DCS DEPLOYED! - My Lil Project

Runing an instant action mission before the Deployed mission clears that up, but kind of annoying.

Restarted my Viper campaign, this time fragged for a range day the first sortie. I think I got the comms flow but got lost on a couple items.

Startup>OPS check-in OK
Tower>Startup/Taxi/Takeoff>instructed to switch Approach
Approach check-in OK

I was never instructed to switch to Range Alpha, so:
Request off freq>freq change approved>check-in with Range Alpha OK
Request tasking OK

Dropped ordnance. Exited range with Request off freq>freq change approved

But then when I contacted Approach they kept telling me to go back to Range Alpha.

So I went to Range Alpha, did RTB and then off freq again, went back to Approach, and this time they told me to contact Center even when I was directly overhead Incirlik.

Not sure how the comm flow is on RTB, but looks like I messed up somewhere.

@jross just thinking out loud here, in the interest of getting DEPLOYED newbs onboard. Watching your YT tutorial, since the coms menu is difficult to read (white/yellow letters on blue sky) it was initially hard for me to know when and what you are communicating with DEPLOYED as compared to the normal DCS ATC which is repeated by default. How hard would it be to have the player’s coms to DEPLOYED repeated so that the call flow is more easily followed?

If that’s a no-go, then could you have the video host explain break it down Barnie style by walking the player through each phase of the communications flow as you do it on screen. “I’ve been cleared by the DCS tower for takeoff and departure, so now it’s time to check in with approach. I pull up the radio menu for Com 1, select F10, …”

After 2 days, I’m finally getting it, but afraid that some folks will throw up their hands in the meantime. The challenge is for the ones whom are used to having DCS repeat what they transmit. Less so for RL or former pilots/controllers, but a challenge for chair jockeys. Again, just thinking out loud here.

Another thought that I had. The initial fam flight/navex is too long. I know that like the Red Flag missions, you are introducing the coms system as well as give the new pilot a tour of the AO, but I would not make tanking mandatory yet. I would even go as far (short) as just flying out into the AO, hit one range, and RTB. Then make the missions progressively more challenging.

That’s a strange one indeed. I go back-and-forth all the time (cept in the last couple of weeks trying to get the code more ready).

Just out of curiosity, try doing this:

Exit DCS then find this folder:

X:\Users\YOUR USER NAME\AppData\Local\Temp\DCS.openbeta

Where X: is likely your C: drive.

And delete that folder or the contents of it. It is where DCS unpacks things as it is loading a mission.

Restart DCS and try the VR mission. It’s a long shot. This folder should be mostly empty (maybe an empty campaign or mission folder). I’ve seen it with THOUSANDS of files when things don’t exit correctly, taking a long time to load on future runs

I think there’s a setting to enlarge the font for this. I think I’ll redo the YT, inserting a blown up image? There’s really only a few menu items (under the F10 | Other one).

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That will help a lot, but IMO (and I’m probably the biggest Barnie in the room), you either need to explain it to them or have the program repeat what the player is transmitting. Or you could just wait for a DCS “influencer” looking for new and interesting content, to do this for you :laughing:. Wait 'till Mover, Gonky, and Wombat get a hold of it :beers:.

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There are 4 constant menu items

FLIGHT STATUS…
WINGMEN…
REQUEST…
RESPOND…
Two dynamic ones
[“With You”] <<< appears when you have a freq tuned in for a DEPLOYED agent
[“Repeat”] Have them repeat the last transmission

Not sure I’m following you. The “With You” could be anything but I had to pick a phrase that is generic[1], it could say many things but in the end all is doing is establishing comms with the AI agent, ie; “Hello”, “Checking in/back”,

[1] I did it this way (perhaps I didn’t make it clear) for VAICOMM use - to reduce the number of commands that VAICOM needs to import/process.

There are many agencies here; to change the F10 menu item every time to display, say:

“Say hello to CENTER”
“Check in with OPS”
“Check on RANGE ALPHA frequency”…
Etc, etc

…Is doable but VAICOM PRO sees these as separate and unique commands- but they all accomplish the same thing = establish comms with the person at the other end of the radio.

If you are on the wrong one it will send you to the correct one (obviously there’s a bug here based on the above feedback…looking at this now).

As for playing back what you are saying - to yourself; that was in there initially but I figured since I know what I’m saying (“With you” - checking on; “request higher/lower/approach”) the repeating of it seemed redundant.

Not a technical hurdle to put it in there; does requires the creation of more audio files, one for each, at a minimum, “With You” (or “Checking on”, etc);

I felt like it clogs up the airwaves: I push a button or say “With you” into the mic (thus VAICOM pushes the button for me) and an audio clip plays representing me saying what I just said. If that makes any sense.

The agents identify themselves when they respond (in keeping with ‘by the book’ radio comms) for the same reason they do it [supposed to do it] in the RW - so you know who you are talking to.

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I think I see the issue: A while back I ‘improved’ the algorithm to handle freq switching - and broke something when you go outside my normal way of doing things. Bad on my part.

Its not just of matter of your physical position in the world or it would be straight-forward. I’m on it. It’s a tough one to test; takes time.

Ok, I think I see what you’re getting at now.

But first…For DEPLOYED I want a more ‘open’ world if you will. Where the initial properties (characteristics) are defined - not by me, I just want to fly the machine - in a ‘world’ that is somewhat authentic. There is an AI thing making decisions in the background at a high level but it will vary. Within limits I want to ‘wonder’ what might happen on this flight (within limits of course).

I want something that is a representation of how the real thing works; like how starting up an F-18 requires a dozen steps and is represented in the sim pretty accurately (as far as I know). But, it will cause many people to go, “arg, too much to do here”. But, that’s how it is.

I fully understand this isn’t for the majority of the people. I’m okay with that.

I had to build (or try to) something that I find interesting - back to Mr. Gray’s thing again (a ‘Tech’ company…you make your own fun [not our job to]); it’s way too much work otherwise.

The DCS user interface (while flying) puts constraints on things; been a while but the DLC, static, pay-ware Campaigns you can get all seem to have a “press spacebar to continue” methodology likely cus the UI is limited; you have X number boxes to check in the process of mission Y; at specific points/times you hit the spacebar (or the like) and it goes to the next step.

These ‘present’ themselves well - they sound good for sure but are not very ‘broad’ or flexible. You should be able to play DEPLOYED and never see the exact same thing (it will be generally similar) and have the freedom to go wherever you want as far as the coms system is concerned. There are limits here but mostly just time to add them in.

I have to ‘abstract’ things to allow for flexibility. You should be able to go anywhere, at any time, and call anyone and get whatever services they provide (an approach, a target, a bearing/range to a tanker, an emergency CAS request; a popup task to go check out suspect vehicle, a “hey how’ya doing” response, etc).

On any mission in any ‘campaign’. And the campaigns can be created in a month or so, not a year (or more) .

There are limitations and it will take time.

Anyway, the ‘bones’ are there I just need to flesh it all out. Took 2 years to determined what DCS would even allow me to do; I still can’t do the comms thing in a ‘clean’ way but maybe someday they’ll give me the one API function I need. Not holding my breath. It was either ‘hack’ it or ignore it all together. So I hacked it, if you will.

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I get it - both your philosophy and methodology. Don’t change a thing. I’ll think about it from the tutorial side as I go and take notes as how I might handle presenting your model to someone for the first time.

Sorry to be a pain, but repeating these…
Once we land, exit the mission and DCS, is there something that we need to do in DEPLOYED to move on, or is this “automatic”?

Is there a VA profile to import into VAICOM yet? < small item

Thanks for all.

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No, nothing to do. There is no debriefing. Yet. You just show up for work the next day (next run of DCSGrok)…

I say ‘yet’ cus in all my research a constant gripe was how the “BDA” was terrible or, normally, completely absent. As is when you hit “COMMIT…” in DCSGrok the generals go and plan tomorrow (an ATO was created for something like 48 hour - to change anything within that time was nearly impossible).

However, I’ve already started the process to make this all semi-‘dynamic’; more like:

  • A plan is executed based on current conditions and state
  • The results of the current plan are NOT based solely on what 1 person does.
  • A probability function handles the big picture. I’m guess like Falcon 4 did but just a WAG on my part. You may lose the war even though you did good. Sheet happens :slight_smile: (obviously easy to change this, it’s just numbers).

Dang, I keep forgetting to get around to that. It should pick it all up after just one run; but that doesn’t help you really.

Can you refresh me on this process - importing this (I’m sure I’ve done it in years past); I normally just let it import on one mission and, since I don’t have many commands (by design) it never has to mess with it again…I think there’s a file you can export in VACOM right? Then uplaod it so you another can import it? Sounds familar.

This button?
image
Which creates a keywords.txt/csv file(s)?

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Yes, that’s it, but I think that you get the whole enchilada. I was thinking more just a set of commands related to DEPLOYED. I bet that you could use notepad++ and compare before and after to cull the new commands. You’ve got enough on your plate. I can take a crack at this when able.

You know, there is a certain beauty in that

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I’ll make a note for my next database export (an internal thing when I add targets or other modules) to export the text of the menu commands. It’s a really good idea in fact.

Today is smashing that bug whereby you don’t get switched from APPROACH to CENTER. Only time it seems to happen - it’s happening to me now too.

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I was thinking about this as well. I can adjust easily, but not everyone can. One other thing that could be added is a delay between contact and response. I noticed when the Deployed AI flights check in with an agency, the agency replies almost immediately, making it sound like one transmission rather than two.

That’s a good point. It might have put me off a little. It was so quick to reply that initially I thought that it was my transmission. The fine details.

Shouldn’t be a problem - the whole thing is one big timing trick. Just never added it. In the real world it’s rarely ever more than about a second for a response however, in this instance. Lot of variables.

Good point. I don’t recall if I’m using numbers for for DEPLOED flights other than you (that can be on or off)

Note there are compromises with callsigns as DCS only gives you, I think, 8 of them for most aircraft (some exceptions) - DCS is very incomplete in this area - “Panther 1 1” get chopped to “1 1” by DCS cus they don’t seem to have audio for that name. Deployed does however. Another hole in DCS World asset/content it appears. But it sure looks purty.

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Typically there are multiple versions, segregated into version sub-folders. Reposting the link if anyone wants to try it.

DEPLOYED - DCS World

NOTE1: THIS IS STILL IN A TESTING PHASE - so, just like DCS World, it is incomplete.
NOTE2: DEPLOYED for DCS World is NOT a tutorial environment. It is not strictly scripted - it is more ‘open’. And it requires you to know how to operate your aircraft and do things like air refuel. On a scale of 1 - 10 with 1 being “Instant Action” and 10 being as hardcore as DCS will allow, DEPLOYED is about a 7.5. All subjective of course.

With that in mind…

@Clutch and @chipwich have been a great help with this - it really needed someone else to poke at it to focus me in on improving a few things and creating some [simple/rough] tutorial videos. See above posts for an overall review. The folder contains a PDF Quick-Start. Here are links to the YT videos:

Part 1
NOTE: Flaming Cliffs modules are NOT supported (video is incorrect) and for the same reasons the Aerges Mirage F-1 was pulled out. Here’s the ones that are, depending on the campaign selected:

F-18, F-16, F15E, A-4E-C, AV8B-NA, F-5, VIggen
The A-10C-2 and F-14B will be added when I get time.

Part 1

Quick Start

Demo of radio usage

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Throwing up a quick edit of day one in the Viper deployment:

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Gonna grab a cup of coffee and watch :slight_smile:

Made some improvements recently. Several actually but want to finish the way I distribute objects (targets, mostly but other stuff) before throwing that version out.

Not sure what ver. you used there but I have ‘compacted’ the audio output a bit, and allowed you to adjust this (to reduce the delay between words).

Also, traffic calls have been on the list for a while - everything’s in place to make that work I just need to finish a couple other things. This gets into an interesting area…

What a lot of people don’t think about (not their fault, just not familiar) is: once you start doing ATC there are expectations - you have to follow ‘rules’.

With the advent of traffic calls DEPLOYED will be a [still simplified] version of “flight following”. DCS is too limited, starting on the ground even, right now, to go much beyond what we used to call “One in, one out” - manual control (like you would without RADAR, similar to the Marshal Stack thing). You don’t have fine enough control of the DCS AI aircraft, IMHO.

Flight Following (first link that the ‘Oracle’ [Google] spit out)

I’m kinda waiting for the Phantom to drop before I upload another update.

The method used to generate airborne traffic is being ‘ported’ over to ground objects:

it’s like, [in my best Valley Girl speak], “Like, totally, duh” to myself - why I didn’t do that earlier (I’m grinding on the content creation side right now). There will be ‘stuff’ on the ground now, everywhere (as time allows), once I’m happy with the scheme to ‘feed’ it all in there. Going to bump up the memory footprint unless I ‘stream’ the data from disk. Undecided.

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FWIW, if using VAICOM, you can say, for instance, “Tower, inbound” (or use the actual name if supported - it finds the closest one I think with the generic term ‘Tower’) instead of having to go through the menus ("Options, take n, take n, etc).

I’m keeping these commands generic to keep the list small; you can add your own aliases of course. For instance on my install I added aliases for “With You”, such as: “Up yours”, “Checking ON”, etc.

And though it’s hard to find, there are VAICOM commands not in the default DCS F10 menus…off the top of my head, with a wingman, “Fence Check” I don’t think is a ‘published’ F10 item but it works. Or did last time I tried it.

For DEPLOYED[1] just, “Action, ‘With you’” or “Action, Request xxx”. Assuming you’ve imported the commands via the 'Import via F10" checkbox.

[1] Top of my list is to put the menu commands into the ‘Docs’ folder for quick import into VAICOM. Started this just slipped my mind.

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