Working on a gigantic DCG campaign...

[Rami]

Reply...

Ettico,

Outstanding work! I must say though, I never got the hang of DCG.

 

[Ghostrider]

Possible to make a slightly less ambitious version work?

 

[Hooraw]

Missing Ships found..

Thanks for your help!

Look in the archives. VN_zuiho should be in the Japanese Marianas Carriers and the san diego under pen32win or af=midway.


Talon

 

[Ettico]

Ettico,

Outstanding work! I must say though, I never got the hang of DCG.

I know, Rami. Building the campaigns is definitely not the fun part of DCG.

The mission builder interface is fun and intuitive, but building a DCG campaign is mostly file editing, and each file has to be in a specific format, with no syntax errors, or it won't work. And when you have a syntax error, it is usually hard to find. In many cases you don't even know what you're looking for.

And there are fine points and tricks. Some of these work like messages to DCG, telling it what kind of missions to build.

It gets much easier with experience. Talon and I may be the only ones still around who have the experience to be able to build DCG campaigns without tearing our hair out.

The final result is, when you have a good set of campaign files, it works. With help from AIRBOSS, it's ideal for carrier battles, but also works well on certain types of land based campaigns.

I like it because, if you build and fly your own campaigns as I do, you don't know exactly what is going to happen in the missions, because you don't build the missions. You set up the campaign, and DCG and AIRBOSS builds the missions.

But I know a lot of players enjoy building missions, and many enjoy building and flying reenactments of actual missions and campaigns. DCG doesn't exactly do that. You can put the exact order of battle into a DCG campaign, but the missions that come out are up to DCG.

 

[Ettico]

Possible to make a slightly less ambitious version work?

Yes, it is possible. As far as I know, the version of AIRBOSS I made to manage a phased campaign works. What it needs to make it work is a complete set of files.

My idea for creating a phased campaign was to build 3 "normal" campaigns - Truk, Marianas, and Leyte Gulf - and then fuse them together into a single 3-phase campaign. But because of other modifications I've made to AIRBOSS, I now need to re-do all the campaigns.

I've added a more synchronized task force movement and an alternating attack-defense method of engagement which allows more air groups to be in a campaign without overloading the missions. Also the ability to cripple land bases by bombing them, which is necessary for the Truk and Marianas battles. All these added abilities need to be integrated into the individual campaigns.

 

[Talon]

It gets much easier with experience. Talon and I may be the only ones still around who have the experience to be able to build DCG campaigns without tearing our hair out.

No we just get more gray hairs working with it,LOL.

I started doing campaigns with DCG right after it came out. I haven't done any in about a year though. Most people didn't want to fool around with it much but a few good campaigns were done years ago. My Fav was Burma42 and now with the new scenery and planes it's so much better. Even the stock campaigns that came with it are easily tweaked to make them better.

2 of my favs that I did were The Solomons and Malta which I lost in a HD crash years ago.

I plan on getting back to doing Carrier attacks on Japan with DCG. I started it but never finshed it but what I had was pretty intense.


Talon

 

[Ettico]

It gets much easier with experience. Talon and I may be the only ones still around who have the experience to be able to build DCG campaigns without tearing our hair out.

No we just get more gray hairs working with it,LOL.

I started doing campaigns with DCG right after it came out. I haven't done any in about a year though. Most people didn't want to fool around with it much but a few good campaigns were done years ago. My Fav was Burma42 and now with the new scenery and planes it's so much better. Even the stock campaigns that came with it are easily tweaked to make them better.

2 of my favs that I did were The Solomons and Malta which I lost in a HD crash years ago.

I plan on getting back to doing Carrier attacks on Japan with DCG. I started it but never finshed it but what I had was pretty intense.


Talon

I started trying to build DCG campaigns years ago. I made my share of boo-boos, and also found that the earlier versions of DCG had problems. DCG was always beta, and it seemed like improvements would be made only to have other problems pop up. I eventually talked Lowengrin into fixing the last 2 major problems with version 6.3, resulting in version 6.32.

Version 6.32 is adequately sound. It is still plagued with air-to-air collisions, but AIRBOSS mostly alleviates that by spreading the formations. It will order strikes against destroyed task groups, which AIRBOSS fixes by editing out destroyed task groups. Pen32win reported a problem with the "start date' option for task forces. I've never checked that out, because there is nothing I can do about it. There is no problem if all the task forces are present at the beginning of the campaign.

And now, at last, I have a QBasic compiler and know how to use it. So I can write code in QBasic and convert the code into executable files. No more messy running programs from the QBasic editor.

Now I just need to figure out how to write an executable batch file which can sequentially execute the executables. If you know what I mean.

BTW, if you need any help suppressing those Japanese airfields in your upcoming carrier raids on Japan, it's on the way.