[Release] Tyrant's Virtual Mission Tools (VMT)
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Doh
Not at all. More “D’oh” on my part for not only not realizing someone might do that, but for not having a way to bring it back.
At some point I’ll have to figure out a better way to do that whole part. Glad we got you sorted out.
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Hello Tyrant’s, here is what I get as an error when I edit a .cam Koréa file, which I created with Mission Commander.
thank you in advanceHmm. Looks like maybe a database problem, although if so it’s still a VMT bug that it doesn’t handle it better. Is this in the standard KTO theater? Can you PM me the .cam file?
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Yes KTO Standard
I can not attach the cam file to PM help me
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Yes KTO Standard
I can not attach the cam file to PM help me
Huh, I don’t see how to do that either. Not sure why I thought you could.
Can you post or PM a link to the file, maybe through something like Dropbox, GoogleDrive of Microsoft OneDrive? Whatever is easiest for you.
No hurry - I won’t be able to troubleshoot this right away.
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https://www.mediafire.com/file/2c7annb5ubc6hc8/Save-Day%20%201%2005%2000%2011.7z
Thanks - I was able to download it. I will take a look when able. I have some travel coming up, so it might be a bit, but I will look at some point.
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Thanks - I was able to download it. I will take a look when able. I have some travel coming up, so it might be a bit, but I will look at some point.
Found the problem. Sting 4 (Package 5062), a two-ship of F-18 Echoes, has an invalid airbase. Technically, this is a database error, not a bug in VMT, but these are common enough that I should handle it better than just refusing to load the mission.
My life is sort of insane right now (I’ve had to make two five-day trips halfway around the world in the last two weeks), so it might be a bit before I can ship a fix for this. In the meantime, if you correct the problem (maybe just delete the flight?) the mission should load in VMT.
I will at some point ship a fix that will emit a warning when it sees this and still proceed to load the mission.
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Actually, looks like it might be the squadron that’s busted:
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Thank you very much Tyrant for your involvement and your responsiveness
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Actually, looks like it might be the squadron that’s busted:
OK, have been crazy busy, but am getting back to spending time on this. Before I go too far down the road of fixing this, though, I have to figure out what I want to do. I’m somewhat torn, so I thought I would solicit opinions here. Please note that this isn’t a vote - I’m looking for help thinking through the various tradeoffs.
This issue here is that VMT was choking on a flight that belongs to a broken squadron. Specifically, the squadron has an invalid airbase. Since a lot of what VMT does is follow links between things like flights, squadrons, airbases, carriers, etc. etc., problems in the mission/database can lead to situations like this. This specific issue is one, but there are lots of others that are sure to come up based on what I’ve seen.
There are a few basic paths I can follow:
Refuse to load the mission. Because the mission is, arguably, corrupt, VMT could refuse to load it. You probably want to fix whatever the problem is before you fly it. And I’m not sure it’s going to be possible to show useful information about a corrupt entity. That said, I think missions get corrupt in small ways all the time, so maybe this would be overreacting - BMS won’t necessarily crash because a flight doesn’t have a squadron, so you can still fly the mission.
Load the mission, but pretend the corrupt entity doesn’t exist. In this case, that would mean showing a world that doesn’t even contain the invalid flights. It would be as if they were deleted with Mission Commander. This keeps the information consistent, but might lead to differences between what happens in the BMS world and what VMT is showing. While that’s not fatal - I think it’s important for this kind of planning tool to contain inconsistencies and gaps in knowledge to preserve the fog of war - it’s maybe not ideal.
Load the mission and attempt to show the corrupt entities. This is basically what Mission Commander does. Of course, it makes sense for MC to do this, since it’s what you’d use to detect and repair problems like this anywhere. VMT isn’t trying to edit missions, but still, a “best effort” load might be useful. In this case, that would mean showing the flight with a squadron of something like “Invalid Squadron” or the squadron at an airbase called “Nowhere” that wouldn’t show up on the map. And of course a warning would be displayed when loading.
I think the first option is out. I think corruption is common enough, and not always fatal, to the point where it would just be annoying not to be able to use VMT on a mission that otherwise works. I’m sort of inclined towards the third option, but a bit leery of it. For one thing, I think it could make the program more confusing if you’re being shown partial information and the only way you can make sense of it is to have some understanding of the mission structure.
For what it’s worth, I just checked, and in this particular mission BMS doesn’t choke. But it shows the flight in a pretty weird way: the squadron basically shows up as an airbase. It’s not listed under any airbase in the OOB, just by itself. And you can find the flight in the ATO, but the info for the squadron shows itself as the airbase.
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Hi Tyrant,
Did you say that ground units would be added to VTM at some point in the future?
That would be a great help and what would be a really big bonus is if, when they are added, you could show if the units are stationary or movers and if movers which way they are moving. This would help in selecting the units that offer the biggest threat to our grunts on the ground.
Great tool - especially the step forward weather feature on the weather map … helps planning a great deal - nothing worse than turning up to a “gun battle with a knife in your pocket” or MAVs when the weather has closed in ;0)
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Did you say that ground units would be added to VTM at some point in the future?
Adding ground units is indeed the plan…it should be out 3-4 weeks after I decide to add it to a release.
Seriously, though, ground units is a fairly high priority, since it’s an obviously valuable bit of information for mission planning purposes. I am still working on VMT, but I don’t have a timeline for that feature yet.
That would be a great help and what would be a really big bonus is if, when they are added, you could show if the units are stationary or movers and if movers which way they are moving. This would help in selecting the units that offer the biggest threat to our grunts on the ground.
I like the idea of indicating direction of movement. I’ll have to think about how that might be done, because that gets into fog of war. In general, I have found that figuring out good visualizations is very challenging, in a good way. Which is not to say I’m thrilled with all the visualizations I’ve come up with so far. But they’re better than the worse ones I had before those.
Great tool - especially the step forward weather feature on the weather map … helps planning a great deal - nothing worse than turning up to a “gun battle with a knife in your pocket” or MAVs when the weather has closed in ;0)
Ha, yes, some of us have definitely used the weather to torture our wingmates at the 1st.
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Hi Tyrant,
I take your point about the fog or war and perhaps showing where the ground units are going would be unrealistic BUT you could show where they have been - this is just good intelligence is it not?
You could either use a time trail to show where they have been or - as with the weather - “a step back in time option” to show where they were at any given time in the past.
With this information you could deduce where the units MAY be in future - now that’s good planning !!!
Ps. don’t be cruel to your new wingman one day you may want him to take the fat one :0)
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Hi Tyrant,
I take your point about the fog or war and perhaps showing where the ground units are going would be unrealistic BUT you could show where they have been - this is just good intelligence is it not?
You could either use a time trail to show where they have been or - as with the weather - “a step back in time option” to show where they were at any given time in the past.
With this information you could deduce where the units MAY be in future - now that’s good planning !!!
Ps. don’t be cruel to your new wingman one day you may want him to take the fat one :0)
I agree that some sort of visualization of unit motion would be super useful. Just meant that it’s going to be tricky to get right. For one thing, there’s no information in the campaign files about where a unit has been. The closest thing is the JSTARS .his file (I think that’s the one) and it doesn’t actually track units - just colored blobs. Like, there is literally no information in the file about which dot is which unit. I have considered analyzing older campaign saves as a way of keeping track of history, but that would be massively expensive in terms of CPU. Could still make sense as a background task. Then, once the information is available, there’s the question of how actually to best show it.
Anyway, it remains a good idea. It’s just going to require a fair amount of thought to implement. Like pretty much everything else, so it’s not a blocker.
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if anyone can - you can ;0)
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Hello Tyrant
I have noticed an issue with the Balkan theater : it seems TE_NEW.TAC file provided into the Balkan theater is at the origin of this issue…
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Hello Tyrant
I have noticed an issue with the Balkan theater : it seems TE_NEW.TAC file provided into the Balkan theater is at the origin of this issue…
Thanks - I’ll take a look. Which version of the Balkans are you using?
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the last one : Balkans_Theater_4.33_v3.6
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the last one : Balkans_Theater_4.33_v3.6
Thanks, I’ll have a look. In case it’s an issue with your TE, would you mind sending it to me?
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