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.

Development builds now install as a separate product with separate Documents folders, so you don't need to worry about your existing Helios 1.4 install.

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.

6) Payment?

Helios is free software and there is no revenue stream for it. So the best we could offer is: you or your squadron could be included in the contributors shown in the splash screen. Also you would be an even more awesome person than you already are.