DCS Tauntaun Live Editor

Flight Sims
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In an infinite series of tools the community are making to keep DCS interesting, here’s an online web planning and mission viewer for DCS missions.

Tauntaun Live Editor is browser based collaborative mission planning tool for DCS events.

So what is it then? It’s a way to load up a DCS mission, display it on an online web map, and let people plan or update the mission collaboratively. For our recent DCS Liberation planning hijinks this saves having all of us install the Liberation client, as we can just use a browser, point at a server with this tool set up and go. Neat!

So to set up you can download a release and get it running. You will need a free Mapbox client token (effectively a key to be able to get the nice maps working).

So here’s how it looks when running, with this mission being our recent fling into WWII and Normandy using Liberation v3 preview. This does look like France.

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The menu in the top left reveals some goodies:

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Importantly you can see that I’m in an ‘Admin’ mode here (hey, it’s my box) so I can even save the DCS mission file back - this allows people to collaborate on the flight plan just using a browser.

One thing you can now do is then select who does what role, like this:

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…so to join up like this:

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Plus even change loadout for my chosen plane (I went for a mix of beer to give to the enemy this turn)

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In ‘Commander Mode’ (epaulets not included) I can even add a whole flight

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I’m having some trouble editing waypoints, but I’ll figure it out. There’s a decent wiki already on how to use this thing here:

Ah - I got it, if you are a flight lead (or Commander of course) you can move/add/edit waypoints and then save the mission back - nice!

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So theoretically we can now participate in the liberation campaign at any time using this app.
1 am here now so I expect tomorrow when I awake fresh there will be explicit instructions on how to join and leave without borking it :heart_eyes:

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Yeah, I think it might be useful for people to get a feel for an upcoming mission, suggest edits and then pick a slot - all without having to install anything.

So a typical Liberation co-op sequence could be something like:

  1. @BeachAV8R works outs an ATO based on people shouting random things at him.

  2. He gets a mission ready in the Liberation client and then opens up something like this on the web.

  3. People shout more random things at him until he edits it, or people edit it themselves. We use the filled slots to see who wants to play.

  4. People in Europe time-zones play a co-op mission when they can all get together (sort of looking for a ring-leader for that @Troll :wink:) and we move on a turn.

  5. People in North America time-zones play a turn.

  6. We all laugh at the results or lack thereof. The enemy remains undefeated. Repeat to 1.

Not sure if it’ll work but if we can get enough people interested then could be worth a go. Not sure how often people could commit to playing (maybe once a week?) or where (@BeachAV8R’s server might be ok for Europe, or we just copy files to let someone host it) or why (existential dread etc.). Anyway, one good thing is that if people can’t make it then the turn can wait, so it can all be very relaxed.

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You sure that’s a good idea…?
I mean, said people started the last two world wide wars, as it were. :wink:

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We didn’t start the fire
It’s been always burning
Since the world’s been turning

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No, we didn’t light it, but did we try to fight it…? :wink:

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Not really. That’s the human thing. When we see fire we don’t think “OMG, FIRE! RUN!!” ,instead we go there and throw/pour things into it…

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And that’s a pretty accurate description of “THE INTERNETS!”

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Understand Captain America GIF

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I clicked this expecting to see the cold and dark startup video from Wags

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I wonder if anyone is as stupid as I am. Can you explain in plain English about the map token please. The readme thinks we are all coder’s “enter password in this font” wtf
Stick a smiley here in case you think it’s a rant :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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Yeah, the install instructions are pretty rough. Here’s how the map token works:

  • The app uses Mapbox.com for the display of the background tiles, the world map. That’s essentially free to use, but does need a ‘token’ (essentially a password) with your install to work.

  • Sign up at mapbox.com. Once you’ve created an account your main login page will show a section called ‘Access Tokens’. The default public token is created for you, and you need to use that. Hit the clipboard icon on it to copy it (it’ll be a long series of letters and numbers, e.g. pk.ey123131 etc.

  • Take that bit of text and put it in config file here:

C:\Users\(you)\AppData\Roaming\tauntaun-live-editor\config.json

  • The config.json file has a blank entry that looks like ‘map_token’: ‘’ - so paste your token in between the quotes, so it looks like ‘map_token’: ‘pk.ey123131…’ and save the file.

Now you should be able to run ‘tauntaun_live_editor.exe’ from where you unzipped it, and then access http://localhost:8080 to see the app. I need to ‘right mouse click’ the menu < on the top left, and then enter the default password of ‘1234’ to load up a mission. Once you’ve done that then close/reopen the browser and you get to see what a regular user would then see, e.g. picking a faction etc.

It is a fairly brutal set of instructions to run one of these on a server, so hopefully that helps.

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