Configuring CTLD with ctld-tools

ctld-tools lets you configure CTLD without writing Lua. It is a small local web app: you double-click it, it opens in your browser, and you edit CTLD's complete configuration through forms — every setting and every catalogue entry (crates, troop groups, aircraft, zones). Your changes are validated at your desk, with clear errors, and injected straight into your mission.

You never look up crate weights or edit Lua by hand, and mistakes are caught before DCS.

Get the tool

Download ctld-tools.exe from the GitHub Releases page — it is attached to each release. No Python, no Node, no CTLD src/ folder needed: everything (the default configuration, the DCS unit-type list, the web interface) is embedded in the single file.

Unblock the .exe first (Windows)

Windows may block .exe files downloaded from the internet. If the tool doesn't start, right-click ctld-tools.exe → Properties → General tab → check Unblock at the bottom → OK.

The tool carries its own CTLD

The exe embeds the CTLD.lua it installs, built from the commit its release was tagged on. It downloads nothing and never updates itself: it works with no network, and the same exe always installs the same engine.

A new CTLD therefore reaches your missions only when a release is published — day-to-day work merged into the repository changes nothing for you. To move to it, download ctld-tools.exe again from the Releases page and re-inject into your mission; re-injecting replaces what the tool wrote before instead of duplicating it.

Release candidates carry no Latest badge

While v2 is in release candidate, each release is published as a pre-release, and GitHub keeps the Latest badge for stable releases. Take the topmost entry on the Releases page.

You may also be handed a dev build — a ctld-tools.exe built from the day's work rather than from a release, recognisable by the commit in its version (2.0.0-rc6-a1b2c3d). Only take one if someone asks you to try something specific: it has no release notes and no documentation of its own.

Open it

Double-click ctld-tools.exe. A small console window opens — that is the local server; leave it open, closing it quits the tool — and your browser opens on the app. No command to type.

The app starts on CTLD's default configuration, so there is nothing to load before you begin.

(From a terminal you can also run ctld-tools serve to open it. The same file is a command-line tool too — used by the CTLD build — but as a Mission Maker you won't need that.)

Finding your way around

A strip across the top shows the three steps: Load → Adjust → Inject into your mission, with the current one highlighted. The header always tells you which configuration is open, how many settings you have changed, and whether your work is saved.

English or French

The interface follows your Windows language, and a Language picker in the header switches between English and French at any time — including the settings' own help texts. Your choice is remembered.

Built-in help

The Help button in the header opens a walkthrough of the editor in your language: the three steps, how to read a setting, what the validation lamp means, and the complete-snapshot rule. It also lists your configuration — every family with what it covers, and every mission-data table with how many entries it currently holds. It is generated from the configuration you have open, so it always describes what is actually in front of you.

The left column lists CTLD's functional families — General, Aircraft, Crates, Troops, Zones, Boarding, FOB / FARP, JTAC, Recon, AA system, Beacons, Smoke, Mines, Parachute, Soldier weights. Pick a family and you get everything about that part of CTLD in one place: its settings and its catalogue entries, with a line under the title telling you what the family covers. Crates, for instance, holds the crate settings and the list of crates you can spawn.

Within a family, settings are split into Common settings and an Advanced settings section that stays folded until you need it (it opens by itself if it contains something you have changed).

Don't know where a setting lives? Use the search box — it looks through every family at once, by name or by description, and tells you which family each result belongs to.

Editing your configuration

Each setting shows a plain-language name, its unit where CTLD documents one (metres, kilograms, seconds), a short description, and the right editor for its type — a switch for on/off, a dropdown for fixed choices, a number or text box otherwise. The raw config name (the one used in the CTLD documentation and on the forums) is shown next to it in small type.

Catalogue entries — crates, troop groups, aircraft capabilities (pick an aircraft type from the DCS list), zones, transport pilot names, vehicle weights — are edited as tables, at the bottom of the family they belong to.

Beacon sounds

The two beacon sounds — the audible one and the silent one FC3 aircraft use — are the one place where a setting is a file, so they get a picker rather than a text box: Default uses the sound the tool carries, Custom opens a file browser for your own .ogg.

A file you choose is read immediately and travels inside the mission. That matters more than it sounds: reopening that .miz later brings the sound back with it, so you can reconfigure and reinstall the mission on another machine, months later, even if you have deleted the file you originally picked.

Two details worth knowing:

• Inside the mission the file is renamed to CTLD_beacon_custom.ogg (or CTLD_beaconsilent_custom.ogg). Your own file is untouched, and the tool keeps its name to show you — the reserved name is what lets it tell your sound apart from the bundled one, even when yours happens to be called beacon.ogg too.
• A saved .yaml cannot carry the sound, only its name. Reopen such a configuration and the tool will say the file is missing and refuse to install until you pick it again — better than a mission whose beacons are silent for reasons nobody can see. If the mission you are installing into already holds the file, there is nothing to do.

Adding the sound yourself

Typing a file name still works, for a sound you added through the Mission Editor: CTLD plays whatever l10n/DEFAULT/<name> you point it at. The picker is the supported path; the text field remains for a mission wired by hand.

Undoing a change

Any setting you change is marked changed, and the family gets a counter in the left column, so you can always see what you have touched. A reset arrow appears next to a changed setting and puts CTLD's default value back.

Prefer to start over? Start from CTLD defaults. To pick up an earlier config, use Open a config file… (a native file dialog). Either one warns you first if you have unsaved changes.

Validation

Live validation runs as you edit. A lamp in the header reads VALID or CHECK, and a panel above the settings lists any problem in plain words — unknown DCS unit types, duplicate crate weights, and so on. Click a problem and the app jumps straight to the setting it concerns.

Saving and using it

• Save as… writes your configuration to a file (a native save dialog) so you can reopen it later.
• Inject into mission… picks a mission and inserts your configuration into it as a MISSION START trigger, ready to play. The button stays disabled while any validation error remains.

Injection is idempotent — re-injecting updates the same trigger instead of duplicating it — and places the trigger first, so it runs before CTLD.

Back up your mission and test it in DCS

Injection edits the mission directly. Keep a backup, and open the result in DCS once to confirm it loads and CTLD picks up your config. The tool validates the structure, but only DCS confirms the mission runs.

The complete-snapshot model

Your configuration is a complete snapshot, not a list of changes: it fully replaces CTLD's defaults. Anything you remove is absent at runtime — not silently defaulted. That is why you always start from the defaults (or an existing config): so nothing is lost by accident.

When CTLD is updated

CTLD stamps a version on its configuration. When you open a config authored for an older CTLD, the tool tells you so and summarises how the current defaults differ — settings added, settings no longer used, default values that changed — each expandable if you want the detail. Nothing is merged: your settings are left exactly as they were, and you decide what to update before re-injecting.

Loading it by hand (alternative to inject)

If you would rather add the trigger yourself, load the configuration exactly like the hand-written template:

1. MISSION START → DO SCRIPT FILE → your CTLD_userConfig.lua
2. MISSION START → DO SCRIPT FILE → CTLD.lua

The configuration trigger must come before the CTLD trigger. See Configuration for the hand-written Lua path — fully supported for power users; ctld-tools is the recommended path for most missions.