Escape Chernarus (Mission Release)

[Tavish 41]

Great work! I'll get testing tomorrow with a pot of tea and (most likely) a hangover.

One more question: since mission is heavily scripted, are you consider porting it to other interesting(*g*) islands? :)

I should have a fairly bug-free version of "Escape Lingor Island" by the end of the weekend - although would prefer to finish it with the new 1.337 release of Lingor (may we all wish IceBreakr & Co a week full of free time and nothing better to do). My version utilises the Lingor units too :D

I'll post here once it's ready for testing.

Huzah!

Thanks again Engima for a top, top mission.

[NeoArmageddon 957]

I am working on a podagorsk version.

By the way, it would be great, if the normal date would be 16.07.2008. Then there will be fullmoon at night (and you can see a little bit without nightvision (and if there are no clouds :))

[Black Russian 10]

The map is really great but we have the problem that when we load a savegame that the second player and probably all others are reset after loading to a mode without weapons.

The host of the game doesn't have this problem. As a host I also can see that initally after loading the player do have the normal layout but then get resetted nearby the first player without weapons.

[bossmansheild 10]

Like the map idea the BW guys enjoyed it but the latest version we keep getting problems with spawning.

One case there seemed to be our squad in two locations across the map one set had weapons?

The next time 2 of us spawned at the fenced area three of us spawned about half a map away next to our selves the whole squad but they had weapons.

We also spawned under water in the prison, the fence was also under water.

We spent so much time trying get the spawn part going correctly, and the the game lagged realy bad, I gave up in the end.

The map is great idea its the bugs letting it down if you can fix these errors it will be great what we did play was enjoyable and has great potential.

[engima 327]

Hrm, savegames... I really don't have any experience of mission making with save games. I've tested it a little, and it worked for me, so I left the option in case it actually works. I will ask the community and hopefully have a solution for this later. My recommendations for now is not to trust the savegame feature.

---------- Post added at 09:09 ---------- Previous post was at 08:48 ----------

I'm a little surprised to see that the problem with spawning *increased* in 1.5. I know there can still be issues (on restart and reassign), but It should be much better now... Does anyone else think problem with spawning has increased in version 1.5? Are you running hosted or dedicated? If you experience these kind of problemes, my suggestions is that you really make sure to start everything in the correct order (as I have mentioned sometimes erlier). 1. Start server, 2. log in as admin (if dedicated). 3. Let players enter lobby. 4. Make sure all players have "greened up" before continuing. I'll have a look at this again.

The spawn in water problem is solved and a fix for that will be in next version.

[Tavish 41]

I'm a little surprised to see that the problem with spawning *increased* in 1.5. I know there can still be issues (on restart and reassign), but It should be much better now... Does anyone else think problem with spawning has increased in version 1.5? Are you running hosted or dedicated? If you experience these kind of problemes, my suggestions is that you really make sure to start everything in the correct order (as I have mentioned sometimes erlier). 1. Start server, 2. log in as admin (if dedicated). 3. Let players enter lobby. 4. Make sure all players have "greened up" before continuing. I'll have a look at this again.

I've done quite a lot of testing with 1.5 and the spawning is no longer a serious issue. I haven't even spawned under water.... yet.

My biggest gripe is the fact you have to re-host each time you play in order to ensure it'll work correctly (haven't tried on a dedicated server yet). Will this be fixed in the next version? So that you can use the Restart option instead?

[NeoArmageddon 957]

My biggest gripe is the fact you have to re-host each time you play in order to ensure it'll work correctly (haven't tried on a dedicated server yet). Will this be fixed in the next version? So that you can use the Restart option instead?

You can use restart if every player press W-S-A-D directly on start. This is some kind of workaround (this will fix a respawnscript related issue, that cause the failed starts).

[ironman3929 1]

Im having an issue, where i can literally walk around in front of enemies and shoot them in the head. and their friends just walk by like nothing happened. its almost as if my character is a ghost. any suggestions on how to fix this?

[engima 327]

Im having an issue, where i can literally walk around in front of enemies and shoot them in the head. and their friends just walk by like nothing happened. its almost as if my character is a ghost. any suggestions on how to fix this?

Ok. That sounds like you are captive in some way, so something must have gone wrong during initialization. Does it happen often? How about other coop players? Does anyone else have this problem?

[silent_op.pxs 10]

Engima,

Thank you for this mission, we are having a lot of fun with it. This has become a true escape and evade exercise. :)

**I'm currently in the process of updating your new v1.5 for our dedicated server.

For our dedicated server, I made some alterations to fit our COOP standards, for v1.1:

-Removed Revive

-No respawn

-ACE wounding system added

-ACE force markers off

-The captive units were changed to unarmed USMC Force Recon

-The Corpsman is the regular USMC Force Recon, but fully stripped of all gear

-The guard in the holding cell, has 2 Morphine, 2 Bandages, and 1 Epinephrine (Other insurgents will only have a bandage at most. You'll have to find a field hospital and steal some supplies.)

(The guard standing on your side of the walls, is there to tend to any minor wounds. Your worth more alive than dead, at this point anyway.)

-The Communication Centers are sometimes known to have rudimentary medical facilities, to treat insurgent fighters in the field

-Briefing updated to reflect changes made above

-ACRE running on the server and client side for any radios we may find

-ASR AI running on the server

I have to admit, we usually consider escaping during night or just before sunset. None of us have escaped yet, but we're having fun trying.

silent_op

Edited March 1, 2012 by silent_op.pxs

[BigTarget 1]

I have recently downloaded this mission, and I have a bug where I stay captive even after the guard dies, and i go outside. nobody engages me, or anyone else on coop. This happens every time.

I have ArmA 2 Free.

[Tavish 41]

I have ArmA 2 Free.

This is most likely the issue, as the mission was released for Operation Arrowhead/Combined Ops and requires Arma 2.

Although i can't think what the exact cause is...

Hopefully, Mr Engima can spread some light here ^^

----------------------------

On a different note, i think an ACRE parameter (like in Domination ("With ACRE - Yes/No")) would be sweet. ACRE works well with the mission, except you start with a radio, which seems flawed. If parameter is set to Yes then the squad would not start with radios and they are hard/harder to come by. If set to No then the mission would be no different to now. Just an idea.

[colosseum 34]

Great mission, though we ran into a problem... all the enemy soldiers at the communications posts are captive! They all stand there with their hands behind their head and don't react to us. Very disappointing after a quite successful escape and evasion game that lasted 45 minutes only to find that the game screwed up! I know how much of a pain in the ass A2 is about mission design so this is obviously nobody's fault, I just wanted to report it to the mission designer.

We are running A2 Combined Ops v1.60 playing LAN with my computer hosting it. No mission problems other than this. Great mission otherwise, probably one of the most fun missions I've played ever! Kudos for great work and I'm sure the captive problem has a fix.

Does anyone know if savegames work well with this mission?

[engima 327]

This is most likely the issue, as the mission was released for Operation Arrowhead/Combined Ops and requires Arma 2.

Although i can't think what the exact cause is...

Hopefully, Mr Engima can spread some light here ^^

----------------------------

On a different note, i think an ACRE parameter (like in Domination ("With ACRE - Yes/No")) would be sweet. ACRE works well with the mission, except you start with a radio, which seems flawed. If parameter is set to Yes then the squad would not start with radios and they are hard/harder to come by. If set to No then the mission would be no different to now. Just an idea.

Yes, that's the problem. And it's not the only thing that goes wrong using ArmA2 free or vanilla ArmA2, so unfortunately I do not have any intentions to fix it. I think I will just add a Combined Operation unit so the reason becomes more clear.

---------- Post added at 13:59 ---------- Previous post was at 13:52 ----------

Great mission, though we ran into a problem... all the enemy soldiers at the communications posts are captive! They all stand there with their hands behind their head and don't react to us. Very disappointing after a quite successful escape and evasion game that lasted 45 minutes only to find that the game screwed up! I know how much of a pain in the ass A2 is about mission design so this is obviously nobody's fault, I just wanted to report it to the mission designer.

We are running A2 Combined Ops v1.60 playing LAN with my computer hosting it. No mission problems other than this. Great mission otherwise, probably one of the most fun missions I've played ever! Kudos for great work and I'm sure the captive problem has a fix.

Does anyone know if savegames work well with this mission?

I know the problem since earlier, but I thought it was fixed. I'll take a look!

Savegames seem to work not so well. In next version I will have it disabled (since I simply don't have enough spare time to look into all details).

Thanks for the error report and feedback!

Edited March 11, 2012 by Engima

[engima 327]

Great mission, though we ran into a problem... all the enemy soldiers at the communications posts are captive! They all stand there with their hands behind their head and don't react to us.

I have some good news. I found the problem, and this issue should be history in next version. Btw, expect it in a couple of days!

[colosseum 34]

Brilliant, I can't wait. We've played it several times, usually just two of us but once with 3. Friend and I actually got spotted near the Devil's castle area and managed to fight off 35 enemy (total killed between us) before finally being killed by a BMP-3 (we had no AT weapons).

One thing we noticed was that if we restarted, sometimes the guarding squad at the very beginning would kill us while we spawned. This is fixed by restarting the server.

This mission is fantastic and with the bugs fixed I will really enjoy it.

[engima 327]

One thing we noticed was that if we restarted, sometimes the guarding squad at the very beginning would kill us while we spawned. This is fixed by restarting the server.

Yes, this is a problem. I think I have almost fixed it now. I will run a few more tests. But anyway I learned that this is a BIS bug too. Do not restart mission. Instead, reassign sometimes work, or restart server (at least if dedicated). Something is not getting reset as it should when restarting.

[NeoArmageddon 957]

I found the problem, and this issue should be history in next version. Btw, expect it in a couple of days!

Will this be the update with the major update to the codebase you mentioned via PM?

Instead, reassign sometimes work, or restart server (at least if dedicated). Something is not getting reset as it should when restarting.

Smashing WSAD while at blackscreen also work (For us this worked every time, we never had to restart the whole server. Pressed keys don't get resetted on restart.)

[engima 327]

Will this be the update with the major update to the codebase you mentioned via PM?

Yes. Some unnecessary script dependencies have been removed and most classnames have been centralized and explained, many bugs have been fixed and content have been added. I will also include some tools (you already got them) and a check list that will help when porting mission to another map.

[colosseum 34]

I would love to see this on Lingor! I don't think it would be possible on Duala... too much open area and not enough cover.

[NeoArmageddon 957]

I would love to see this on Lingor! I don't think it would be possible on Duala... too much open area and not enough cover.

After porting Escape to Podagorsk, I will try to port it to Duala (with and without Duala units). Escape on Duala will be very interesting and challenging!

At the moment we are testing the Podagorsk version, but it seems okay. We don't plan to release it before the major chernarus escape 1.7 update, but if anybody wants to test it (1.5 codebase), feel free to download the first version here: http://armaplayercenter.com/co08_escape.fdf_isle1_a.rar

Please not that Engima is not repsonsible for supporting this ported version and that it may contain nuts/bugs.

Edited March 17, 2012 by NeoArmageddon

[engima 327]

Escape Chernarus 1.7 released!

Finally I think I have got rid of the annoying start bug! It was not an easy one, but I have learned a lot about ArmA initialization scripting! Mission now synchronizes carefully between clients before intro text is shown! Thanks to NeoArmageddon with friends who have helped me with testing, and thanks to everyone posting feedback and bug reports! Please tell me about new issues found, and I will fix them if possible! The complete list of changes looks like this:

v1.7

- Fixed the start bug (player do not wake up dead anymore)

- Increased the time it takes to hijack a communication center, and FAC Operators do it faster than the others.

- Added field hospital at communication centers.

- Added things that you don't want me to tell you about.

- Fixed bug that made enemies surrender.

- Fixed bug that made player's vehicles suddenly disappear.

- Made it much easier to port to another map.

- A lot of fixes and improvements (for complete list, see ReadMe.txt in installation pack).

And more details:

- Included information about FAC Operator in briefing.

- Classnames are now in one file (and the few that aren't there is mentioned).

- Increased probability for groups to spawn in villages.

- Added guarded locations (houses, farms and villages)

- Added possible positions for communication centers.

- Added parameter option Start time of day "Random".

- Fixed: Start guards do not have hand grenades.

- Fixed: Mission duration in debriefing screen now shows the correct time.

- Fixed: Removed civilian bus (since it sometimes stopped the traffic due to its size).

- Fixed: Reinforcement trucks can now recieve new intel and change drop position when driving.

- Fixed: Ambient traffic now works without dependency to "traffic markers".

- Fixed: Ambient traffic now does not stop working if team members are far away from each other.

- Fixed: Start prison and ammo depots are now not placed in ponds.

- Fixed: Removed ammo trucks.

- Fixed: Removed maps from civilians.

- Fixed: Array for communication center markers and village markers are now better formed (to make porting easier).

- Fixed: Bug in search leader script made some missions too easy since it through whole mission sometimes took a long time for enemies to report contacts.

- Fixed: Road blocks now spawn even if player team members are far away from each other.

- Fixed: Lowered the chance that an enemy have night vision a little bit.

- Various small fixes.

[NeoArmageddon 957]

Nice, great update! Spawnbug is definitly fixed, we just tested it. All other known bugs seems to be fixed too!

I just released the first unofficial port of Escape: http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?132638-Escape-Podagorsk-(Mission-Release)&p=2122337

I tweaked some settings and added a more random loadout for enemy patrols.

[Kommiekat 11]

I guess there is no way to port it for SP?

I tried it LAN and was unable to get AI slots going.

[NeoArmageddon 957]

I tried it LAN and was unable to get AI slots going.

Depbo mission, open description.ext with texteditor and change the 16. line from disabledAI = 1; to disabledAI = 0;. Repack the mission (with tool or mission editor), put it in your mpmissions folder, start up a local server and have fun.