[SP/CO8] A 3 - Antistasi Altis.

[barbolani 198]

Hello! Thanks neofit and Rydygier for your long comments and AAR!

@nefoit: spawn system Works on distance basis, and yes, it doesen't have a "cache" except for AAF roadblocks. If you get far from any zone, and turn back, all the units will be there again (or more, or less, depending on lots of params), is just like "you gave the enemy time to reinfornce the zone".

nearby: in the zone area, let's say a poweplant, there must be some hidden units in the buildings covered by the whole powerplant.

Also: spawn distance can be changed in game, mínimum is 1Kmt, so not so much "spawn in your nose" may happen. Go to game options in the map and change it to the size you want.

@Rydygier:

Pricing: I have a problema with that. Prices are not fixed as depend on a few params. My skills regarding dialogs are very low, so when I asked for help in the fórums, in order to have contextual widnows with dynamic text, nobody could help (maybe it's imposible)

Display: by night a black color has the same problem. I can change it depending on daytime.

Undercover: Civ vehicles make a difference. If you mount a mil vehicle, no undercover. The conditions are based in outfit, vehicles, distance to be spotted, and knowsabout to be un-spotted.

Delivery truck: had to delete it so players don't mess between trucks of finished missions and new mission spawned trucks.

Parked cars: happens sometimes when a road segment has maybe 3 roadsConnectedTo, it is on the side of two segments but in the middle of the third. Will change that so those positions are ignored.

About the convoy: despite convoys have some scripts to protect vehicles damage on the wheels from incompetent AI drivers, seems the AI made heavy damage to the truck or something like that.

[Rydygier 1309]

Pricing: I have a problema with that. Prices are not fixed as depend on a few params. My skills regarding dialogs are very low, so when I asked for help in the fórums, in order to have contextual widnows with dynamic text, nobody could help (maybe it's imposible)

Can't be sure, my knowledge here is also tiny, but perhaps one of these commands may help: ctrlSetTooltip , ctrlSetText. or maybe some way to load text from global variable at GUI creation, where variable may be redefined with another text meanwhile...

Display: by night a black color has the same problem. I can change it depending on daytime.

Not sure, if possible, but outlined text could solve this. Eg white font with black outline. Or use another color. Not white nor black. An example of outlined GUI font:

It's from TPW's tactical HUD, where I customized via structured text the font. Amongst other things I could set an outline variant:

"<t align ='right' size='1.8' shadow='2'>%1<t size='0.8'><br />Height</t>"

IIRC "shadow" is that parameter. Amazing, how this improves readibility regardless of the background. Not sure, how he applies this to the GUI.

Parked cars: happens sometimes when a road segment has maybe 3 roadsConnectedTo, it is on the side of two segments but in the middle of the third. Will change that so those positions are ignored.

I'm affraid, all was rather on the road than at the road, even without crossroads involved. :) Not really a problem to me, don't know, what way you're using to setting their positions, I would use _roadSegment modelToWorld [_roadWidth,0,0], where roadWidth may be roughly guessed or determined precisely using the loop with isOnRoad and another modelToWorld with progressive X distance. At some of those roads there was barriers though, that could be a cause or that could collide, if ignored.

Undercover: Civ vehicles make a difference. If you mount a mil vehicle, no undercover. The conditions are based in outfit, vehicles, distance to be spotted, and knowsabout to be un-spotted.

IMHO player should become undercover if in the civilian vehicle even if armed with rifle and with vest etc. Maybe it is that way, but if not - just saying. :)

Delivery truck: had to delete it so players don't mess between trucks of finished missions and new mission spawned trucks.

Also due to performance I guess. But anyway, if possible, maybe do so without player unit inside deletion? :) I got respawn screen in such situation. At least wait, until player will disembark or even until player don't see se the truck - always more elegant, than deleting/spawning stuff just in front of player's eyes... Losing stuff in the trunk this way also hurts. Any kind of remedy (not delete until something in the trunk, or spawn, what was inside on the ground...) or at least a warning may help...

About the convoy: despite convoys have some scripts to protect vehicles damage on the wheels from incompetent AI drivers, seems the AI made heavy damage to the truck or something like that.

That was my thought about the likely reason. One simple can't trust AI drivers... Good, it ended eventually, not was left like that forever. Code could detect somehow, if vehicle stuck and act accordingly. Like regular position checks. If position wasn't changed too long - it's stuck.

Edited May 3, 2015 by Rydygier

[barbolani 198]

Thanks for taking your time man, not everyday I have reports from players with scripting knowledge.

Messed with crtlSetTooltip and that's something beyond my knowledge. I wish someone publishes the "non beginner tutorial for dialogs", and then I will put some effort on that, because as you see, everything is very basic, just buttons.

About statistics: I added a shadow = true (the code at dialogs.hpp is copypasted from the tutorial in YouTube) but, as I'm shit with that, I can see no difference.

Parked cars: I use roadsConnected to to calculate the relative angle and position of the car from the selected road section.

Delivery truck: noted, I have a nice idea, it's a supply truck, you did the supply, truck is out of fuel....

Unstuck vehicles: Did it on early stages, but in some rare cases it worked as supposed to. Corner stuck vehicles change their positions indeed, slighlty, but they change, as the driver is forward-backward in their eternal stupid loop. In some other situations the vehicle really crushed in something and who was hurt is the driver. Well, that things happen in real war so I decided to give the players the chance of an easy prey when that happens.

About the .rpt: Nothing to worry. The HC command hasnt linked any unit on early begining of the misión, but after that Works well. UPSMon, well, as those errors are not giving any issue, I'd rather not to mess with that. The serialisation, yes, has something with that, but as I am display/dialog retarded, I couldn't do anything but enabling a statistics reinit on the Y menú.

---------- Post added at 22:58 ---------- Previous post was at 22:32 ----------

No, for all other units pressing CAPSLOCK for TFAR just pops up trying to do in game voice. Doesn't seem like any of the TFAR keybindings work like CTRL+TAB to change volume.

EDIT: It seems to be something with this in the initplayerlocal.sqf and reinitY.sqf

Once I turned off reinitY for JIP players the radio started working for them.

 gameMenu = (findDisplay 46) displayAddEventHandler ["KeyDown", 

thanks gulfy, and sorry, I missed your post.

Found reinitY had this: (findDisplay 46) displayRemoveAllEventHandlers "KeyDown"; I think that was the problem. Removed on the next release.

Edited May 3, 2015 by barbolani

[Rydygier 1309]

Messed with crtlSetTooltip and that's something beyond my knowledge.

IMO just do your thing and expand your knowledge in fluid, natural way, as she comes through particular needs. I started to do anything with dialogs and controls only after few years of scripting. Tooltip is just a text, that may appear, when you hover the cursor over the control (button or whatever). You can see those at the beginning of my Pilgrimage mission (initila settings GUI). It's set like this:

		class AmbientC_Combo: PIL_RscCombo
		{
		idc = 2111;
		x = 26.5 * GUI_GRID_W + GUI_GRID_X;
		y = 9 * GUI_GRID_H + GUI_GRID_Y;
		w = 7 * GUI_GRID_W;
		h = 1 * GUI_GRID_H;
		tooltip = "Intensity of ambient combat around the player. If enabled - east and resistance are hostile to each other; L - limited amount of spawns per given area";
		};

It's one control config. Example 2 of BIKI's command description shows, how to use display and control numbers (idd idc) to make this working. Not tested though.

About statistics: I added a shadow = true (the code at dialogs.hpp is copypasted from the tutorial in YouTube) but, as I'm shit with that, I can see no difference.

The main problem to me is anyway, whole thing disappear and is no more at first mission load. Same with the music apparently. :) About outlined dialog font, you may ask TPW. Example is from his mod. Or even check his mod on yourself. BTW his GUI is not disappearing after game load, so you may find answer also on that in his work.

Parked cars: I use roadsConnected to to calculate the relative angle and position of the car from the selected road section.

IMO is simplier just to use just given/closest road segment direction (getDir _segment) and my way, but that's IMO. Do, as you see fit best.

but they change, as the driver is forward-backward in their eternal stupid loop.

So you need to set some minimal distance threshold to filter out such tiny movements. Use distance checks or speed checks. So eg distance between previous and current pos has to be minimum 10 meters and absolute speed > 0.1 or something. If not - some _stuck number may increase + 1. If higher than eg 10 - car is stuck. Then you can do anything about it. setpos on the closest road segment, end the task or whatever. Doing nothing is of course anther option, but then not so easy to determine, when task should end. For me it ended just after some time, that was too short to even get at the position, so no easy prey, rather mission impossible. :) Of course, this may happen too, why not.

Well, no more time for now, so just good luck. :)

[barbolani 198]

Thanks, Ill do some investigations about tooltip. About the statistics thing too.

I never gessed a road segment could have dir, :), makes the script less heavy, will investigate too.

[barbolani 198]

Thanks Rydygier, the prices will be shown in the buttons.

Parked cars, tested a deployment with getdir and is a bit uglier, dont know why...

A better "unstuck" convoy script in a to-do list.

[swoop 15]

Just to say, myself and about 5 others ABSOLUTELY ADORE THIS SCENARIO.

It's epic, in almost every way.

However, in the latest version there seems to be two issues: 1. Too many enemy convoys. It's very early in the mission and we can't deliver any city supplies cos there's enemy armour basically EVERYWHERE. And every convoy that spawns just leaves it's escort in the delivery city, at one point we had 3 MBTs, 2 Moras and 2 Gorgans (plus Christ knows how many striders) all parked around a particular city. Too many convoys and they don't clear themselves up.

Second problem is, with the new clearing up of dead bodies we're finding we've got bodies disappearing while they're being looted.

Apart from that, this is the best mission that's ever been made for any version of arma / OFP, period.

Edit: Oh and there's no boats. Civilian boats in harbours would be cool, give us an extra option for transport.....maybe a few with diving gear onboard, just to expand the players options a little more.

Edited May 17, 2015 by Swoop

[barbolani 198]

Hi! Thanks Swoop! Glad to see good opinions from since OFP players!

About Convoys, noted, I will script and additional waypoint for the whole convoy so they leave the area and make some distance in order to despawn.

Body cleaning, timing is on 15 minutes, but no matter what time I put, that can allways happen.

Botas: you can buy boats from any owned Seaport flag.

[swoop 15]

Botas: you can buy boats from any owned Seaport flag.

Didn't know that, nice! Civilian boats lying around in harbours the way civvy vehicles pop up around towns....would be cool too. Any chance of some way to get wetsuits, rebreathers and goggles? They're kind of tactically pointless in this mission but we've got a group together who intend to play your mission for weeks at a time.....the more there is to play with the better.

Convoys moving off and despawning will be very welcome.

---------- Post added at 23:31 ---------- Previous post was at 23:23 ----------

Thinking it though.....15 minutes on clearing up of bodies may be a little quick. A firefight can take longer than 10 minutes when you're hiding from armour and trying to sneak rocket attacks in.....then someone's gotta find some transport....if you'd consider maybe a 30 min clear up time, we'd really appreciate it. Or even give us a setup parameter so the clear up time is configurable per server....?

[barbolani 198]

The variable cleantime in init.sqf is the one, measurement is in seconds. If you know how to unpbo the mission, is very easy to change.

Civ boats: it is a bit CPU intensive to search for water on each zone, that's why AAF boats only spawn in seaports (100% chance of water being close so worth the search), and a bit more to spawn them on shoreline. Would be a fine addition, but performance wise, seems something expendable.

I may add some rebreather to AAF ammoboxes in seaports.

[barbolani 198]

Those updates and many more in the last Steam and Dropbox versión!

[swoop 15]

Just tried it on the save that had an entire armoured division parked outside Dorida. All clear, working well.

Re: Boats. I did try unPBOing the mission and adding static unmanned boats (and a few SDVs) in pretty much every harbour area (some with rebreathers, etc, in them) just in the mission editor. Seemed to work well in game, no CPU load cos no searching going on. 2 pitfalls: 1. The empty boats are always in the same exact locations (I can live with that). 2. Every time you update the mission I have to do it again. :-).

And dude, you update this scenario almost as often as BIS used to update OFP!

Epic mission with a developer who improves often and listens to feedback.....I hope your day job is software developer cos if it isn't then the industry is missing out. And now I'm going to stop blowing smoke up your backside and go back to playing.

---------- Post added at 21:26 ---------- Previous post was at 21:20 ----------

One question. When you say "- Rebreathers added in AAF Seaport ammoboxes." do mean just rebreathers or are we talking wetsuits and goggles as well? Cos without wetsuits and goggles you move REALLY slowly underwater and can't see anything...

I'd go and look but we're miles from a seaport in the current game.

---------- Post added at 21:35 ---------- Previous post was at 21:26 ----------

And there's more:

"- Removed the Striders in roadblocks as they were not a great addition."

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! Those were our main source of capable vehicles. :)

[barbolani 198]

heh, no man, I studied laws and work as sales agent :)

Those boats won't respawn or despawn, so they will be "single use and eternal" if that's ok...

Rebreathers: And googles. Can't add wetsuits as Arma engine does not allow wear (click and drag) the uniform of other side without mods. Yes, I noticed you swim veeeery slow, but at least you can.

Striders: I know, but in change all the patrols run sweet, mission has better performance...

[swoop 15]

Those boats won't respawn or despawn, so they will be "single use and eternal" if that's ok...

Yep that'll work. If you like I can send you over the blank mission.sqm with all the static boats so you can just cut and paste what I did?

Rebreathers: And googles. Can't add wetsuits as Arma engine does not allow wear (click and drag) the uniform of other side without mods. Yes, I noticed you swim veeeery slow, but at least you can.

Yep, that's right. However, running the mod works absolutely fine with your scenario. I take great pleasure in spotting enemy snipers cos it means I get a ghillie suit til the next explosion....

[swoop 15]

BTW, is there a write up on how the enemy economic system works? We've been trying to make a concerted effort to run the enemy out of armoured vehicles but it doesn't seem to be having any effect.

[barbolani 198]

The first concern for AAF is to be at 100% of vehicle capacity, so it is really hard to make them lack of tanks. Anyway a line from the changelog:

- AAF will buy one type of vehicle at a time when taxes income. This will give more chance of seeing lack of tanks / APCs / planes etc..

If AAF lacks of "special vehicles" such as tanks, APCs, planes or attack choppers, they will use normal transport vehicles (trucks, transport helis). Those, when killed, are not substracted from AAF vehicle pool, but cost money for AAF.

This way, AAF will be allways able to fight, patrol and counterattack.

[giorgygr 61]

Hi barbolani.

We have set the mission as Coop on our dedi.

Today we encountered a serious issue.

Even if we take "Default Commander" slot ..we are not allowed the "Commander" actions.

So..things like Persistent save or Garbage cleaning..or squads ..dont work.

Any solutions?? ^^

[barbolani 198]

ouch!!! That's serious! Contact me on Steam or MP here and we look into that!

[giorgygr 61]

*update*

Thankfully we managed to save after some trials.(including kicking 1 of our friends from the server temporarily)

After that..the *actual-recognized-from-the-mission as commander was...our doctor-while it wasnt matter if someone was already on "Player Commander" slot.

I want to add...i know there is an option on every mission *fresh start if Commander should be static or can change...and i m sure i chosed "static" option..

Well..at least we saved our $hitload of weapons+AAF MBT :D

PS!!!

Our Commander/Doctor moved some squads via High Command module..and after the "Garbage Cleanup" the vehicles (ie unarmed offroads some units have used ) stayed there.

I imagine in the long term..this will degrade slowly but steady the performance.

I will write again the soon we got our server restarted if *those vehicles are still there

PS2 I know my English are terrible ok? ;D

Edited May 25, 2015 by GiorgyGR

[swoop 15]

After lots more testing we're finding the convoy escorts move off and despawn after a convoy reaches destination, however, the convoy objective box trucks themselves do not. They sit at the destination forever.

Another issue becoming apparent is that we've done several NATO ammo drops since reaching a NATO support level of 100 and we're finding we're getting weapons with no ammo for them. For example, we've got around two dozen .408 LRRs and no .408 ammo. Same with the .338 rifles.

[barbolani 198]

I think I know what's happening. For some reason, the default commander is missing when I open a dedi server session.

Game searches for that, and If doesen't find him picks the (I think) first guy who connected as Commander.

Your Doc probably has the best PC or connection among you :)

An easy way to know who is the commander on the begining is asking people for their Rank in their statistics line. The CORPORAL is the one.

[giorgygr 61]

There are other tweaking issues also.

Things at ammo crates getting duplicated -or mysteriously spawned-

(i found 40+ toolboxes,compasses,maps,GPS,vests,backpacks)

I seriously think you must invent or incorporate a save player loadout system (probably tied with player's game ID or something)..so player (no matter slot he connects) he gets his things back.

I m currently disconnecting from server -leaving my Uber things on a crate or vehicle..knowing i would never see them again... :/

PS 1

..also..a crate with PERMITTED access to AI and scripted NO cargo space limit..would be really useful.

Unfortunately no same rules can apply perfectly for SP and Coop version altogether :/

PS 2

As commander slot (and casual player slot i think) on Coop version i couldnt spawn a static mortar or Mortar squad.

The game kept asking me to have a "Sea port" on my possession ://

*added*

PS 3

Another issue is..none anymore (players) has the *action "order unit to follow" on Refugees mission.Neither *slotted commander /neither casual players

Sometimes also we getting bugs as Doctor cant revive (even with the possesion of Medikit)..or Medic and patient gets stucked on ground (after heal action) unable to do anything except reconnect to server (tricks like Vaulting animation or equip gun doesnt work at all..hell..neither inv. key).

Basically IT IS a very enjoyable-serious mission!!..so keep work on it and dont get frustrated :)

Edited May 25, 2015 by GiorgyGR

[swoop 15]

Another minor bug we're finding is only the mission commander gets the menu option to order a refugee to join group.

[giorgygr 61]

Another minor bug we're finding is only the mission commander gets the menu option to order a refugee to join group.

Nope..not true

After 3 days session even as the *only player left on server+Player Commander slot ..the action on Refugees doesnt exists

*Update*

When ANY of the remaining guys on server dont have "Commander" privileges (even on slot)

the workaround is:

1. everybody Disconnect from server

2. One player joins taking the mentionaed slot

3. Others follow

Edited May 27, 2015 by GiorgyGR

[swoop 15]

Havn't seen that behaviour in game at all. 5 guys connect to my hosted game, I'm the default commander.....only I will have the menu option to order a refugee to join group, no-one else will. I can't test what happens if I disconnect cos I'm hosting so if I disconnect so does everyone else.