[SP] Pilgrimage

[cihaners 10]

Hi and Thanks for this great SP mission.

My question is;

I found the correct church with a green marker and it says his body is here (But actually cannot see the dead body around). How will I load the body to truck.

Best,

Cambo

[Rydygier 1317]

Body must be somewhere near. You can temporary set terrain details to low to remove grass etc. what is helpful in such cases. Green marker appears only, if player was close to the body ( < 50 m) and had not obstructed line of sight towards it. When you find it, bring any vehicle close to the body (< 10 m). Then at the body should appear action "Load body into the vehicle". Use it.

[haleks 8212]

That workaround was a false hope - I used it for same gameplay, but some time later - same problem. Seems, like something is wrong from the beginning and only awaits for certain circumstance to occur. Sadly, it is traceless. As for debugging this I tried many times. Currently there is special log to RPT file, if code exits main loop (what logically should never occur, as this is while {true} do {} with no exitwiths). In my today's case, there is no this log in RPT, so this will confirm second option - loop is stuck somewhere indefinitely.

I had the exact same issue while working on a SP version of DayZ. I never managed to identify the faulty code line, but eventually fixed it after many hours spent to optimize the concerned script as well as a few others running at the same time : I had to disable some features and added some condition checks to make sure the script would "pause" when it wasn't needed.

It's still unclear to me what was causing this, but I guess it's related to some kind of "overload" : there was so many complex scripts running - after a few hours a couple of them would just give up and stop (including "while {true}" loops). In other words, it might not be an issue with a specific script, but rather a general optimisation issue. (Maybe there's a code executions limit in Arma?)

Anyway, good luck on this man!

[Rydygier 1317]

Yes, overloading scheduler with multiply loops/parallel threads can make huge exec delay, thus to avoid that in this mission there is one, big main loop with 10 sec sleep plus one secondary onEachFrame loop needed for 3D icons.

I experienced this issue once again, this time with my debug logs, so I was able to narrow suspicious portion of code enough to find out something. Not sure, if this is the only cause, but for sure could be a cause for latest stuck, under 1.72.

My today's findings here. It would explain most of observed facts, not completely though. It explains, why or at least where code could stuck during loading the mission or during the mission in 1.72, where I'm spawning new groups on the fly for ambient combat, but still unclear, why code was sometimes stuck after long flawless gameplay in versions, where no new group appear after init. Still, was reported, bug showed up beginning from 1.4, means exactly this version, where amount of groups on map was vastly multiplied.

Anyway, I did correction to avoid exceeding group limit and to avoid stucking inside this loop even if group limit was exceeded or another cause of stucking in that loop present. Also I have now many additional logs is suspicious points and tommorow will continue my tests.

Edited April 1, 2014 by Rydygier

[haleks 8212]

All I can say is "courage!"

I know those things are a real pain to figure out & fix.

[tortuosit 486]

Haleks, nice to see you here. I'm also sometimes in Dayz sp community under different username. Currently not playing Dayz sp, but I will constantly return. Maybe same will happen with Pilgrimage mission in the future :-)

[neofit 65]

After a few attempts at the mission, interrupted for various reasons, in 1.71 I finally found the brother, brought his remains to the boat and "won". Overall I had a lot of fun, definitely more fun that in the stock BIS campaign. But I am a bit disappointed: I never found a stronghold :). (and with all the money I made selling guns, it may be a good idea to move to this place)

A few suggestions if I may:

* Maybe you can switch the scope of the mission a little bit? Finding the remains of the brother AND freeing 2+ friends held somewhere in some strongholds? Finding the two companions was very important to me, so even if you do not want to change the focus, having officers giving special info about stronghold locations would be a huge plus (a circle with a different color from that of the regular enemy activity). Having to find and free companions with various areas of expertise will add a lot of RPG-ness to the experience IMO.

* Nice touch with the green circles, but mine were strangely too far apart. So when I found the second officer who gave me a circle (not at an airfield but in a city with a UAV operator), it excluded like 95% of the churches, and after interrogating one other officer near the intersection there was only one church left. Here are the circles:

It's not very visible in the screenshot, the intersection is the tiny band running from the NW to the SE of Frini. Is it intended that they would be so far apart?

* More strongholds, with intel on their location, and heavy activity at *every* airstrip. I would add a joke about some fat loot like a purple assault rifle of +sharpshootiness, but with the current inventory sizes it would be a waste.

* I'd love to be able to choose my class at creation. So far all the perks of being an explosive expert have been lost on me. I would have preferred to be a medic. Without one you cannot heal to 100% and in this condition, whenever you are out of breath, the character instead of just panting is expressing pain which is rather annoying. I know I can spawn with a medic companion, but I would rather not have one at the beginning. Being alone, vulnerable and with a pea-shooter adds a lot to the starting experience.

* I am playing with TPW_Mods and their ambient cars. I am not afraid when I hear a car engine, I know they are all civilians, but I would like to be afraid. During the whole mission I've only seen one enemy MRAP driving outside a city, and I am afraid it was simply lost. IMHO it would add to the experience if there were moving AI patrols between cities and inside them. Not in armed MRAPs, that would be sudden death, that's annoying and there is enough of that in Arma already. But if we had some order, for instance the CSAT stormstroopers guarding important locations like airports and strongholds, and their AAF auxiliaries manning checkpoints and patrolling in pickups or unarmored MRAPs would be nice. 2-3 guys in a pickup or other civilian car, they would stop and disembark upon seeing the player. Besides I'd love to light up one of those pickups with a machinegun some day :).

All in all, a very pleasing experience, great job. I hope next time I find a stronghold.

[Rydygier 1317]

Maybe you can switch the scope of the mission a little bit? Finding the remains of the brother AND freeing 2+ friends held somewhere in some strongholds? Finding the two companions was very important to me, so even if you do not want to change the focus, having officers giving special info about stronghold locations would be a huge plus (a circle with a different color from that of the regular enemy activity). Having to find and free companions with various areas of expertise will add a lot of RPG-ness to the experience IMO.

Well, adding to the notes info about secondary goal - to free, let's say, two of Alex' brother helpers, is trivial. Then I could add another message from brother about capturing them and another attachement to one of phone calls with intel about all possible locations of these two strongholds (list of rough coords, no markers), then player will get enough info, yet not exact location, so he must to check several places, unless lucky, before he find the right one. Also, agree, each of four officers should have info about all four important places - airfields, and strongholds. I'll do that. More - in such case each of captives should get two actions: to hire for money or to free for no money (then captive will disappear instead of join). But this goal I'll keep optional. Not needed to finish the scenario.

About circles - the only rule is, body must be within. The lesser common part of two circles, the more lucky you are, as area of search is so small then. Only question is, if body indeed was in this narrow common space? It isn't too easy, because not happens often, so circles are so far one to each other and except officers, getting circle intel has very low probability.

More strongholds, with intel on their location, and heavy activity at *every* airstrip. I would add a joke about some fat loot like a purple assault rifle of +sharpshootiness, but with the current inventory sizes it would be a waste.

Not doable. As you can read above, I reached group limit for both hostile sides already. Game limitation.

* I'd love to be able to choose my class at creation. So far all the perks of being an explosive expert have been lost on me. I would have preferred to be a medic. Without one you cannot heal to 100% and in this condition, whenever you are out of breath, the character instead of just panting is expressing pain which is rather annoying.

Wrong sound for exhausted unit breathing is game issue, annoying, true, but not reason to adjust mission design. It is present for perfectly helthy units as well. This should be fixed by devs, I hope soon. Frankly somehow do not like much this idea - yet another init setting (and two other to figure out, to keep list simetrical). This way we could extend list of these settings, and extend... I would like to say "enough" for amount of settings present in 1.72. After all - you can heal completely at hideout. Also, let's say, I could make one of captives a medic, so you can get one this way - more interesting and challenging.

IMHO it would add to the experience if there were moving AI patrols between cities and inside them.

Statistically there is at least several motorized/mechanized/armored groups spawned at init on map. Each such group will patrol several near towns constantly and, more, will investigate area, where player was spotted, if not too far. It is limited to 4000 meters around the player though due to caching. I can't left motorized groups not cached, tried - costs too much fps. If you saw only one such group after checking half of the map, then I could say only, you was unlucky this time. Also, there will be in 1.72 small chance for spawning motorized enemies as part of ambient combat feature.

Thanks for great feedback. :)

Edited April 2, 2014 by Rydygier

[haleks 8212]

Haleks, nice to see you here. I'm also sometimes in Dayz sp community under different username. Currently not playing Dayz sp, but I will constantly return. Maybe same will happen with Pilgrimage mission in the future :-)

Thanks Tortuosit! I have something brand new coming soon for Arma3; hope you'll enjoy it as well! ;)

[haleks 8212]

Not doable. As you can read above, I reached group limit for both hostile sides already. Game limitation.

You should take a look at the DMZ delete script by Demonized (for Arma2) : it handles deletion of empty groups.

It may be worth mentionning that, whenever all units of a group are killed, the group is not deleted : it remains as an empty group. Deleting those allows to work around the "144 limit" and spawn more units over time. ;)

EDIT : Woops, sorry for the double-post!

[Rydygier 1317]

Yes, there is even more tricks possible, so OK, technically doable, in more than one way, but not all, what possible fits here and not all I want to do here. Till 1.72 there was iron principle in this mission to not spawn any new group on the fly - all only at init. Exception was made for ambient combat feature alone, introduced for incoming 1.72 as option because of its nature, and yes, there is "gravedigger" function to delete empty groups, bodies, wrecks... Necessary. There are also practical problems however. Let's say, for now there is not enough group slots to populate given area. We want to do this later, when player destroy enough groups. But it is risky assumption. What, if player reach this area before he kill enough groups or anybody? What if I want some group to be present all the time for such area (chopper group for airfields case)? Possibility of such "creaks", making mission working properly only under certain assumptions, is no go for me.

Besides IMO on max seetings saturation of the island with hostiles is really at least enough even without ambient combat. I do not want to have island crawling with enemies like anthill.

[haleks 8212]

Yeah, it has its limits - especially in a full persistant mod where units aren't despawned and remain active the whole time.

On a personnal note I tend to avoid that : I delete units when they are too far away (thus not really usefull to the immediate game experience) and spawn new ones if needed - but I usually work on 100% free roaming missions (no end game), so I don't really have a choice.

In the end it's a choice to make between full persistancy and long-term playthroughs/performances; it all depends on the mission style.

I think I'm gonna give Pilgrimage a try tonight; I didn't have time lately, but I'm quite curious.:p

[Rydygier 1317]

Mission upgraded to 1.72. Changelog:

- optional ambient war (opfor vs resistance, seriously affects shape of gameplay, making it more chaotic, less predictable, more intense and difficult);

- option to have weapons from loot always with some proper magazine or two;

- choosable initial daytime;

- added secondary goal to the diary entries - to free two captives from strongholds;

- added list of all ten possible coords of the both strongholds to the one of the phone calls;

- stronghold and airfield commanders now hold intel about exact locations of each such places on map;

- if player has any subordinate, from time to time some group chit-chat sentences will be displayed;

- code tweaks and fixes.

Ambient combat - Mainly for players, that like to be threatened nearly constantly and are bored on default settings due to not enough action and enemies. Also for those, who want to get war ambient. Think twice before use. As said, it really can change shape of gameplay. More chaotic, unpredictable, more difficult even on low intensity, player in potential danger all the time. Using this feature makes assumption, so war isn't as over, as it seemed and chaotic skirmishes are raging constantly across whole island. Opfor and resistance become enemies fighting each other, player still is enemy to both. This affects also usual garrisons etc. Side effects - only opfor group can call air support (as choppers are opfor), and calling artillery depends, if mortar is on the same side, as AI group.

Intensity controls, how many groups of both sides at the time will be present around player and also how close may be spawned. Not in direct vicinity though. Groups are removed permanently/replaced by new if player go farter than 2.5 km, also bodies and wrecks left by these AIs are removed after some time, if player far enough, or if too many of them. Removed are also any empty groups.

AC starts to work with hardcoded 10 minutes delay.

Edited April 3, 2014 by Rydygier

[Kommiekat 11]

So you have also the DropBox of each version you make?

Honestly, I really don't like having to start over and over and over again after putting in so much time and effort to get my player and side kick set up..........and.........having NOT completed the mission.

SaOK is doing the same thing as you. Making one hell of a mission, but updating and updating and updating which deletes the previous version.

Is there not a way to replace the versions but keep your saves?

regards,

kk

[Rydygier 1317]

Yes, I probably have each released version on Dropbox.

As far, as I know, saves works only for version, where was saved. Sometimes you can load older save with newer version, but IMO then is loaded older version anyway, stored in the save or something like that (also changed is usually code ran only once, at init, so restart is needed anyway to see any changes). If there would be another way - I, and for sure SaOK too, would use it. But seems, it is unavoidable. You can wait with update and play older version, until you finish it and only for next time use newest version. Poor players using Workshop version haven't that luxury due to auto-updates, thus I recommend to avoid Workshop. Who uses it should have pretensions to people, who decided, so Workshop will work that wrong way, not to mission makers, that are hard working and updating their mission to provide highest possible quality for players. Instead play manually downloaded version to keep control over updates...

Man, I heard same thing many times on Workshop. Do not know, what saboteur set the things that way there, but effect is, mission maker is discouraged from upgrading his work, as what he gets in response are grievances "where my saves?! Give my saves back!". How you would feel hearing such thing after you worked hard to bring more good stuff to people? Exactly. And such response of players is fully understandable in these circumstances. I would be annoyed too for sure loosing my saves again and again. So - screw Workshop. Do not know, if I'll upload there anything else because of that. Perhaps only for wider promotion, without further updates, or only final versions with big delay. I have enough of this messy, chaotic and unreliable tool.

Good news is, these updates simply MUST end at some point. :) I'll continue development only as long there are things to fix or good ideas to implement. Each update all fixes and all ideas known are added, but there are constantly new requests and wishes appearing... For now - no plans for next version. But tommorow this may change swiftly, as it was many times so far.

Edited April 3, 2014 by Rydygier

[law-giver 190]

Rydygier, although i've had ArmA3 since Alpha i've not exactly been a fan and have refused to play it sticking with ArmA2 OA. Today i started playing Pilgrimage which i've had on my drive for a while. Four hours later and i couldn't stop playing it, until my mate phoned to play ArmA2 Warfare online. :D

Simply put, it's brilliant, i've downloaded 1.72 and can't wait to play it tomorrow morning, unfortunately i have work in the evening. Keep the updates and new ideas coming mate! ;)

[Kommiekat 11]

Yes, I probably have each released version on Dropbox.

Sorry, I was writing out of frustration, not anger. You mission rocks! Just want to have a chance to finish it.

It's the same with SaOk's mission. I gave up on his mission months ago and won't go back to it until he feels "satisfied" that it's stable.

I may have to do the same with yours and just wait until you feel the same, stable. But that's not a bad thing.

Cheers,

KK

[Rydygier 1317]

Yep, that may be reasonable course of action - wait for stable (let's say a month without any sign of progress). For me every next version seems to be "stable", until next day several new things pop up... :) Let's see, how this will be with 1.72. For today I'm satisfied with it.

[stevendeamon 10]

Does anyone have major framedrops with the latest version (1.72)? I can run Arma3 on high with almost any number of enemies NEAR me fighting eachother (tested that in the editor, copy pasted hundreds of enemies and watched them fight eachother), but with the latest version of Pilgrimage (1.71 had this problem aswell to some extent) I get around 5-10 FPS max. And that's from the very start and lasts untill I exit the mission due to being pissed off. It's like the scripts are constantly spawning and running AI routines and whatnot. Halp!

[Rydygier 1317]

Here FPS same, as in previous versions, means decent, around 40-45 depends on surroundings. Any mods? What exact init settings?

[stevendeamon 10]

I do have a lot of mods, but the only one that would make an impact would be bcombat. But I used bcombat from the beginning of Pilgrimage versions, so no change there. The only change I can think of is that I play with 100% garrisons and checkpoints. But I thought groups are cached so there should be no performance impact no matter the number of groups on the map (well sort of). I will try setting garrisons and checkpoints on default and see if there are any changes. The ambient war is great tho, as far as I could play with low fps.

[Rydygier 1317]

So perhaps first try without bCombat to be sure, it is the cause. Do not know bCombat well enough to say, if my caching will improve its performance with 1100 AI on map. What was changed through the versions of Pilgrimage is amount of AIs, recently are added also several not cached groups, eg ambient combat groups, often engaged in fights. It may also depend on bCombat version, I was notified about major performance change between 0.15 and 0.16 but also was notified, so even 0.16 will cause such effect with old caching system, so nothing is sure for me. Personally I'm not using it (I'm rarely using mods in version < 1.0), so I rely on feedback from the bCombat users.

[stevendeamon 10]

I appologize for the "OMG FRAMEDROPS" rant. I gave it another go, this time with bcombat deactivated. It seems that somewhere along the road bcombat freaked out with your newer versions of Pilgrimage. I do not know what is changed (except your unchached groups) but that does seem to be the issue. Guess it's no more bcombat for now. I did not deactivated bcombat first time I noticed major frame loss because I always used it. Long story short, back to good framerate and running for my life moments. Thanks and good day.

[Alex72 1]

The awesome get awesomer. Thanks Rydygier. :)

I use a few addons and notice no bad FPS with the latest caching. This is regarding previous versions. Havent tested the new yet with combat here and there. I think 1.71 got harder in itself though with larger and more AI groups. Sometimes 2 full infantry teams with vehicle support. Very hard to fight (but fun). You of course have to use guerilla tactics and run away - fool - take out one or two, run away etc. Good stuff.

EDIT: Man, this new version sure has enemies all over. :D Cant drive between 2 towns without being shot at. The first town i looted i got contact between 2 or 3 baddies. I took out 2 of them and couldnt see the last one. After some minutes of fighting them an attack heli came and searched for me plus a combat vehicle lol! Guess what, i sat in a house surrounded by hell itself and planned to take them out 1 by 1 if they entered the house. They didnt though and maybe that was for the better because after maybe 20 minutes of me hiding and hearing them running around shouting all of a sudden kaBOOM! The other armed force came and started battling my enemies. :D In the end the other force killed my enemies and took off. So i could finally get out from the house, get into my truck and leave for the next town.

Very cool. I would prefer a little less enemies, but i guess i can set that in the beginning. People that thought this mission wasnt action enough surely have that now. :) Good job Rydygier.

Btw i can use NATO uniforms now when restared. Cant use other factions though. I think it would be awesome if there was some script command that let us use any unforms we find to be worn. Wonder if there is such a command.

EDIT2: Found a little bug i think. At first when i killed some AI i can see their "+" signs on the map (where they died), but now maybe 2 hours in i dont see them anymore from my kills, but i see them all over the map where AI met eachother. So when they die by "AI hand" they are marked on map, but not when i kill them.

Edited April 4, 2014 by Alex72

[law-giver 190]

Yeah it's kinda frustrating when you find a cool uniform and you can't wear it. I just run around in my underpants. It's so damn hot! ;)