[SP] Pilgrimage

[neofit 65]

I realized all of the enemies pretty much ignored me. Even the checkpoint's dude at the .50 cal couldn't be bothered to shoot me. Only after I exited the vehicle they opened up on me.

I was hoping for quite some time that this becomes an actual feature in Arma :). Say I'm driving an Ifrit, how do the CSAT guys know that I'm an enemy, from hundreds of meters away to boot? They shouldn't until they see me through the window at 5 meters or so or if I exit the vehicle.

[Rydygier 1317]

Dev branch updated:

- various code tweaks (also fixed problem with 1.16 changes);

- body marked in 3D when noticed by Alex;

- own code for ambient civilians on foot.

Last one is quite major and for now experimental only. Decided, so mission after all should have own code for civilians, as some interesting features are dependent on civilians. It does roughly same thing, as TPW's foot civs module, but not exactly same and in another way (code wise). So you can play with disabled foot mobile civilians module of TPW's. Or not. Code should work also together with other such scripts, just monitoring, so overall amount of near civilians shouldn't exceed 50 (will not spawn own civilians in such case). Feedback about overall impresions and performsnce impact very appreciated. Tried to make this code as CPU cheap, as possible with kept all basic features of "civilian life pattern", but it isn't tested very well yet. As this is part of the bigger whole I could also make it well integrated with the rest so IMO is or at least eventualy should be a recommended option to use this internal civilian ambient code only for pedestrians. As mentioned earlier, I don't like the idea of more init settings, but if there will be many enough request to make it switchable/tweakable, probably I'll do it.

Some features:

- dynamic spawn of randomized civilians around the player, up to 50, depending on amount of buildings around;

- each civilian has own "home";

- civilians should tend to stay home at night;

- civilians will stay home or walk to some other buildings or places or just stay outside during the day;

- should often look for roofed position during rainy weather and tend to run instead of walk;

- should sometimes watch near persons, especially player;

- should react with watching, running and lowering silhuette when there are fights/shots fired nearby.

---------- Post added at 18:13 ---------- Previous post was at 18:12 ----------

I was hoping for quite some time that this becomes an actual feature in Arma :). Say I'm driving an Ifrit, how do the CSAT guys know that I'm an enemy, from hundreds of meters away to boot? They shouldn't until they see me through the window at 5 meters or so or if I exit the vehicle.

Exactly. That would be nice. Many aspects of AI specificity are very inhuman.

Edited April 11, 2014 by Rydygier

[neofit 65]

Do the civilians run home if there is gunfire in the vicinity? I ended up turning off the TPW civilians because there were too many around even during firefights. I mean not just drop to the ground in fear when someone shoots nearby, but actually run away when someone is shooting within like 100-200m?

[Rydygier 1317]

As this is CPU-cheap solution, there is no calculated running direction, but there is good chance, so, wherever people are going, they'll run, not walk. But not necessarily at home. Thought, person in panic often will not act reasonable. Still, can easily add increased chance to go/stay home in danger situations. And there is still vanilla behavior in danger, that may cause unit go prone anyway. From the other hand, AFAIK, vanilla AI behavior also allows civilians to run away sometimes. After all, I said about new init settings, I think this feature simply needs some possibility to tweak, such as max amount of units, radius of spawn, and, as I need third setting anyway to keep GUI symmetrical, possibly I'll also incude your request and make green circles occurence tweakable.

As for shooting, again, used CPU-cheap solution. Avoided adding event handler for near shots per every civ. Added only "fired" EH for player's group. As for rest - I assumed, if player's enemy is near and know about the player, he will shoot at player, and even if not, civilian, knowing situation, will predict combat soon and will act properly.

[teoleo 2]

emh, with tpw mod my companion is killed from a civilian car.... :O((

two civil marked with blue icon, are useless...is normal??

[Rydygier 1317]

two civil marked with blue icon, are useless...is normal??

If there was action to ask them, but then message about "nothing useful", then yes. Only some civilians can be asked (those with 3d marks) and only some of them will have any useful information. Note, asking action will be not visible, if player's character knows about any enemy presence (any enemy unit icon is visible on map). In such case you must wait, until will be safe again (enemy units will disappear from the map either because of time pass without sight contact or if you kill'em all).

Edited April 12, 2014 by Rydygier

[teoleo 2]

i have problem now with tpw mod...save the mission, but don't load.....

[Rydygier 1317]

Sorry, but that says me nothing useful to help you. Need more specifics.

[teoleo 2]

i have a big msg error but I can only read many names of "file" but not the reason of the error (ca_modules ca_weapons, ca_animal and more more more more more )

important: is not because the mod....i have set off the mod and the probles is Always here....

is the dev branch mission and i have arma III updated...

---------- Post added at 11:46 ---------- Previous post was at 11:34 ----------

arghhhh is my game...i have the same problem with all mission!!!!!

---------- Post added at 11:59 ---------- Previous post was at 11:46 ----------

ok, i have deselected and re activated all the mod and now works :O)

---------- Post added at 12:35 ---------- Previous post was at 11:59 ----------

how i can swith to the companion?

Edited April 12, 2014 by teoleo

[Rydygier 1317]

If you play new enough beta version, where it is possible, then it depends on your Arma's keyboard configuration. For me this is U key.

---------- Post added at 15:11 ---------- Previous post was at 15:00 ----------

Uploading last, I hope, beta version for 1.75, official release planned soon after weekend. Changes:

- init settings to customize ambient civilians and "green circle" intel occurence;

- more code tweaks;

Customizing ambient civilians allows to set radius for population and maximal amount of civilians - if reached, no more civilians will be spawned by this code until will drop below this value again. Here all code may be also disabled, if someone experiences any troubles with it (please, inform me in such case) or simply preffer to play without civilians or uses another mod for this purpose.

Note - setting minimal radius and high density gives really extreme results like few civilians in every house around. Small radius means also, so player may more often see disappearing civilians. Default, 400 meters, seems optimal to me.

Edited April 12, 2014 by Rydygier

[Kommiekat 11]

Finally! Finished it.

Nice nice. I had many good battles. Loved it.

[tortuosit 486]

emh, with tpw mod my companion is killed from a civilian car.... :O((

Yes of course, this happens often with tpw civilian cars. In one mission, I was killed as well, I dodnt see the car coming... I play without buddy meanwhile, because usually he dies after a couple of minutes, he is pretty useless.

Finished the mission, I think it was 1.71, but will start again maybe now with a stable 1.75

Congrats at Rydy for your successful mission. It's strange, there are so many good missions which get no attention, but there is some turning point, which you achieved, a critical number of players, which make the thing rolling... But of course its your hard work, you spend a lot of time in your mission and answering questions here in this thread, we can only be thankful.

Edited April 12, 2014 by tortuosit

[doc. caliban 34]

Weird game issue, not related to the mission AFAIK: I've killed and searched about 30-40 enemy, many of which had NV goggles on their helmets. Guess what not a single one of them has when I loot them? The goggles are vanishing into thin air when I kill these guys, so I can't get any. I am getting rather annoyed. Any ideas as to why this is happening?

The mission itself is fun as usual though!

-Doc

EDIT: I just took out another 8-man patrol, all of which had NV. That is, until I went to loot them. It's 19:15 ... if I don't get some soon, I'm going to be in bad shape. (I don't want to sit out the mission until morning.)

Edited April 13, 2014 by Doc. Caliban

[Rydygier 1317]

Not game issue, mission feature. Not as aggressive, as it was in early versions, still killed unit's equipment is "decimated" by a script to limit amount of loot from bodies. In NVGoggles case there is 5% chance, so body will keep it. For the plot purposes may be assumed, so part of equipment is damaged during combat (a little far-fetched...) or for any other reason can't be used. As you undoubtfully noticed, same thing happens with dead man's magazines and other items - As for rest may be accepted, so marauders often will have incomplete equipment.

If you fail to find any NVs before pitch black, I suggest "sleep" to the morning at hideout's fireplace or just by using 0-0-0 radio channel several times, unless you really like challenges.

[doc. caliban 34]

Not game issue, mission feature. Not as aggressive, as it was in early versions, still killed unit's equipment is "decimated" by a script to limit amount of loot from bodies. In NVGoggles case there is 5% chance, so body will keep it. For the plot purposes may be assumed, so part of equipment is damaged during combat (a little far-fetched...) or for any other reason can't be used. As you undoubtfully noticed, same thing happens with dead man's magazines and other items - As for rest may be accepted, so marauders often will have incomplete equipment.

If you fail to find any NVs before pitch black, I suggest "sleep" to the morning at hideout's fireplace or just by using 0-0-0 radio channel several times, unless you really like challenges.

Ah, ok. I don't think that I noticed that before.

Perhaps that could be part of the 'Hardcore' version? For this type of mission I like to be able to hunt based on what I need so that I can supply myself as I see fit. I disable all loot boxes and depend entirely on taking equipment from the enemy. In this case I have engaged far more soldiers than I otherwise would have had to, and spent a lot of time running / driving around looting them for one piece of equipment.

Just a thought based on one person's play style.

Thanks again for the mission!

-Doc

PS I'd even considered that the NVGs were being damaged in combat and took care to not shoot guys in the head ... didn't help ... but it did occur to me that that's what could have been happening!

[Rydygier 1317]

I think, this will stay, as is. Only change, I could consider, is removing NVs and other visible parts of equipment (helmets) at unit spawn, not death, so from the beginning player knows, who will have this gadget, but this gets more complicated due to caching/decaching. So far every play I was able to obtain NVs sooner or later. It is also part of the challenge, to find useful equipment, so can't be too easy. And if someone is starting at evening or night? Well, if he wants to make things harder this way, it is his choice with all its consequences. Life is brutal. It's not a school trip. :)

You can also start at bright day, play until NVs obtained, then wait for the night. There are also possible dirty tricks with save&load, when you encountered surrendering enemy with NVs - save, kill him, if no NVs, load and repeat. Bad for immersion though.

Edited April 13, 2014 by Rydygier

[law-giver 190]

Rydygier, I have a problem, I can't stop playing this bl**dy mission. It's so addictive! Sod the brother, just getting your guy kitted up with everything and surviving is fun enough! The more I play it the more I see what an excellent mission this is mate. Top notch! I hope you have more missions in the pipeline! :D ;)

[king homer 1]

Started to play this morning... and it made my day. :)

Superb job you did there. I'm still ingame, played for about 7 hours now and still can't stop.

[law-giver 190]

Started to play this morning... and it made my day. :)

Superb job you did there. I'm still ingame, played for about 7 hours now and still can't stop.

LOL! Know the feeling, been playing it since i finished work this morning only stopping for dinner & tea. Just got off 20 minutes ago, surrounded by 4 tanks.......:eek:

Rydygier, with regards to the NVG's i never had any trouble finding any. Got a pair now, takes a while to find a pair but i've always found a pair during a game restart although they seem pretty rare. ;)

Edited April 13, 2014 by Law-Giver

[doc. caliban 34]

I think, this will stay, as is. Only change, I could consider, is removing NVs and other visible parts of equipment (helmets) at unit spawn, not death, so from the beginning player knows, who will have this gadget, but this gets more complicated due to caching/decaching. So far every play I was able to obtain NVs sooner or later. It is also part of the challenge, to find useful equipment, so can't be too easy. And if someone is starting at evening or night? Well, if he wants to make things harder this way, it is his choice with all its consequences. Life is brutal. It's not a school trip. :)

You can also start at bright day, play until NVs obtained, then wait for the night. There are also possible dirty tricks with save&load, when you encountered surrendering enemy with NVs - save, kill him, if no NVs, load and repeat. Bad for immersion though.

Understood. For me it breaks the immersion to know they would really be there but aren't. But now that I know, it's easy to deal with next time around. :-)

-Doc

[neofit 65]

I tried the 1.75 beta. I like the new shift-click placement of markers like in the vanilla. But how do you remove them? In vanilla it's Del but it's not working here. I don't really want to go to where I placed the marker, I use them mostly to gauge distances.

[Rydygier 1317]

Yes, failed to apply same deleting way. To delete - move it on your position, then it will be considered as completed and removed.

Pilgrimage upgraded to 1.75. Changelog:

- visible parts of gear now are removed at unit spawn, not at death, so no more suddenly disappearing helmets or NVGs;

- improved spawning and caching of motorized groups;

- init settings to customize ambient civilians and "green circle" intel occurence;

- brother's body marked in 3D when noticed by Alex;

- own code for ambient civilians on foot;

- second recruitable character is now an engineer;

- player can now take direct control over any subordinate;

- AIs, that surrendered, are now 3D-marked - useful for finding individuals to interrogate and gather their loot, when defeated group was scattered;

- improved clean up function for ambient combat: now weaponholders near each body are removed as well;

- old and far bodies apart from ambient combat, along with their weaponholders, will be now deleted too;

- on Alpha radio channel (0-0-1) now forced clean up: manual immediate removal of all dead bodies with near weaponholders, wrecks and empty groups;

- various code tweaks.

[tortuosit 486]

A good opportunity to start over again... Which mods do you use with your mission, Rydy?

[Rydygier 1317]

My current set is: CBA, JSRS, Blastcore, customized TPW's (without fog, bleeding, parking cars, not sure about HUD yet, and now without pedestrians), also for testing, how it works with custom addons, I'm using aggressors and massi's pack with African Conflict and weaponry.

One note, I forgot to mention. Starting from 1.16 at init sometimes I see error window indicating some config problems (A3 vanilla). Apparently in the vanilla config of some unit, that may be chosen to spawn, is some typo in weapon name or something like that. In such case I'm just restarting the scanario.

[law-giver 190]

Rydygier, i'm playing the latest 1.75 and i got the sense the smell of smoke.. message and a foot trail message come up at the same time, was a little distracting. Any way of preventing two messages coming up at the same time?

LG ;)