tacview-fog-of-war

A PHP 8.0+ tool to parse ACMI files and implement fog-of-war by removing all enemy objects that have had no interaction.

This tool will only keep the following:

• Blue and Neutral objects
• Any Red objects that have fired a significant weapon such as:
  • Missiles
  • Rockets
  • Bombs
• Any Red object that was fired upon by Blue including
  • Red air and sea-craft that were hit by A-A or A-G missiles
  • Red ground and sea-craft that were within 50 meters of a dropped weapon
    • This distance can be editted in the .env file

Before and After Screenshot

Before (Left) and After (right)

Installation and Usage Instructions

Installing the scripts is pretty easy and has minimal requirements:

Requirements

• PHP Composer
• PHP 8.0 or higher

Installation and Usage

• Download the code repo to a location of your choice
• Place all of the tacview files that you want to process in the Tacview directory. The files must be a valid ACMI file:
  • zip.acmi
  • txt.acmi
• In the directory, execute the composer update command to install the required packages.

Running in Standalone Mode ()

• FOR A FULL RUN, execute php tacview-fow.php
• FOR A DRY RUN, execute php tacview-fow-dry-run.php
• FOR A READ ONLY RUN, execute php tacview-fow-read-only.php
• FOR A LESS VERBOSE RUN, execute php tacview-fow-less-verbose.php

Including in your own project

To run this in your own project simply add the following lines

For a dry run (Will only list the files that will be processed):

require_once "./tacview_parser.class.php";

$parser = new tacview_parser();
$parser->dry_run();

For a read-only run (ACMI will be read and validated but no output file written):

require_once "./tacview_parser.class.php";

$parser = new tacview_parser();
$parser->read_only_run();

For a real run:

require_once "./tacview_parser.class.php";

$parser = new tacview_parser();
$parser->run();

To disable any verbose output:

require_once "./tacview_parser.class.php";

$parser = new tacview_parser();
$parser->set_verbose(FALSE);
$parser->run();

Notes

• Output files will automatically be created in the Output directory.
• File names will include the name of the author of the ACMI file
• These files will not display the "This file has not been altered" message in Tacview for obvious reasons.

Notes on Google Drive support

Google drive support will not work but there are certain steps that need to be followed in order to be able to use Google Drive

• You need to create your own Google Cloud Project
  • (https://developers.google.com/workspace/guides/create-project)
• You need to enable the Google Drive API integrations for your project
  • (https://developers.google.com/workspace/guides/enable-apis)
• You need to create a service account and credentials for the service account
  • (https://developers.google.com/workspace/guides/create-credentials#service-account)

Once this is done you need to do two more steps:

1. Rename the JSON file credentials.json and place it in the root directory of this project.
2. Run tacview-fow-with-google-drive.php and follow the instructions.

Example credentials.json file

{
  "type": "service_account",
  "project_id": "<YOUR_PROJECT_ID>",
  "private_key_id": "<YOUR PRIVATE KEY ID>",
  "private_key": "-----PRIVATE KEY-----",
  "client_email": "tacviewfow@example.iam.gserviceaccount.com",
  "client_id": "<YOUR CLIENT ID>",
  "auth_uri": "https://accounts.google.com/o/oauth2/auth",
  "token_uri": "https://oauth2.googleapis.com/token",
  "auth_provider_x509_cert_url": "https://www.googleapis.com/oauth2/v1/certs",
  "client_x509_cert_url": "https://www.googleapis.com/robot/v1/metadata/x509/tacviewfow%40example.iam.gserviceaccount.com"
}

Future Plans and Ideas

• Download Tacview files from a remote server/location
• Provide MD5sum verification that the file was ONLY altered by tacview-fog-of-war in cases where proof may be needed