 FSX Mission Editor by Jim Keir |
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Jim Keir's Mission Editor for FSX The new 'Missions' that Microsoft introduced with their latest itteration of the Flight Simulator franchise, Flight Simulator X, drew a lot of excitement. Not only would the missions give something 'to do' and possibly attract a whole new breed of flightsimmers. It would also be something 'to do' in the more creative sene; MAKING MISSIONS YOURSELF and adding to the sim experience that way. Alas.... the implementation was less than stellar in the area of design and building. With Jim Keir's mission editor for FSX this is now changing. Jim writes ".....With the release of Microsoft Flight Simulator X, the new Missions feature looked like a great way of adding customisable scenarios. However, as Microsoft pointed out in their SDK docs, the supplied ‘Object Placement Tool’ – the mission editor – is far from easy to use. This program is an attempt to cover what I felt to be the shortcomings in the default tool. It is designed to help you create and test your mission logic without worrying about the technical details, while still using the original tool for what it does best - placing scenery.....". So now finally BUILDING missions for FSX has come within reach of many more people, using Jim's user-friendly program. Three versions available: Payware Full Version Commercial Licensing What FSX Mission Editor is capable of, and what the additional functionality of the Full Version is will be discussed below. Features
... plus, for registered users ...
Restrictions of the free Base Version The biggest restriction on the free version is the number of nodes. It's plenty for simple missions, but for anything with a complex storyline to it you'd need more. Any size of mission can be loaded, so the free one can always be used to error-check a mission. The first 'power feature' that is missing is the ability to create MSI installations (just like most programs get packaged). Normally to install a mission you may need to edit the .FLT file, or add something to the FSX scenery library, or copy files around manually. If you create an installer it does all this for you, making life easier for people getting your mission. It also looks more professional than a zipfile with a readme and lots of manual fiddling. The second 'power feature' is the ability to debug your missions in real-time. Normally you set a mission going and it's up to you to work out what triggers are firing, and what order things are happening in. With the paid version you can automatically set your mission up so that you can find out what it's up to in real-time. This is a huge help when something isn't working properly. Last, the paid version lets you create a basic mission from a saved FSX flightplan in addition to the free version's point-to-point mode. This means you can prepare much more of the structure of a cross-country mission automatically. The other things are all about convenience. You can create groups of actions that tie together to achieve a single thing and then add them all at once instead of having to build that feature up by hand. You can copy and paste text from the status dialogs, letting you create lists of all the errors you need to fix, or a list of all the speech in the mission and what files it should be stored in which you can pass to voice-actors. The mission system extension is available in both versions; only the licencing is different. It adds several commands to the FSX mission system allowing you to do much more. Some of those additional commands are: IF : Test any SimVar
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