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Drongo69

Drongo's Toolkit

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Drongo's Toolkit (DT) is a collection of scripts, addons and dialogs to add a wide range of features to OFP missions. It is designed to work in SP and MP, with any mod.

What can you do with DT?

DT offers a wide range of tools to make missions more interesting. It duplicates a lot of addons that already exist, but in DT they are integrated, largely automated and can be easily used with most addons. DT is also very modular, so players can decide what they do and don't want to use.

Features:

  • Command Engine (with radio voices confirming orders)
  • Air Support
  • Personal menu (assigned and saved to any key the player desires)
  • Voices (currently US English, Arabic and Russian)
  • Infoshare
  • AI enhancement (AI can call CoC artillery and air-strikes on enemies)
  • Objectives
  • AI "commander"
  • Satellite
  • Radar vehicles
  • Civilians
  • Vektorboson's script library
  • Jukebox (all players hear the same track)
  • A new game-mode (buy your force and capture all objectives)
  • Automated map population (a little like DAC) (Removed for now)
  • Highly customizable
  • Many random elements increase replayability of missions

A test mission is included:

Command demo: SP. Set the point limit for yourself (West) and the enemy (East) and use your forces, air, artillery and satellite support to capture 3 objectives. Be warned that the enemy AI can call artillery and airstrikes against you.

Some screenshots:

Command engine

command2.jpg

Command engine battle

battlegp.jpg

Calling reinforcements

reinforce2.jpg

Calling air support

airsupport.jpg

Personal menu (can be assigned any key for activation via fwatch)

menudo.jpg

Setting up a random command mission against the AI

reinforcex.jpg

Satellite view

satellitee.jpg

Jukebox

musicxi.jpg

Requires:

OFP 1.96/CWA

USMC markers

ECP_DSAI.pbo and ECP_DSAI_2.pbo (from the ECP mod)

CoC Unified Artillery (for CWA you NEED this hotfix)

fWatch is recommended:

Faguss's fWatch for OFP and CWA

fWatch for CWA (by vektorboson)

Thank you very much to the following people:

  • Chops (testing, ideas, support)
  • ECP team (Russian and US voices)
  • Kegetys and Faguss (fWatch)
  • Macser (radio model and textures, testing, ideas)
  • Sanctuary (dummy configs, radio model, testing, ideas)
  • RootLocus (testing, ideas)
  • Vektorboson (scripting, testing, help with dialogs, script library, radar, satellite, ideas)
  • Wolfrug and Sickboy (Arabic voices from RUG_DSAI/ACE for ArmA)
  • and of course BIS for OFP

Download Drongo's Toolkit beta 0.3 (~2.24MB)

Optional music .pbo (~152MB, required for Jukebox module)

DT can get fairly complex and I didn't want to spend the next week writing documentation. So if you have any questions or tips, please ask them in this thread.

Feedback is always welcome.

Edited by Drongo69

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Drongo's Toolkit (DT) [...]

Single player and multi player, works with any mod. This looks very, very promising.

The questions I have here:

1) Does the AI also call artillery strikes on BLUEFOR units?

2) How is the Automated map population different from DAC? How many BLUEFOR units does it support? DAC had a limit of 256, as far I remember, which limited You to battallion or brigade (tanks) level. IN DAC, every BLUEFOR unit/group leader needed a "DAC-hook", limiting a mission designer to 256 units.

3) Is it possible to save and resume missions? (Back then, this was my main reason to ditch my creation large scale missions.)

5) The 150 MB jukebox music tracks are (hopefully) optional, right?

6) Are any statistic functions implemented e.g. losses on each side, etc.?

OPF 1.99 - now all I need is to get a functional Cold War Crisis CD key to check these scripts out. It is the classic: Move from A to B, and discarded my OPFs stuff while throwing useless stuff away. But of course I had to keep my BF2 CD for Project Reality's sake.. bah!

Edited by wuschel

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@wuschel

1) The AI of each side can call artillery (UA) or air on any enemy group. This option can be enabled/disabled by the mission maker.

2) The map population is less sophisticated than DAC, but is a bit easier to set up I think. Spawns are based around markers that are either Towns, Roads or Areas. It should be possible to use DAC with DT without any conflicts (assuming certain DT features are disabled). In fact, you could probably use both systems side by side. I am not sure of the maximum amount of units per side.

3) Saving/loading probably doesn't work, there are just too many variables.

4) :)

5) Yes, jukebox is disabled by default.

6) No, but this would not be hard to implement I think.

BTW, I am not sure that 1.99 is required, that is just what I am using.

Edited by Drongo69

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Really interesting, looks like this was your secret project ;D

Anyway, the campaign flavour could be made like the DGC system addon for IL2, where the casualities of both sides and things went to a log, and when generating another mission the log was readed and the things compiled in the game (maybe for saving it would be useful)

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@NacroNicke

Yeah, I've been working on this for ages, a lot of work has gone into it. I didn't want to talk about it too much before release because nobody likes vapourware. Anyway, using fwatch, your idea is quite possible. In fact, I experimented with a similar idea before. I never ironed out all of the bugs (because I didn't try hard enough :P )

@ProfTournesol

I did not know that, I just assumed that ArmA CWC worked much as OFP. I am still running OFP.

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@ProfTournesol

I did not know that, I just assumed that ArmA CWC worked much as OFP. I am still running OFP.

It seems to be working with 1.96 too, so that's nice. Demo missions are waiting for WW4 helper and the Coop one for WGL mortars too. Oh, and one mission is complaining about markers missing (the command one), even though i got the required addons.

EDIT : gosh, i forgot to thank you... :o

Edited by ProfTournesol

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Congratulations on the release, Drongo!

edit: ProfT - nice sig!

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Thanks ProfTournel. I didn't realize, but cti_markers.pbo is also required. I can't find a download link, so I will include it in the .zip. I cleaned the references to ww4_helper anc coc_mortars from the missions (I don't know how coc_mortars keeps sneaking in).

Everyone, please download again from the first post to get the fixed version.

I will try to make my own AAA marker to eliminate the need to use cti_markers

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ECP_DSAI.pbo and ECP_DSAI_2.pbo (from the ECP mod)

A small point, but: Any chance You could provide these two files within Your addon? 131 MB download for two files might be quite a lot.. but I just realized that ECP_DSAI.pbo is 84 MB large.. what is hidden in that file? 700 dpi scans of the soviet attack plan on Europe? (:

Cheers,

wuschel

Edited by wuschel

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i can't start up fwatch to play it because its looking for the resistance .exe file instead of the new cwa one.

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@BronzeEagle

A hotfix will be available soon making fwatch optional.

A hotfix is now available from the first post.

Edited by Drongo69

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Features:

  • Command Engine (with radio voices confirming orders)
  • Air Support
  • Personal menu (assigned and saved to any key the player desires)
  • Voices (currently US English, Arabic and Russian)
  • Infoshare
  • AI enhancement (AI can call CoC artillery and air-strikes on enemies)
  • Objectives
  • AI "commander"
  • Satellite
  • Radar vehicles
  • Civilians
  • Vektorboson's script library
  • Automated map population (a little like DAC)

Simply amazing Drongo, will definitely try it!

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Has this been MP tested? I get client crash on mission start with the templates, host or dedicated server keep running.

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Not all of it has been MP tested, but the voices, satellite, air, jukebox and menu have. The command engine, AI and objectives have been tested, but not at the latest version.

Which mission causes the crash? Which mod are you using? Do the clients have CoC UA? Are you using fwatch?

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Which mission causes the crash? Which mod are you using? Do the clients have CoC UA? Are you using fwatch?

All of the templates, latest version. None. Yes. No.

I think the crash might be CoC UA related though, because it happens right before its initialization messages should show up.

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when you're done with him, i still can't get mine to work on cwa. Even if i don't start it with fwatch or whatever the hotfix was supposed to do. I'm really eager to try the grunt simulation, but im patient.

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@Pulverizer

I'll test it in MP as soon as I am able to do so and will get back to you.

@BronzeEagle

What kind of error do you get? I just tested the three demo missions in CWA with no mods, just CoC UA and DT and all of them started fine.

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I thought I pretty clearly stated in the Fwatch documentation front page that it's for 1.96. Well, maybe font was too small...

All-in-one pack would be nice.

Menu dialog: would be better to have some background. Font is truncated.

Post information about Fwatch activity and view distance in the dialog instead of chat. Generally the less chat and user actions - the better.

Adding black in effect after logging out is not a good idea.

View distance limit is 500 - 5000. Don't change it at the start - unnecessary slow down.

Number coordinates in satellite view are useless for the player. Convert them to alphanumeric.

Grunt demo:

  • Markers not visible in briefing
  • "in this area" - missing link in briefing

Command demo:

  • Text in 'Plan' section is too long. Move exceeding content to the 'Notes'.
  • No markers in briefing
  • Starting dialog - hint informing what is this dialog for should be in the dialog.
  • Got Error when tried to reinforce

Coin demo:

  • Error at the beginning
  • After then mission ends (successful)

Merge:

  • I start in the sea

Edited by Faguss

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I thought I pretty clearly stated in the Fwatch documentation front page that it's for 1.96. Well, maybe font was too small...

Nice one (';

I am just wondering - what is Fwatch used for anyway? The satellite view? Because all the addons like COC-UA and COC-CE as well as Mapfact's DAC were not using it.

It would be quite sad if the latest 1.99 would not be supported by Drongo's Toolkit.

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Thanks for the feedback.

I thought I pretty clearly stated in the Fwatch documentation front page that it's for 1.96. Well, maybe font was too small...

I got mixed up with vektorboson's version of fwatch, it works perfectly well with CWA.

I don't want to change the personal menu background, the idea is that it shouldn't obstruct the view too much. I will adjust the font size, I didn't know it was getting cut off. The black in after logging off is supposed to mask any possible lag in case a remote camera is being used, but I'll think about removing it. I will disable automatic view distance setting by default.

Thanks for the link to gridcoords.sqf, I will implement that. I will also fix the other bugs for the next release. Please note that the "merge" mission is not intended to be playable, it is just for easy copy-pasting.

@Wuschel

Fwatch is NOT required for Drongo's Toolkit, it is optional. It is only used for binding the personal menu to a key and automatically switching to the map in certain situations. If DT doesn't detect fwatch, it simply doesn't use these functions.

Again, thanks for the feedback guys. I am currently working on the RTS module.

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Drongo, I have been watching some of the scripts carefully, and testing them in game, and they are really great, and useful for large coops or missions.

Anyway now I'm thinking on doing a serie of coops with some friends, and my idea basically was to use your toolkit to make the two armies in a mission controlable (for two players), with reinforce and command, and at the same time make it possible to play the game as a grunt for people that wanted to be in the action, somewhat like a mini-CTI with a mission background basis.

So far it looks that it would play pretty good in mp, i will test it soon i think

Thanks!

EDIT:

I laugh hard when i saw this:

; Called from DTR dialog button

; I'll be honest, I really don't know what the fuck this is. I must have been drunk when I wrote it. I'm not going to delete it, who knows what would happen.

_type = _this select 0

dtrType = _type

[] exec "DT\Reinforce\Dialog\Dialog.sqs"

Well, anyway my question was how to define the reinforcements to make vehicles buyable by an player commander, It seems that you need to call the reinforce dialog with a dtrtype = 1 but I can't see where it needs to be activated

EDIT2: What a douche', at the right side of Infantry it says Vehicles in the reinforcement dialog ingame, I didn't saw it! I need glasses maybe :P.

Thanks again!

Edited by NacroxNicke

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