What are mission designers using to fill a town with civs?

[Tankbuster 1733]

I ask because Bangabob doesn't seem to have logged into the forums for months and his COS is the most recent system to spawn civs in a town. There are others available, but that are rather older, so I was wondering what other community mission makers are using to create civs on foot, driving and parked cars in a given town?

[jshock 512]

When I do need to do something like this, I end up just writing out a few of my own functions and stuff, I've never really used someone's system.

[das attorney 857]

Same here.

 

It's easier to write your own script that does what you need it to do rather than download someone elses and fanny around with it imo

[beno_83au 1363]

As above, and the learning curve isn't too bad either, even after throwing in options for building spawns/patrolling. But i agree that is definitely easier to edit your own work than someone else's.

[inlesco 233]

Same here.

 

It's easier to write your own script that does what you need it to do rather than download someone elses and fanny around with it imo

Any possibility you could share it? No worries, if it's spaghetti or anything, I think many will find it useful if it's up to date :) Just a thought, no pressure.

[accuracythruvolume 547]

Check out Enigma's civilian (and traffic) system. They are pretty easy to use, are dynamic... aka spawns / deletes units automatically to only have AI near the player to conserve server resources. I use them for my missions, it makes cities seem way more alive.

[drunken officer 18]

I write my own stuff, because not every mission is equal to eachother.

 

The background is always the same.

1. You have to "mark" the city

2. Place a trigger (for beginners is easier) or check inside a script is somebody inside this area

3. Create an array.

4. Spawn the guys and push them to the array

5. If nobody inside this area, you have to delete all units in this array.

[inlesco 233]

Wait a sec... Are TPW's ambient civs & traffic outdated? Last time I checked, they were the fastest way to inject some ambience into a mission.

[IndeedPete 1038]

Wait a sec... Are TPW's ambient civs & traffic outdated? Last time I checked, they were the fastest way to inject some ambience into a mission.

 

I don't know if they're outdated, but I still use TPW's scripts to populate missions on Altis and Stratis.

[Tankbuster 1733]

I write my own stuff, because not every mission is equal to eachother.

 

The background is always the same.

1. You have to "mark" the city

2. Place a trigger (for beginners is easier) or check inside a script is somebody inside this area

3. Create an array.

4. Spawn the guys and push them to the array

5. If nobody inside this area, you have to delete all units in this array.

This is what I do for opfor in the city, but I'm hoping for driving civs and parked cars. Bangabobs COS did that nicely.

I'm not afraid or unable to write something like this, it's well within my skill set, but I have a burgeoning feature wish list and a fast growing bug list on existing features. Keyboard time and coding horsepower limits me.

I'm not too proud to use community stuff, but it seemed to me everything out there is a bit old. It looks like I'm going to have to take COS and see how it works, learn from it and remake it as a homage to the author.

[tpw 2315]

Wait a sec... Are TPW's ambient civs & traffic outdated? Last time I checked, they were the fastest way to inject some ambience into a mission.

They still work just fine, but are best for SP.

[Tankbuster 1733]

Yep, TPW is good stuff too, though I have less experience with it. That said, ff it's for AI, that's pretty much SP anyway. I mean, it's only creating units and giving them waypoints. For that sort of server side stuff, there's little difference between SP and MP.

[Tankbuster 1733]

Check out Enigma's civilian (and traffic) system. They are pretty easy to use, are dynamic... aka spawns / deletes units automatically to only have AI near the player to conserve server resources. I use them for my missions, it makes cities seem way more alive.

This looks a good candidate. I'll have a look at this.

[inlesco 233]

Yep, TPW is good stuff too, though I have less experience with it. That said, ff it's for AI, that's pretty much SP anyway. I mean, it's only creating units and giving them waypoints. For that sort of server side stuff, there's little difference between SP and MP.

Well, what features you've got in mind?

 

Civilians actually carrying out their daily tasks? Gathering up (like, 3-4) in houses to have chat, leaving after a timeout (fe, 200 secs), etc?

 

Sure, a better simulation of civ behavior would be nice, but that's also a time and hair killer to debug and implement properly so it's no unmaintainable spaghetti code :D

[Tankbuster 1733]

Civilians walking and driving around the city, some parked vehicles. That would be a minimum. There may be other requirements I haven't thought of yet. Certainly having them go in and out of houses would be good.

[zagor64bz 1225]

This looks a good candidate. I'll have a look at this.

I used to use COS together with EOS to populate map...but recently I switched to Enigma's CIv script....it doesn't need markers, and everywhere you go, as long there are enterable buildings, civis are around you all the time...I liked better,IMHO.

[froggyluv 2130]

+1 Enigma's script.

 

+ TPW's.

 

I like alotta life in my mission.

 

Have to say really dislike Arma3's choice of civilians vs Arma2. Besides obvious fact of zero females, they all look like they're going to a GAP beach party..in the middle of a war..

[cosmic10r 2327]

+1 Enigma's script.

+ TPW's.

I like alotta life in my mission.

Have to say really dislike Arma3's choice of civilians vs Arma2. Besides obvious fact of zero females, they all look like they're going to a GAP beach party..in the middle of a war..

So you are mad that there is nothing left on the shelves at the gap when u get there ?

:p

I used COS in a tak mission recently and it worked well...

[froggyluv 2130]

Dammit how you find me!

 

 

[zagor64bz 1225]

 

 

...Have to say really dislike Arma3's choice of civilians vs Arma2. Besides obvious fact of zero females, they all look like they're going to a GAP beach party..in the middle of a war..

LOLLLLL....so true!!!!

[Tankbuster 1733]

I should add that I want to fill a specific town at a given time. It has to be done mid mission too. The dynamic nature of spawning civs as players move into a town is not a requirement.