Enhanced debug console - looking for ideas and suggestions

[kju]

gday  

I will write a new debug console based on Vektorboson 's Debug Console 3.0.
Please share your ideas and suggestions you think useful.

Vektorboson 's Debug Console 3.0 ported to a2:



Plan so far

Two main components are debugging and mission testing.
It is not meant to debug AI. TroopMon2 is the tool to do so.
The new console will work both SP and MP.
Server admins need to have signature system active anyway to be safe.


Debugging

• Many input fields to show the value of a global variable or any expression
• The values will be also shown as part of the main display without the debug console open (left side)
• One input field with a button to log a global variable or expression to local group chat or to rpt.
• An optional second field to set the cycle time (default 1 second).
• Three single line and one multiline code fields with buttons to execute.

Testing

• Automatically setPos on mapclick
• Button to toggle player and his vehicle invulnerability on/off (active by default) (automatically active when entering new vehicles)
• Button to do the same for the whole player group
• Button to heal the player group
• Switch to unit on mapclick
• Switch to unit of cursortarget via pause button
• Button to toggle dot map markers for all units on the map
• Button to toggle movement map marker dots of all units on the map
• Button to toggle movement particles in the 3d world for all units on the map
• Button to toggle markers for all empty vehicles on the map

• Button to toggle animation state of player shown in the side chat and rpt.

• Button to toggle between difficulty modes (SP)
• Button to switch to camera.sqs
• Button to switch to the config viewer
• Teamswitch active by default
• Ability to decelerate the game below 1.0 (SP)
• Ability to stop the game (SP)
• Ability to fast forward or backward daytime (+/- one hour)
• Ability to change weather and fog back and forth
• Button to toggle disabled/enabled for all AI
• Button to save current unit position to clipboard
• Button to toggle clutter on/off
• Button to close the loading screen (on error)
• Selfkill
• Minimap

Interface

What do you think about using DEH to have access to some functions in the main display.
In other words press a key combo while playing to execute or toggle some feature.
Should there be only key actions or also buttons in the debug console?


PS: I still need to ask VB for permission.
PSS: Not everything might be doable. It is mainly about gathering ideas.

[Wolfrug]

Button to toggle between difficulty modes (SP)

Can you actually do this? I mean, you can switch the difficulty in the options menu at any time, but it's not going to change unless you restart the mission. It seems a little unlikely though that you could do this in-game via scripting, unless I've missed something?

Otherwise, it's looking good!  Just as long as it's accessible! Also, and this is just out of curiosity, would it be possible to have a field where you could open up a script in-game (since you can read them) and display it? I'm guessing the formatting would be shot to hell, but it'd be better than nothing - add the ability to edit it and then copy the edits and paste them (manually of course) into the external script, and I think we'd have an in-game script-editing-winner. I guess though most of you play windowed when editing scripts, for some reason though this doesn't work very well on my setup, so yeah.

Sounds good anyway!

Wolfrug out.

[kju]

Updated the first post.  

See the PSS. So I am not sure if it can be done.
However from what I recall at least in the editor I can change the difficulty mode without the need to restart a mission.
And you can go through dialogs/the menus via scripting. So one should be able to reach it.

About your idea your Wolfrug. You can display it for sure. Most likely also loaded it into an editable control.
But I am not sure why you want to do that other than having access to auto-completion available ingame.
You need to tab out again to save your new code anyway?

In the external code editor you have code highlighting and soon thanks to T_D efforts also a parser to
check for errors and maybe more.

The copyToClipboard functionality might be of some use though.
Like one could auto dump some data every x seconds in there. Saves at least on CTRL+C.  

[Mandoble]

Use a multiline ED to allow entering several commands as well as local vars, allow to spawn or compile-call that code. Allow also to fill up the control with loadFile entering the name of a script.
Allow the execution of single commands printing out the result (the returned data).

[kju]

Mandoble whats a multiline ED.

I like the other suggestions.  
It'd be great to have persistence to use local vars and leave the console and still have the locals available.
Any idea if/how this could be done?


ShowClass of Cyborg11 seems like a great addition as well.
http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=8481

[Dr Eyeball]

Just want to make sure you know about Loki's Lost Key debug console too.
It's very good and could help with your ideas. It contains far more options than you can see in the screenshots.

[kju]

yep. almost forgot about it. cheers. 

[kju]

Might it be possible to save a dev console history across game session with http://community.bistudio.com/wiki/saveStatus?

Also plan to integrate some features of this useful tool:
http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=11937


When will development start - Might be tomorrow or some weeks or more.
In other words when I feel like doing it.