[MP | COOP 02 - 10] Altis Force Recon: West

[DaViSFiT 21]

lets see, i will try tomorrow another session with your new version. i will report in. First try will be without hc, second with HC ;)

[meatball 25]

Sounds good. I made a few fixes and tweaks and have another minor update if you want to try it. One of the tweaks was that I changed the civilian scripts to force them to run on the server/headless client.

This has ambient civilians on by default, but you can still disable the civilians through the game parameters.

[Solitaire_G 10]

Hello, Meatball. Good job on the mission. I've been attempting to work on an A3 version of my A2 mission, Nomads. I like how you've scripted this one. I hope you don't mind me digging around inside the pbo ;)

[meatball 25]

Hey Sol, sure thing, have at! I can almost say Nomads was a bit of an inspiration for Force Recon. I never got to play Nomads, but a few ST friends told me about the basic concept of just having a whole lot of available missions without a set goal and it sounded fun, so I ran with it.

[solentis 10]

Hi there!

This mission sound really gret, I've uploaded it on my team's server. But there is a problem : we encounter no hostile IA at all except the targets (officiers, observers). Not a single patrol, not a squad to protect the objectives. I thinks its not by design, but anybody encounter this? The parameters for ennemy presence is actually by default.

[meatball 25]

I've been working with some tweaking on AI. There probably are AI, the issue is they spawn around the players at range, and if the players move quickly, they can easily outpace the enemies. It's a balance between spawning random AI close enough to the players that they run into them, but not close enough that the players suddenly see enemy pop up before their eyes.

I have a new version just about ready. Just putting some final tweaks on a few things including a little surprise with weather :)

[solentis 10]

Ok, i'd like to see this. Personally, sometime I stay 3 or 4 minute on a spot to see wath's going to happen, but no ennemy spawn at all. Very frustrating, because I feel a huge potential.

Edit : ok, I tried on a local server, it worked. But on a dedicated server, there is no AI spawning at all.

Edited February 8, 2014 by Solentis

[meatball 25]

Been working out a few bugs I've found and before I fully publish a v 1.0 and I wanted to throw a version out there for folks to test. Let me know if you run into anything with this version.

---------- Post added at 15:43 ---------- Previous post was at 15:42 ----------

Ok, i'd like to see this. Personally, sometime I stay 3 or 4 minute on a spot to see wath's going to happen, but no ennemy spawn at all. Very frustrating, because I feel a huge potential.

Edit : ok, I tried on a local server, it worked. But on a dedicated server, there is no AI spawning at all.

Think I've got this worked out. Just so you know though, the enemy patrols/spawn won't occur at all until you complete at least one task. Figured I'd give folks a little bit of time to get settled into the mission :)

[daneplant 5]

The mission sounds great, will try this with headless client when I figure out how to do that! Anyways we will be hosting this on our server at Arma Series Euorpean Factions, your more than welcome to join us Meatball and show us the ropes dude. Check the gaming night section of our website for details when we are hosting, thanks for the mission. http://www.armaseries.com

[solentis 10]

I made a few more test, but same problem. On a local server, ennemies spawn normally around objective and behave well, but on a dedicated server, there is no ennemies at all.

[meatball 25]

@Sol, I'm not sure, all my testing lately shows things working correctly on all setups. You grabbed the latest test version, yes?

Anyone else having similar problems of not seeing AI around objectives, or random AI when you're moving between them?

[solentis 10]

Yes, both the last uploaded and the test version above. However, I repeat, on a local server that work just fine and the mission is great. But when loaded on our rented dedicated server, the problem occur. Only in this case.

[daneplant 5]

Are you running MCC?

[solentis 10]

No. Nothing like that.

[meatball 25]

I plan to do some extra testing over the weekend, but the only thing I can possible think of is that the issue is related to the automated Headless Client check not running correctly for some reason. Basically there's a script that runs as the mission starts up that checks to see if any of the connected clients are a headless client. If so, it's sets a variable 'spawnExec' to 1 on the headless client, if not it gives the server spawnExec 1. Then in any script (including all the AI related scripts) that I want to run on a HC if connected, and on the server if not, I lead it off with "if(spawnExec != 1) exitWith{};" Here's the actual script:

// Headless Client Autodetect v0.1
// By Meatball
// Inspiration/Ideas from elec's Headeless Client Auto Detection Switch script

// In any script you want to run on HC if available, or on server otherwise, make the first line: 
// if(spawnExec != 1) exitWith{};
// This will exit out of the script on any machine that does not have the spawnExec variable set to 1.

// Set the spawnExec variable on all machines to 0.
spawnExec = 0;

// If this is the server and spawnExec has not already been reset by the HC (see below), set spawnExec to 1.
if (isServer and (spawnExec !=2)) then {spawnExec = 1;};

// If this is a dedicated/headless client, transmit spawnExec out to all clients and server and set/reset to 2, then set HC variable to 1.
if ((!isServer) && (!hasInterface)) then {spawnExec = 2;publicVariable "spawnExec";spawnExec = 1;};

I'd be interested to know if anyone else is having this same problem, or if this is just something strange going on with the mission and Sol's server.

[meatball 25]

Alright, so I ran some more tests, and on Local Server, Dedicated Server without HC and Dedicated Server with HC, the AI worked fine for me. Though I created a debug mission you can use to test and see if things are working right in your mission, but it's a bit of a long process to give things a test, so if you want to try it, here's how to do it.

1) Load up the mission on your dedicated server (or whatever way you plan to test).

2) Connect with your client and login to the server as admin. (#login adminpassword)

3) Go into parameters and turn off Civilians, and you probably want to set the time of mission in parameters to some time during the day so you can see what's going on easily.

4) Pick any unit and fire up your mission. Once loaded up and in, hit your Escape key and you should see the Debug Console.

5) In the 'Watch' lines, type in two things, In the first run type in 'milRun' without the quotes, in the second line type 'count allUnits' without the quotes.

6) You now should see a 1 in milRun and the count allUnits will go up and down. milRun 1 is when the server/HC is creating/caching all the AI around objectives. This will take 3-4 minutes, there's a lot of Objectives to militarize :)

7) Wait until milRun shows 2 and count allUnits shows between 55-60. This means all of the objectives have been 'militarized' and the units have been cached. You'll see the 2 pop up first and then it'll be 30 seconds or so until the script finishes caching the units and it settles down.

8) Now, grab one of the boats, and put a marker exactly on the map marker for Search for Intel or Destroy Naval Assets. Head either direction, but make landfall when you are more than 1.3 Km from the marker.

9) Once on land and over 1.3 Km to the marker, open up the debug window again. It should still show milRun 2, count of 55-60. In the Execute box, type 'tasksComplete = 1;' without the quotes and hit the "Global Exec" button below the box.

10) Stand around for 3-4 minutes. You can use this time to get closer to the objective you picked, just stay over 1.3 Km from it. You should see milRun go from 2 to 3 to 4 all at once. 4 means the 'ambient' patrols around the players should start spawning. You should start seeing the count allUnits start to go up.

11) When you're satisfied that's happening, run within 1.3 Km of your objective and you should see milRun hop up to 5, which means it'll kill the ambient patrols and spawn the defenders around the objectives. The count allUnits will fluctuate as the patrols start to despawn the defenders spawn, and should eventually settle down to a steady number somewhere above your original 55-60 number. That means the defenders are in place.

12) You can move back and forth outside that 1.3 km range and should see milRun keep going back and forth between 4 and 5 and the allUnits count going up and down as it spawns/despawns patrols and defenders. The transition time between 4 & 5 will vary, so it's not immediate and you may have to wait a few for each transition to kick in.

Test that out on your dedi server and see if you see the AI spawning/despawning. If everything just stays around that original number forever, then something is definitely not working. But, if you see it the AI numbers and milRun going up and down, the AI is spawning, it's just not spawning close enough for you to run into.

Edited February 18, 2014 by Meatball

[lexxer 11]

We tried this mission today. No AI whatsoever, only the mission objectives. (Dedicated server)

[meatball 25]

Here's an updated test version. I pulled the new Headless Client Auto Check and went with another version, also tweaked the AI a bit. In my tests, AI is spawning on local servers, Dedi server with no HC, and Dedi Server with HC.

Test Version - Force Recon

I left the Debug Console enabled for admins, so I'd love to hear if this fixes the issues those of you not seeing AI are having. You can do a 'count allUnits' in one of the Debug Watch fields. By default the mission has 54 units + any players that are connected. You may see 5-10 units for 'civilians' (if enabled), but anything above that is AI being spawned for either defenders around objectives (first few minutes of mission or when players are withing 1300m of a defended objective) or ambient patrols around the players (after the first task is complete and when players are 1300m+ away from any defended objectives).

Edited February 18, 2014 by Meatball

[kilo1-1 1]

AI wouldn't spawn for me either in .91 on my dedicated server but it's fine in your test version, AFAIK. I get unit counts of 80-100 when I have it set to max enemies and ambient civilian life. I did get some error message though about the civilian spawner script. It also appears that the weather parameter doesn't always work. When I choose overcast, the mission takes place with clear skies. Lastly, is there any way you can make a parameter or configure VAS to use mods? For example, massi's NATO weapon and DEVGRU pack comes up as a blacklisted item under VAS.

[meatball 25]

Do you know what the specific error message was about the civilian spawn script? That might help track down what's happening there.

As for overcast, 'Overcast' is about 30% cloud cover, so it may look relatively clear at first. Once you start hitting 50% cloud cover, there's a good chance of rain showing up, so wanted to keep it below that. If you want more clouds, I'd go with snow or rain as starting weather.

For VAS, I really can't support VAS mods as there's so many weapon types/mods out there that there's no way I could support all of them, plus in my mind for the mission the players are starting with access to the weapons a Blufor team would have access to. That being said, you're more than welcome to pick apart the pbo and edit the VAS files to your hearts content to do whatever you wish. :)

Edited February 23, 2014 by Meatball

[solentis 10]

This version work fine, ennemies are spawning. But sometime, they got stuck, walking but not moving, never notice me and dont try to shoot. And they are immortal.

That happen after a halojump.

Edited February 25, 2014 by Solentis

[meatball 25]

Yeah, I've seen that before, I think that's just a general bug and they'll just despawn when you go out of range.

Has anyone run into any issues with Respawn/Revive causing a crash to desktop?

[solentis 10]

I've tested it alone for the moment. I also noticed that ennemy spot me with great difficulty. I saw a soldier walking just in front of me, 10 ft away. It was deep night but he got NVG. I put ennemy setting on "5/6 players", but there was less than 10 of it around the objectives.

[meatball 25]

Did you try adjusting the enemy skill level? At the lower levels (particularly Easy) the AI can be pretty bad.

[solentis 10]

I let all the settings on default but the hours, changed to night time.