GR Tournament planned - possible assistance required.

[lightspeed_aust 681]

I think it could be time for a Ghost Recon-style coop tournament

Back in the day when I was creating missions for Ghost Recon I produced and ran 3 tournaments aimed at testing the skills of the coop players.

Each tournament would contain between 5 and about 10 missions. All missions would contain multiple objectives with points attached to each objective.

The missions would have no respawns - you die and your toast. You couldn't even spectate so you could not assist the remaining players with what was going on in the mission.

You could only keep your points if you successfully extracted - so in effect you had a serious risk versus reward situation. Do you go for the extra points but risk dying and failing to secure any points? Or do you take the points you have and extract hoping that it would be enough to be the best Ghost Team on the block?

Now I don't know if this has been done before in Arma2 or earlier versions of this glorious game but you'd better prepare yourselves for some seriously intense and enjoyable coop.

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This above is from a post I just placed in User Missions.

But I need to get some stuff preferably to make this as authentic as possible - maybe the appropriate addons exist, maybe someone wants a job.

I want to use some real GR looking characters in woodland camo - Im thinking about 8 characters I'll need for this. Just throwing it out there now and I can focus on the rest of the stuff.

[HarntroX 10]

Used to play those types of tournaments myself for the original Ghost Recon, absolutely loved them. Good luck. ;)

[WillaCHilla 10]

This sounds really interesting.

After playing the first missions of your campaign, I'm sure you will create a fitting playground for this :).

Perhaps these units [woodland, multicam] are suitable for the tournament?

[Guest]

Problem is, how do you keep the mission secret? In the GR tournaments everybody inserted in the mission without knowing anything except the briefing. Since clients did not download the mission that worked.

Now, clients download the mission and so "people who feel the need" can share the mission and influence the outcome (I normally call those people not so nice words) since they can practise it.

I never joined your organized tournaments so maybe you did it differently than +SD, Alpha Squad and some others I forgot the name of (but all were truly excellent tournaments!!)

[edit]

Do I see HarntroX there? If you are the HarntroX from all those lovely fun GR missions...........welcome.

And if your not him........you are welcome as well of course ;)

[lightspeed_aust 681]

hello Harntrox - wots happening? still modding?

good question Foxhound and I haven't yet worked out the logistics of running it, however, the most important thing is that it is for fun and we aren't paying money to play so nothing to lose really.

i would at first thought - look at securing support from some dedicated and honest Arma2 server hosts who might then help administer the tournament.

things to figure out yet but i am a believer....

[Gnome_AS 10]

Think it's an excellent idea Lightspeed.

I've spent many an hour myself thinking on the subject, so I'd be happy to see it happen. With the proper logistics in place anything is possible. The gatherings were always a great time.

Lots of captive thoughts milling about in the grey matter. Wasn't all that long ago I was playing around with an upscaled GR Tank map. ;)

.

[lightspeed_aust 681]

an upscaled GR Tank Map - do share!!!

This is one of my thoughts and i will post this in mission editing section.

If you get the base of the Tournament Mod to download but some critical files are held on the dedicated servers that are hosting the tourney.

so alone the dload is useless and does not allow you to cheat - when you jump on the server you can now play the mission.

[Gnome_AS 10]

The issue around preventing a mission leak is a rather profound one. While I quite enjoyed the way we used to do things in GR, my final thoughts on the matter was it would probably be better to avoid it all together in ArmA. Which means everyone would have access to the mission upfront.

Of course that thought process really changed the way I had to think about tournament/mission scoring and design in general. Ultimately I decided that the best way to approach it would be to utilize random factors in the mission to overcome some of the "advanced knowledge" of the teams. Things like DAC/UPS bound AI for exterior patrols, optional objective locations, order of objectives, sudden time requirements all very good functions. All the while being able to retain the normal dynamics like stealth, player deaths or whatever.

One other thought that I gave some time to, was time itself. While all the old GR missions were limited by default. (think we ran out to 90mins) ArmA presents an obviously much larger enviroment where time come go by quick. So the thought was to intergrate objectives that were either time based, (ie.. get there by then..) or scored based on time (how lond did it take you..). Missions should be timed for real world logistics sake, so theres always that element also. A powerful tool if used properly.

Anyway, point of all that jabber is that I think with the proper elements in place ... having advanced viewings/playings of the missions should be fairly acceptable. And ultimately not really make a profound difference on scoring.

:)

[lightspeed_aust 681]

that is a fair proposition and obviously in the case of Arma2 it seems to be the only option bcoz files in Arma2 are dloaded to client in order to play the mission.

i think you are on the right track with all of the above and really the only way to see if it works is to create and test it.

i am currently working on some refinements to the missions i built recently to improve the realism and once this template runs missions the way i want i would look to create 3 missions to test this competition format.

very curious to know more about the Alpha Squad addon and how it enhances realism - any info on that Gnome?

[Gnome_AS 10]

Think the dev-heaven wiki page is disabled do to the last major set of updates or I'd point ya there.. All in all though, it is as you would expect. ;)

It's been based on top of ACE for a long time now, along with quite a few top notch community made mods/features. Robablo is wickedly effective at keeping things in check. Ie.. all mods working together cleanly, configs, sounds, errors.. you name it, it's handled.

We still try to maintain the same ole AS type gameplay, so things are tuned to the realism side of course. And yeah, thats the nutshell. Robalo recently moved everything into Sickboys SU network, so if you have it you can search AlphaSquad and get a better idea of whats going on :)

.

[=MS=PFC Lancer 0]

The Medic Station would be happy to help. We also played in many of those tournaments and remember how much fun they were. Some of us still play the missions. We just tried the Lingor last night and liked it a lot.

[Darkguerilla 10]

Yeah we did and it was fun, but with three of us its hard as the AI tend to dick around.

I think it would also be good if someone added something to the mission to allow players to remove the grass layer.

[Gnome_AS 10]

Lancer! Hey man, nice to see your name slide out of the shadows :D

I feel a gathering in the works

[galzohar 31]

You can always just go with random missions, so looking at mission.sqm and the script doesn't tell you anything, but then each one would end up playing a different mission, which again could be a problem for a tournament situation.

If you can somehow make the randomness be based on a seed value, and then have everyone in the tournament use the same seed value, then you could have a random mission that would be the same for everyone. But scripting something like that would not be very easy, since you can't use any of the default game's randomization functions and have to basically implement them somehow yourself.

[Gnome_AS 10]

There are rumors in air regarding a very good alternative for handling missions. More to follow as we prove to ourselves it'll work. This being very recent ;)

One of the prevading thoughts/concerns for us at AS has always been, "How can we produce the same quality of tourney gameplay, as we did in the GR days. Within ArmA.". Which is a very serious and somewhat complex topic for us.

One of the very nice things about working with GR was that we could very accurately predict the AI. While this might not seem important at first, it actually has a lot of effect overall. In that situation we were very comfortable in knowing all teams would be put to the test, in the same manner, everytime. Whereas, in ArmA, it's near impossible to eliminate as another member said, "the roll of the dice" factor.

While I do think there could be good use of random elements specific to AI movement, those elements would need to be very specific. Again the usage of time factors and more standard elements are truely more suitable in most cases regarding tourney play. Unless of course the event is perhaps something like the big firefights we used to run. (those were always great fun)

Anyway, enough rambling from the me.

[Robalo 465]

I guess it wouldn't hurt to throw in the idea, I haven't tried anything yet but perhaps someone can quickly create a proof of concept mission:

Design the whole mission in RTE, but do not integrate it in the mission.sqm (IIRC it's possible to export sqf).

Have as little as possible in the mission pbo and make the bulk of the mission in a server side script with all the units, objects positions and all the logics as functions, initialized at mission start.

[galzohar 31]

In the end if one can get his hands on the mission file he can know what's going on. All you'll do is just make it a bit harder for him.

In any case, even if the mission doesn't have any randomness put in, as said AI behavior is still somewhat random, meaning even with a very fixed scenario you still won't have everyone facing the exact same situation. So just giving up of having a "uniform" experience and just making unpredictable missions (where having access to mission files won't do you much good) might not be such a bad compromise. Heck, in my missions, since I'm the #1 customer for them, the briefing usually already has most of the info you might have gathered if you would have looked at the mission files themselves, and the rest is unpredictable.

[Gnome_AS 10]

So just giving up of having a "uniform" experience and just making unpredictable missions (where having access to mission files won't do you much good) might not be such a bad compromise.

That thought has come about on more than one occasion. Hard for me to accept coming from previous ventures of a specific nature. Yet I know this game, so why I continue to beat my a head against the wall is probably a valid question.

@Mod

We probably belong in the multiplayer cage or somewheres else more clever.

.

[lightspeed_aust 681]

Have as little as possible in the mission pbo and make the bulk of the mission in a server side script with all the units, objects positions and all the logics as functions, initialized at mission start.

i dpboed a mission recently and found virtually nothing in there which was interesting - i will find the name of it and show it here - not sure how it was done exactly but obviously a lot of scripts generating stuff at launch.

but here's the thing - we are not playing for sheep stations as they say (in Australia anyway) - it is for fun but with a serious gameplay.

i am confident that i can produce missions that despite being known are still tricky bcoz of unpredictable AI - i am confident that we can produce missions that are virtually the same each time despite AI going one way or the other. hell - even knowing all the GR Tournament missions inside and out - they were still f'n hard.

and realistically, players should expect the unexpected.

i think this will be a gr8 initiative for the Arma2 COOP community - to bring them what was the most fun and intensity I have ever had in a tactical FPS and get the community sharing the fun and getting to know eachother better. now i just want BIS to put some prizes together to add a lil sumthin.

does AS intend to build some missions for this - or should i organise the first mission set (say 3-5)?

plz PM me if you have any ideas for the missions or if you have some comms where we can work out the finer points. straight up - i would plan not to make the missions too difficult first time round so that teams have a better then 50% chance of completing.

then start building the difficulty level as the missions progress.

love this shit!! ha ha

Edited February 27, 2011 by Lightspeed_aust

[Darkguerilla 10]

I can tell you guys already.

I've edited a fair share of missions.

Now most of your are probably thinking: "The map is too large for this type of game play."

NO its not. All it would take is someone selecting a town to do the fight in and blocking of sections with whatever is available. As a backup you put four triggers around your square area that will kill any person who attempts to leave the combat area.

I'd love to get together with anyone who wants to do some editing.

I'm not a pro, but I do know what I am doing.

I've edited tons of stuff for the Medic Station guys.

[lightspeed_aust 681]

thanx for your input DG -

no probs with assisting - help is always good.

in respect to map limiting - its completely unnecessary to do the GRAW "you are leaving the combat area and will die magically" scenario.

the fact is, if your objectives for a mission are at A, B, & C then by all means head to X, Y & Z but you will not complete any objectives, and wonder why you bothered playing the mission at all. by default, players will/must be drawn into your mission zone and so the other 60km2 becomes irrelevant anyway - no force fields needed.

i am in the process of finding a suitable map (something fresh) for the missions and from there will try to figure out a good campaign of sorts - happy to involve you and AS and MS and anyone else in that process.

and then we begin mission making.

also, need to figure out the addons for this - straight up i am thinking special forces units, and fast rope, i think ACE has to be part of this, and a limited revive or medic function.

any other suggestions?

[galzohar 31]

Aren't the special forces in the game just fine? ACE and famous islands are the only things I'd really consider, especially if you want a lot of players playing it. And ACE has fast-roping already.

[kremator 1064]

Why not use something like VTS or MCC to create missions on-the-fly? That way no one is going to have an advantage before the mission?

[lightspeed_aust 681]

hmm - will have a look into that - looking for a point system though and detailed briefs so its not just a matter of place objectives and a few AI and off you go.