DCG: An idiot's Guide - Printable Version

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- fly_zo - 23.12.2007

super ... thanks a lot


Z

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- Scharnhorst1943 - 23.12.2007

Now lets look at names of locations for road networks. If you put the following in the name of locations in your map, you can trigger special events. See Below:

X_Factory
X_Factory_District - If you put static objects underneath industry buildings, it will trigger level bombing raids. Level bombers will be assigned to destroy the factory buildings (or objects inside them :wink. If you place fuel trucks or fuel train cars inside the factory buildings, it will effect the fuel supply system, if you choose to use it. If a fuel truck is destroyed or captured, then that side looses its abaility to advance. So by destroying factories, you could cause armor not to advance.

X_Airfield - This type of airfield supports all types of aircraft. When doing road networks, try and get your road to get as close to one of the runway markers without interfearing with the operation of aircraft taking off or landing. Also remember that whichever icon you put your road to, the planes will ALWAYS spawn at the opposite one to take off. So you have control over which direction planes will takeoff and land.

X_Airstrip - This type of runway does NOT support heavy bombers. It will only support fighters and G-Attack planes. Be careful even with the G-Attack planes, because some of them will still crash on takeing off on the runways.

X_Supply_Depot - This location also triggers level bombing if static objects are place there. It also is a spawn point for tanks/vehicles. If a supply depot is captured, and later on the tanks are destroyed by enemy planes, instead of starting at the beginning, they can spawn at a supply depot.

X_Bridge# - Bridges can be locations. If at an end of a road segiment you need two waypts after. If at the beginning you need two waypts before the bridge. Set a plane to G-Attack the bridge to get the bridge#. If bridges are in the middle of a road segiment, you need 5 waypts before, and 5 waypts after the bridge.

X_Station - These are train stations. Trains can resupply or drop off tanks at stations. However, you must have a X_Station in your road routes and an X_Station in your rail routes for it to work. Additionally, these locations always take the side of the nearest road location. So in your road network, you should have a road from X_Station to X_Factory. If X_Factory is captured, X_Station will take the same side.

X_Railyard - In addition to doing everything that stations do, railyards will spawn trains.

X_Dropzone - Dropzone will trigger paratrooper drops. Paratroopers can capture the location that the dropzone is linked to. So you have a road that goes from X_Dropzone to X_Factory. Transport planes will be triggered to do a paradrop over the dropzone, and X_Factory can be captured.

X_Shipyard - This needs to go into the road network. If you have a harbor with the same name, this will spawn ships at that harbor.

Also remember when you do your road routes, if you have a fork in the road, the path will be chosen randomly. So if you have a road that goes from A_Supply_Depot to B_Factory, and then you have a road that goes from B_Factory to C_Factory and an additional road that goes from B_Factory to D_Airfield, the tanks will choose at random which road they will use.

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- Scharnhorst1943 - 23.12.2007

I have a question for everybody. When I am in the Full Mission Builder, and I hit "printScreen" to take a screenshot, where do those screeshots get saved?

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- Lefty - 23.12.2007

Scharnhorst1943 Wrote:I have a question for everybody. When I am in the Full Mission Builder, and I hit "printScreen" to take a screenshot, where do those screeshots get saved?

As a default to your main Il-2 folder with grabxxx.tga files

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- Scharnhorst1943 - 24.12.2007

Al right, I am having trouble posting the pictures for you guys to see. Do I need to upload the pics onto the web in order link them here, or can I just link them from my harddrive?

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- lowfighter - 25.12.2007

Yes, needs uploading them on web, I use photobucket for that. Needs also converting the tga to jpg or something (at least photobucket doesn't accept tga format).

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- Scharnhorst1943 - 25.12.2007

lowfighter Wrote:Yes, needs uploading them on web, I use photobucket for that. Needs also converting the tga to jpg or something (at least photobucket doesn't accept tga format).

I actually already have them all converted, I just need to upload them. I will do a search for this photobucket tomorrow. Hopefully then I can show you what I am talking about. The pictures will be a must later on in my explanations ...

Except for giving a last general overview of what the road network does and how it relates to the campaign, we are close to being done with roads. The sea lanes and prd and rls files won't take very long at all. After that, combining all the necesarry data to make a scratch campaign. And lastly, how to "fix" the outcome of your campaign so it always ends a certain way.

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- Scharnhorst1943 - 25.12.2007

lowfighter - thanks for the photobucket tip mate :wink: .

So time for some pics. This first is a road route startinga at an airfield. Note that my road begins at the right end of the runway. When planes spawn to takeoff, they will spawn at the opposite, or left end. So you have control over how your runways are oriented.



This pic is of a depot location. For depot, station, railyard and dropzone locations, it is best to have them tie into the main road route. So your road should go from A_Factory to B_Factory, and you will have road segiments that go from A_Railyard to A_Factory, or A_Dropzone to A_Factory ...



Now for bridges. This first pic is of a bridge in the middle of two locations.



Here is a bridge at the end of a location. You need the plane to get the bridge number. I will explain in more detail later on when we make the files for the scratch campaign.



Here is the bridge starting the next segiment of the road network.



Here is a railyard to a Factory



Here is a dropzone to a factory



I hope this helps expain what I have talked about. If you guys have any questions, fire them away.

So, ideas to consider when making your road network:

1) You need to decide where the Allied and Axis supply centers are. These are the locations that if captured or destroyed will cause the map to be won or lost.

2) You need more than one main route from one supply center to the other. This will help so you don't have bunches of armor that clash. If you only have one main route, one side may never be able to get to the other side, and you end up being stuck in stalemate never able to win the map.

3) when makeing your road routes, don't make them with alot of locations. If you find yourself makeing alot of locations, put in supply depots. When the armor advances, it goes one location per day (if it advances due to supply). If an enemy flight destroys the armor, it starts back at the beginning of the entire road netowrk, and must travel the distance again without being destroyed. If you have supply depots, you can make it so that the armor can spawn closer to the front.

4) Always have railyard, station and dropzone locations tie into the road network, but never have them be on the main route.

5) if you use the fuel truck system, put several on the map. If you only have one or two and they are destroyed or captured, then it really hurts that side.

Questions on road networks before we move on :?:

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- lowfighter - 25.12.2007

Thanks for pics and all!
Ruminating all this :wink: will take some time (one nickname of mine:nanoRAM )

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- Scharnhorst1943 - 25.12.2007

Now that we have covered the road routes, lets take a look at sea routes.

Sea Routes (.srd) - These are just like road routes, except for ships. Because the waypts are in the ocean, you should have less of them. Just like tanks travel to the next location per mission, ships will go to the next location every mission. There are certain names of locations you can use to do really cool things. You can also set up invasions ... so here are some locations names in the srd file.

X_Harbor - Harbors are a place where new ships can spawn or they can drop off tank units. Harbors can be used to set up invasion points.

X_Seaplane_Base - You need to put routes to seaplane bases in the srd file. Also, one more thing I have learned, you can put a seaplane base ANYWHERE and have it work. DCG will allow seaplanes to take off from any location that is listed as a "harbor." If you set up a seaplane base, make sure it is far enough away from land that AI planes won't run aground and crash.

X_Sea, X_Bay, X_Ocean, X_Strait - These are just a few possibilities you can name waypts in the ocean as stopping points for ships. The longer ships are at sea, the greater chance of getting anti-shipping missions.

You make these just like you would roads. Make sure that the last two of the previous segiment and the first two waypts of the next segiment are in the same general direction.

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- Scharnhorst1943 - 25.12.2007

Invasions

If you want an anvasion, such as the invasion of Normandy, or even a fictional 1946 invasion of Japan, this is what you need to do in the roads file (.rds).

1) you need a waypt that goes from the beach to a beachhead location. The beachhead location needs to be as close as you can get to the water. Always make sure you go FROM the beach TO the beachhead. The purpose of the beachhead location is to give invading troops and units a "fallback" location in case they get overrun. After this, you can have your beach location network until it reaches the enemy supply zone. If you put static bunkers and pillboxes at the beach, it will be targeted by aircraft too.

2) You need a sea road segiment (.srd) that ends at your beachhead location. It helps if you name this sea location a harbor.

Pictorial Example

Beach to beachhead location:



Beach to next location in the road route:

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Fantastic, thanks - vonofterdingen - 26.12.2007

As some other posters to this link, I have been using DCG for years without really understnding it. This really helps.

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Re: Fantastic, thanks - Scharnhorst1943 - 26.12.2007

vonofterdingen Wrote:As some other posters to this link, I have been using DCG for years without really understnding it. This really helps.

Thanks for posting. Actually, I am flattered, but it is nice, so thank you. But buckle up Dorothy, 'cause your about to learn a hell of a lot more

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- Scharnhorst1943 - 26.12.2007

So now we have covered sea routes and road routes, lets cover rail routes. When in the full mission builder, trains can only have two waypts. So when you are saving your rail.mis files is really simple.

Make two waypts that connect the stations or railyards you want in your campaing.

Last we come to the .prd file. The PRD file is a patrol box for carriers. Basically, the carrier will sail aroung randomly inside the patrol box. It will never leave it. Any ships assigned to the carrier will also use the prd instead of the regular sea lanes.

When in the mission builder, choose a static ship to place on the map. Put two down that make half a square. I will explain why when we go to edit the files. But for the prd, place two static ships that form two opposite corners of the box or rectange you want the prd to be.

Here is a picture of what you should make. The reason you need the two opposite corners is to make a perfect box. Since this is damn near impossible using the FMB, this does it.



Now here is a picture of the area that is used for the patrol box using the points from above




Any Questions before I move onto making the files needed using the information from all my previous posts?

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- Scharnhorst1943 - 27.12.2007

Everything I have shown you so far has had the sole purpose of getting the data you need. When you save each road segiment as a .mis file, you are saving it to get the waypts. It is the same when you save your sea and rail routes. Once you have each segiment of the road saved as a .mis file and named, so you know what it is, you are ready to make the necessary files.

*Mapname*.rds - What this file does is hold the waypts for each and every road segiment in your campaign. Remember I told everyone to save each road segiment as a .mis file and name the two locations in that road segiment? This is where it becomes important.

To make this file, copy one of the .rds files, open it in notepad and save it as your empty template. Copy this file after you rename it to the map name of your campaign. So if you were doing a map in ardennes, you might name your map Ardennes1940 or France or Bastogne1944, or whatever you dicide. *Important Note! - You cannot have a map name that is the same as the default map names that come with DCG. To see what these are, open your DCG folder inside your IL2 game folder, and then open "masters" folder. Any map name the same as any of those map names will cause a crash or error, and your campaign WILL NOT generate.

Open the .rds notepad file and the .mis file of the first road segiment. The structure of the file you are making should be as follows:

[Location_Name to Next_Location_Name]
Waypts
Waypts
Waypts
Waypts
Waypts
[Next_Location_Name to Next_After_Location_Name]
Waypts
Waypts
Waypts


What you should do is put the name of the two location of the road segiment in [brackets]. You need to list the starting one first and the end last. So in the Ardennes map, you have a road that goes from St Vith to veisalm bridge. In the file you would have:

[St_Vith_Factory_District to Veisalm_Bridge18]

Now in the .mis file, scroll down to where it says "chief road", and copy that whole paragraph of waypts and paste them in the notepad file. Be sure to indent two spaces for waypts. [b]Second Important Note - In this file, when you are listing locatoin names, DCG does not recognize spaces. You must put and underscore ( _ ) to represent spaces.

I will post pictures later tonight

Again, any questions please ask. I know not everyone gets this stuff. It took my a long time to figure this out, but I want everyone to know I am here to help. Please ask questions

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