Jurassic Arma - Raptor Pack

[Guest]

just create a briefing.sqf.....

Is the mod still going to have future updates?

[corporal_lib[br] 396]

Just a headsup! Sometimes, improvements on a stable mod result on bugs later on (when BIS changes so much core features/scripts/functions) so I´ve just realised that the old V1.1 works (OK, the dinos give orders but maybe with ACE_noradio this should be disguised lol) and they sprint, surround you and attack a lot from behind, so they´re "fun" again... I don´t know if armaholic has the old files, but I can host then on my dropbox if somebody is interested =) )I keep a lot of old files due to this... dezkit jets are my personal treasure as they all got wiped from the interwebz)

cheers!

[ineptaphid 6413]

;2958347']Just a headsup! Sometimes' date=' improvements on a stable mod result on bugs later on (when BIS changes so much core features/scripts/functions) so I´ve just realised that the old V1.1 works (OK, the dinos give orders but maybe with ACE_noradio this should be disguised lol) and they sprint, surround you and attack a lot from behind, so they´re "fun" again... I don´t know if armaholic has the old files, but I can host then on my dropbox if somebody is interested =) )I keep a lot of old files due to this... dezkit jets are my personal treasure as they all got wiped from the interwebz)

cheers![/quote']

My friend is making a raptor mission and could use the older version-he's having issues with the mod./He made the doomsday night missions,so this will be great.Could you give a link for the older version?

[corporal_lib[br] 396]

My friend is making a raptor mission and could use the older version-he's having issues with the mod./He made the doomsday night missions,so this will be great.Could you give a link for the older version?

Already have, Sig said he´s up to some scripting which fixes on mission the raptors! Let´s see what he´lll come up with! =)

[ineptaphid 6413]

Oh great!We should play the mission when it come out.

[bad benson 1733]

there's going to be a minor update in the future. i have no working pc (writing from mac) right now so i can't do any work on the AI nor release what i have so far. but maybe Ruppert will repack the latest public version with a key and re-release. i'll talk to him about it.

overall the set up of the raptors is pretty fragile (it's arma after all...) and as Corporal_Lib[bR] mentioned the probability is pretty high that stuff breaks just from BIS updating and messing with animation stuff etc.

i can't do any tests myself for the time being but here are some general things to keep in mind.

- try not having the raptors in groups (they won't share targets but they will also not be any interference by default squad level AI)

- generally don't overload your mission with countless third party scripts, this can definately break the AI since it runs a pretty heavy loop to allow a lot of its features

- above goes also for number of raptors operating at the same time. each additional raptor will slow down reactions of them overall. not noticable at certain counts but if you go heavy you will notice. just like with normal AI, more units = less performance + more reaction time.

in conclusion: you will get the best out of this by making linear horror missions with dynamic raptor spawn. if you do open worldish stuff you HAVE to be economic with all the scripts you use as explained above and you will HAVE to do dynamic spawning. there are countless scripts out there that handle that (EOS for example).

the waypoint speed stuff i already fixed irc and i also added a variable to disable and enable the custom AI routines on the fly which also makes them work better with waypoints. these improvements are on hold though until, as mentioned, i have a pc up and running again.

i will also need more detailed reports. the raptors are designed standalone. so if you have a problem, first thing to do is test them in an empty mission. so can someone confirm that they don't work at all anymore?

[das attorney 858]

i will also need more detailed reports. the raptors are designed standalone. so if you have a problem, first thing to do is test them in an empty mission. so can someone confirm that they don't work at all anymore?

Hi mate, they definitely work in an empty mission as intended (I spent a while getting chopped up by them earlier tonight) :)

I need to get on Skype/steamchat with you as I found something that could speed up your FSM. I won't blab on here about it but it could yield a nice procedural improvement :)

[badlucky1776 3]

Anyone experiencing raptors sinking about halfway into the ground and getting stuck after firing at then?

[Guest]

there's going to be a minor update in the future. i have no working pc (writing from mac) right now so i can't do any work on the AI nor release what i have so far. but maybe Ruppert will repack the latest public version with a key and re-release. i'll talk to him about it.

overall the set up of the raptors is pretty fragile (it's arma after all...) and as Corporal_Lib[bR] mentioned the probability is pretty high that stuff breaks just from BIS updating and messing with animation stuff etc.

i can't do any tests myself for the time being but here are some general things to keep in mind.

- try not having the raptors in groups (they won't share targets but they will also not be any interference by default squad level AI)

- generally don't overload your mission with countless third party scripts, this can definately break the AI since it runs a pretty heavy loop to allow a lot of its features

- above goes also for number of raptors operating at the same time. each additional raptor will slow down reactions of them overall. not noticable at certain counts but if you go heavy you will notice. just like with normal AI, more units = less performance + more reaction time.

in conclusion: you will get the best out of this by making linear horror missions with dynamic raptor spawn. if you do open worldish stuff you HAVE to be economic with all the scripts you use as explained above and you will HAVE to do dynamic spawning. there are countless scripts out there that handle that (EOS for example).

the waypoint speed stuff i already fixed irc and i also added a variable to disable and enable the custom AI routines on the fly which also makes them work better with waypoints. these improvements are on hold though until, as mentioned, i have a pc up and running again.

i will also need more detailed reports. the raptors are designed standalone. so if you have a problem, first thing to do is test them in an empty mission. so can someone confirm that they don't work at all anymore?

Awesome news, please don't let this mod die, it's too good and important. I am currently working on my Dino mission and it's coming together REALLY GREAT! The Raptors are deadly but a lot of tweaks needed to be made for the Raptors to react well. First off they can't spot you at night, you have to be like 10 feet in front of them to see you, so your mission has to be in the day time, then they see from far away and now acting like real deadly Raptors.

Second, modules like task modules breaks the Raptor AI, they stop attacking if one module is in your mission, that's VERY strange lol. But check it out yourself, put a intel/task module in the editor Raptors won't attack anymore. So my work around is to use a trigger for the briefing, and text trigger to let the player know objective is complete for story of course.

Third, Independent Raptors seem to be the only working Raptors and only attack you if you're Independent as well. If the Raptors are independent and you're on the blufor or opfor they will have trouble seeing you even in day light. So I had to switch to Independent team and add a negative addrating to all Raptors so your teammates shoot them and another addrating for every teammate so they don't turn on each other from killing Independent Raptors. It's complicated I know.

That's how I got it to work so far. Might want to check that out so see if you notice those bugs. But so far man, the Raptors are good as long as I use these tweaks but they need to be fix in a update and also sprint ability/full speed so you can control the Raptors movement with waypoints, that's gold right there so thanks for looking into that.

[bad benson 1733]

Awesome news, please don't let this mod die, it's too good and important. I am currently working on my Dino mission and it's coming together REALLY GREAT! The Raptors are deadly but a lot of tweaks needed to be made for the Raptors to react well. First off they can't spot you at night, you have to be like 10 feet in front of them to see you, so your mission has to be in the day time, then they see from far away and now acting like real deadly Raptors.

you will laugh but our approach was to give them NVGs. we made sure that the NVGs don't show up on their head but it will make them have the sight of a proper predatorial animal that hunts at night. this solution was the best since it uses engine functionality instead of adding more and more detailed conditions into the AI cycle. so forst check if you have taken away their NVGs. some people use global NVG removal code for night missions. maybe you have something like that in your mission.

i thought they had NVGs by default but maybe not. i bet BIS messed with AI and now i'll have to adjust everything again :/

Second, modules like task modules breaks the Raptor AI, they stop attacking if one module is in your mission, that's VERY strange lol. But check it out yourself, put a intel/task module in the editor Raptors won't attack anymore. So my work around is to use a trigger for the briefing, and text trigger to let the player know objective is complete for story of course.

.........

.........

Third, Independent Raptors seem to be the only working Raptors and only attack you if you're Independent as well. If the Raptors are independent and you're on the blufor or opfor they will have trouble seeing you even in day light. So I had to switch to Independent team and add a negative addrating to all Raptors so your teammates shoot them and another addrating for every teammate so they don't turn on each other from killing Independent Raptors. It's complicated I know.

hm. very weird indeed. this sounds like something in the game changed with how side and enemy relations are handled. maybe at mission start. your fixes make it seem like that. you could also try it the other way around and delay the raptor spawn a little. maybe that works too.

when we released it was totally fine. this is kind of frustrating but i will see if i can do something later. no promises though. i definately don't plan on giving this mod a major overhaul. i'll mostly release the internal progress and see if i can do some hotfixes.

and also sprint ability/full speed so you can control the Raptors movement with waypoints, that's gold right there so thanks for looking into that.

yea the waypoint thing is the last thing i did before taking a break. so that is 100% confirmed. it will just require you to switch a variable on the raptor in question. easy to use stuff.

i will probably have saved some money for replacement parts for my broken pc late in the summer or something. so until then i can't even run arma at all. so you'll have to be a little patient.

Anyone experiencing raptors sinking about halfway into the ground and getting stuck after firing at then?

hm. this sounds either like you are using that other dino mod alongside ours which will cause skeletons and animations being overwritten since the class names still collide. or there is a new bug caused by BIS making changes to the animation stuff in general. hard to tell right now.

overall the set up is pretty fragile and as you might have noticed we had to force animations to be played to make it work properly. if we wouldn't do that the raptors would just get stuck and stop working (they would all simultanously be inside a loop running in place) after working perfectly for a short time. hair pullign stuff...arma modding in a nutshell.

we never found the reason why that happened so we had to apply this dirty fix for now sadly. one benefit is that they can get to you much faster. it just looks less fluid and natural.

i still hope one day whatever hardcoded stuff causes it will be changed so i can turn off the forced animations.

[Guest]

I actually tried that as well the NVG thing lol but it didn't work for me, glad you are still working on it. Understandable that you won't be doing a major overhaul, to tell you the truth the Raptors look great, the thing that needs work really is the AI, speed and that weird module issue. Have you been able to reproduce that issue with the modules yet?

Also is there a code I can put in the ini field for the Raptors to see you better? I'm about done with my mission, I've noticed this one last strange issue though... when I spawn my men near the Raptors they see me right away and are deadly, they can see me over a hill, see you from away, great. But, if I start the mission from home base, explore, get in a helo, ride around, and then get to the Raptors.... they have a hard time detecting me now, I literally have to be right in their face.

The AI for the Raptors seems random, a hit or miss. Was wondering if a simple ini code could fix the detection. Hope I made sense.

Edited July 3, 2015 by Guest

[bad benson 1733]

Have you been able to reproduce that issue with the modules yet?

as i said. i have no pc at the moment whatsoever. i can't run arma on this old mac laptop i'm writing from.

The AI for the Raptors seems random, a hit or miss. Was wondering if a simple ini code could fix the detection. Hope I made sense.

that sounds like it's broken. have you followed any of the advice i gave about general mission stuff? have you tested with like 10-30 raptors placed in an empty mission? does that work?

that was a number that always worked in the tests during developement. i personally only tested the raptor AI in my own lightweight survival MP scenario (which i might release) with dynamic spawn and clean up and with simple mass tests in otherwise empty editor missions.

the result of the latter was that even large numbers of raptors hunting you at the same time "works". FPS dies when they all attack (claw and bite) but the search routine was still working eventhough delayed by seconds depending on count.

this all sounds more like they are just breaking like what you described happens with the modules. so rule of thumb: don't try to use them like normal AI in overloaded scripted missions. even normal AI is hungry. but the raptor AI is not prioritized by the engine like the vanilla AI routines on the engine level are.

but who knows how the game itself has been changed since release. no point in speculating until i can test again myself. i had a friend confirm to me that they still work when used carefully so all i can do right now is give general advice. if the task modules cause problems, try to ditch them and see if the raptors work then in the long run.

anyways. better to wait because right now i can do literally nothing...

[Guest]

as i said. i have no pc at the moment whatsoever. i can't run arma on this old mac laptop i'm writing from.

that sounds like it's broken. have you followed any of the advice i gave about general mission stuff? have you tested with like 10-30 raptors placed in an empty mission? does that work?

that was a number that always worked in the tests during developement. i personally only tested the raptor AI in my own lightweight survival MP scenario (which i might release) with dynamic spawn and clean up and with simple mass tests in otherwise empty editor missions.

the result of the latter was that even large numbers of raptors hunting you at the same time "works". FPS dies when they all attack (claw and bite) but the search routine was still working eventhough delayed by seconds depending on count.

this all sounds more like they are just breaking like what you described happens with the modules. so rule of thumb: don't try to use them like normal AI in overloaded scripted missions. even normal AI is hungry. but the raptor AI is not prioritized by the engine like the vanilla AI routines on the engine level are.

but who knows how the game itself has been changed since release. no point in speculating until i can test again myself. i had a friend confirm to me that they still work when used carefully so all i can do right now is give general advice. if the task modules cause problems, try to ditch them and see if the raptors work then in the long run.

anyways. better to wait because right now i can do literally nothing...

Ok sounds good, I will try that for sure. Thanks again!

[SchwererKonigstiger 28]

Okay, got a bit of a bug report for you.

A night or two ago, we tried running a surprise horror mission for our soldiers, with raptors as the enemies in a jungle environment.

However, I personally got a bit of a surprise back.

So, here's the bug report.

When spawning a raptor, either AI or player, or assuming a player slot as a raptor (Placed via editor), ACE3 interactions, as well as TFAR, ALiVE and MCC all break. At the same time.

This would seem to be a problem with the both the newest and slightly older versions of CBA. The RPT logs do not include a CBA error, however raptors does dump quite a bit of information into the log concerning skeletons and animations.

I can confirm this error with JUST ACE3, CBA, and Raptors running as well, on both newer and older CBA (Pre and post XEH-handler updates)

I can provide log files if needed, from both the servers and clients, but it will take me a couple days (I'm personally on vacation for a bit, typing this up on my phone)

Thanks for the amazing mod, it did make the mission a terror, though some people were bummed out about the interactions breaking immersion.

Keep up the good work! I really enjoyed it, and honestly didn't think such a thing was actually possible. Thank you!

[bad benson 1733]

I can provide log files if needed, from both the servers and clients, but it will take me a couple days (I'm personally on vacation for a bit, typing this up on my phone)

don't waste your time. there will be no support for bugs related to other mods for obvious reasons. this mod is for arma. ace =/= arma.

i appreciate the report anyways though. any active attempt at trying to make this better is appreciated.

as mentioned in the recent posts, there will only be a final pass on this addon in the near future. there's no long term progress ahead. sorry.

[oksman 37]

Love to use this, is it possible to reduce the speed of the Raptors by a lot? They usually get stuck in all the trees they can find, and they run off cliffs in super speed which looks hilarious but it doesn't really add much considering they just keep lagging around. I got some footage I'll show you later of GOL playing some COOP with the raptors, it's a lot of fun but half of the Raptors attacking us can't really get to us, since either they run off the slopes of hills or they just ran past you and cause friendlies to shoot each other.

Looking forward to more stuff like this, the feel of the hunt yet not zombies as per usual :D

[SchwererKonigstiger 28]

don't waste your time. there will be no support for bugs related to other mods for obvious reasons. this mod is for arma. ace =/= arma.

i appreciate the report anyways though. any active attempt at trying to make this better is appreciated.

as mentioned in the recent posts, there will only be a final pass on this addon in the near future. there's no long term progress ahead. sorry.

In this case, I will be dropping this from both my servers, seeing as it's now breaking all CBA forms of interactions, as this mod isn't XEH-handler compatible.

It was a great idea, and the players found it really fun. They'll be pretty disappointed to hear this, seeing as CBA is essentially equal to arma when it comes to the online community.

Last Question

Will you be releasing source code and permissions for editing after?

[bad benson 1733]

Love to use this, is it possible to reduce the speed of the Raptors by a lot? They usually get stuck in all the trees they can find, and they run off cliffs in super speed which looks hilarious but it doesn't really add much considering they just keep lagging around. I got some footage I'll show you later of GOL playing some COOP with the raptors, it's a lot of fun but half of the Raptors attacking us can't really get to us, since either they run off the slopes of hills or they just ran past you and cause friendlies to shoot each other.

Looking forward to more stuff like this, the feel of the hunt yet not zombies as per usual :D

yes they seem to break more and more with each game update. the behavior you describe is what we had fixed with a crazy hack right before last release. speed won't fix that. it's a very weird complex issue related to the animation tree. no idea why it appears now again.

yet another reason to stop working on something like this. after spending the most time tricking the engine into doing something that should be simple instead of working on more features, because arma, you end up playing catch up because BI are unable to release a finished game and thus several years after release keep changing the architecutre and data structure. and in all fairness. the engine is not made for this. it isn't made for many things.

i honestly have better things to do, especially considering the weather lately ;)

i appreciate the passion for this addon though. i get it. dinos are popular. but it's retarded effort just to get something half decent that will then randomly break after a month.

maybe the other dino mod is still rocking it? something like this requires a lot of maintenance as described above. so you are better off focusing on the people that actually still work on their stuff. or forget about hte dinos and focus on star wars. that's what ruppert works on now ;)

[inlesco 233]

Hey Benson,

just dropping by to thank you for the effort on this mod and, out of pure curiosity, I'd like to ask....

What things do you miss in Arma technically speaking? For instance, what functionality would make easier developing / maintaining mods that heavily depend on effective pathfinding / nav in RV engine? :D

[yourry 14]

I share your opinion Bad Benson, with this kind of model we achieved the RV engine limits.

But I trust in the future and for now despite the updates while working.

I feel, maybe I'm wrong, the config that was set up on Reign Of Jurassic seems stable...

[oksman 37]

It's always been nice this, breaking the rules of what can be done. I'm sure player vs player works out better, we're still going to play around with it. It does have it's issues with ACE obviously but we don't really mind, it's a nice addon for some varied gameplay. I shat my pants at least

You'll see the friendly fire, the rampaging raptors and the swimming raptors too :)

[maxjoiner 284]

I tried this addon only now, and I can say quietly It's a very good addon.

The animations are realistic and the dinos are enough reactives.

Great work!

[phxdefcon 36]

Great mod ! :(

[pulstar 55]

Too bad we won't be getting the T-rex, but what was on offer was a nice taste of oversized lizard! :D

[bad benson 1733]

i might do a final pass on this soon now that EM beta is out. there's a lot of things in the AI script to fix animation config and engine issues. that makes it unstable and perform worse. i will try to get rid of those things which might result ins some visuals being removed. that will also probably make the raptors less fast and aggressive but it should make them more stable in all kinds of missions. emphasis on "try". i recently started converting the AI script into a version that can be used for zombies and all kinds of units that i will release separately. so i already semi started on this.