Very serious multiplayer bug

[PowerMage 0]

Hi there!

I hope one of the DevelopementCrew of OFP is reading this. I just want you to tell that you please please please add a joinInGame function with the new Netcode. I did a very huge Multiplayer map and I skripted my ass off for months to create this map! It has about 100 Skriptfiles (50 are really important rest is ActionMenu stuff). There have been lots of difficulties but I nearly mastered all of them so please read on and don't let my afford be wasted! Let me now explain why it is so neccessarly that MultiplayerGames allow joinInGame feature! (I do not complain about waiting 30 min. but if you are having a real war that is scattered around the whole island and you have to restart because of lacking players or players that are bidding for a restart it gets really frustrating when you have just played a map for 4 hours and have just conquered half of the island and this is what my multiplayer map is about! Not a small mission it's real MP war on the whole Island! And it is not just planned, it's almost done and it works!.

First of all you can Download the map here: DynamicCTF

I did the first full running version and I tested it with 10 Players. There are some minor bugs left. One thing is important! Each Side must take the Officer or the map will be buggy (fixed soon). So I beg to you OFP-Developers: Play this map and wait till your clients crashed or the server crashed and then you will want to kill someone because this map is a lot of fun and takes a lot of time and is very very huge and that's why you'll be frustrated because you really enjoyed it and then it's all gone!

Now I'll explain some of it's features. They all might be improved by time but doing their jobs for now:

Cities/Towns:

First feature and goal is it to conquer towns all around malden!

All cities are held by the Resistance. East and West have to take control of all these towns and battle themselves off the island (it's like the whole OFP Campaign but in one Mission and Multiplayer). Each Town will defend itself if there is no player at it's location. Some towns have special buildings that will allow you to build vehicles. Some towns may build tanks others may even build Helicopters/Planes (Airport).

Each town can be upgraded (right now only IV Artilery & 5 Flak work properly). Also you can set your glogal respawn to every captured town. If a town gets attacked and you had your Respawn in that town the respawn will automatically move to a town near the attacked town that is under your control. Ammoboxes refill at respawn and also appear again if they got destroyed.

Factories:

Factories are mostly visible as bunkers and repair facilities. In Harbor1 the factory is located at the pier. Just move on it and you'll see the "Build Vehicle" ActionMenu appear. After you chose "Build Vehicle" you'll see all buildable vehicle categories popup. If you select one you can choose the specific Vehicle to be build. Each player can build up to 3 Vehicles on each factory... if you can't build anymore vehicles but you badly need some then you can chose "Destroy all Vehicles" and the vehicle slots are free again. Take care that no other player is using your vehicle! If the factory gets damaged it can't produce until it regenerated itself. If it gets completely destroyed it will be inactive for serveral minutes. It starts to disappear in the floor and a new undammaged factory pops up at it's place.

Special Vehicles (maybe a bit buggy yet):

Ever dreamed about building your own base in a multiplayer game? Ever wanted to place tank barricades arround a town to protect it from those nasty T80s? Well, here you go: There is a special Vehicle that is called MobileBaseW(E/G). With this vehicle you can set your Respawn anywhere on the map and you can build a base to gather your troops and coordinate attacks on the enemy. This special vehicle can be build only at your start location, so don't let the enemy take control of it! If you moved your BaseTruck to a location where you want to build up your base then unload all troops and chose "Build Base"->"Mount Base". Now the Truck is fixed and can't be moved. If you select "Build Base" again you can chose between "Respawn On/Off" and "Get Type". Type is replaced by buildingtypes like fences, tents, sheds, etc... Now you can select the building you want to build. After that this object will appear in front of you. You can move arround and place it on the floor where you want to. If you wish to place the object then select "Drop Object". Now the Object is placed before you. Only you can move that object again (because ActionMenus are executed local at the player but even that I managed to avoid ;-) ). With "Lock Object" you can fix it totaly to the floor. It can't be moved anymore (no ActionMenu). Pickup is self explanatory. On the truck you can select "Lock all Object" and "Unlock all Objects". This locks all placed objects or unlocks them again. "Unmount Base" picks up all build items and enables the truck for driving again. "SelfDestruction" is to be used with cation. Only the leader may use this function. After 30 sec. the base will blow up. Only use this if the enemy is about to overrun you and you have no chance to secure the base. If you turned on respawn then you will respawn at your just build up base. By unmounting it the respawn will move back to the last city where you set the respawn. Only one BaseTruck can turn on respawn at a time. Be careful: If the truck gets destroyed the build base will slowly fall appart and the respawn also returns to the last city after 2 minutes.

Some more nice features:

Ever been in a town far away from your group and you had to run all the way on your feet? Well, this map has a solution! This solution is called civil traffic! It's a really useful and funny feature... there will always be cars driving from town to town and it's a total "coincident" that they will cross your way. You may walk infront of a driving car and force it's driver to slow down. If you're fast enough you can get aboard and will be carried through the land without beeing detected by the enemy. You can also get a ride faster and easier by shooting the driver and stealing the car. But this is nasty, isn't it?

There is also military traffic! If you travel through your conquered cities far away from the frontline you will mostly meet troop transports and jeeps. The closer you are comming to the frontline there will be more support units and even whole Tanksquads. It just depends how many enemy cities your city is surrounded by. So in a way your captured towns may also be attacked by the enemy side (without enemy palyers beeing in sight).

You wonder how such a big war may take place on the whole island with dozends of vehicles without slowing down the clients/server? Well... very easy... I developed a system that I call virtual vehicles. If a player created a vehicle it appears for real on the map. But if the player goes away (1000m) then this vehicle will disappear. All it's data (position, dammage, etc...) will be stored in large arrays and if the player returns than this vehicle will appear again without the player noticing it has been away! So you can build 10 Tanks and leave them behind. They won't desturb the performance.

Same principle works for the events (civil/military traffic). First the event will drive from a distant town to the player and then head off for other towns randomly. As soon as the event gets out of sight it's removed from the gamefield again. Only if a player decides to get a ride and stays close to the event it will move on and on and on and on...

You can see that this map will not be boring! There will always be events that will get the attention of the players.

In later versions there will also be dynamic mission targets. The east players have to detroy a west convoi and the west players will have to guard that convoi. So there is a lot to be done but I think it's worth the work if there will be inGameJoins and a more stable Win/LinuxServer ;-). So I hope you read this whole stuff... yeah I know it's a lot but I think it was worth the writing because Operation Flashpoint has a potential that has not been seen before because there is no limit in missions and game designs that can be placed on top of the OFP engine. So please consider my request for a joinInGame Option and you'll see thousands of OFP-Fans scream up in extacy! Imagine what other kewl projects might follow for the multiplayer mode in OFP!

Sincerly,

  PowerMage

[Dawdler 0]

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote </td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">If a player created a vehicle it appears for real on the map. But if the player goes away (1000m) then this vehicle will disappear. All it's data (position, dammage, etc...) will be stored in large arrays and if the player returns than this vehicle will appear again without the player noticing it has been away! So you can build 10 Tanks and leave them behind. They won't desturb the performance.<span id='postcolor'>

Hm... One think that the game code should be faster than a script on this... And besides, you cant store ALL data in array, you cant reach it from a script.

Anyway, it sounds like one cool mission

(and btw, they probably wont consider that request as it has been requested 100000000 times and rejected 100000000) (Unless resistance bring really revolutionary netcode that is, but then they dont have to consider cause its already there )

[PowerMage 0]

Yes yes... I know that this was requested a million times but I just wanted to show a practical example that really hits the point. As I said... I won't complain for waiting 30 min to get into a mission but if there are really big dynamic maps it's really hard to get it done without a join. The last comment about resistance, did it mean "Yes, ingame join" or "No, no joinings". My english is not best yet an rethorical stuff is a bit hard...

Okay... that's it. CU