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thomsonb

[SP] Flashpoint: - Instant Action - Dynamic Missions - Release Thread

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BAF and PMC are not required, because the default Operation Arrowhead include BAF and PMC lite versions (somebody correct me if im wrong here!) The only difference is you get low res textures on the units. Of course if you chose the manual setup options in my missions you can choose the factions you like...

That's GREAT to hear!

And "Yes," Combined Operations do come with PMC and BAF units, with low resolution textures. I forgot that one can customize the level of randomization, so I'll just avoid those units till I get them (hopefully by no later than Christmas).

It's my understanding that the full range of GL4SFXE's capabilities for AI to enter urban centers and then occupy and fight out of structures is only maximized if one starts a mission that activates its script. Simply running the addon-version won't accomplish what we see in those jaw dropping screenshots (many other aspects of the mod will still work via the addon method though). I've played with every AI mod out there, and I've never seen them do what I've seen in those screenshots.

If you don't mind, I'll write ChrisB to see if he'll share with us more details and then I'll pass them along your way, to do with what you will.

Wow. Great news about playing the missions. Too bad it's unlikely that I'll be able to give them a shot till next week due to my schedule this week, but now I've got something of high quality to look forward to.

Thanks again for all of your hard work!

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Please explain more to help me fix it!

- Does this happen just at the start of the mission?

- Does the happen after you restart a mission?

- Is it temporary, or for the rest of the mission?

Cheers

B

EDIT: The EXTREME frame loss (down to 9) was caused by a new mod pack I got, however, my FPS is still dropping to about 30 or 40 without that pack. Maybe just something to look at! :)

The mission starts off okay, and as it goes on, and on, it starts to drop more and more frames. It starts at a good solid 60, but then it will slowly drop to about 30 - 40. Then, it stays around 30 or 40 for the rest of the mission, and I yield the same result if I restart.

Thanks again.

Edited by JetlinerX

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The mission starts off okay, and as it goes on, and on, it starts to drop more and more frames. It starts at a good solid 60, but then it will slowly drop to about 30 - 40. Then, it stays around 30 or 40 for the rest of the mission, and I yield the same result if I restart.

Thanks again.

Any errors in the rpt? What mods/addons were you running?

@thomsonb: I'll have a beta Podagorsk port by sometime tomorrow night, I hope. I won't substitute Russians for Takistani forces yet.

In the near future I'll be porting it to to other favourites - Fallujah & Lingor v1.4. Would you like those as well? - Lingor one will eventually be 2 versions, one vs. Takiban, the second using Icebreakr's Lingor units & vehicles (but the latter will be a while yet).

Edited by Orcinus

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Any errors in the rpt? What mods/addons were you running?

@thomsonb: I'll have a beta Podagorsk port by sometime tomorrow night, I hope. I won't substitute Russians for Takistani forces yet.

In the near future I'll be porting it to to other favourites - Fallujah & Lingor v1.4. Would you like those as well? - Lingor one will eventually be 2 versions, one vs. Takiban, the second using Icebreakr's Lingor units & vehicles (but the latter will be a while yet).

Not sure where the RPT file is, but the mods I use are:

- ACE

- JSRS

- CBA

- SMKAnimations

- TPWC Supression mod

- HazarKot and Aliabad

- Fallujah

- ASR AI

- BlastCore War FX

- COWarMod (<-- Causing the bigger frame issues because it's about 200 other mods.)

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Not sure where the RPT file is, but the mods I use are:

- ACE

- JSRS

- CBA

- SMKAnimations

- TPWC Supression mod

- HazarKot and Aliabad

- Fallujah

- ASR AI

- BlastCore War FX

- COWarMod (<-- Causing the bigger frame issues because it's about 200 other mods.)

I'm using JSRS and ASR_AI, and CBA obviously.

I'm not experiencing any performance issues, with either of these, in fact I'm amazed that for a dynamically generated scenario that it runs so smoothly.

I've heard that ACE is pretty demanding, hence my reluctance to use it, even though its supposed to be pretty damned good.

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I've heard that overlapping of mods/scripts in missions can seriously hinder performance.

There was a discussion on the thread for the "LOST" game mode, in which somebody had confirmed that ASR_AI was giving them performance issues, and I had personally confirmed that the LOST game mode was performing some redundant tasks in tandem with ASR_AI.

Although, I experience no such thing with this mode, so I'm quite happy.

Perhaps try different combinations and report back?

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Overlapping mods eh? Well, I have a few mods installed in the standalone way, that the mod pack has included... let me remove some duplicates, and report back. Also got rid of ACE completely, just not a fan anymore :/

Good News: That did the trick, I now run from 20 - 35FPS.

Bad News: Thats still below average, however, it is definately playable. Now I think it is just the massive amounts of dynamic events going on in the map that is the problem, and hopefully there is a performance tweak to that without losing the "large scale...ness" of FP: Cherno/Takistan. :3

Thanks PD3

Edited by JetlinerX
Partial solution found.

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JetlinerX, you might want to experiment with the number of infantry groups and vehicles you use in Flashpoint. For testing purposes you could set up a game of just 2 opoposing infantry groups, check the frames and test again with more stuff. This will show the impact certain changes have on the frame rate. If fire and smoke make a difference, consider the fact that most vehicles tend to explode sooner or later.

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...still below average, however, it is definately playable. ..

Thanks for the info JetlinerX, glad its still playable.. during development I have only tested the missions without mods mostly.

I expect its a mod or mods that has some hefty init code for all spawned units, and a high "per unit" script overhead... but I will look into my code to check I havnt messed up in the latest release...

I did increase the default group counts in version 1.19, but in v1.20 I dropped the defaults back again slightly, and also dropped the default vehicles and air units counts slightly.

The mission was designed mostly on an old and slow pc, so all the dynamic stuff tries to keep the group counts and script count to a minimum.

Could you do me a favour and test it Vanilla with No mods at all, and let me know if its still sluggish (with your PC specs it should maintain 60fps 90%of the time!)

PS i forgot to mention, if you are setting up manually, the support percentages (vehicles, armour, sniper teams, helis and aircraft) the percentages are per infantry group spawned. So if you choose a high group count, the default support percentages will lead to more support groups spawned. Inversely tweaking the group counts down a bit also reduces the total group count quite a bit...

B

Edited by thomsonb

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Not sure where the RPT file is, but the mods I use are:

- ACE

- JSRS

- CBA

- SMKAnimations

- TPWC Supression mod

- HazarKot and Aliabad

- Fallujah

- ASR AI

- BlastCore War FX

- COWarMod (<-- Causing the bigger frame issues because it's about 200 other mods.)

I guess from the size of your RAM that you're using W7, so I'm not sure where the .RPT will be. In my XP Pro it is currently in "C:\Documents and Settings\Orcinus\Local Settings\Application Data\ArmA 2 OA"

or just search for arma2oa.RPT

Very useful when sorting out hassles. One cause of poor FPS can be the game exe spamming the RPT with thousands of repeated error messages if there's a faulty script, corrupted pbo, or a bad conflict between mods, etc.

You should not be using COWarmod with ACE. There's a separate beta WIP thread for COWarmodACE (as linked in Gunter Severloh's sig!). Apart from incompatibilities, you have been running two, maybe three copies of asr_ai, and not necessarily all the same versions... one standalone, one in COWarmod, & IIRC a version in ACE2 (Robalo is one of the ACE developers). There's also a possibly earlier version of TPWC AIS in COWarmod.

Running two copies of an addon or mod is bad practice, & if they are different versions you can reliably expect problems.

For TPWC AIS, use the latest version plus the v1.15.1_test5 of asr_ai.

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Hullo

Am I going mad or can I not find "Latest release V1.20.1"?

Rgds

LoK

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Am I going mad or can I not find "Latest release V1.20.1"?K

http://www.thomsonb.co.uk/arma2/flashpoint/takistan.html .... the filename is FlashpointTakistanZargabadShapur1201.zip cant remeber, but it may still show up as 1.20 in the missions list in game (sorry, but no prob, if the weather works you know you have it!)

It was a small update and released so quick I didn't make a big post about it :)

you're using W7, so I'm not sure where the .RPT will be.

Mine lives here in Win7: C:\Users\thomsonb\AppData\Local\ArmA 2 OA\arma2oa.rpt

@JetlinerX.. my missions should hardly dump anything into there by the time I release them... blame your mods cocktail if its full of crap ;) just kidding, hope you find a good mod setup that works well, please let me know...

Cheers

B

Edited by thomsonb

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hullo there

Looks like we're both making errors today.

I was looking at the Chenarus page. Doh!

Your error? Check yer last quote, pretty sure I didn't say that :)

Thanks for the reply though, sorry, I'm a bit thick sometimes...

What's your excuse?

Keep up the good work, mate.

Rgds

LoK

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....... Brace yourselves, but I have 36,126 lines of code in my rpt... XD

Edited by JetlinerX

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Overlapping mods eh? Well, I have a few mods installed in the standalone way, that the mod pack has included... let me remove some duplicates, and report back. Also got rid of ACE completely, just not a fan anymore :/

Good News: That did the trick, I now run from 20 - 35FPS.

Bad News: Thats still below average, however, it is definately playable. Now I think it is just the massive amounts of dynamic events going on in the map that is the problem, and hopefully there is a performance tweak to that without losing the "large scale...ness" of FP: Cherno/Takistan. :3

Thanks PD3

No probs, I think in general you'll see a considerable frame rate increase if you use some of the CAA enabled islands such as Sahrani, I can easily expect lower performance with takistan or chenarus, however I can have multiple factions going at once, no fog, eight groups, high percentage of air power, armor, etc with Sahrani and the ambiance is amazing.

I would actually like to see a dynamic mode similar to this for Avgani, which is one of my all time favorite Arma maps. The only problem with avgani is there really isn't much ground to cover, so I wonder if there could be like a survival mode in which maybe you had to last a certain amount of time, and then make it to a randomly generated point or something.

In general, I think this particular script set has so many possibilities, I could see expanding the mission generation potential to:

-destroy structure/base generated at x/y location.

-assassination

-sabotage

This is seriously becoming one of my favorite game modes for ARMA 2.

For an added challenge, try playing as the NAPA insurgents vs the Russians.

You have absolutely no map or gps, so you have to carefully maneuver your way into a place where you can kill an adversary, steal their gear, and then find your mission waypoint.

---------- Post added at 04:55 ---------- Previous post was at 04:04 ----------

I also actually have a question regarding the mission itself.

In init.sqf, does max_skill set the upper limit for random variation?

That is, if I lower the variable max_skill from 1.0, to 0.7, will a line such as this:

_unitType createUnit [[_pos,50] call areaPos,_grp,format["soldier%1 = this; removeAllWeapons this",_soldierCount],random MAX_SKILL];

Mean that his ultimate skill potential is between 0.1 and 0.7?

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Your error? Check yer last quote, pretty sure I didn't say that :)

oops you're right, fixed :)

---------- Post added at 14:39 ---------- Previous post was at 14:26 ----------

In init.sqf, does max_skill set the upper limit for random variation?

Hi Pd3

Yes it is the upper limit for random variation.

The skill of each unit is a random between 0 and MAX_SKILL.

So yes if you set it to 0.7 you will get units with between 0 and 0.7 skill.

The Leaders of infantry groups always have their skill set to MAX_SKILL with no randomness (so they can be quite dangerous!).

On your other points, about sabotage or assasination or other mission types, I will definately improve on the objective system in the future. The "Give me an objective" now is very basic I know (can still be very challenging though!)

Cheers

B

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....... Brace yourselves, but I have 36,126 lines of code in my rpt... XD

Delete it & start again :)

@thomsonb: apologies for delay. Hard drive problem, HD now replaced.

One comment from the playthroughs so far: I find the spawning of enemies 100 m or so away really irritating. When two or, occasionally, more enemy groups spawn less than 200m from me when I'm in an open space it's not so much instant action as instant death. Could this be toggled in the set-up? And anyway, the player can always reduce the minimum spawn distance.

Edited by Orcinus

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Well, I also find this new "instant death" feature a little strange but it doesn't annoy me. I just start again or respawn. But a toggle in the set-up would probably be a good idea. The more options the better.

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Tested the multiplayer, its okay. I understand it's Alpha, and it's awesome to see it works! Cant wait to see when all the features are converted. :D

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...I find the spawning of enemies 100 m or so away really irritating...

In the next update I will increase that minimum at mission start to 200m, to avoid the instant death situations!

---------- Post added at 03:37 ---------- Previous post was at 03:28 ----------

Tested the multiplayer, its okay. I understand it's Alpha, and it's awesome to see it works! Cant wait to see when all the features are converted. :D

I have done some more testing and tweaking of the MP coop version tonight, very pleased with the results. I have balanced the group counts and spawn areas to get the gameplay sweet, not too many groups, but enough that you have to always be tactical and careful, and sometimes you feel surrounded! Great stuff, very tense when sneaking into villages and forests etc...

I will release an improved MP test version tomorrow, the features included and working so far are:

-Infantry groups spawning and respawning near all players (even if players all go to different locations, then return together)

- Random infantry groups, random custom load outs etc.

- Random dynamic weather and time of day.

Next feature to add will be AI vehicles... and maybe then an official first release :)

nice to meet some of you guys in my server while testing, thanks for the help guys

cheers

B

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Do you think you could add a new feature that allows you to suicide while injured? I often get wounded and get no medic, but since I can't suicide I have to restart the mission.

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Do you think you could add a new feature that allows you to suicide while injured? I often get wounded and get no medic, but since I can't suicide I have to restart the mission.

Hi Pachira

I guess you mean in the MP version? (the SP version has file dressing to heal and suicide in the radio menu)

I have added the field dressing heal action to the players in the MP version now, will release the latest version later today

B

---------- Post added at 15:52 ---------- Previous post was at 15:34 ----------

Hello

Updated MP coop test version available for download here:

Flashpoint Chernarus MP02 download page

Still a work in progress! Not many features yet, but MP stability is my priority before adding stuff. Works on dedicated server or local host. Does not have any Join in Progress at this time.

One bug is the Bird camera when you die, sometimes the camera flys miles away to coordinates 0,0 (soon i will replace it with a spectator script anyway)

please report bugs to me by PM :)

B

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