Testing of Development Prototypes or Alphas with DCS

If you want to participate in Helios development, but don't want to write code, you can help out by testing prototypes of upcoming versions and reporting your feedback. However, since these prototypes are not finished, you can't expect them to operate safely with your existing Helios or DCS installation.

Here are some requirements for early access to developer builds:

1) At least one DCS installation that is not in use

For the duration of testing, you will need to be able to reset the DCS installation used to @openbeta or @release, run repair to erase all mods, and to be ok with it being modified for testing. You can't use the DCS installation you use to play during the same time frame.

It is really easy to just install another DCS on your machine for this purpose. It doesn't need to be fast, so you don't have to put it on SSD even.

2) Ability to archive and restore all your previous Helios installation, if any.

Sometimes, we will want to install a dev build over an existing Helios installation and test if it does the right thing. Sometimes, we will want to have an entirely clean Helios documents folder and installation folder. You need to be able to make that happen. If you also use the same computer for playing DCS, then you need to be comfortable archiving all your stuff safely and putting it back after you are done evaluating the prototype.

There is currently no way to install a future version of Helios alongside an existing Helios install. So you have to be comfortable reinstalling Helios and restoring the Documents folders accordingly.

3) Ability to open and view some files

You should have an editor like Visual Studio Code or Notepad++ that can open and edit some config files.

4) You need to know

• Where Export.lua is located
• Where MonitorSetup files go in Saved Games
• Where MonitorSetup files go in the install folder
• Where viewport mods go, in general
• What Templates do in Helios (that's real easy to learn if you don't)

These are needed because you can't report what isn't working without being able to check these files if they were generated incorrectly.

5) Not required, but awesome

If you happen to have a Virtual Machine setup like VirtualBox or similar, you could test Helios installer scenarios very easily in that. @derammo does all their installer testing in VirtualBox and it runs fine. Even though it is not going to run DCS, using virtual machines for install testing is great because you can roll back to known state with a button press.

Obviously Wireshark is awesome. If you can listen to the loopback adapter and set a filter, you are golden.