[SP] Lost

[markb50k 1]

Title: Lost

Type: SP Mission

Side / Role: West / Various

Version: 2.0

Arma2 Version: CO 1.60

Date: 2012-01-05

Addons: None

Author: markb50k

Features:

The mission has gone through a complete overhaul, and will require a fresh restart. Here are the important things to know about what is in this mission.

Added in 3.0

- RESTART REQUIRED (New comms menu, new included ADDON)

- NEW ADDON REQUIRED (Included in ZIP, just place "MARKB50K_LostAddons" in your ARMA 2/Addons directory)

- Added in several new TASKS to help point out some essential game play mechanics.

- Friendly forces laid out a bit differently, with more of the friendly groups set up at the rally point early on. Helped their survival a bit.

- Removed all always-present actions that cluttered your action menu. Now everything is accessible through COMMS menu.

- fixed invincible russian guy bug. This was not a conflict with another mod.

- Less Enemies option now has greater effect in cutting down enemy forces.

- Enemy vehicle patrols will retreat and try to fill gunner and driver spots if they accrue losses.

- Group manager now shows Ranks and Unit Type of your soldiers, helps with organizing your squads.

Added in 2.0

- Mission is never same mission twice. Fully randomized and dynamic troop positions create completely different experience each playthrough.

- Number of running scripts significantly reduced through use of waypoint based AI movement and smart AI caching.

- Starting position of player is randomly generated.

- Moveable weapon cache that player can store all his army's weapons and gear salvaged from enemy. Cache can be moved in any Truck sized vehicle to allow for redeployment.

- Clayman's group manager that allows you to easily arm and fit out all your soldiers and manage your sub squads.

- Enemy forces randomly generated including:

- Paratrooper groups that are fully functional (no magic spawning of these groups). You can run across these guys before they liftoff and afterwards as well.

- Around 40 vehicle mounted patrols that travel the roads of the country, deploy infantry, then move to the next patrol point.

- Around max 90 manned enemy encampments randomly placed. Enemy will man static weapons, patrol the local area.

- Around max 70 mobile foot patrols, that travel cross country and always seem to popup when you least expect them.

- Enemy AI will respond very forcefully after player makes significant progress in war.

- Uses Resistance side groups manned with OPFOR soldiers to get over the 144 group limit.

- fully functioning ALICE and SILVIE modules, including civilian vehicular traffic.

- All AI movement is controlled through dynamically generated waypoints, so no always running scripts controlling movement.

- All AI units will call out for reinforcements so battles will get very hairy if you wait around in an area that you are in contact with the enemy.

- Small amount of friendly stragglers that will try to consolidate. One of your goals is to find this rally point.

- All friendly groups can be recruited by player if you find them. Once that happens, High Command module kicks in.

- friendly forces and civilians can give away enemy positions and point out corpses that can be scavenged for ammo and weapons.

- many useful High Command commands can be accessed through Communications tree including splitting, merging units quickly, team switching and other neat options.

- possible to rescue POWs at enemy camps

- possible to find enemy intel on dead enemy officers

- AI caching scripts optimized and improved to prevent loss of immersion (no units suddenly spawning out of nowhere).

- option to initialize the mission with "less enemy" for less CPU.

- redone start of mission so that there is almost no waiting for all enemy to spawn.

- all ammoboxes found in mission are almost empty, so ammo, fuel are at a premium.

- Partisans will join player randomly as player does more damage against enemy forces. Use Resistance units in West groups to get around this.

- all vehicle have chance of small amounts of weapons/magazines, including civilian vehicles.

Storyline:

Chernarus is a beaten, war-torn country. What started as an internal struggle between the CDF and Chedaki has devolved several times. First the Americans got involved on the side of the CDF, and later the Russians on the side of the Chedaki, and a stalemate ensued. Lack of popularity within the US and a change in the White House began the pullout of American troops, which signaled dark days for the CDF. Things looked bleak for the Chernorussians, and without much hope, disaster resulted...

The CDF, fearing the loss of their only ally, launched a full-scale assault hoping to drag the Americans back in, maybe out of pity. Even though many of the USMC forces had already left, individual Marine commanders assisted the CDF while they still could. But it wasnt enough. The pro-Western forces were decimated, leaving some with no option but the unthinkable..

Two days ago, someone detonated a nuclear weapon in Moscow....

Yesterday, the world erupted in flames...

Today, you are alone.

You find yourself nearly out of ammo, and cutoff from any friendly forces. Your extraction never came and the radio is quiet.

So much pain and blood you have given trying to help protect Chernarus, and now it seems that it was all for naught. There is no hope, and there is probably no home to return to either.

Well, you pick yourself up off the ground and decide you'll go out in a bang. For, what else is there to do now except survive and perhaps?.. be a hero.

Credits:

Mission: This mission was inspired by the awesome post-apocalyptic mission called "Zero" by Clayman. In fact this started as my personal edit of his mission, and with his permission, I am releasing my interpretation of the grand strategic epic he started producing. In essence, I stripped the storyline out of "Zero" and ratcheted up the scope and size of the battle.

"Lost" has now an even more 'sandbox' feel to it, with the entire mission's forces randomly generated. Your soldier is the only unit in the mission.sqm file.

You'll be severely outnumbered by the enemy but there may be help somewhere out there.. hopefully you'll find it.

Scripts:

"Random Position Generator" by Shuko

"Group Manager / Equipment Editor" by Clayman

"High Command Extensions" by DomZ

"MIP (updated ALICE/SILVIE modules)" by wolffy.au & zGuba

"AI Unit Caching" by (AEF)Wolffy.au

Thanks:

BI for Arma2

Obviously Clayman for which this mission, which I have had a ball trying to beat, wouldnt exist.

Download:

File @ OPFEC Beta thread

Edited February 6, 2012 by markb50k
updated to v3.0

[kremator 1065]

Nice ... will try this out when I get a moment :)

[josche 11]

Hi, I have played only 10 Min., Performence is verry bad. 15 FPS, not playable for me, sorry.

I7 960 @ 3,8

GTX 580

Intel SSD

Rampage 3 extreme

[markb50k 1]

The first 10 minutes are when all the spawns are happening... it clears up afterwards.. my old I7 860 @ 2.8 plays it fine. thanks for playing!

[Coffeecat 10]

mission is unplayable cause even after all the scripts are done and things spawned it lags like hell on a 2500k:rolleyes:

[markb50k 1]

Please realize that even after you are teleported to a random starting location, there are a number of scripts still running.

I can look at using the AI caching routines but i have to tweak it some..

[NoRailgunner 0]

Too much loading and lagging. What if you try to use DAC only + only a few other working and compatible scripts/modules? Don't let the player wait 10 minutes or more to start a single mission - even 5 minutes is still too much. ;)

[markb50k 1]

Updated to v1.1

-- sped up initial building of enemies

-- implemented AI unit caching for big performance boost

I didnt have any issues with lag with the initial release, but after putting in the AI caching, I saw that it definitely is running smoother. So hopefully it will perform well for you all. Please try it out. Thanks!

[markb50k 1]

Updated to v1.2

-- fixed bug in AI unit caching where cached units do not respawn.

[heklos 0]

I am doing a play through right now. I think, that if you added some objectives that would make sense in the game world to help you achieve things, or to gain things it would add that tiny bit more of pizazz to the mission. I do like the civilians and the friendly forces to the mix.

I am playing with Blastcore visuals, SLX and JSRS sounds and am experiencing no lag while using the lesser enemies option. Although occasionally there seems to be a weird action of the caching scripts as sometime you will engage a group of enemies and the third soldier who is always carrying a RPG will disappear for a few seconds and then reappear and then raise their rifle up. It is really rare, as I've only seen it twice in the 10 hours I have played.

[markb50k 1]

Thanks for the feedback heklos,

I am trying to add some more 'events' to the mission so that the player can feel more accomplishment and some sense of progress. I'm also doing a large change to how the AI is controlled using waypoints instead of scripts, should calm down the CPU a good bit as well.

Have you reached 33% progress? If so, there is an event that will happen that I would be very interested in hearing your opinions....

And given you've played it 10 hrs i'm guessing the mission is pretty stable?

[heklos 0]

Sounds great. Correct, no crashes or game stoppers at all even when running ACE the first time. Not at 33% yet, haven't played in a few days.

[markb50k 1]

Updated to v2.0 - Complete overhaul for performance and many new features!!!

[Nirow 10]

i got shot in the first city, where can i find a medic tent or something like that ?

btw. Its very funny to play the mission ive choosen a city as my base and now im collecting

weapons and vehicles there ^^

[markb50k 1]

every enemy camp has a small chance of spawning a MASH tent there or an Ambulance, so you need to scour the area to find one.

Also, there may be friendly medics around. Definitely try to find the friendly rally point would be your best chance to find a medic.

Finally, there is a chance that when a partisan is created he will be a medic.

[heklos 0]

I was playing a game running SLX, Blastcore visuals and JSRS sound mod and came across an enemy commander that was immortal. It was the model from the chedaki side (I think), that looks like he is dressed in baby blue with dark spots pajamas. I am starting a new game to see if the same thing happens. I had an ambush setup with two SPG9 UAZ and they hit him with the rounds and he flew up in the air and went over the top of a mountain. When he returned and killed one of my crew and I emptied about 3 mags and 5 grenades at him and didn't die, I knew something was up. I am leaning towards it being SLX the cause. If I run into it again, I start a new game without SLX and see what happens.

I do like the additions you have for 2.0. Nice work! Performance is great with lesser enemies, playing with ACE did cause some slowdowns, but I expected that. It certainly feels like there is more going on now. Still have not reached that 33% yet :-)

As for stability. No issues what so ever for me.

[markb50k 1]

Well, 2.0 is a complete (or near to it) rewrite of the missions underlying code, so I definitely think that a restart was necessary. Let me know if you run into something like that again.

Thanks for the feedback! I'm continuing to look for new ideas!

[maturin 12]

ofpec.com thinks I'm a bot with a virus. Damn Russophobes :p

[SPC.Spets 21]

can you send me the link to "AI Unit Caching" by (AEF)Wolffy.au

please?

[markb50k 1]

---------- Post added at 10:38 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:37 PM ----------

ofpec.com thinks I'm a bot with a virus. Damn Russophobes :p

you can go to Armaholic as well.

http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=15945

---------- Post added at 10:39 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:38 PM ----------

can you send me the link to "AI Unit Caching" by (AEF)Wolffy.au

please?

the code (my version of it) is included in the mission. You dont have to go anywhere to get it. Let me know if that is what you meant...

[SPC.Spets 21]

thanks, I found it, just wanted some info about that script

[heklos 0]

Well, 2.0 is a complete (or near to it) rewrite of the missions underlying code, so I definitely think that a restart was necessary. Let me know if you run into something like that again.

Thanks for the feedback! I'm continuing to look for new ideas!

This was a restart, as I removed some mods so I had to do so. One suggestion. I am sure that its probably a bunch of work, *NVM.. played some more and realized it was pretty much like that. Or have the ability to for the mission to recognize mods that the player is running and add them on the fly?

Edited January 27, 2012 by heklos
removed one suggestion.

[markb50k 1]

This was a restart, as I removed some mods so I had to do so. One suggestion. I am sure that its probably a bunch of work, *NVM.. played some more and realized it was pretty much like that. Or have the ability to for the mission to recognize mods that the player is running and add them on the fly?

This is my first Arma 2 mission so I'm not too experienced with detecting mods...

But i'm definitely up for hearing recommendations, etc. Thanks!

[maturin 12]

Once you open up the Intel menu for the first time, it is open for all eternity, cluttering up your action menu when you are trying to get into vehicles under fire or transfer gear. How about moving it to radio or something?

And my .rpt is filled with dozens of pages of this:

Small mapped regions: 9, size 40960 B

Virtual memory total 2047 MB (2147352576 B)

Virtual memory free 166 MB (174071808 B)

Physical memory free 685 MB (718462976 B)

Page file free 2647 MB (2776268800 B)

Process working set 1439 MB (1509879808 B)

Process page file used 1617 MB (1696378880 B)

Longest free VM region: 13238272 B

VM busy 1973411840 B (reserved 220340224 B, committed 1753071616 B, mapped 20226048 B), free 173940736 B

I have a 4GB pagefile, so I don't know what it's on about. But several times the mission would slow to a crawl, giving my 2.53 dual core an FPS of 4-6 until I either waited it out or reloaded a save file. Whatever was going on, the game stayed slow even after I loaded other missions.

But it's a lot of fun ambushing (or the other way around) roving small groups of enemies and building up stocks of fuel and weapons. I can't imagine what it must take to finish even the lesser enemies version of this mission.

Anyways, I run ACE, so I can see the locations of all friendly units on the map. They are clear on the opposite side, which means I have to fight a one man war until pretty much the end of the mission. This will get old really fast, as I badly need a medic, a technical gunner and a supply driver. I would recommend coding one of the friendly groups to spawn within a kilometer or two of the player. I have been unable to get any intel out of civilians. Can I recruit them? Are enemy strongpoints supposed to count as seized on the map?

[markb50k 1]

Once you open up the Intel menu for the first time, it is open for all eternity, cluttering up your action menu when you are trying to get into vehicles under fire or transfer gear. How about moving it to radio or something?

Anyways, I run ACE, so I can see the locations of all friendly units on the map. They are clear on the opposite side, which means I have to fight a one man war until pretty much the end of the mission. This will get old really fast, as I badly need a medic, a technical gunner and a supply driver. I would recommend coding one of the friendly groups to spawn within a kilometer or two of the player. I have been unable to get any intel out of civilians. Can I recruit them? Are enemy strongpoints supposed to count as seized on the map?

Well, you dont recruit them per se but every so often if you have upped your victory score, partisan will be created in a random city and will travel to you.

you can also find POWs at enemy strongholds to strengthen your forces.

strongpoints arent seized other than the fact your there and the enemy isnt. random patrols may travel to areas youve cleared. but otherwise no new enemies will just pop up in your rear areas. like i said before, all the enemy you have to kill is there to start the mission.

i will also look at moving some actions to the COMMS menu.

Thanks for the feedback