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IndeedPete

[SP Campaign] M.E.R.C.S. - mercenary expendable ruthless covert selfish

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I'm glad it solved the problem for you! And I hope you enjoy/ed the new content! It was actually the idea of an Armaholic user named gpgpgpgp, totally forgot to mention him. Thanks gpgpgpgp!

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Huge thanks to mizifih from the Armaholic forums who took a video of him playing the first contract mission. So, for those of you who are still uncertain if they should try M.E.R.C.S. I recommend watching it. I realise that there's not that much action and explosions around but it shows some basic prinicples and features of the first (tutorial) mission.

I find it amazing to see how others play my content and how they approach my missions. It's simply invaluable to a developer to actually see how users react to different situations. In a perfect world I had a bunch of testers I'd observe and research face-to-face to improve the quality of my content. Anyway, have fun with it!

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Hello,

I can't bring up the action menu. I'm at the finish of the first mission and I need to be extracted. According to the video above the menu should be there when you hit space to change weapons, but it's not there. Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks!

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Hi, I've changed it to be accessible from the comm menu. Hit Backspace-0-8-1 to open the TacPad and the press the "extract" button.

The video above is done with an older version. But I guess I forgot to update one or two hints, thanks for reminding me!

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I find it amazing to see how others play my content and how they approach my missions.

You also noticed that he cheated!!

He DID NOT hide! He anticipated the next move.

I"M CALLING THE BIS POLICE AND REPORTING THIS!

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Oh no, he didn't! *near heart attack*

I will remove his video immediately, have him tracked down and brought in for interrogation! Maybe we can still save his poor soul if we call the exorcist right away!

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Hi, I've changed it to be accessible from the comm menu. Hit Backspace-0-8-1 to open the TacPad and the press the "extract" button.

The video above is done with an older version. But I guess I forgot to update one or two hints, thanks for reminding me!

Thanks! Great job, I'm really enjoying this. It's been a great tool to learn how to play Arma. I'm too used to having my hand held, I need to learn how to figure things out:)

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Glad you like it! Interesting to know that M.E.R.C.S. has an educational purpose now. oO

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Glad to present two new shots of the just finished 9th contract mission "Protection Money". After the cowardly attack on our convoy in "Sauerland Express" we're striking back! Looks like Raif is planting some really bad stuff into the ground...

m04b_load_source4tu5h.jpg m04b_overview_sourcer5ukz.jpg

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Hi there,

I've made a quick video to show the Glass system a little bit. It's nothing fancy, just a quick showcase. Please ignore the low framerate sometimes and my crappy shooting. I've recorded it on my small laptop and it's quite hard to hit something with 18 FPS.^^

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Just a reminder for me to come back and download this campaign :D

HUD is looking good although I found with tpw's version and from what I see on your video is the markers don't look like they are rendered on any type of tactical glasses probably not best description and as if i would know what it would look like, but they look like markers over units heads, which is what they are, regardless I'd be keen for a standalone as mentioned in another thread :)

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Just a reminder for me to come back and download this campaign :D

You should. And then you will post feedback here to tell me what's good and what I should improve. :)

The markers are the same as you have in high command stuff. I just apply them to single units instead of groups. They're just to visualise an enemy. I don't know if I'm getting old or my eyes fail me sometimes, but often I have no clue where the enemy shooters are. But my Tactical Glasses mark them for me so I can finally return fire. I see what I can do about a stand alone. Have plans to release a script library / hub / campaign framework / whatever post-contest anyway.

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I've been praising your work in another thread already, but today I continued playing your campaign for a bit and I felt I really need to tell you how much I love it.

Storywise it's one of the best campaigns I've ever seen, the dialogues are great and funny throughout. I especially loved the ones with the german businessguy. The overall attention to detail is really amazing, e.g. that you took the time to even make up a believable IBAN number that really could belong to a Credit Suisse account in one of the contracts. Or the fact that the Glass system by Böhmen Integrated Systems is running on "Java Quantum Machine 1.7". It's really the little things that make this campaign what it is.

From a technical point of view I'm absolutely impressed. For academic purposes :) I had a look at the source and from what I can tell it's flawless. I think every missionmaker should check it out because it's so much easier to see all the best practices in one place instead of scraping knowledge together from half done Biki pages. And the time you spent on the architecture of the whole thing really pays off, because performance couldn't be better and the missions are as bug free as Arma can get.

You see, I can't stress enough how blasted away I am and all I can do is thank you for your contribution to this great game and hope for more to come (especially the standalone Glass system :p).

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Wow, I'm blasted away by your comment! It's great people appreciate my work in that way, really keeps up the motivation.

If I'd strictly follow the contest rules I'd have to remove / replace the German text with English or add German voice acting with English subs. Not sure what I'll do for the final version yet. The IBAN number just took me a few minutes (it's always the same). Opened up wikipedia to get some basic info, then googled Credit Suisse example IBAN and maybe changed one or two numbers - that's it. However, my "contract English" is not the best so it's hard for me to get the lingo right. Most of the contract sentences have been copied from Arma 2 PMC. Fun fact: The German word "Böhmen" adresses a former kingdom whose domain covered more than half of today's Czech Republic. The region borders with the German federal states Bavaria and Saxony as well parts of Poland and Austria. The latin term is "Bohemia". ;)

And I'm not sure if we will have operational quantum computers by 2035, but considering the technical advancements of the past 20 years I think it could be a realistic development (at least some prototypes). Not sure if 2048 MQbytes is enough for BIS Glass though.^^

It has its flaws, believe me. But my own tests showed no visible script errors. All fellow Armaholics are free to open up the PBO and take it apart. If you repurpose and publish something just keep in mind to release it under APL-SA. I'm glad if my work helps somebody as I'm certainly not an expert. I'm not happy with the performance in one or two missions but I guess there are just too many AI, maybe I need a good short range caching system.

If you have some basic editing knowledge you could always try to extract the Glass system by yourself. But I see to a (simplified) stand alone release. However, the campaign has priority. Keep on playing. ;)

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Fun fact: The German word "Böhmen" adresses a former kingdom whose domain covered more than half of today's Czech Republic. The region borders with the German federal states Bavaria and Saxony as well parts of Poland and Austria. The latin term is "Bohemia". ;)

Since I don't live too far away over in Switzerland I was actually aware of that, which is why I found it (and good ol' Credit Suisse of course) particularly funny :D

I have started an attempt to strip out the glass system but I doubt I'll be getting anywhere with it. Right now it's just an empty mission with glass in it, we'll see if I manage to turn it into a full-fledged addon. In case I should, I'll obviously publish it under APL-SA and credit you accordingly.

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I honestly didn't know any other banks from Switzerland off the top of my head. :D

Good luck with your attempt! The files/dirs needed should be:

  • fnc\shop
  • fnc\glass
  • fnc\tacPad
  • cfg\tacpad
  • cfg\glass
  • cfg\defines.hpp (general dialog stuff)
  • cfg\functions.hpp (Glass, TacPad + Shop Parts)
  • cfg\factions.hpp (Optional)
  • cfg\conv\dialogs.hpp (There's the class rscTitles which must be defined only once in a mission. Hence there are references to all systems that rely on titles instead of dialogs.)
  • cfg\shop\missions.hpp (Optional, only to read mission specific values.)

I realise it's not very flexible right now as it's tied to other campaign systems, shop, mission data, factions etc. Feel free to make an addon from it and enhance it in any way you like. And feel free to ask some detail questions if there are some. Add me on steam, that should be faster.

Oh, and in the released version is still a bug that makes the task marker sliding away. (And it shows a marker even when the task has no destination.) I've already sorted this out in my local version. There's a code block beginning around line 63 in "glassCore.sqf" which should be replaced with:

_task = [player] call BIS_fnc_taskCurrent;
if (_task != "") then {
_destArr = [_task] call BIS_fnc_taskDestination;
_pos = if (count _destArr > 2) then {
	_destArr
} else {
	_obj = _destArr select 0;
	if (!isNull _obj) then {(getPos _obj)}	else {[0, 0, 0]}
};

if (!([_pos, [0, 0, 0]] call BIS_fnc_areEqual)) then {
	_posMod = [(_pos select 0), (_pos select 1), ((_pos select 2) + 10)];
	drawIcon3D ["\a3\ui_f\data\map\Markers\Military\warning_ca.paa", ([(side player)] call BIS_fnc_SideColor), _posMod, 2, 2, 0, "", 0, 0.04];
};
};

Good luck! :)

In other news I've been working on some minor ambient textures to practice my (very low) skills in that area. That should add some more nice details to the campaign. Looks like one of the mercs has an artistic streak. :D

2014-05-25_00002k2urt.jpg 2014-05-24_000051uq8z.jpg 2014-05-24_00003zdqwj.jpg 2014-05-24_000045yroy.jpg

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Decided to "personalise" the ION chopper a little bit more. According to wikipedia the first five letters could be an actual Swiss registration number for a helo.

2014-05-26_000013ooy6.jpg 2014-05-26_00002v1r25.jpg 2014-05-26_00003d4por.jpg 2014-05-26_00004p8ok3.jpg

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You may also consider this:

Throughout the history of the military, promiscuous homosexuality was rampant. That includes the Greeks, Romans and Japanese Samurai.

So that being the case (and fact!) and your mission is full of hunky muscle men all squeezed together in a small camp that they can't help but "bump" into each other,

you could create one of those metal containers/bunkers you have used for sleeping in, as a "Pretty Pink Party Hearty Hub" for the men to get together for frolicking.

Also, a homosexual relationship that develops between your hero and his Greek side-kick.

Should be an interesting mission indeed!

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I must say I somewhat see this coming... BIS: this is what happens when you don´t have female models ingame, virtual testosterone is too high for these characters!!! Zeealex, pleeease, finish up your mod... HURRY! 89 (lol)

On a more serious note, I haven´t seen ingame the face recognition data box of your tactical HUD indeedPete! (I´ve been playing your campaign with a limited setup of addons - only guns and units mostly - so I don´t have TPW´s mods on so it isn´t conflicting) I´ve turned on all the HUD core features, I can see the objects markings and other features, but maybe the databox (where it lists the name of known characters, health etc) is outside the visible area of my screen definition (1600x900px, 16:9 ratio) I´ll make an ss and post here later!

[EDIT] BINGO! When I resized to small interface, the databox showed up... IndeedPete, is there a way to make it auto adjust to player UI (as you´ve fixed the chat box and dialog box), I really don´t like the overall size of small UI size =/

cheers!

Edited by Corporal_Lib[BR]

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@Kommiekat: Ha, funny yet realistic idea. But there are no kissing or holding hands animations. And we'd need pink glow sticks (pink sticks *giggle*). But wait, there are purple smoke grenades, right? I might be able to add some eastereggs (eggs *giggle*) somewhere in the camp. Nevertheless, a romantic lovestory between any genders should be a premiere in the Arma series. No wonder they had so many wars on Altis. Caged on a hot island with no women but thousands of guns and tanks? No surprise here. Maybe that's the real reason why the AAF attacked in the original campaign. :D

@Corporal_Lib[bR]: On the other hand, looking into history there were also enough wars over women. Wait, Troja shouldn't be that far from Altis, right? :)

Hm, made up the Glass dialogs quick and dirty. I was afraid this could happen (again). You have the same resolution as me on my laptop but I use the small interface size. I really don't get it, somewhere in the wiki they write dialogs are automatically adjusted to user's settings. But I still have to tweak the hell out of it because on one or two of the five possible interface sizes it doesn't work. Had the same problem wiht the conv system. On very small and very big text was "falling out" of the box - didn't have that problem with the other three sizes. I see to it! :)

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According to wikipedia the first five letters could be an actual Swiss registration number for a helo.

I see, so ION cleverly has all its assets parked in the tax haven nearby :) Unfortunately (at least for ION), swiss parliament actually banned contractors from operating in armed conflicts back in autumn. But I guess there's nothing wrong with providing tourist flights over beautiful Altis in company of some well-built men ;)

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No, I think your historical education is wrong there, Sir! In 2018, after the great breakdown of the European Union, armed conflicts in several former EU states broke out. Since the bilateral contracts between Switzerland and the Union died with its breakdown on one hand and the rising demand for PMCs in the European region on the other, Switzerland saw the opportunity, changed the laws and lured big investors like ION, Inc. as well as arms producers into the country. Get your facts straight, my dear Swiss colleague! :D

Apart from that ION really offers extended tourism and traveler services - "massages" by "well-built" men included. ;)

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There really is a surprising potential for comedy in making up fictional timelines :)

And it's not even such a long shot. Since the last polls we know that a (slight) majority in Switzerland cares more about "rampant" immigration than about economic ties to our neighbours. So it's not at all surprising that without the most important trade partner the Swiss would look for some new (possibly ethically dubious) sources of income, and you know, in Switzerland we never thought money stinks ;)

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Making up different dtimelines is part of the fun - it's a game after all. :)

Vast changes within the EU in the next few years are also not a that long shot considering the catastrophic results of the election yesterday (at least in Germany). Right-wing parties gain ground in many countries (France, Denmark, Hungary...). Not really a good development in my opinion. I agree, the EU should be reformed in many contexts but I think highly of the basic principles of a united Europe. And don't worry, we have similar idiots saying all the bad foreigners destroy our country and culture. *cough* Seehofer against Serbian immigrants *cough*

Though it was a surprise that Switzerland would actually go that far with that referendum. Many Germans seem to share the Swiss view on money - otherwise we wouldn't have to put so many (prominent) people *cough* football manager *cough* behind bars. Anyway, too much real world politics here. :D

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