game when none of the end campaign setting were met?

campaign almost done...everything seemingly working well...goes a few missions into it and suddenly "bam!" gives me either a (" is not a valid floating point!) error OR, just says in debrief, "there is nothing of significance to report!" and then when i click apply, it boots me back to IL2 main gui interface!

doh!

this always happens (apparently) when dcg is trying to generate the NEXT new mission.

checking the dcg error log...it shows no problems whatsoever. and btw...the campaign is NOT over. the endcampaign is set to a DATE for the enemy (which has not been met yet, still got a year to go) and a LOCATION takeover for the allies...again, which has not been taken over yet...or if it has, they teleported deep into the heart of enemy country in a lightning swift Star Trek type attack! g'ah!

it was working fine earlier...actually ran thru (quickly) a couple of complete campaigns (this is fairly short, from 44 to 45) but then i changed a few odds and ends around, shortened a few ship routes, a few other small things...and presto! now it's screwed!

very frustrating as i'm putting the finishing touches on it and it's 95 percent or better ready to go!

any ideas?

okay... i figured out finally that i had a couple of things going wrong (per my last problem.) 1. i had a small t instead of a LARGE T in one of my ship (sdr) routes. also, i had a couple of land routes (rds) too close together. i found the rds points finally after i discovered i could check them using the dcg gui but the srd mistake (small t instead of large one) took AWHILE due to the fact that it was camoflaged inside of the file so well. lol! i must have looked at that file dozens of times before i spotted that "tiny" mistake. WARNING! dcg IS case sensitive!

i wish the program could better tell you what's wrong with it when it won't run...but alas it usually won't, and those teeny-tiny mistakes will really cost you a lot of lost time (and headaches!) when you make them (and you will) unawares. what really threw me with that error msg (as mentioned in my above post) is that there are apparently MANY things that can cause that same msg and shutdown. so even though i did tons of research on the problem to find the cause, most of it was in the 'wrong' direction. also, a lot of times when older hands (longer time dcg users) try to help, they don't give you 'enough' of an answer to fix the problem as they 'assume' you know more about the program than you really do. example: hey, how do i make a new tank column appear at a certain time in the game? answer from a seasoned dcg user: add it in your time table file.

d'oh!

hock: what's a time table file and where is it and what's the proper coding to do that?

lol!

(btw...the timetable file is named timetable.dcg and is located inside your main dcg folder inside the Dat folder. you can add certain items (see examples inside the file) using the coding examples there.)

anyway... the original poster of this thread is quite a bit more helpful than that example and therefore this thread is a lifesaver for anyone interested in using this program to make their own campaigns.

many thanks for it.

working on a small campaign for a small Pacific Atoll map and had everything going good...during final testing about into the 8th mission, suddenly the AI guys behind me opened up blowing up several A-20s several planes back! WTH! never happened before! but i thought, oh well...a small glitch, maybe their guns jammed or something. continued on with mission and had a good run.

next mission i realized WHY the guys behind me had opened up... they had a target to shoot at!

that time, i happened to READ fully the briefing message BEFORE i started it and saw the reason for the gunner's madness.





notice in the two pictures... there is part of a Japanese squadron ABOUT to be spawned right in the middle of my American airfield (Johnson Field) and no doubt right in the middle of my squadron of American planes!

doh!

it's probably something i've done during the campaign building but i have no clue as to what... any ideas on what's causing this and how to fix it GREATLY appreciated as this campaign is practically done except for glitches here and there (mostly ship movement.)

thanks for any help on this Japanese 'fifth' column invader squadron sneaking onto my field!

that is truly bizarre! Ive never seen that happen before, just guessing but is that sqn accidently assignd to green instead of blue?

I dont know what I have done, but I dont have access to sqn documents in a DCG campaign, the "roster" button has disapeared

checked the Japanese plane and squadron...their assignments look fine. plus, they worked perfectly earlier (in fact that squadron and plane actually sank a US carrier! g'ah!) but...look here:

i checked DCG to see if i had somehow accidently assigned it to Johnson (American held) airfield... it showed still assigned to Dutch Airfield (a Japanese held field in the campaign) BUT LOOK at the identification of the plane and squadron! the nationality button! :o



a Japanese meatball AND an American star!

doh!

got me bamboozled for sure. a turncoat in the ranks? lol!

anyway, have yet to load and fly that mixed (Japan/American) escort mission as i wanted to hear back from anybody in case i needed to look for anything else odd.

thanks for any help on this...