tourist 617 Posted August 2, 2015 (edited) Hello ARMA community, I play the series since OFP, but never had the patience to go into mission editing. The most important reason why I finally try it now in A3 is my buddy whom I talked into playing A2, later A3. We're Germans, we both can't play regularly with a (german) clan due to him working shifts and due to my wife not being fond of the perspective to have her husband play for hours every weekend or, even worse, on an additional evening on weekdays. So we mostly play over the internet when we have time with me hosting the games for us as non-dedicated game. We happily enjoyed all the cool missions in A2 made by experienced modders. But while there are some quality missions from German perspective for A2, there seems to be nothing like that for A3. So I used the fact I'm in between jobs right now and looked for fitting addons, found them and then grabbed every tutorial I found. Short overview: Title: Schwarzer Freitag Version: 1.2 Author: tourist Type: COOP 2-24 Respawn: side Game Version: created and playtested with my buddy on 1.46 Stable Language: German Features: inspired by real events intense firefights with 24 Germans against over 100 Taliban total nasty surprises on various roads CAS and MEDEVAC detailed briefing custom music, but not during the fighting to avoid hurting the immersion possibility to change loadout at crates after mission start without time pressure performance friendly due to avoiding eye-candy The mission is made after the real events of 02.04. 2010 which are referred to by the German Bundeswehr as "Karfreitagsgefecht" or by some also as "Schwarzer Freitag" - it really was a black friday for our army. The Holiday called "Karfreitag" is part of the Christian Easter festivities. This Karfreitag of 2010, a German Bundeswehr unit was trapped in a village where they wanted to check on IED's rumoured to be there and were then attacked by about 100 Taliban. They had to call Helicopters for CAS and MEDEVAC (works only partially: CAS is reliable, MEDEVAC/Transport using BIS modules is unreliable!) and then retreat back to Kunduz FOB. One vehicle was hit by an IED which was either placed after the initial fight or had been there all along as a means to inflict damage once the retreating Germans would pass this possible route of escape. (works!) Here's some info that can be switched to English:http://wachbtlbmvg.blog.de/ I also used other information (german language only) like from the website of the Bundeswehr: http://www.einsatz.bundeswehr.de or german newspapers and TV stations: http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/taliban-angriff-auf-die-bundeswehr-blutiger-karfreitag-in-camp-kunduz-a-687137.html http://www.afghanistan-connection.de/bundeswehr-im-afghanistaneinsatz/ There are even videos of the fighting made by the Germans and the Taliban: I can't recreate everything in real time because then the players would have to fight for 9 to 10 hours until CAS and MEDEVAC choppers finally arrive. The goal of bringing the events into the game as detailed as I, being a simple civilian who has not served there, could research them, is fulfilled within a first-time mission maker's limited abilities, I'd say. Additional notes on mission design: This is my first attempt at mission making. Ever. So please don't just insult me if you dislike something, but instead share helpful advice and constructive criticism! It was a purposeful decision to NOT build a detailed FOB Kunduz because I read in Psychobastards tutorial that this might strain system ressources - and when the mission doesn't revolve around base defense or similar scenarios, then I'd rather avoid the draining of system ressources by a feature not paramount to the mission itself. Besides the obvious addon choices like BWMOD and Dingo APC, why AGM? I know full well there is ACE3 in the making, but AGM is definitely already made compatible with BWMOD and has a rock-solid medical sytem that actually makes AI medics useful! Also AGM offers weapon overheating (happened to the G36 of the Germans IRL) and car repairs - well, the latter is partially there in principle, but will you really be able to change tires under fire? Isn't the mission linear and with little replay value? Maybe, but feel free to change the course of events by using AI mods that make the enemy act more on his own like enabeling the radionet option of ASR AI or using Group Link 5 with it's reinforcement features serverside - I did so in playtesting and easily achieved some variation of attack locations and directions. Remember though that for the proper mission end you HAVE to play through the events at least in the way that you actually go to the main objective in Tal Kar at some time or another! Why all the tasks that do nothing but giving the next waypoint, but then I didn't make them pop up one after another? - This is on purpose; I hope it helps to navigate through the long ingress route if you get all waypoints right at the start of the mission. Also I want the players to use a certain route to avoid premature contact with the enemy. Why is the mission only in German? - Because while I don't know EXACTLY how to localize all text besides that the stringtable.xml file is needed for that, I DO KNOW it will most likely be a very time consuming process. I'd rather get some feedback on the mission itself before doing a localization once and then after re-editing the mission having to do it twice! Plus I hope that there are enough german players here willing to give this mission a try and then post some feedback here. If I hear the mission is playable and bug free, I'll call for help in the Editing Forum here and I'm sure the nice ARMA community members will help me with the technical side of localization! Finally I recommend playing with at least four humans due to A3 AI being such abysmal drivers that they will NEVER manage to get a Dingo APC over the bridges on this map - so make sure all four Dingos have human drivers. If playing with less than four humans, stop before river Quunduz, make AI wait and order the AI drivers to dismount, then drive the Dingos over the dam bridge one by one. First I'll credit the creators of the used tutorials because without their work I couldn't even have started A3 mission making, modded game or vanilla: MacScottie/Jester814 for providing his very motivating and beginner friendly YouTube Tutorials Psychobastard for his PDF A3 Editing Guide in German sproyd for his A3 Editing Guide in English Next to be credited are the friendly forum members (listed alphabetical, not by amount of help) that helped me to solve various problems during the creation of this mission: AZCoder for his help with triggers and adding custom music Larrow for his respawn script allowing support assets to be available after team switch/death and respawn Papanowel for helping me to edit unit loadout with LEA R3vo for his help with triggers and adding custom music Reforger for testing, feedback and suggestions Here comes the required addon list: Bundeswehr-Mod: http://bwmod.de/index.php/inhalt/download Big Downloadbutton is the mod; also download both compatibility-PBOs one for compatibility with ASDG Joint Rails one for compatibility with AGM Mod Update: both compatibility PBO's now included in the mission download due to being no longer available at the BWMod site ASDG Joint Rails: http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=23242 AGM-Mod http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=25779&highlight=AGM CAF Aggressors for Taliban units: http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=24441 download CAF Aggressors Audio Fix as well Map „Kunduz“: http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=27882&highlight=KUNDUZ US-Blackhawks:http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=26349&highlight=BLACKHAWK Dingo APC:http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=28054&highlight=DINGO CBA A3: http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=18767 Optional AI-Addons: ASR AI: http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=24080&highlight=ASRWhy ASR AI? It's my personal preference and IMHO the best plug-and-play solution for SP and MP alike! TPWCAS: http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=19467&highlight=TPWCASWhy TPWCAS? Because it allows to have player suppression effects and it's AI line of sight component is still useful to make CQB challenging, but fair! And finally the mission itself: http://www.filedropper.com/mpleaschwarzerfreitag12%C2%A0%C2%A0 or <a href=http://www.filedropp...rfreitag12><imgsrc=http://www.filedropper.com/download_button.png width=127 height=145 border=0/></a><br /><div style=font-size:9px;font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;width:127px;font-color:#44a854;> <a href='http://www.filedropper.com'> >upload files free</a></div> I really hope I created a mission that some of you will find playable, enjoyable, recommendable tourist Edited September 3, 2015 by tourist 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
ice_age0815 37 Posted August 7, 2015 Nice mission. Can you change over to ace3 ? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
tourist 617 Posted August 7, 2015 I will do that for sure once there's a compatibility patch for the equipment weights and ballistics of the BWMod stuff. Also, because of the lenghty playtime the mission is designed for, I wanted the players to have a savegame option - as far as I know, saving doesn't work yet in ACE. But more important is weight and ballistics - and I'm sure ACE and BWMod will work together like they did for A2! Did you try the mission already with AGM? Kind regards, tourist Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
tourist 617 Posted August 7, 2015 Here comes an Armaholic mirror for the mission: - Schwarzer Freitag Co-24 (@) Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
ice_age0815 37 Posted August 7, 2015 I did play a little just to have e look I will play some more this weekend with some friends on a sever most of the guys I play with are from de anyway so gone be a blast Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
ice_age0815 37 Posted August 8, 2015 hi really like you mission but had some problem ctd did not had any error just ctd every time the enemy shows up and one bad thing is if you play with AI there wound drive over the river but that is not your fault that the problem of the map it self new bw 1.2 up date for ace 3 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
tourist 617 Posted August 10, 2015 Hi ice_age0815, thanks for playing the mission! I'll try to fix whatever issues come up, so thanks for reporting the ctd when enemies appear. Can you please give me some additional information about your mods and your PC's specifications? New BW mod with ACE compatibility? I'll check that out as well! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
ice_age0815 37 Posted August 10, 2015 i think the problem was AGM and the new CBA did some messing a round and after that is was working fine hope to see more bw mod missions from you soon Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
tourist 617 Posted September 3, 2015 Mission Update 1.2 (1.1 was for testing only - big thank you to reforger for his feedback and suggestions!) MEDEVAC Helis now unkillable by small arms fire for better playability Replaced the four Blackhawks from the CAS element with two Apaches for more... supportive appearance and believability as CAS Made mission compatible with newest BWMod 1.2.1 Therefor no more AWC Bags addon needed: replaced with new integrated BWMod backpacks (AWC Bags dependency removed) Usage of the old BWMod 1.1.2 compatibility-PBOs for AGM and ASDG Joint Rails still necessary and possible Received permission from BWMod Team to include the old compatibility PBOs in my download Alternative mission end for all who take another way back to base than intended and withdraw from the enemy earlier than I have planned - but attention, please: you still have to return to the medical container in the camp to finish the mission! Better waypoints for Taliban so the battle is longer (not all of them right on top of you immediately, premature start of battle less likely) and has at least two stages (more time until order to retreat from Tal Kar to Chahar Dara will be given) MORE Mines and IED's in the entire area e.g. at the main objective like announced in the briefing, also more garbage objects placed in general so you don't say "Aah, looky here, a trash heap in the otherwise clean and tidied up village - MUST be an IED!" Therefor replacement of the two marksmen per squad with two engineers, but most IED's and mines can be detected and defused by anyone with an AGM Defusal Kit in his inventory (get it at mission from AGM box in camp if you're not an engineer with pre-equipped Defusal Kit) How does the defusing work? - crawl real slooowly towards the suspicious trash heap with an AGM Defusal Kit in your inventory, then choose the action "defuse" from the AGM interaction menu! Tested the mission with some performance killing mods like Blastcore, Blastcore Physics and JSRS Dragonfyre with me as non-dedicated host - smooth FPS and CAS (BIS Module) works reliably even after death and respawn into any BLUEFOR unit, MEDEVAC/transport (BIS Module) is still buggy sometimes when the original requester has died until the MEDEVAC helis arrive - sorry for that! Here come the links: http://www.filedropper.com/mpleaschwarzerfreitag12 or <a href=http://www.filedropper.com/mpleaschwarzerfreitag12><imgsrc=http://www.filedropper.com/download_button.png width=127 height=145 border=0/></a><br /><div style=font-size:9px;font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;width:127px;font-color:#44a854;> <a href='http://www.filedropper.com'> >upload files free</a></div> 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
tourist 617 Posted September 9, 2015 Mission (Version 1.2) Converted to ACE! Due to user requests, the most recent version of the mission was converted to ACE Mission is using the following ACE Modules: advanced ballistics, wind deflection, advanced medical system, pointing, explosives system, hearing, map, interaction system, name tags All ACE Modules apply to players and AI Made the Huron container an ACE medical facility and made the Blackhawks ACE medical vehicles Only the Medics and the squad leaders can use Surgical Kits (not removed upon use) and Personal Aid Kits (PAK, removed upon use) for full heal and have to be at medical facilities or inside/near the MEDEVAC Helis for using the PAK Known issue: AI Medics don't do the job. In ACE (current version 3.2.1, that is) you need human players for Medic roles - sorry! No ACE Revive because of possible conflict with the script to re-assign supports after side respawning into free AI soldier (needs more testing in my future missions to confirm conflict) ACE Explosives setting allows Non-Engineers to defuse IEDs, but they take longer for it; also any IED or mine should be defusable if approaching cautious ACE Defusal Kit added for Engineers loadout; others need to get it at ACE Box in the camp Replaced the US Helicopters by geraldbolso1899 (AKA Kimi) with the original addon by APlion due to a conflict/duplicate PBO issue between ACE and Kimi's version that prevented the AI gunners of the Helis to fire at enemies - but APlion's helis can and will shoot, tested it again and again! Get APlions Helis here: http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=24845 And of course, you'll need the latest ACE: http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=28557 Or go to the ACE Dev's place directly: https://github.com/acemod/ACE3/releases/tag/v3.2.1 Use the ASDG Joint Rails compatibility PBO from ACE's folder named "optionals" and the BWMOD/ACE compatibility PBO from BWMOD's folder named "compatibility" Here come the links: http://www.filedropper.com/mpleaschwarzerfreitag12acekunduzpbo or <a href=http://www.filedropper.com/mpleaschwarzerfreitag12acekunduzpbo><imgsrc=http://www.filedropper.com/download_button.png width=127 height=145 border=0/></a><br /><div style=font-size:9px;font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;width:127px;font-color:#44a854;> <a href='http://www.filedropper.com'> >upload files online</a></div> 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
mad_cheese 593 Posted September 10, 2015 the links redirect me to the filedropper main page, I tried in a few browsers. i'd love to give this a go if you could supply a mirror. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
tourist 617 Posted September 10, 2015 @mad_cheese: in BIS forum postings it seems that the first link is always malfunctioning. So click the red text from the second link - that works, as other users confirmed for the previous versions of the mission! Hope you can try the mission soon, if the 2nd link doesn't work as well PM me for the mission as 7.z file tourist Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
mad_cheese 593 Posted September 10, 2015 thank you and apologies :) Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
ice_age0815 37 Posted September 10, 2015 nice thank you Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
mad_cheese 593 Posted September 11, 2015 Okay I gave this a go in SP. Very nice layout and mission, here's my feedback (spoiler alert): When starting the mission, I find myself supposed to lead a 12 unit strong squad over a very long route. Therefore I understand the presence of 4 Dingo's as an obvious invitation to convoy towards the objective. Since the journey is very long, I feel like something is going to happen en route. I feel you can do a lot to improve the mood. Civilian activity and other form of ambience would be great. The player crosses through areas that would be perfect for markets etc. Weather and lighting would be other improvements, but off course all these have to make sense within the historic boundaries. First big issue: I need to cross a bridge and feel like my idea to convoy may have been ambitious. I realize that's probably a SP only problem. The AI is, off course, not capable of crossing the river. One Dingo gets sunk by the AI so I take the time to wipe everybody's ass and bring the vehicles to the other side myself, one by one. I arrive at the AO with a thirst for blood. All of a sudden there's a huge number of AI in one compound and a major gunfight ensues. The area is very well chosen, I loved the firefight and the fact that I appear to be almost circled by enemies. I have a Dingo positioned on a hill for Firesupport, he's having a bit of a party as I get a hint that it's too hot to stay - I was surprised to see that as there was no big number of enemies left, but then they kept coming and I decided to go with the hint. Maybe you could word that differently, just to prevent that thought process. Back in the town, I expect I was not supposed to prevent that IED. Anyways, I also really enjoy the firefight here in another well chosen location, with believable enemy positions and movements. When I get ordered to retreat, I realize I need to cross that river again. I decide to quit at this point, taking into account that I may miss something. So wrapping up: I think this is a great layout for a mission, lots of details and effort were put into the concept, location and presentation. Balance of enemies seems good to me, the only time there's a little much is when I am supposed to be outnumbered anyways. The first firefight could be a bit longer, so we get a taste of the stress these soldiers must have gone through in 9 hours of battle. Atmosphere is already there but immersion could massively be improved by ambient life (believable, visible and audible), enemy fortifications and weather/lighting choices, especially in regards to the long drive in the beginning. You could also use this in creative ways, where a lack of civilians could indicate the presence of Taliban, etc. The bridge… I really think you may want to fix this as there may be an AI driving one of the Dingo's. Even if you had a cutscene that finishes with the vehicles on the other side, that would work for me as the only option is to do it yourself as the player. You could use isMultiplayer or just check if there's an AI driving a vehicle… There's no shame in creativity when it comes to create the illusion of functioning AI :D You could use a condition like the following to check if the player(s) need help or not. ({(!((vehicle _x) == _x) && (_x == driver (vehicle _x)) && !(isplayer _x))} count NAME_GROUP > 0) -> anyways, just a general idea, there's so many ways you could fix that problem. You could also just check the drivers of the Dingo's, if you trust your customers to not modify your mission. Really nice mission and I hope you keep improving it :D 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
tourist 617 Posted September 11, 2015 Hey mad_cheese, thanks for your detailed feedback and thanks for using the spoiler code,too! Currently there is a compatibility problem with the Dingos and the most recent version 1.2.1 of the BWMOD that keeps me from (safely) editing existing Dingos in the mission and also prevents placing any new Dingos, sadly. But once that is fixed, I will try to find a solution for the bridge problem. I mean, you even provided some helpful code, so I should at least try if I can make it work! Regarding your ingame impressions/gameplay feedback, I'll put my first (general) answers in spoiler code; maybe I'll edit these later or we can go into PM if you like: You are absolutely right about the possible improvement of immersion and believability the mission area could gain if there were at least some civilians and/or animals. in fact I thought about a lot of stuff like actually having dialogue with one of the local informants mentioned in the briefing who then confirms to have seen Taliban north of Chahar Dara and especially in the village of Tal Kar. But it took me already a looong time to create the mission as ii is, so I first wanted to have some quality feedback like yours or reforgers's before going into all kind of potentially even more time-comsuming editing tricks. I wanted to avoid wrestling with the more advanced editing knowledge necessary for adding just a subtitle-style dialogue, let alone voice-acted communication (Uh-oh, my Dari is a bit... rusty, or rather, to be honest: non-existant :blush: ) The other thing I kept in mind was performance: I know full well that adding ambient life to the roads and villages leading to the mission area can be realized with "silent" civilians that get simple "shopping patrol" waypoints with a cycle-type at the end, but these guys still eat system power. Thing is, I was a die-hard AMD-CPU lover for years due to the low prices not only for the CPU itself but also for the corresponding Mainboards if compared to an Intel sytem. And until I got into ARMA2 and played that on my Phenom 2 X4 940, I never realized just how crippling AMD CPU design was when used for a BIS engine game. I'm not talking COD/BF-inspired bullshit talk here like "Meeh! If I don't get uber-haxxor-pwner-FPS of above 60, tah game is unplayable 4 me!" Until 2015 when I built my current Core i5 system, I had to leave a whole heap of cool ARMA2 SP missions and campaigns unplayed or couldn't use them to their full potential due to my weak system. That is why I wanted to avoid too many "non-critical objects and NPCs" in a mission that has already a lot of combattants in it. I feel for the gamers who suffer from BIS coding faults more than others. But if you have some general tips on performance-friendly mission design, just share them, so I can maybe find a fair balance between the conflicting goals " great performance", "lots of action" and "full immersion". Thank you very very much for any tip you share, I'm eager to improve my skills in mission making one step at a time with the friendly help of a great community like here in the forums! Regards, tourist Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
