Trying to make some sense of things...

[Stig]

First off, thanks SO MUCH to those of you who are pioneering the modding efforts for this sim. You're singlehandedly keeping this thing alive, and I for one, appreciate it.

But... (and you knew there was a "but" didn't you...?)

While trying to collect all these new missions and campaigns and mods, I am still not very clear on "how things are done". I also think (I won't say I know because at this moment I'm too confused to know for sure) that different people are doing things different ways. This, I believe, needs rectification, because as more and more of us get clear on how this stuff is done, the more likely we are to pitch in and add stuff of our own. And, the fewer variations there are on procedures, the less confusion there'll be.

To wit: I have added the T-34 Gunnery Range, Kyth's newest mission and am still trying to figure out how to get all three Desert Mod scenarios to appear for selection.

This morning, when I launched the sim, I find the Gunnery Range in my User Made Mission menu. Shouldn't this be in the Tutorial menu?

Also, shouldn't there be an entry for the Desert Mod I've installed on the right hand side Campaigns Menu, with all the desert missions (eventually, three?) in the left side? As of now the one desert mission I've managed to successfully install is in the User Made Missions.

And, to top it off, shouldn't the campaign menu list be on the LEFT side of that screen, with the missions under each campaign on the RIGHT? (Yeah, that's a small quibble, but it adds to the confusion, no doubt).

Anyway.... I think our little community needs to make sure that when we offer one-off missions, those are packed up so as to populate user made missions menus, and if they're campaigns or linked missions, they need to create and populate new campaign menus...

And, we need some real clear, profusely illustrated tutorials on how ALL this stuff is done. For those of you whose talents go more to actually discovering and working this stuff out, I offer to you help in creating clear tutorials. If you can show me how to do a process such that I can do it myself without help (and without mistakes), I can then turn it into a tutorial guide so that we can teach others "how to fish" rather than to "eat fish for a day".

PM me if you're interested....

[frinik]

Stig you have to understand that the game was designed by the developers to follow a certain logic. ; campaigns are a series of missions made by the same person on a common theme or tank i.e. the T34/85, T34/76(South Campaign) the Panzer IV or Stug IIID or F...

Single missions are just that , a single mission either taken from an existing campaign and featuring a new tank ex the Nepokrytoe German mission which has been made for the Panzerjaeger I, the T34/7r, the Tiger II  and the Hetzer.Or the Zawody one made for the Panzer II Trophy tank, the KV1 and the  Mathilda I think.

The new user-made campaigns that you find in the campaign game menu as part of new mods releases are there because I suspect the modders incorporated their new  campaign into the new release by manually adding them into the cm_campaign folder .The game engine cannot tell a campaign from a single user made mission , it has to be added by anybody who wants a particular item to figure in a selected place in the game menu.


User-made missions on the other hand, are for totally new missions which don't fit in the other categories. The gunnery mission cannot be part of the tutorials because it was made independantly by sombody who was not part of the original team of modders who made the various mods.Likewise any user-made mission or campaign you make will end up in the user-game menu by default unless you input it into the campaign folder of your game.

[Stig]

I *think* I understand most of that....

My point is, these decisions probably need to be made intelligently, so that the missions end up in their logical places.

If missions are part of a standalone "mod", wouldn't that create a "campaign-level" entry in the right menu, and then, when clicked, the single missions within that mod would appear in the left?

I don't understand quite about the Tutorial missions, and why the Tank Gunnery mission couldn't end up there. If you open the right files for the stock tutorials, I'm sure you'll see references to the right locations and associations that land them there. It would seem the Gunnery Range could then be editied to follow that convention and thus would end up in that menu (where, in my humble opinion, it belongs... along with perhaps ranges for the German tanks, too... )

I do understand fully about "standalone missions", and have no problem with them landing in a bin with all other ad hoc missions. But for those mods that do have some association with each other, it does seem that the game is set up to better accommodate that kind of structure, whether all the missions are created simultaneously or not.

[Rends]

Stig. You can place your missions where you want.
If you want to create a campaign add a line in the    camp_list.engcfg and create all nessessary files that makes  a campaign
If you want the mission as a tutorial add a line at the teach() section in the main_camp.engcfg.
If you want to make it a single mission add it to the seingle section in same file and if you want it as usermade mission than add it to the user_camp.engcfg. You can organize all missions the way you want it just needs to be added to the right place.

[Kyth]

You can organize all missions the way you want it just needs to be added to the right place.

Yes, I second that,

I normally use the 'user_camp' as a temporary holding area, until I can slot the mission under a separate grouping.

[frinik]

Thanks Kyth and Rends that's whaat I was trying to tell Stig although obviously you were clearer than I was...
Stig essentially it's up to you to organise you game menu the way you like it. I don't think the modders are going to change the way they organise things...

[Kyth]

Hi Stig,

I suppose, at some point down the road, I could do some compilations for a campaign...

But at the moment there's only my one dinky little mission!! 

[Stig]

Ah, this is what I was looking for. Thanks, Rends, for that clarification.

Knowing what files to edit, and where, and with what, to get the desired effect, is exactly the main thrust of this thread.

All this knowledge is NOT intuitive, and thus, it needs to be captured and put in one place, where those who are inclined can start producing stuff or using stuff without going through weeks and months of "discovery" as we're having to do.

As I said before, what we desperately need is a series of good, clear, profusely illustrated tutorials on this stuff, all in one place. And then... as the saying goes, "if you build it, they will come".

[Kyth]

Hi Jennie,

How may I assist?

 

[frinik]

Kyth I could almost hear you bat your eyes