Deciphering .dll's

[grover1]

Hi all,

I recently took a computer programming course as part of my degree and a lot of it covered AI and AI development.

I'm just curious if anyone has ever attempted to improve the CFS3 AI? Similar to what WOFF did, but not to that extent. I believe in order for us to go to the level that WOFF did, we would have to develop a manager similar to what they did.

Something tells me we can improve the AI in the game, we may be able to add in many features that were previously planned. Such as carriers and all that. It seems like they were originally supposed to have been included in the final version? Same with navigation aids and all sorts of stuff like that. I could even see the possibility of a true multi-skin feature if we're able to access these .dll's.

Essentially, what I'm asking is has anyone here ever been able to access the .dll files in the main game folder? I believe if we can decipher those, we can improve CFS3's overall gameplay dramatically.

ETO, BoB, PTO Solomon's and Rising Sun, MAW, and DPC Korea are already amazing additions, but the AI has always been lacking for CFS3.

Again, I'm thinking if we can decipher what's going on in some of the .dll files, we may be able to fix a lot of the bugs Microsoft never fixed.

I truly believe that if we all put pur heads together, we can decipher those files! I do remember John Turek managing yo do something with the .dll's. I'll definitely look through the files he sent me, and go from there.

Thanks,

Chris

[NachtPiloten]

two things that I would love to see improved or added.

1) real radio navigation NDB's would be wonderful
2) radar that displays elevation as well as direction and distance (guns do track these three axis just wish we could get radar to do the same)

If this ever happened I might get inspired again to finish a few things that are so close.

Oh reach out to the WOFF guys to see if they would lend some of their knowledge......

[Daiwilletti]

Great to voice that issue, Grover1. Anyone who plays OFF is struck by just how aggressive the WWI AI are.

One thing that is related, is that for various reasons I have been wondering if sodding MS, via Windows 10, has shut down some cfs3 dlls from running properly?

I have decided to test, running Win 10 with Windows Defender turned off a few times to see if there is a noticeable difference. If the dlls are to be tinkered with, it would be good to know that Win 10 is not controlling the dlls as well.

For example, I have noticed in campaign play that it is very hard to complete a campaign these days. Starbage1 has been vocal about campaign play, and IIRC it used to be reasonably straightforward to complete the stock campaign, in WinXP. So I started to wonder if some of the cfs engine's analysis/die rolling is being blocked? I am playing 1944.xml in ETO at the moment, and every time a campaign mission is flown, the success mod is negative in the corresponding .cmpstat file which is written after every campaign mission. That suggests that something is amiss in the way that the success mod is being calculated - and dlls come to mind. Merely speculation at this stage.

The answer is not in the die roll settings of the campaign xml file - I have checked that already.

Incidentally Grover1, have you modified the uisel.xml in the way that I discuss in the Knowledgebase sticky? That improves AI in campaign play. In mission/qc modes, AI can be controlled with skill level settings. With modern, fast processing speeds the AI isn't too shabby if you set skill levels to 3.

Also a way to improve your own flight's skill level is to modify the pilotattributes.xml - vision, gtolerance, health, experience, etc.

[grover1]

The biggest thing that I've been wanting to do is add in working night fighter RADARs and all that.

Same with the ability to turn formations around instead of shooting them down, just as what could have possibly happened.

First thing I'd need to do is reach out to the WOFF guys about it and hope that they're able to lend a hand. I'm sure they will as it would be a completely different AI than WOFF.

I'll also need AnKor's help with suggesting a .dll program to use. The good thing with AI is it's mostly C++ or a C-language.

I don't have the time to work on this right now, but I will be able to in the upcoming week.

[popsaka]

Thank you all for a cool thread...

[gecko]

Exciting to hear, I do hope you can make progress here. I've been thinking about Radars as well, I wonder if you and Ankor could cook up a solution, as he's been able to do a lot with how visuals are rendered.

[grover1]

Have some good news and bad news.

The good news is a new AI and the features we want to make are possible, including carrier landings!

The other possibilities with this include:

-Working night fighter RADAR
-New and historically accurate AI (Including the ability to turn around aircraft formations),
-Multi-skin features! (OBD was great and shared how they did this with me
-We might even get the ability to create a story driven campaign similar to CFS1 and CFS2
-Possibility for in-game cut scenes similar to WOFF
-Possibility for custom formations or the ability to change formations within the game its self
-More radio chatter. Similar to what Daniel and Clive did with their AI Chatter mod for BoB

There's a way to make this mission builder compatible, but I'm still looking at options

Now, for the bad news

The bad news is how we would implement this.

Having been in consultation with Polovski over at OBD, he said the best way to do this would be to create a manager similar to what they did with WOFF.

Now, I'm still looking at other options, but it'll be at least six months before I make any real progress. I've got to really refresh my C language skills.

I've picked up a few books on C++ and C#, so that should give us a bit of a headway on this.

I've also got time to do this as I've been having some problems with my legs again and I'm taking a semester off school to recover.

The good part is I've got the expertise of one of my friends who's an avid WWII buff and a total computer guy helping me out!

I'll talk more with the WOFF guys and hope they'll share their secrets with us! They seem pretty excited with this idea!

Thanks,

Chris

[gecko]

This is fantastic news! Compared to what you say you can do, an external manager doesn't seem like a major obstacle. I've been thinking about trying to build one for quite some time. I know the WOFF manager swaps out files ahead of each mission to customize the game for that specific scenario, and I'm familiar with how they do multiple skins. To accomplish what you're hoping does the manager have to do anything else? Very nice of them to give you some tips!

Do you think the AI programming could include AI switching between turn fights and boom and zoom tactics based on its opponent?

Are there possibilities in working with the flight models to allow better modeling of aircraft systems -things like radiator shutters that effect the cooling of the engine, modeling of superchargers, etc?

Anyways, I am happy to do what I can to help.

[Frosty]

... They seem pretty excited with this idea!

I 'm pretty exited with it too, if this really comes to to fruition!! I don't mind waiting for another year or so. After all, after more than decade of fiddeling with this thing, what's another year?
It's exellent news!!

[FOO FIGHTER]

This would be amazing! Might this include guided missiles/bombs or proper Mistels? It is a shame that CFS3 has taken a decade to realize it's potential. If only MS had taken it's time and done a proper job to begin with. Thanks to you and others CFS3 can be a new sim all over again. It really is like discovering it for the first time. All of these new developments over the past few months should be combined into one unofficial CFS4. Perhaps downloadable as one package some where.

[grover1]

Hi Gecko,

I think modelling aircraft systems is possible. I'm not completely sure though, but I think it is possible. I think the easiest way to tackle this would be to have an external manager, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it

I think that it would be possible to have the AI change between "boom and zoom" tactics and turning fights.

The ground AI isn't too shabby, especially when it comes to flak and all that. We just need to improve the aircraft AI and add in RADAR capabilities

I'm also going to reach out to the Battle of Britain II team and see what expertise they can lend. A lot of those guys used CFS2/CFS3 as a basis for their game.

So far, the biggest problem we've got is getting into the game engine. I'm having a terrible time accessing the DLL's that we'd need to use. Again, that's why we'll need to get in touch with AnKor to point us in the right direction.

I've been slowly reviewing Python and C. I'm not sure if we'll need C++ or C# yet, but I'm assuming we will.


Hi FooFighter,

Unfortunately I don't know if guided missiles and mistel bombers are at all possible. My primary focus right now is seeing how feasible this project is.

The biggest things that I want to see is improved AI and improved flight models. But, I'll definitely look into mistels and guided missiles.

Thanks,

Chris

[grover1]

Sorry, I forgot to answer your question about the manager.

The biggest thing we'd need the manager to do is swap out skins for a multiskin feature and control the difficulty level of the AI.

I'm not completely sure what else we'd need a manager for apart from those two things and the basics such as controls and graphic settings.

I'd like to see if we could use a manager to implement a gore setting similar to what WOFF did, but again it's a matter of what we can and can't do.

[mongoose]

I assume a manager would also set weather?

[grover1]

Mongoose,

As of now, I'm unsure what the manager would be doing. I would assume yes, but I'm not sure yet.

[gecko]

The manager can be used for lots of things - changing out seasonal scenery and other textures, loading sounds based on weather or type of aircraft, global layers (as in ETO) and the list goes on. I've written some simple autohotkey scripts that can do any of this and compiled them into exe files. Click and it does everything in the background. What it lacks is a slick gui that automates it. Instead of clicking on different options before a mission to specify you want autumn terrain and global layer set for Era 2, we need something that looks at the parameters of the mission you select and swaps in the appropriate files.

Another thing WOFF does (whether through their manager or a dll I don't know) is that every aircraft is tracked through each mission allowing the stats of everyone in your unit to be tracked based on what they actually did in flight. It adds a lot to the campaign experience to be able to track your squad mates progress through the war.

[grover1]

I definitely think a manager is the best option to take with this.

That way we'll have full control over what the game does.

Plus, a manager opens up a whole world of possibilities for us and we can still make it mission builder enabled and all that.

I don't think we'd need one as extravagant as WOFF's, just something functional. We could still make it so custom missions are playable.

I've also been thinking that with a manager, we may also be able to swap out theaters and eras. Effectively making swapping things that much easier.


Gecko,

Having looked into how WOFF tracks aircraft is through their campaign manager. That's all they would tell me about their manager.

[hairyspin]

Enough there to keep you busy for a few years, methinks.

[grover1]

Tom,

One really good option to tackle the AI would be to rewrite the AI in the game engine. It's in one of those .dll's in the main game folder, just don't know which one.

The manager would be used to control all parameters such as weather, multi-skin, missions, everything else. We'd set it up in a way similar to CFS2 so custom mission builders can still use the mission builder.

You definitely are right, it's going to be a while before we make any headway, but we'll work something out. It can be done for sure! I've already overcome the first major hurdle, and that's figuring what we can and can't do. So far, the cans outweigh the can'ts. Hopefully we'll start making a bit of headway in the next few months.


Chris

[FOO FIGHTER]

Unfortunately I don't know if guided missiles and mistel bombers are at all possible. My primary focus right now is seeing how feasible this project is.

The biggest things that I want to see is improved AI and improved flight models. But, I'll definitely look into mistels and guided missiles.

No problem. One step at a time. Will be gratefull for any and all improvements you make.