[Release] Tyrant's Virtual Mission Tools (VMT)
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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?
Sent from my Pixel XL using Tapatalk
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Thanks, I’ll have a look. In case it’s an issue with your TE, would you mind sending it to me?
Sent from my Pixel XL using Tapatalk
OK, I’ve had a look, and I have to admit I’m a bit stumped. I’ll start with a basic explanation, and then go into technical details. Feel free to ignore the latter - they’re there in case one of the devs has mercy on me and can explain what I’m seeing.
So, basically, the TE “template” file, TE_NEW.tac, has different sections in it. One of them holds the objectives - things like airbases and cities. Each of these objectives has different data associated with it - its ID, its coordinates in the world, etc. etc. One of these pieces of data - the very last one, in fact - is a flag that says whether there is radar range data associated with the objective, optionally followed by the radar range data. So far, so good.
In the Balkans theater, this file appears to me to be corrupt. Specifically, for the very last objective (campaign ID 14026, Galatina Airbase Perimeter Fortification), I can see that that radar flag is set to “1”, which should indicate that there are eight floating point numbers following the flag, containing the radar data. But the file actually ends at that point - there is no more data. Hence, when I try to read them, there’s an “IndexOutOfRangeException”, also sometimes known as a buffer overflow. (My code computes the uncompressed size of the objectives file at 298666 bytes, with the has-radar flag being read as 1 at position 298665.)
What’s really weird to me is that Mission Commander seems to read the file correctly, at least in that it doesn’t crash. It shows that objective as having no radar data.
There are at least the following possibilities:
- I’m doing something wrong. Totally possible. I’ve had to reverse engineer the BMS file formats, in some cases working completely blind. I’m sure I’ve interpreted what’s there incorrectly in some cases, and this may be one of them.
- The file is corrupt, but Mission Commander and maybe BMS are somehow immune to the problem, or have coded around it.
I’ve actually seen problems with this particular flag before, and in the Balkans theater. Specifically, I saw that flag be 17, which suggests that maybe it’s not a simple boolean, but a bitflag of some kind. I have no idea what the various bits mean in that case, other than that one of them likely indicates the presence of the radar detection ratio array.
In terms of a fix, I’m not entirely sure what to do yet. Ideally, someone who knows what’s going on will tell me how to correctly interpret the data, or tell me that it is in fact corrupt, and how to react correctly in that case.
If I don’t hear back from someone with more of a clue than me, I can probably find a way to make it load.
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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…
Fixed in v051.
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Version 051 released. First post updated.
Downloads and change log here: http://org.craigandera.vmt.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com/stable/
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First post updated.
Download: http://org.craigandera.vmt.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com/stable/
Changes:
- Major speedup in mission and briefing loading. - Add checkbox in map controls section allowing show/hide of borders of wind stability areas. - Wind stability areas and weather override regions are automatically placed in edit mode when created. - Fix bug introduced in v051 where squadrons weren't showing up for carriers and army bases. - Fix bug where weather override edit button wasn't displaying correctly when editing.
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good job!:D
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v054 is now available. First post updated. Downloads and change log available here:
http://org.craigandera.vmt.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com/stable/
The only significant change in this release is the addition of an opt-in update checker. If you turn this on (you’ll be prompted when you run the app), VMT will check to see if a new version is available every time you start it. I know people are sensitive to apps “phoning home” so this is disabled by default.
You can access the update settings using the new settings icon at the top right of the main screen. There, you can also manually check for updates using the appropriately labeled button:
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Hi Tyrant,
When you pull up your flight plan and then step through the weather say at 15min intervals, would it be possible to show your jets position at each weather step i.e every 15 mins along its flight path - this would help adjusting the flight plan timings to coincide with a weather window to suit the munitions you are carrying. As an example if you take laser guided munitions you can see from the weather map and your position on your flight path if you will arrive in a clear patch of sky and thus be ale to deploy.
Ps. I got the weather Map file - I will work on that many thanks.
Just a thought.
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Hi Tyrant,
When you pull up your flight plan and then step through the weather say at 15min intervals, would it be possible to show your jets position at each weather step i.e every 15 mins along its flight path - this would help adjusting the flight plan timings to coincide with a weather window to suit the munitions you are carrying. As an example if you take laser guided munitions you can see from the weather map and your position on your flight path if you will arrive in a clear patch of sky and thus be ale to deploy.
Ps. I got the weather Map file - I will work on that many thanks.
Just a thought.
I have it on my list to include the weather on each waypoint of the flight plan. Right now you can see things like speed and heading, but there’s no reason it couldn’t also include winds, clouds, temperature, etc.
Having the icons on the map for flights is also a good idea, but it would require removing the restriction that briefing files don’t let you advance the weather map past the mission time. I think that’s okay, since the (intentionally somewhat inaccurate) forecast is already present in the briefing. I’d just need to modify it to allow the map visualization rather than just the written forecast.
Suggestion noted. I’m sure you understand that even if I decide to do this, it won’t be soon.
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let me guess- your taking a couple of days off over Christmas ;0)
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let me guess- your taking a couple of days off over Christmas ;0)
Yes, indeed, and have been enjoying spending a bit more time on VMT. For a variety of reasons, over the last few months I have been unable to spend as much time on it as I would have liked. But I should be able to go back to making more steady progress, although I don’t think it will ever be what I’d call “rapid”. My ultimate vision for the thing is pretty huge, and that doesn’t even take into account bugfixes and feature requests that people will ask for.
Anyway, it’s been fun, and I hope people continue to find it useful.