The Forgotten Few - SP/MP Dynamic Campaign for CO

[KingN 249]

King Nothing, first off I wanted to say that I absolutely love the campaign. The idea of all dynamic missions is something I always look for in downloading new campaigns and yours does a damn good job of invoking that unpredictable feeling of danger. I ran into a bug during my first mission of clearing a stronghold about 2 clicks out from the objective. After I was close to being dropped off by my BMP transport for insertion, the mission just upruptly ended without anything ever happening. Was this part of the unpredictability or did the enemy guerrillas not spawn correctly causing the mission end trigger to fire? Once again, thank you for the well done campaign. Was just wondering if I had witnessed a bug or part of the randomness I was supposed to play through? Using ArmA II CO (non-addon) v0.50b version btw..

That's interesting. No that shouldn't happen. I need to know few things to help me trying to track down the reason for that.

- Was the mission about an enemy strong point? Was this strong point in a city or in the outskirts?

- Do you use any special addons?

- How far where you when the game ended? Was it 2km away? I take it you didn't even get to the objective?

- How did the mission end, the normal way? Screen fading to black and debriefing showing up?

Thanks for the report. I'll try to fix it once I get some specifics. I've never experienced such a thing.

@Others

Thanks for the desert units, didn't know about those ones. I've found russian desert naval infantry. It even has some desert camo vehicles.

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?t=99516&highlight=desert+naval

Are there any desert spetsnaz units available? I think I could use some spetsnaz from the GRU pack by Caprera and Massi. And I'm interested in some more russian desert vehicles if there are any.

[deltafiveone 11]

Thanks for the reply, glad I can help debug the campaign in this manner if anything..

- Was the mission about an enemy strong point? Was this strong point in a city or in the outskirts?

Outskirts of a smaller village. I should've took note which city/villa this occurred.

- Do you use any special addons?

I use JSRS sound, ASR AI v1.11, Proper Vegetation (Low), Fallujah v1.2 (probably irrelevant but used nonetheless), and ALL ArmA II CO files/installation are run off my Crucial M4 SSD if that matters. I am also using the A2 CO beta patches, always run up to date with latest release. Maybe that's what caused this?

- How far where you when the game ended? Was it 2km away? I take it you didn't even get to the objective?

I was actually dropped off 3km away as I recall now, I was barely about to get to my insertion point next to a small house along a main road by BMP-3.

- How did the mission end, the normal way? Screen fading to black and debriefing showing up?

Mission ended as normal, text stating I had completed my objective of clearing the stronghold then the normal fadeout to debriefing.

On another note, the mission after that (mission 2, same campaign after bugged mission 1) I was tasked to raid a stronghold at a farmhouse, did my usual insertion around 2.5-3 km out, neared the objective around 500m-750m out went to my map and got a freezeup. No CTD but a straight-up ArmA II freezeup. Had to Task Manager out manually as my cursor was stuck as that specific map cursor even on desktop. My guess is I should've just restarted ArmA II CO completely after the first bug I encountered with the auto-ending objective. Just to state, I have tried your campaign other times before this situation with no errors at all. Nine times out of ten, I hadn't had any other bugs besides that last run through. Hope this helps, thanks again!

[KingN 249]

Aha, I think I found what was causing it. In the last version I added an additional exception condition to all missions. If there are only 1 or 2 enemies left in the area, the area will be considered cleared eventually. I think this triggered the main objective accomplished in your case. And as you were 3km away from the area, you were also considered extracted. Now I added a new condition to the exception that you have to visit the objective area first. I hope it's fixed now. Thanks again for noticing this!

I'm not sure about the freeze-up. I've heard of few people having that problem when getting in contact with enemies. I have fixed one freezing error in one of my scripts but I'm not sure if this is causing them. Let's see how it goes when I get to release my next build.

[deltafiveone 11]

No problem man! I look forward to your next version. Thanks for taking the time out to address what I found.

Edit: Can I find the fix of the first bug on your first page or do I wait for v051b? Just want to get back to the action *haha*..

Edited October 5, 2011 by DeltaFiveOne
Addendum

[Tonci87 163]

I think I have some new intel on that freeze.

When I played the new build for the first time, everything went well. I had no CTDs or something like that. But when I restarted the campaign those freezes were suddenly back. Could there be something wrong during campaign initialization?

[solidsnake2384 10]

King Nothing, first off I wanted to say that I absolutely love the campaign. The idea of all dynamic missions is something I always look for in downloading new campaigns and yours does a damn good job of invoking that unpredictable feeling of danger. I ran into a bug during my first mission of clearing a stronghold about 2 clicks out from the objective. After I was close to being dropped off by my BMP transport for insertion, the mission just upruptly ended without anything ever happening. Was this part of the unpredictability or did the enemy guerrillas not spawn correctly causing the mission end trigger to fire? Once again, thank you for the well done campaign. Was just wondering if I had witnessed a bug or part of the randomness I was supposed to play through? Using ArmA II CO (non-addon) v0.50b version btw..

Same exact thing happened to me.

---------- Post added at 09:49 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:45 PM ----------

But I still have that problem with the second mission where i cant extract the prisoners. Mods I use are all of the ACE related files but people had no problems with ACE on this and JSRS.

[Tonci87 163]

Whats wrong with your prisoners?

[KingN 249]

Same exact thing happened to me.

---------- Post added at 09:49 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:45 PM ----------

But I still have that problem with the second mission where i cant extract the prisoners. Mods I use are all of the ACE related files but people had no problems with ACE on this and JSRS.

I'll test both the strong point thingie and the prisoner rescue. I'll let you know if I can reproduce the problems and fix them! And I think I already fixed the strong point issue.

[deltafiveone 11]

I'll test both the strong point thingie and the prisoner rescue. I'll let you know if I can reproduce the problems and fix them! And I think I already fixed the strong point issue.

Take your time. Making campaigns are difficult enough.

[solidsnake2384 10]

Whats wrong with your prisoners?

I walk up to the Russian captives but nothing happens. They just sit there with their hands behind their backs.

[KingN 249]

Ok time for a little update. I've been actively working on the 051B. In addition to usual smaller new features, improvements and fixes as usual I will introduce major updates. Let me say that this update will be the biggest so far so you'll be in for a treat. For me it more or less changed the way the gameplay feels.

Build 051B higlights are as follows:

• Civilian life and traffic
  
• Greatly improved script performance
  
• Dynamic position finding for AI infantry
  
• More spread out mission area
  
• Improved immersion
  

I'm not using ALICE module. The civilians are spawned and simulated by a cpu-friendly script of my own, avoiding the memory leak issues and other problems I've experienced with the BIS module. The simulation is kinda simplified (but still very immersive) and the civilians are de-spawned at distance. Most importantly now you have to check your targets when engaging: not everything that moves is an enemy.

The heavier scripts and functions work like a greased lighting compared to the previous builds. Missions will be generated at greater speed and dialogs run mostly without delays. Also LZ finding is performed instantly. All this is achieved by prioritizing these scripts with a better use of the "call" function command.

I have baked up a new dynamic position finder script. This will find a logical position for enemy and friendly infantry groups, in both unalarmed and combat situations. This will basically make the AI deadlier by choosing waypoint positons from cover and avoid too open areas when cover is available. The AI will also tend to stick more together.

The enemy will now set up forward defences/outposts in some mission settings. The enemy vehicles will also be patrolling this outposts and a wider area so you should be more carefull when closing in to the mission target.

All in all, after implementing the civilian life, enemy position finding, outposts and few new detail features that you will learn about will improve the overall immersion. The takistan version and newmission types will be added in the next builds but now I will concentrate on improving the old content and scripts. I will continue testing and adding stuff plus wait for new russian translations to improve the verbal aspect of the russian version. You will get your hands on this soon enough, like a month or so. Stay tuned my friends!

[Variable 322]

You never cease to surprise us Kingnothing...

Thank you very much for your efforts!

[metalcraze 290]

Hopefully this time my CPU will be able to handle the mission with a playable FPS

[humvee28 10]

Very nice Update Report. Thank you!

Since i found this Mission, i play (nearly) no other Mission. :D

[KingN 249]

Hopefully this time my CPU will be able to handle the mission with a playable FPS

Umm about that. By the performance update I only mean the heavier scripts (or functions in fact) run when calculating things during mission generation and LZ finding. There are still the same amount of units on map, or actually more now that there are civilians. And ther are still about the same amount of scripts running on background, except I do have eliminated 2-3 looping manager scripts, this will at least further affect on the speed of running other scripts.

Another thing related to this. I bought a new beast to run Arma 2. I have now a very high-end comp to replace my 4-5 year old comp. This is of course a good thing when it comes to playing but not good in terms of mission dev. You see, now I need more feedback from on how the campaign changes affect on lower-end comps so I hope you can bear with me and see how it goes with the new builds. But I will of course continue trying to keep the cpu usage as low as possible.

And to others too, thanks for your support!

Edited October 28, 2011 by King Nothing

[humvee28 10]

King, can you tell me if it´s possible to remove the First Aid System from this Mission without breaking Content?

[Tonci87 163]

Ok time for a little update. I've been actively working on the 051B. In addition to usual smaller new features, improvements and fixes as usual I will introduce major updates. Let me say that this update will be the biggest so far so you'll be in for a treat. For me it more or less changed the way the gameplay feels.

Build 051B higlights are as follows:

• Civilian life and traffic
  
• Greatly improved script performance
  
• Dynamic position finding for AI infantry
  
• More spread out mission area
  
• Improved immersion
  

I'm not using ALICE module. The civilians are spawned and simulated by a cpu-friendly script of my own, avoiding the memory leak issues and other problems I've experienced with the BIS module. The simulation is kinda simplified (but still very immersive) and the civilians are de-spawned at distance. Most importantly now you have to check your targets when engaging: not everything that moves is an enemy.

The heavier scripts and functions work like a greased lighting compared to the previous builds. Missions will be generated at greater speed and dialogs run mostly without delays. Also LZ finding is performed instantly. All this is achieved by prioritizing these scripts with a better use of the "call" function command.

I have baked up a new dynamic position finder script. This will find a logical position for enemy and friendly infantry groups, in both unalarmed and combat situations. This will basically make the AI deadlier by choosing waypoint positons from cover and avoid too open areas when cover is available. The AI will also tend to stick more together.

The enemy will now set up forward defences/outposts in some mission settings. The enemy vehicles will also be patrolling this outposts and a wider area so you should be more carefull when closing in to the mission target.

All in all, after implementing the civilian life, enemy position finding, outposts and few new detail features that you will learn about will improve the overall immersion. The takistan version and newmission types will be added in the next builds but now I will concentrate on improving the old content and scripts. I will continue testing and adding stuff plus wait for new russian translations to improve the verbal aspect of the russian version. You will get your hands on this soon enough, like a month or so. Stay tuned my friends!

This is great!

I´m really looking forward to play this!

King, can you tell me if it´s possible to remove the First Aid System from this Mission without breaking Content?

I think this mission doesn´t have a First aid System? I added the BIS default system myself.

(Could you please introduce it as default?)

[delta99 34]

Looking forward to the updates although the current build was fantastic as far as I'm concerned. It is the most played single player mission on my system at the moment.

[humvee28 10]

I think this mission doesn´t have a First aid System? I added the BIS default system myself.

I mean i´ve readed something about such a System in this Mission. Maybe i´m wrong. Nevermind. :)

[delta99 34]

I think it is a bit of cheating if you add the BIS First Aid system. There are medics in the group that you can use in your squad. Only a few of them though so use them wisely.

[humvee28 10]

This Mission combined with ACE Wounds is great, but it doesn´t work properly all the Time. Might be related to the amount of Scripts in the Mission itself.

[delta99 34]

I've run through this mission fully 3 times now with Vanilla Arma without any issues and it locked up on the first mission when I tried it with ACE so I avoid ACE with this. I'm fine with it remaining vanilla anyway.

[mad_mm 11]

Good News, the civilians are the right step foward, for next Arma 3 King Nothing must be made the new Campaign, not the lame crazy Tank drive....

[KingN 249]

I think this mission doesn´t have a First aid System? I added the BIS default system myself.

(Could you please introduce it as default?)

I think I will add this module as an option if it's possible in 052B. I will implement a settings window that will open before the campaign begins. In this window you can change the difficulty and other possible parameters. I have found out that one can spawn modules by a script so this should make it possible to turn on/off modules.

[Tonci87 163]

I think I will add this module as an option if it's possible in 052B. I will implement a settings window that will open before the campaign begins. In this window you can change the difficulty and other possible parameters. I have found out that one can spawn modules by a script so this should make it possible to turn on/off modules.

Perfect Solution!

You could ask SaOk. He has a Settings Dialogue on start of every Mission/campaign he made