[SP][Chernarus] - Timebender - {exploration, action, sci-fi}

[zapat 56]

Timebender - A WICT driven SP mission for ARMA 2

The Features:

- Timebender is a singleplayer, mini-warfare game, happening across all Chernarus.

- completely free-run: you start with an empty map and you decide on your direction to follow. You need to find your objectives also to get to your final destination.

- fully dynamic set-up: every playthrough is different

- Anywhere you go fierce battles are guaranteed by the great WICT engine

- custom support: squad reinforments on foot/by heli, supply drops, air support, custom UAV. You can dig in, and also pray, if nothing else helps. Switchable units help fluent gameplay.

- SP only: it has some effects that makes making MP hard.

- ARMA2 only so far - (plans for v2.0 is to make it usable on any map)

The Story:

Russian scientists have been working on a project researching parallel universes for long years. The academic world has always been too sceptical about this.

Until now.

A former cold-war general stole the core device of the research some months ago. The russians have turned to us for help when the situation turned out to be much worse than they had thought. Actually the project is way more advanced than anybody has ever presumed: it is fully operable but was only tested under controlled circumstances.

Again: until now.

Some months ago a former, cold-war general has stolen the projec's core device, which is said to be able to switch among parallel universes. Reportedly the general's team (call them Ivan as in the good-ol'-days) has developed the concept a lot further: it seems they managed to create and suspend a territory in alternate reality.The area -the size of a whole county- is parallel to Ukraine, and is called "Chernarus".

Not much is known about the process: they are using a kind of a gate (that must be powered by the stolen device) to suspend an area.

Our guys hasn't been lazy either. We could create gate that links right into Chernarus. This means we can transfer units via this gate.We also have a mobile controller instrument (we call it the Swag) that can ovverride the link of a gate this way it can control it. You and the Swag are going in to retrieve the stolen device.

Remarks:

Advised view distance for the mission is at least 3000meters.

Overall performance is good IMHO, with some rare hiccups (when the engine is initializing / recalculating a whole battlefield)

If you decide to give it a go: please read the briefing carefully for hints and for intended gameplay. I know it is long: believe me it was longer to cook it up... :)

If heat is way too much, just dig in and wait for the army to get there (they are coming, but a bit slow) or wait for available reinforcements.

Too much heat means you are alone on the front.

Not enough heat means the battle is somewhere else: don't worry, eventually it will find you. :)

Battles are -on the other hand-are indication of a gate's direction. Enemy comes from its closest gate, the army is figthing with the enemy, so figure...

The mission was tested throughout. There are bugs that come up every now and then though: just like in a real battle. :)

Thanks:

Thanks for ArmaIIholic for his continous support!

Thanks for at least a hundred people out there whose ideas from the forums could be used to solve many problems.

---This is my first full-scale released mission. I don't yet know if balance is okay. I hope you'll have as much fun playing it as I had creating it.---

Addons required:

-CBA

-WICT (included in download)

Addons recommended:

- JSRS: soundmod for the best sound environment

- vftcas: so pilots tolerate timebending better. :)

- ACE for a lot of reasons.

- GL4 because of force move.

Changelog:

-09.20: v1.0: wrong settings, redownload!

-09.22: v1.1:

- Wrong setting corrected

- Tweaked a bit

- Apache support added

-09.24: v1.2:

- Major rebalance

- Added dig in feature

- Added pray feature

- Added Humvee to supply drop

- Some minor bugs corrected

-09.28: v1.3:

- Added call for UAV

- Contracted air support

- Balance is now great

DOWNLOAD 1.3

Armaholic mirror

Edited September 28, 2010 by zapat

[ArmAIIholic 10]

parallel universes

yeah man, you are really good with stories. The image reminds me of Half-Life :)

[zapat 56]

Well, if you can't hide the engine of the game, why not build a story around it instead. :)

[Velocity 10]

Does this mission include the weapons and equipment brought by Operation Arrowhead?

Even if there's no sand I would like to have them - they make it more diversified.

[heklos 0]

Zapat,

When I play the mission it has what looks to me to be a little debug box in the upper right hand of the screen that tells me how many AI groups there are and where the East, West or Neutral bases grid location. Also it seems that the enemy never targets me, they target the AI squad members but seem to ignore me the player. It seems that maybe the mission has the player slot set to captive ??? maybe??

Unless this is ACE's doing.

This is running Arma2:Combined Operations, ACE 1.5 stable/w CBA, and the @WICT mod folder provided in the mission download.

Besides that.. wow it gets pretty intense and the storyline premise is interesting I like the effects.. nice.

[zapat 56]

PLEASE DOWNLOAD V1.1

Thanks Heklos, for letting me know.

I forgot to turn off debug before I compiled the mission.

Sorry everyone!!

Edited September 22, 2010 by zapat

[B00Ts-SA 0]

Thanks for the effort looking forward to trying this, well done on your first mission.:icon_eek:

[zapat 56]

Velocity: truth is, I still don't have OA... :o

I can give you the sources if you want to port it for weapons:

-I use F2 framework for start

-There are three weapon boxes dropped by supplydrop Osprey.

-Units are WICT generated, so it is easy to change for OA.

[Richey79 10]

Nice work Zapat, I can see myself mucking about in this mission a lot

Cheers,

[zapat 56]

If heat is way too much, just dig in (I'll probably do a script for this soon) and wait for the army to get there (they are coming, but a bit slow) or wait for available reinforcements. Too much heat means you are alone on the front.

No enemy around means, the battle is somewhere else: don't worry, eventually it will find you. :)

And I need to tweak heli reinforcements a lot more: they landed well while testing, but having lots of false stuff in real circumstances. At least they try... :) Sometimes... :)

edit: I found the problem: some more testing and it will be the best heli reinforcements ever in A2... :D

I've made some tweakings on balance too, so expect a 1.2 soon: I've played it for hours already, and I had some truly great moments...

Edited September 23, 2010 by zapat

[zapat 56]

Version 1.2 released

There are some very enjoyable changes:

-I got you the best heli pilots in the Navy (for sending squad reinforcements): they try to land even in hot LZs, and they are very good in finding LZs.

- You can now dig in!! Very useful in intense firefights. I decided on sandbagfence (which is not realistic) because I had problems placing dirtenvelopes on sloped terrain.

- You can pray as a last resort at the worst situations. Get your asses safe, while God listens! :)

- I rebalanced the whole spawning process: now you will get more enjoyable (sometimes bigger battles).

You should try 1.2 if not for the mission, but for these new additions! I have many workhours in them, please write a "like" if you like them...

Edited September 24, 2010 by zapat

[zapat 56]

I released the final 1.3, if someone is still interested...

[Velocity 10]

..., if someone is still interested...

I am! I would give it a try but unfortunately I don't have the time at the moment :(

[katipo66 94]

Hey Zapat, ive downloaded it... will try tonight after work!

[puzzola 10]

Great mission, I played 1.0 but i lost diary for some reason and forgot what to do :D

So i restarted with 1.3 and I'm en route for the device.

Very useful the Humvee drop and the uav, not used dig or pray 'cause now it seamed a bit more simple. I appreciated the differt radio text from the choppers.

Hope you'll release some other SP mission for ArmA2 standalone.

Thanks

[zapat 56]

puzzola: It is great to hear!

You see, every battle is different: I've had some gates, where I didn't meet one single enemy, and I had some, where I was so pinned down, I needed all the support to be able to move a little. So trust me you'll feel like praying some time soon. :))

[puzzola 10]

@zapat: Very good. It deserve some other replay then.

Thank you again

[zapat 56]

Btw: what do you mean you lost diary?!

[puzzola 10]

Once in game it doesn't show anymore neither with J key :confused:

The menù is there yet but with no content. It's ArmA way of life ;)

[muttly 10]

hi zapat

finding this quiet hard got any tips.

Basically i spawn tells me to leave insertion area get about 500m or so away then i get enermy armour and squads spawn around me then i die.

Do i have to wait it out until i get message saying "found active gate" then head there?

Its just ive ran off one time found differant gate but swag did nt do any thing then i bumped into few hostiles squads and died think 15min is most ive managed to survive :D

doin some thing wrong i think lol any tips :)

[zapat 56]

Once in game it doesn't show anymore neither with J key :confused:

The menù is there yet but with no content. It's ArmA way of life ;)

Hmm, have you switched units near a gate? I also had a bug when switching leaders... It may confuse the whole thing a bit.

Basically i spawn tells me to leave insertion area get about 500m or so away then i get enermy armour and squads spawn around me then i die.

Do i have to wait it out until i get message saying "found active gate" then head there?

Its just ive ran off one time found differant gate but swag did nt do any thing then i bumped into few hostiles squads and died think 15min is most ive managed to survive :D

You need to find a gate (two radar towers) and walk through them. ~90% of the time you will find it, sometimes other Western units do (this is when "Gate revealed" hint appears).

You just need to walk through, nothing more. Check swag is only for checking if the Navy/Army can come through to help you. (Shows if there is an active gate around or not)

There are complete battles happening between gates: you need to behave accordingly (that is not running around alone).

If battle gets too hot it means you advanced without fellow units: dig in, call for air support and wait the rest of the Navy get there to help you. You can check the situation via the UAV. They will come if there is an active gate closer than 2800 meters.

If you start carfully you should be able to dig in when you are about to meet first enemies... If its a heavy armour and there are no western anti tank units nearby, that sucks... :)

Edited October 1, 2010 by zapat

[wodin 0]

The message move out of area at the start makes you feel you have to get clear quick...which then leads to a quick death...I didn't know you could just dig in and wait for back up....the message may need changing....

[zapat 56]

Yes, it is a pretty dumb mission as I see it now. :)

It's been my first attempt in mission making, without the needed experience..

[hungrytoheal 10]

Just thought I'd let you know that when I tried to play this mission, there were no enemies on the map at all, even after trying three times. Also, the helicopters always crashed before dropping me reinforcements or supplies, and reinforcements on foot never came, even after I controlled three gates (including the insertion point). I got the error message, "WICT\start.sqf not found" on startup also.

Shouldn't gates be green markers as well after I captured them? Because the marker stayed red after walking through them/capturing them.

EDIT: It seems the addon was not launched correctly when I ran ARMA, because I do not get the script error anymore and I now have AI in the mission. I'll let you know if I am still having the reinforcements issues.

Nope, all is good it seems with the reinforcements.

And I have to agree with others, this mission is a real challenge! Have the AI been designed to be quite accurate in this mission?

Edited July 31, 2011 by hungrytoheal

[zapat 56]

Hi hungrytoheal, thanks for trying my mission. Yes timebender is suffering from inbalance issues: sometimes it is too hard, sometimes it is too easy.

Ididn't quite know how to set skills properly, I just used WICT for the engine. Apart from that: as i see it now there is not a single part in the mission that is working flawless. This was my first mission and I didn't quite knew what I was doing...

My new mission is already in the works (for like half a year now) and will address all the issues in timebender: I rethougth the whole concept, and hopefully I will be able to present something that really works this time: expect it around end of the year. :)