[SP] Lost v 4.0 - Like a mash-up of 'Dogs of War' and 'Manhattan' (without the bugs)!

[Binkowski 25]

I just learned of this mission, definitely going to check this out and post my thoughts on it.

[markb50k 1]

...

Thanks, will see if something easy can be done. no promises. by and large i have little issue with general AI behavior as done here.

---------- Post added at 15:22 ---------- Previous post was at 15:19 ----------

I just learned of this mission, definitely going to check this out and post my thoughts on it.

Great, I have much respect for your work, would appreciate the feedback!

[Cheese 10]

Recently installed this and I'm loving it so far. I stole a beaten up GAZ limo from a house near where I started and drove through the wilderness to the outskirts of Chernogorsk where the remaining army was defending itself quite well. I noticed that I didn't take command of them after encountering several of them and getting to the objective marker but I found a Humvee with a radio and managed to get command. Ordered the 26 survivors out into a neighbouring forest.

If there aren't already, I'd suggest adding leaders/important figures to the enemy army that have to be eliminated in order to win. You'd find their position through intel collected on corpses or somesuch or they'd always be in heavily defended areas such as an airfield or something.

[markb50k 1]

Thanks for the feedback Cheese!...

- to take command, you have to either a) find a radio on dead officer b) find radio in a vehicle or c) use the "Recruit Nearby Units" option in the COMMS-Mission menu.. with friendlies nearby. I'm guessing the last option is what you should have done when you come across friendlies the first time. They wont join unless you ask them to...

- there is at least one General out there, perhaps more depending on map size.. and they are at a large base

[Rydygier 1302]

I think, that in some future free time gonna to prepare experimental addon version of Rincewinder and check, how it will work with Lost and how Lost gameplay will look, when player need to deal also with enemy battle mages... or maybe also player will be a battlemage? :) But first I want to make sure - enemies (most of them) are really present on map from the beginning, not dynamically spawned, right?

[markb50k 1]

the game determines how many enemies are on the map at the beginning, and then does the following..

- for all vehicle and helo patrols, it creates the groups immediately

- for all foot patrols it caches them in memory and puts an object where they are. As BLUFOR moves close or far from them, they spawn, or de-spawn. But no new groups are created. There is a finite number of enemy groups set at the beginning for the regular enemy army.

- a certain number of towns are selected as areas where enemy spetsnaz patrol. as the player gets near the town they spawn. but again its a finite number figured out at the beginning of the scenario.

- in two cases, enemy are spawned from nothingness.. when you search houses you may cause the creation of either a partisan enemy group

- and in one special case, and enemy SF group is created from nothingness when you get near a friendly SF group that you have to help (sidequest)

Hope this helps

[Rydygier 1302]

Thanks, it helps... in negative way. :) Beacuse if foot groups are constantly totally cached/uncached/recached (so in one moment there is a group, and in another stays only object at its position, then Rincewinder will not work - it chooses mages at the beginning, and does it once (after finish of choosing, procedure will be not repeated), so if mage is "cached" (means in fact unit vanishes), then... exactly this: was a mage -> a mage is no more and no longer will be, since vanished, when unit will be uncashed (spawned) again, no longer has a "mage" attribute). Well. Pity.

EDIT: this morning figured out quick way to prepare special mode of Rincewinder, compatibile with "Lost" specificity, need to test this concept. Again thanks for indeed helpful info. One question more - at what distance from player (de)caching of foot groups occurs?

Edited June 27, 2012 by Rydygier

[MrBismarck 10]

Bumped into LOST this weekend for the first time and I'm really enjoying it so far Mark - excellent work. Found it slightly brutal to start with until I changed my play style to the sort of hit and run you'd expect to require as one guy against a country.

A few questions about houses though - if I have searched one is there any point to going back to it some days later? Will it ever have a chance to spawn loot again? Secondly, can I trigger the call to opposing forces by sending one of my team within 100m of an unsearched house? Or does it just respond to me specifically?

Also, my score with certain towns seems to be decaying... what's happening there? I was up at 5 points toward total victory with a certain town at 11 because I'd killed some enemy nearby. Then sometime later the grand total had dipped to 4, naturally taking that town down to 10.

[markb50k 1]

Thanks, it helps... in negative way. :) Beacuse if foot groups are constantly totally cached/uncached/recached (so in one moment there is a group, and in another stays only object at its position, then Rincewinder will not work - it chooses mages at the beginning, and does it once (after finish of choosing, procedure will be not repeated), so if mage is "cached" (means in fact unit vanishes), then... exactly this: was a mage -> a mage is no more and no longer will be, since vanished, when unit will be uncashed (spawned) again, no longer has a "mage" attribute). Well. Pity.

EDIT: this morning figured out quick way to prepare special mode of Rincewinder, compatibile with "Lost" specificity, need to test this concept. Again thanks for indeed helpful info. One question more - at what distance from player (de)caching of foot groups occurs?

Cache-ing distance is about 1250m

---------- Post added at 21:01 ---------- Previous post was at 20:58 ----------

Bumped into LOST this weekend for the first time and I'm really enjoying it so far Mark - excellent work. Found it slightly brutal to start with until I changed my play style to the sort of hit and run you'd expect to require as one guy against a country.

A few questions about houses though - if I have searched one is there any point to going back to it some days later? Will it ever have a chance to spawn loot again? Secondly, can I trigger the call to opposing forces by sending one of my team within 100m of an unsearched house? Or does it just respond to me specifically?

Also, my score with certain towns seems to be decaying... what's happening there? I was up at 5 points toward total victory with a certain town at 11 because I'd killed some enemy nearby. Then sometime later the grand total had dipped to 4, naturally taking that town down to 10.

- Once searched, not really any reason to go back to it.

- House will respond to any friendly going near the house, not just you

- what probably happened here is some of those cases i mentioned above where either bad guy partisans are created or enemy spetsnaz are spawned. the overall number is a % of enemy killed so i guess its possible that it could go down..

[MrBismarck 10]

That's great. Thanks for the answers. I'd been ordering one of my colleagues into town, while I hung out in the treeline with the rest of my guys to try to draw in the enemy, but I wasn't sure if the patrol that showed up was in response, or just randomly patrolling that way any way.

One more question - if I advance time an hour all I'm doing is ticking through the weather generator and day/night cycle, right? If I see a patrol in town and jump an hour they'll still be in town, rather than an hour down the road, correct?

Thanks again for your work on this mission, I'm having a great time with it.

[markb50k 1]

That's great. Thanks for the answers. I'd been ordering one of my colleagues into town, while I hung out in the treeline with the rest of my guys to try to draw in the enemy, but I wasn't sure if the patrol that showed up was in response, or just randomly patrolling that way any way.

One more question - if I advance time an hour all I'm doing is ticking through the weather generator and day/night cycle, right? If I see a patrol in town and jump an hour they'll still be in town, rather than an hour down the road, correct?

Thanks again for your work on this mission, I'm having a great time with it.

Yup skiptime does exactly what your saying. Thanks for the kind words!

[MrBismarck 10]

Another question for you - how the heck do you heal up? I have no medic, but I did manage to steal a BMP-2 Ambulance and get it back to base. I was hoping it might have Hello Kitty Bandaids inside or something, but I don't see any options for healing.

*EDIT

Never mind. Apparently there's only one sweet spot on the ambulance and the way I had parked it meant I couldn't stand there. I'm all healthy again now.

Edited June 29, 2012 by MrBismarck

[fishshrike 1]

I'm having problem with a bug- its always pitch black. Night and day. I can see fine with NVG goggles, but when I take them off, I can't see a thing. Not even fire from explosions or even my own muzzle flash.

Any ideas?

(Tested at midday and midnight.)

[markb50k 1]

Are you using the skiptime feature? I would skip an hour and see if that helps. It will reset the weather module which is the only thing I think might be causing your problem

[fishshrike 1]

I have tried that, so far I find that it only occurs on certain maps, and that it is temporarily fixable by restarting ARMA.

[BiggerBoat 10]

I'm having problem with a bug- its always pitch black. Night and day. I can see fine with NVG goggles, but when I take them off, I can't see a thing. Not even fire from explosions or even my own muzzle flash.

Any ideas?

(Tested at midday and midnight.)

Was just jumping into the forum to research this issue. Just downloaded LOST today and having the same problem. I played for a bit (and had lots of fun) just thinking that my office was overly bright and that it was nighttime in the game. The goggles worked fine, but I soon realized that it was pitch black without them no matter the time of day (tried advancing by several hours as well)

Tried some other game mods and scenarios without issue. Made sure that LOST was the only active mod (aside from some maps). I reloaded and restarted several times, and was only able to load a LOST map a couple of times without the black screen.

[markb50k 1]

Weird. Is it a specific map? Is like to try to reproduce this. And it's a new game? I'll need as much info as I can to figure it out because I don't ever get this issue

[BiggerBoat 10]

Re: the black screen issue....

I am using the ArmA II Launcher program. On a whim, I changed my "Default World" Option from "None" to Chernarus. I had this option checked as none previously because it allowed the game to load up faster.

Since making that change, I have started three different LOST missions on two different maps and every one of them loaded up properly. No black screen.

(Shrug). Not definitive yet, and changing that option might be coincidental, but it's another data point.

As an aside, thanks for this mission and for Apocalypse. I love open world single player missions. Your hard work is much appreciated. Hopefully this issue will stay sorted for me.

[b0x0x 10]

I'd like to report the same thing. It definitely seems like something going on with the weather module somehow. When it's occurred for me, I get lens flare drawing from the correct sun position if I'm using the NVG, but when I take them off, it disappears and it's pitch black everywhere again. NVG/IR scopes function and will actually draw trees/etc as brighter from the correct sun angle, just not 'lit' lit without a scope. I've got a completely clean Arma/OA install and I've never set my map to load 'none' at startup on this install. I never saw this when I was using OA Build 90242 but it started from the first new game I started on 94364. It seems intermittent though so perhaps this is a coincidence. I've seen it happen on Chernarus 3 times now, but test games on Utes haven't exhibited the problem (yet). Lost is installed as an expansion in OA and there are no other non-bis mods ticked and no pbos other than the lost one and the lost missions.

Edited July 2, 2012 by b0x0x

[markb50k 1]

Thanks, is the 94364 build a new one just released? Is that the build others have?

Either way, I will look at an option of, from the menu, turning off the weather. I did not write that code, so it is doubtful i could figure out the issue, and turning it off would be my real only option. Perhaps I'll post a question on RUBE's weather module thread.

---------- Post added at 14:27 ---------- Previous post was at 14:21 ----------

Oh, one other possible cause of this... is this only happening on a restart/ new game? Or did it happen in mid-game? Thanks

[b0x0x 10]

When it's happened it's been dark from the start and I've just assumed that it's meant to be dark .. and then it stays dark. I thought it was just something I had done wrong installing the mod so I didn't really take too much notice of it happening beyond restarting the game. I did test advancing time through the command menu and while this changed the lens flare/nvg lighting angles it still kept the game pitch dark for eyeball mark 1 view. The issue persisted from loaded saves for me when it happened, but again I would hestate to say so for sure since it's usually been notice problem > start new game when it's happened. If I run into it again I'll let you know if I can be more specific. 94364 is just the latest OA build I grabbed on the assumption that newer was better (ha :)).

[Rydygier 1302]

With really great results I'm playing this mission with:

- customized CO SLX,

- customized ASR AI,

- newest TDS,

- newest, just released Rincewinder with new mode dedicated for this and similar missions,

- JSRS,

- some other small, self-maded modifications.

Fantastic fun. :)

[markb50k 1]

Great. I'm glad you are able to run other mods well with the mission. I think it's also helpful that others can get ideas on different setups from your experience. Thanks!

Ps. What is TDS?

[b0x0x 10]

- customized ASR AI,

Could you share what you've customised with this set? I've installed @ASR_AI and the @CBA/@CBA_A2/@CBA_OA dependencies, running after all bis packs and before Lost. The mod functions seem to work OK in terms of changes to AI/rearming etc, but the main drawback is that now the functions to take gear and intel from enemies no longer work at all (briefly disappear and reappear with no result). Is there something I should change to make this work?

[Rydygier 1302]

What is TDS?

See my signature - Nice_Boat's Tank Damage System. Similar to ACE's in values, but only script-based and simplified replacer for default hitpoint-based tank damage, that should work for all vanilla and OA armored and anti-armor content.

Could you share what you've customised with this set?

Nothing big really, ASR is cutomized only via changes in hpp in userconfig. Mostly rearming is turned off, but this is because of another self-maded addon for loot gathering, that is not used in "Lost" by me. Trivial stuff, not serious changes. Code is intact. I haven't problems, that you described, also with rearming active, so can't tell, if and how ASR is somehow involved.

Edited July 3, 2012 by Rydygier