I have to say I started this article with the wrong mentality. And by doing so, I got myself stuck into something that I didn’t like. I ended up deleting a 1.500+ word review, because I thought it actually served no purpose.
I don’t think this is one of those things that you can quantify by giving it rates. Yes, I can say if I like it or not, if it’s easy to use, for example. But that’s it. It’s very binary. It’s not a 0-10 thing. At least not the way I look at it.
So, here I am, 2.000+ words later (the initial, deleted 1.500 words + this article) to tell you about AGHTM. In a much different way, not as a review. But not as just a news article item.
Didn’t fall asleep yet? Good. Let’s dive in.
AGHTM is a mission-building framework that Amoeba Games developed to “facilitate rapid building of helicopter transport missions that follow a basic premise”. So, a quick and easy way to create said missions by the use of a premade mission template but you can also build missions entirely from scratch, or even overlay it on top of an existing mission.
Considering how much I am a fan of non-military missions in DCS, this caught my attention immediately, and, as soon as Amoeba Games reached out to me, I knew I wanted to learn more about it.
The goal of this tool is to provide everyone, even those that are not mission builders or have never written a single line of code the ability to create these missions, “with all of the wiring, messaging, voiceovers, navigation radio beacons, etc. already working, and with very little effort”.
On top of this, Amoeba Games has also released a few missions for the Mi-24, Mi-8, UH-1H, and the community-mod UH-60. Each helicopter has a pack of missions that consist of you flying through a few waypoints to transport something – or someone around. A great way for you to hone your navigation skills and not be worried about weapons systems. It’s all about flying.
I have flown a few of these, mainly using the Huey and the Black Hawk, so I could try it with an official module and a mod, and I had a lot of fun. Especially since I had to remember how to navigate with the Black Hawk (it has been a while). I guess the Huey got easier engraved in my memory for some reason – that reason possibly being the fact that I have a lot more hours in it.
The missions are not complex at all but they are very pleasing and the ones I flew took me about 45 minutes to fly. One of them was closer to an hour but I think that was mostly because I took my time to enjoy the route. I have to confess I did make some detours to check something in the scenery here and there – DCS offers great sights and I sometimes can’t resist.
Now here’s how the framework part of this works. And there’s also how the “framework” word fooled me because I am a programmer and despite me knowing the word can be broad, I was expecting something different.
Is that a bad thing? Not at all. Quite the opposite. Amoeba Games’ framework is actually much easier to use than a regular, programming framework (more on this later).
Remember me saying the goal is to have an easy way to make missions? Yep. This is quite easier this way.
First of all, you’ll need one of the premade mission Template Bundles. Make sure you check out the as you do that since they will get you up to speed with everything you can do. And you can start even without the files.
Once you watch the videos you should understand what templates are, how you can edit them to make your own, and even how to populate them so that they are a bit more immersive.
The templates let you cheat into developing your own missions as it already has a lot of the basic stuff you need: waypoints, beacons, etc., so you don’t have to worry about that yourself. You will just have to find a good area, drag some elements around and you are good to go.
Then all you need to do is populate the map a bit more to make it more realistic and immersive and tell your story.
The AGHTM framework will not remove the work of going through the mission editor. You will still need to do it. But it will reduce your workload a lot.
Now, while I did mention that the AGHTM framework is a bit different from what I am used to as a developer, this doesn’t mean it’s not very complex and robust. In fact, Amoeba Games is developing its own actual code library which they will be releasing further down the road and is what is powering everything behind the templates.
But, right now, all you need to do is edit those missions and, as I said before, tell your story.
