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Dynamic Missions/Campaign?

ithai

ithai

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1
Hi all,

I'm not sure if this was discussed before but here goes:
IMO when it comes to gameplay, one of the most important aspects is randomness - or more precisely - intelligent randomness.

Do you think it is possible to create an addon for FSX that will act as a driver for a dynamic campaign (such as in Falcon) and will be able to control simobjects and monitor events. In other words - create a persistent, dynamic scenario affected by a single pilot or even a number of pilots in a multiplayer environment?

My initial thought was to have an external process which communicates with FSX, places and controls objects - creates fx and listens to events generated by user actions (eg. firing a missile).

Is it worth a try :confused:

TIA,

Ithai.
 
You can write an external application to interface with FSX using Sim Connect. You don't need to have an external application to do this. You can do triggers and logic within the mission to give you different paths based on player actions.

You can drop objects or bombs and have them react by adding effects and change the path of the mission if successful. I am sure you can do the same with rockets, it is just a little more involved.

Objects, mobile objects, and AI aircraft and vehicles can be controlled within the mission. They can also change routes, appear and not appear based on the players actions in the mission.

Yes it's worth a try because it can be done :)

Gunner
 
The main problem with "random" actions in missions is that they're not really random. You can only choose between certain actions you defined before. It's not that fsx creates objects or assigns waypoints by random.
I like the idea of an external tool to do that but it would still be incredibly tough to get interaction between the user and those objects, because how should this work?
Finally, fsx is just no war "simulation", it was never good for shooting down something or bombarding stuff below. Why force it to do so? ;)
 
I have a similar need...

I want to create missions that change based on pilot descisions made along the way. My thought is to query the pilot periodically using menu prompt triggers,though I am not sure how this will look in the mission xml. It could be sticky.

For instance, after landing at airstrip X, he is informed that the patient on his plane has gone from seriou to critical. Also, the O2 ran out... Now he must decide to either fly to Y or Z.

If the patient's condition and the O2 supply randomly changes,
I am not sure how I will create realistic outcomes at both Y and Z, depending on which he chooses. I have a bit of learning to do yet...
 
Of course it's a great idea to implement non-linear mission structure. If you look at adventure games today, lots of them still have linear stories, which is a bit ridiculous, but as it takes lots and lots of work to implement more than 1 way to solve a mission most games choose the linear option.

I tried one mission where the user has some 5 or 6 objectives and has to decide himself what to do.
Still that didn't include random actions.
If you use random actions to confront the user with different scenarios you have to program a logical way for all possibilities. That's a lot of work. ;)
 
I suppose, in my case, if circumstances randomly cause the O2 to run out or the patient to go critical, the outcome will be that said patient will not survive the trip if the pilot elected to fly to Z (becaues it took too long, for example). But for that outcome to happen, the patient (object) would need to have timer triggers or some other device that knew it had "latched" into critical condition (perhaps due to time and altitude) and had "latched" into hypoxia and finally, "latched" into the hearafter.

How hard is it to create "objects" like that?
 
You don't need those "objects". All you need is a script. For complex missions I sometimes draw a diagram on paper to see what actions I need to trigger in which cases.

In your case you want to create a random action that says "low O2" or "passenger gets critical" or "some other malfunction".
Easiest way to do this is to create 3 counter triggers for example. The random actions sets one of the counters to 1.
Now each of those counters will fire if set to 1. All following actions (timers, proximity triggers, dialogs,...) are activated by this counter trigger.
 
Hi,

As has been pointed out you can't do that with the mission system as it stands, but you can do it using an extension. The good news is that it's already been written :)

Check out the manual and free version here. You're looking for the PROFILE and PROFILENAME commands in the manual. They let you set values either as set values, or based on the environment, which can be passed from one mission to another.

Cheers,
Jim
 
Reviving an old question.

OK, I know I'm reviving an old question but I'm new to FSX and I have been building a mission with the Instant mission Maker. This tool doesn't seem to allow for branching conditional operations in the flight. If I use ME or find another way to code, can I make a mission were you have to do multiple tasks like fly a slalom and then a loop followed up by a nose dive and say that you have to complete all three tasks hitting every way-point within three minutes?

I have read you can have conditional effects on environments and here you say the mission can change on users action. Could The mission be set to work in such a way that if they miss the loop they are told to move on and then they jump straight to the dive? Then at the end of the mission it could play audio based on finishing the loop or missing it saying "you completed x of 3 tasks."

I want the mission to have a set time limit. No sight seeing just complete as many tasks as you can in the short time limit. Is this possible? I have been told on other forums that it cant be done but The discussions on this forum suggest it should be possible.

I'm an artist first and a programer about 8th on the list so I would need help if it requires hand coding the xml or something like that but if it is possible I would like to try.

Thanks even if the answer is "No it cant be done" at least then I will know.
 
All your questions are answered in the default FSX and Acceleration missions. You can do whatever they did in those missions - and a lot more.

In short: yes to all.
 
???

OK. How? I'm Using IMM and as I said I'm not really a programer I have read over the SDK and the OPT doesn't make a lot of sense to me. My learning style is not simply reading static pages of a manual so much as asking questions and reviving feedback to test. Which is why I singed up fro three forums (two of which told me this couldn't be done) So if you know how to do this please elaborate. I have FSX with the SP but not Acceleration. Do i need to get ME? Dose anyone know a trick to make this work with IMM?

Thanks again.
 
I have never used that Instant Mission Maker, but guessing from the name I expect it'll be not so easy to develop advanced missions with it.
I see no reason not to look into the SDK and learn a bit about creating missions with the OPT. The principle is rather simple: You use triggers to run actions (dialogs, timers,...) in order to create interaction between the user and the mission script.
Using a default mission sample it'll be very easy to learn things. Start with the tutorial missions that keeps things simple: a couple of triggers and dialog actions, that's all for a start.
 
Hi,

FSXME will allow you to do everything you can do with the OPT. The latter has the benefit that it's free, but FSXME is written to make things much simpler to pick up; you can actually see what's happening on screen rather than just reading lists of visually unrelated text.

One additional benefit of FSXME is that it will let you work much more easily with the extension that comes with it, SimVar. One of the extra commands you get will let you build up a suite of missions and have each one react to things that happened in other missions, by storing values in a file that gets shared between them.

You can try FSXME for free of course, so there's nothing to lose by trying it. Oh, BTW - I'm the author, so I may be slightly biased :)

Cheers,
Jim
 
Thanks

Thanks Jim. So FSME can truly do anything that the OPT can do. Is there anything that neither could do and I would then have to hand code the xml?
 
Hi,

There are a few situations where the OPT generates incorrect XML, but only in fairly obscure places. I do hear of people getting so upset with it that they decide it's easier to write pure XML though.

FSXME will do all the XML editing for you; it won't do object placement because that's what the OPT (i.e. Object Placement Tool) is good at :)

Just try both out and see which you prefer. Load up one of the missions in the SDK into the OPT and see how long it takes you to work out how it hangs together, then try the same in FSXME. I'd guess days if not weeks on the former, probably an hour or two in the latter.

Cheers,
Jim
 
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