4-12 wish list (Merged)

[bitterman]

1. possibility to add objects to the map dynamically. by this I mean it would be cool to add objects to the map at mission's runtime. it can be done via server's console: you type smth like "create xxx", where xxx is description of what you add in XML/JSON/INI format.
example: we need to to add AI path (in mission-file style):

[Wing]
  237ShAP10
[237ShAP10]
  Planes 2
  Skill0 2
  Skill1 1
  Class air.IL_2_1940Late
  Fuel 100
  weapons 4xFAB50_8xRS132
[237ShAP10_Way]
  TAKEOFF 161931.69 102708.47 0 0 &0
  NORMFLY 153600.00 117200.00 500.00 300.00 &0
  GATTACK 134492.44 142258.58 500.00 300.00 0_Chief 3 &0
  NORMFLY 140228.57 132971.43 300.00 400.00 &0
  LANDING 163084.27 101555.89 0 0 &0

to do that we type (or send via socket) to console such string (JSON format as example)

create {"section":"Wing", "title":"237ShAP10", "description": {"Planes":"2", "skills": {"Skill0":"2", "Skill1":"1"}, "model":"IL_2_1940Late", "fuel":"100","weapons":"4xFAB50_8xRS132"},"way":{"TAKEOFF": {...},"NORMFLY": {...},"GATTACK": {...},"NORMFLY": {...},"LANDING": {...}}}

and after that new AI appears in currently running mision ({...} is left not to do bigger mess)

2. Introduce clear identification of AI in mission's file and in server's log.
the problem: when some event happens with AI vehicle, you can not identify that vehicle by reading server's log. E.g.:

[10:37:47 PM] Bf-109G-2 shot down by username:La-5 at 41059.33 19015.783

here pilot with nickname "username" shots AI Bf-109G-2, but there no info about AI: no wing name, no position in wing, no team info. If I shot AI, so server's commander can not know what to do: give me points for the enemy kill or give me penalty for the friendly kill. So, it's would be cool to have smth like that to be logged instead of the example from above:

[10:37:47 PM] II_JG5_210:0:Bf-109G-2 shot down by username:La-5 at 41059.33 19015.783

where II_JG5_210 is wing name and 0 is a position in that wing. And this should be applied to the ground AI too.

3. Add server console command to get planes' positions.
There is command

user nickname STAT

to see user's statistics. I suppose there should be a command like this

user nickname POS

to see user's current position. Similar command should be to see AI vehicles' positions too. Of course, now X,Y,Z position and current direction can be obtained from UDP packets on the server side. But it looks like a dirty hack and this is bad, because using PCAP library to look through packets needs system's administrative rights.

4. Is using JVM 1.3 still OK? There 1.7 exits for about 1 year already.

5. Is it possible to get current set of map's images? There's a software "MapTools" and it has images of maps and of terrain heights in PNG format. But as I can see, this soft is not updating any more. It should be nice to have always up-to-date images set. And it would be nice to have 100% correspondence between maps and their's images. I mean: if you have a road on a map, and you have that's map image, and you want to place a vehicle on the road using the image, you must be sure that vehicle will appear exactly on that road but not moved some [kilo]meters to the bottom or so. And it would be really grate to have all possible info about map stored in XML, for example.

6. Vehicle and weapon comparison system. I know that info about vehicles, weapons and objects can be obtained by dumping java classes from the memory. Using those classes we can calculate how powerful vehicle's gunnery is. You need to calc number of guns, number of shells, and using TNT_equivalent we can say how powerful some vehicle is. It's really a hack work that looks like Sisyphean toil. It would be cool to have some convenient way to compare one tank to another, one bomber to another bomber, one fighter to another fighter. As I said, it can be done manually, but the way is really weird.

7. Is it possible to get some server's console-interaction protocol or API? When we connecting to the server console's socket, we can send and get text string to fulfill some requests. But it's bad, because server needs to parse text request, process it, serialize result to text again and send it back to socket's client, where it will be deserialized from text. Is there some way to operate with standard data types or some structures or objects? And is it possible to output log messages not only to the log file, but to some another socket also?

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I'm developing modern server commander and those points are really important. I can provide my help if it needed.