Why Aren't We Seeing More User Created Missions?

[MGMSwordsman]

With apologies and appreciation for those great missions already created, is it because of the complexity of the mission editor?  It seems to me that the mission editor is in great need of a GUI.  I think that would perhaps cause more people to build missions and even campaigns.

Thoughts?  

[AEthelraedUnraed]

IMHO, the main reason is the amount of work needed to create good missions.

• Speaking from experience, most of the time it takes to create a mission, goes into research. I read Wikipedia, websites, books, interviews etc. to find a mission or period that sounds interesting. Then I try to find relevant mission logs, or failing that, other literature that gives some more details about what happened. Often I end up spending hours cross-referencing various sources before I've got a good idea of what went on during a particular mission. Of course, if you don't make a historical mission, you can skip most of this step.
• Then comes the actual mission building. The logic itself is easy enough; it might take me 15 minutes up to an hour or so, depending on how complex the mission is. Placement of mission objects takes a bit more time though, especially if you want to place your targets in such a way that they blend into the terrain. That means you have to manually place every object. Scenery again takes a lot of time. Clutter and static aircraft at your base, things to see along the route, smoke and other effects, front-line gunfire, that sort of stuff.
• Next, there's the main testing phase. Often it's back to the drawing board as things don't work out the way they're supposed to.
• When I'm satisfied that the mission performs well enough and is fun, I finalise the map markings and mission briefing. Usually, I also provide some historical background or some backstory. This also might take a few more hours of research into the general situation on the front.
• Then there's another testing round. The mission logic should be alright at this point, but usually I have some minor details I want to change.
• Finally, after all this, the mission is complete and I can get on with the next mission in the campaign.

I suppose other mission writers like @Jaegermeister and @Juri_JS have a similar workflow?

In my case, it's not the mission logic (where the perceived "complexity" of the editor comes from) that's the main cause of missions taking so long to write. It's rather research and the extremely easy (but very tedious) placement of objects that takes the most time/effort.

[AndreiTomescu]

I'm a scripted campaigns fan. Imho, there's nothing better than those.

Regarding your question, after helping a bit some really awesome mission creators on the old Il-2, I can really say that a full campaign might take 6 month to get fully done. And a huge amount of work.

Some side factors:

- future expected changes in AI and game overall might brake the finished campaign, so some creators are holding back until the game is more mature.

- the new career is much , much, MUCH better compared to the old one and thus the dire need of scripted campaigns is less dire

- the new setting, Korea, is quite a mystery compared to WW2, thus harder to document

- the devs haven't released any payware campaigns yet, maybe that would be good. And profitable.

- some creators wait for the fabled DLC to bring naval into action

- the limited nr of available planes make historical accuracy difficult. A scripted campaign is, by nature, historical accurate: tells a story

While craving for some new Scripted campaigns, I realise these are truly valuable while connected to a story. And we lack those dearly. If dynamic campaign will be implemented, that will reduce further the pool of scripted campaigns consumers. But still, the night is young. 

[AndreiTomescu]

P.S. oh, and the devs decision to ignore the UN aspect of the war, like Australian, South African, British pilots, al least on the available aircrafts, created a bit of frustration that inhibited, justified, imho, mission creation.

On the other hand, the impossibility to be just a regular guy, not the big brass commander in career might encourage campaigns where you are such.

[AEthelraedUnraed]

16 minutes ago, AndreiTomescu said:

P.S. oh, and the devs decision to ignore the UN aspect of the war, like Australian, South African, British pilots, al least on the available aircrafts, created a bit of frustration that inhibited, justified, imho, mission creation.

No worries, I'm working on a RAAF campaign 🙂

Of course, another reason that writing missions takes so long, is that one might get carried away, especially if one starts editing surfaces:

These two villages aren't in the game, yet they were attacked in a mission I'm recreating (or at least, two unnamed villages within a mile of these). So rather than have the mission target another village, I decided to just build them😅

The rapid just before and underneath the bridge is actually animated!

These are satellite images of the actual villages. Of course they're modern, but I know the villages already existed back then and had both fields and waterways close by, so I used these as a starting point.

[Jaegermeister]

6 hours ago, MGMSwordsman said:

With apologies and appreciation for those great missions already created, is it because of the complexity of the mission editor?

No

6 hours ago, MGMSwordsman said:

 It seems to me that the mission editor is in great need of a GUI. 

That is in fact exactly what the new revised and improved Task Editor is.

6 hours ago, MGMSwordsman said:

I think that would perhaps cause more people to build missions and even campaigns.

I believe most people want someone else to do it for them so that all they need to do is fire up the game and play.

6 hours ago, MGMSwordsman said:

Thoughts?  

Creating a scripted campaign is a lot of work. There are very few people that are interested enough in the content of a mission, or series of missions, to do all the research regarding what fits on the maps with the specific planes we have available. Then the process of condensing that information into basic facts that can be put into mission design is tedious and sometimes frustrating due to lack or information resources. Korea is not called “The forgotten war” for no reason. Many of the official records were classified due to Cold War concerns about national security, and are still only available with specific requests from a family member or in the few available books on the subject.

I can count the people I expect to see make Scripted Campaigns in the near future on the fingers of one hand, and all you have to do is read through the posts in the mission builder section of the forum to know who they are.

I have kept estimated records and for me, each campaign mission takes a minimum of 30 hours or work, and if you hit a technical problem it can be half again or double that much. With this in mind, a 15 mission scripted campaign would take 450 to 600 work hours to complete. That equates to 10 or 15 weeks of full time work. Remind me again how long the game has been published and available to most players…. Oh yeah, since August 4th, which is about 4 weeks.

In my case, I had the advantage of starting work on a campaign during beta testing, and using the missions for that purpose. I am sure there will be more user made content coming out, but not for another month or three.

 

5 hours ago, AEthelraedUnraed said:

I suppose other mission writers like @Jaegermeister and @Juri_JS have a similar workflow?

This is all 100% correct. My work flow is slightly different, but very similar with the same main components.

I would add in that for me the generic plane skins, story line, mission briefings and GUI graphics to go with the campaign take an additional week or so to write, edit, format and translate to various languages. Many thanks go out to the uncredited translators who help with that chore!

In short, most people are just not interested enough in a specific topic to do the necessary work to make it happen. There really are no shortcuts, and no changes you make to the Mission Editor interface are going to all of a sudden cut the work of making a good single mission to a 1 hour process.

🙂

Edited September 1 by Jaegermeister

[Juri_JS]

7 hours ago, MGMSwordsman said:

 It seems to me that the mission editor is in great need of a GUI.  

Not really. The editor uses a visual scripting system, once you understand how it works, mission creation is actually quite fast, especially when you work with group files, so you don't have to create the same logic from scratch in every mission.

In Il-2 GB, I could have released more campaigns. I still have several unreleased, more or less finished campaign projects. When I am not fully satisfied with a campaign it doesn't get released. As I don't get paid for my work and there isn't a financial incentive, I sometimes just don't have the motivation to finish a project, when I've lost interest in the topic.

Edited September 1 by Juri_JS

[DFLion]

Good to see both of your reply's on using the IL-2 mission editor. It took me quite a while to learn how to use it, with some very good help from Jaegermeister and checking out your missions Juri_JS. The reason I stuck to single missions and not campaigns was that I didn't have time to do them because my volunteer work.

I now have some more time and appreciate you setting up a Campaign template to help the process Jaegermeister, so I will give it a go. I am currently doing these single missions using ' Osprey Aircraft of the Aces' for historical Korean reference material. The IL-2 Korea flight sim is a great historical part of our aviation history when the first jet fighters took our sky's. It has even greater potential 'when and if' the Aircraft Carrier comes into the game with a good compliment of aircraft.

I am starting to get much better and faster at the mission editor and am starting use 'group files' to save time, as you mentioned Juri_JS. As the Flight Sim matures I am sure mission making will get much better with hopefully more players taking it on.

DFLion

[Mark_Krieger]

Players with much more experience with the editor already explained a lot of good reasons. I'm not so used to the editor and usually in GB I just adapt single player campaigns to cooperative ones to play with my virtual squadron. In my opinion, one of the most important reasons to not try to edit missions or campaigns at the moment is the awful AI behaviour. So although in GB I loved Scripted campaigns and career mode, I lost almost all interest in single player missions or campaigns in Korea until the AI behaviour seriously improves. 

[DFLion]

I must completely agree with you 'Mark_Krieger' the AI behavior must be seriously improved. I have already reported this situation to the IL-2 Team and I know they having a close look at it.

I just finished flying my last posted mission 'DF_B-29_Attack'. During the mission I was bounced by the F-80's, after shooting one down and running out of ammo, I returned to Antung to refuel/rearm and was chased by the remaining F-80's 'around and around' the airfield until they either ran out of ammunition or where shot down by the airfield defenses. This really didn't happen historically. The same thing happened when I was followed by Migs flying an F-86A all the way back to Suwon from 'Mig Ally'. The Migs had run out of ammunition and just about all their fuel, this really didn't happen? 

DFLion

[AEthelraedUnraed]

5 hours ago, Jaegermeister said:

[...] lack or information resources. Korea is not called “The forgotten war” for no reason. Many of the official records were classified due to Cold War concerns about national security, and are still only available with specific requests from a family member or in the few available books on the subject.

I should add that actually the main reason I'm doing a RAAF campaign, is the availability (and quality) of No. 77 Sqn's Operation Record Books. Many of the UN allies have published those resources that are of no importance to national security anymore, freely available online. The US instead hides away everything, at best making things available to members of their military exclusively (see @Dash,Polder's post here https://forum.il2-series.com/topic/3608-the-mwr-libraries-and-data-source/). This in itself prohibits, or at least severely hinders, the creation of any historical campaign for the US.

Edited September 1 by AEthelraedUnraed

[AEthelraedUnraed]

4 minutes ago, DFLion said:

I must completely agree with you 'Mark_Krieger' the AI behavior must be seriously improved. I have already reported this situation to the IL-2 Team and I know they having a close look at it.

I just finished flying my last posted mission 'DF_B-29_Attack'. During the mission I was bounced by the F-80's, after shooting one down and running out of ammo, I returned to Antung to refuel/rearm and was chased by the remaining F-80's 'around and around' the airfield until they either ran out of ammunition or where shot down by the airfield defenses. This really didn't happen historically. The same thing happened when I was followed by Migs flying an F-86A all the way back to Suwon from 'Mig Ally'. The Migs had run out of ammunition and just about all their fuel, this really didn't happen? 

DFLion

Sounds like you didn't cancel the Command:Attack MCU, or provide an alternative task for the F-80s. The Attack MCU by itself doesn't stop, so if you don’t have a Force Complete as well as a new task, you've literally ordered the flight to follow the MiGs forever and fight to the death. In IL2, you should generally implement disengagement scenarios yourself; e.g. a Force Complete followed by a high priority waypoint after X aircraft die, or when the enemy reaches a certain area. The one exception is the "RTB on damage" option, but it requires a friendly airfield to return to.

[AndreiTomescu]

Another side reason is VR. Yes, not joking. Although i'm not in VR yet (love to, but my fps are only acceptable in 2k, I fear what a half value would be), my favourite scripted campaign designer flyes VR exclusively. And until that's better, I doubt I might convince him to start such an endeavour. Not that i haven't tried.... 🙂 

[MGMSwordsman]

Thanks for the great replies guys. 

[Jaegermeister]

5 hours ago, AndreiTomescu said:

Another side reason is VR. Yes, not joking. Although i'm not in VR yet (love to, but my fps are only acceptable in 2k, I fear what a half value would be), my favourite scripted campaign designer flyes VR exclusively. And until that's better, I doubt I might convince him to start such an endeavour. Not that i haven't tried.... 🙂 

My secret to having a good experience in VR is not upgrading my headset. With an older HP Reverb G2, the resolution is not a problem for the game to render and it works just fine. I am getting performance equal to or better than in Great Battles before I upgraded my other computer components. 

If I do upgrade to something like the Pimax Crystal Light, I am sure that resolution adjustments could make it run just fine, but it would be about the same visual experience as what I am seeing now. Why spend $1K for that?

 

6 hours ago, AEthelraedUnraed said:

I should add that actually the main reason I'm doing a RAAF campaign, is the availability (and quality) of No. 77 Sqn's Operation Record Books. Many of the UN allies have published those resources that are of no importance to national security anymore, freely available online. The US instead hides away everything, at best making things available to members of their military exclusively (see @Dash,Polder's post here https://forum.il2-series.com/topic/3608-the-mwr-libraries-and-data-source/). This in itself prohibits, or at least severely hinders, the creation of any historical campaign for the US.

I have done that before too. When I find a good source, sometimes the Campaign comes directly from that instead of coming up with an idea and then trying to find the information to fill in the details.

 

Edited September 1 by Jaegermeister

[LuftManu]

I started to work https://forum.il2-series.com/topic/4253-red-sunset-1948-fictional-missions/#comment-28703

I expent many hours already for MP missions and Pa38 server.

There is also things to be added, changes being made... 

But it takes a looooooooooot time! so there is that 🙂

 

 

[sandmarken]

16 hours ago, AEthelraedUnraed said:

No worries, I'm working on a RAAF campaign

Oh no, this is what i was working on! I guess i can leave that project then.

I was sure you said earlier that you had been working on a campaign for the SAAF 😅

[AndreiTomescu]

2 minutes ago, sandmarken said:

this is what i was working on!

oh, you, man! 🙂 so you did start working on it....

Don't leave the project. 2 projects can be joined into a large and awesome one. 

Also there is that "air special ops of the Korean war" idea of mine......kind of the Allmost campaing from GB.... if you guys wanna hear more of it.... but i'm just a textier/researcher/tester. The hard work of actual mission design has to fall on somebody experienced. and open to adventures.  

[sandmarken]

2 minutes ago, AndreiTomescu said:

oh, you, man! 🙂 so you did start working on it....

Don't leave the project. 2 projects can be joined into a large and awesome one. 

Also there is that "air special ops of the Korean war" idea of mine......kind of the Allmost campaing from GB.... if you guys wanna hear more of it.... but i'm just a textier/researcher/tester. The hard work of actual mission design has to fall on somebody experienced. and open to adventures.  

I have not come very far! And I also have some other ideas! 😁

Most of what was done was just learning the new editor and setting up a rudimentary mission to see how things work now. The research is just good fun anyway 😄

[Hook_Echo]

Since all the mission makers are here, the scripted campaigns are the star of the show. I made a couple race courses in great battles and I got not much feedback. I understand what you all do can be a thankless and monumental effort. So, thank you so much for making missions and campaigns over the years. They bring the sim to life and really show what it is actually capable of. You guys are so creative and I appreciate all your effort.

 

I haven't looked at the Korea editor. The GB one was... intimidating to someone who had never done anything like that before. The huge pdf editor manual and asking questions got me through it to do the bare minimum, but I've since forgotten how to use it due to inactivity.

[AEthelraedUnraed]

4 hours ago, sandmarken said:

Oh no, this is what i was working on! I guess i can leave that project then.

I was sure you said earlier that you had been working on a campaign for the SAAF 😅

Sorry 😬

I'm only covering the period between 19 November and 3 December though - so if you're willing to compromise on the airfield, there's much more. Just as a matter of curiosity, which date did your "rudimentary mission" cover? Even within the period my campaign covers, there's plenty of dates for which I haven't planned anything yet 🙂 

2 hours ago, Hook_Echo said:

I haven't looked at the Korea editor.

It's almost identical to the GB editor, so if you already have some experience with the latter, you shouldn't have any problem with it 🙂

Edited September 1 by AEthelraedUnraed

[sandmarken]

44 minutes ago, AEthelraedUnraed said:

Sorry 😬

I'm only covering the period between 19 November and 3 December though - so if you're willing to compromise on the airfield, there's much more. Just as a matter of curiosity, which date did your "rudimentary mission" cover? Even within the period my campaign covers, there's plenty of dates for which I haven't planned anything yet 🙂 

Yes, these are the dates I was looking into since it's when they are based at Yonpo, actually on our map. But with some missions after the return to Pusan (with an alternative airfield) to be able to take part in the Chosin Reservoir incident.

But no worries, I have other ideas as well! Looking forward to your campaign! 

[Aapje]

22 hours ago, AndreiTomescu said:

- the limited nr of available planes make historical accuracy difficult. A scripted campaign is, by nature, historical accurate: tells a story

This is not true. Books also tell a story, and you have both fiction and non-fiction books.

There are also various levels of historically accuracy possible. For example, leaving out all the days where nothing happened, as all campaign creators do, is already a choice to reduce accuracy to make the campaign more fun.

A whole bunch of other approaches are possible, like:

- Combining the experiences of different pilots together in one character (a trick often used by Hollywood to make their movies easier to follow and making it more feasible to create empathy with that one person)

- Taking a bunch of realistic missions and creating a fictional story around them

- Changing the planes to fit what is available

- Creating a what if scenario that intentionally examines what could have happened.

I'm happy with any campaign that is fun, but I prefer if the maker explains what liberties were taken with actual history.

22 hours ago, AndreiTomescu said:

While craving for some new Scripted campaigns, I realise these are truly valuable while connected to a story. And we lack those dearly.

Perhaps it is an idea to create a suggestion thread where people can make suggestions, preferably based on stuff they have read. Then that thread can also be used by makers to lay a claim on a story, so we won't have two people doing the same thing.

This way people who can't or don't want to learn the mission editor can contribute.

Of course, it would need to be supported by the actual campaign makers, because it is useless if they don't want this.

[AndreiTomescu]

Historical accurate , well I didn't mean like transcripts from war reports. But based on actual happenings. Your first 3 "other approaches" i consider that fit into historical accurate, or at least semi-historical.

@Jaegermeister Home by Christmas campaign it's historical accurate for me. And also immersive, fun, challenging.

But how do you intercept a night bombing Polikarpov if you don't have that plane? Can't do. Or make a British jet campaign without the Meteor?

So, we might have historical ones ( @BlackSix was usually into those) semi-historical ones (but inspired by general events, with more leverage into making them juicy), and fictional ones.

From all the scripted campaigns in GB, and there are many, and I've done almost all of them, I recall only one fictional: that happening after the war in South America. So there ain't much market here.

My take is that if a mission gets you into the time frame's mood, and it's not different from what happened (like the Romanians having Fw-190, for ex) then it's enough historical. But that's just my take....

Sorry to bother, just my thoughts.

P.S. a campaign tells a story, yes. Like a movie. It has to have enough historical background to make the fictional, imaginative parts believable. Like the K-19 movie, for ex. Or the Bridges of Toko-Ri.

[AndreiTomescu]

1 hour ago, Aapje said:

suggestion thread where people can make suggestions

Excellent idea. I'll dig into that, I have a "persistent" ideea about a campaign, something like the "Allmost" campaign. That was something.......