Rts-3 released

[BBSmith 0]

Well, that'll Bring Sum Chatter from everyone! I tried lookin that up, all I found was a Choper with Bouys on it..

No idea..

Ttyl

[Baphomet 0]

This is the first time I've ever heard of this multiplayer mission set. I've just played a bit of it. There sure has been a lot of work put into it. The only other game type I've seen similar to this was a very early MF CTI.

The game seems quite complicated. I can't say that I found initially for it to be intuitive to just pick up but such is the nature of strategy games. Heh. Good ones at least.

One thing did concern me. It doesn't appear that you're really intent on releasing templates or allowing end-user configurability. Which is disappointing albeit understandable considering the overall size of the scripts. There's tons of 'em. Not to mention that for whatever reason you may not want people to make their own variants using their own addons/units.

Usually those types of games don't appeal to me much since I don't play on the net and I usually network with a bunch of people with tastes as discriminating as mine are. Good as this is. The inability to easily integrate or replace buildables would cast a pall on the enjoyment.

Are you planning on making any other modes of play. It seems once the game ramps up to a certain pace it looks as if it could be fairly one-sided. Since I tried it by myself I noticed the soviets were just snatching territories left and right. By myself I had little hope save perhaps geurilla tactics... which really this game type doesn't facilitate in the least since it's all about who commands the most territory. I'd like to see a scenario wherein all territories must be claimed... it gives outnumbered opponents the opportunity to either, make a desperate last-stand. Or fan out and attempt to claim as many territories the enemy neglected in an effort to sow confusion to sway the balance.

Anyhow. Good luck on future releases. Looks interesting.

[SpeedyDonkey 0]

I've seen alot of modified versions of both RTS3 and CTI. Its quite easy to open the RTS mission and access all the scripts so that you can alter them, but of course, you should allways write the main credits to KaRRiLLioN since he made all the hard work

[Baphomet 0]

Of course he should receive due credit. However when a game this popular starts getting modified, credit becomes less of a necessity and becomes more of a courtesy (which I'm not begrudging anyone). Nobody unless they were a total flaming moron would try to modify an addon or game set like this and attempt to claim anything other than simply making a slight modification.

How customization friendly is it though? I'm sure you could but it looks as if you'd have to be as knowledgeable in modifying as the person was who created it. That may in fact simply be due to the fact it's so complex.

Take for example :Weapons BuyMenu V1 of BattlePOWER by ben reeper and animal. I'm sure quite a few of you have seen the buymenu or have tested it since it was submitted to ofpec for people to use. The thing I love the most about this is... you can add or change any weapons bought or sold with one well organized list. You don't have to chase down references in any other scripts. It's all there in weaponslist.sqs.

I'm not sure upon taking a glance that RTS script system is of a similarly "modular" design. That is to say everything though related is kept neat and tidy in easy to modify chunks of script. You may well have to track down many references to this or that in other scripts which makes porting or adding or replacing your own addons for building etc, a full time job. In that case it's usually only the gurus who could've just as easily scripted some of the mod themselves who wield a large enough "whip" to get the game to do what they want. That's all I was trying to get at. =P

[KaRRiLLioN 0]

Actually, it's all there in one script named RTS3-ARRAYS-Units.sqs so a person could change any building or vehicle, and/or add your own. For example BeAMer at ofpnews.com took one of my earlier versions of RTS and created a NAM version by simply replacing all of the regular vehicles with the SEB Nam Pack stuff. I tried to make RTS as easy to change as possible, not just for others to modify, but so if I wanted to make different ones like a WW2 RTS I could easily change it without having to rework everything.

The main difficulty with some things is that you have to make sure that if you add or remove a new array, it has to be added/removed to/from some master arrays for doing vehicle repairs, etc.

Within that script file, you can modify price, time to build, etc.

For the ammo crates dialogs I created a separate script with arrays in it.  It is named Karr-DLG-Loadout-Arrays.sqs.  You can add/remove weapons from it and do whatever you want, but if you add or remove an array then you also need to adjust for it in some of the other global arrays.

Some things are hardcoded simply because there wasn't a good way to make them into a simple modular design, like the research that you do at the command HQ.  Since then I have thought of many improvements, but I don't know when I'll be getting around to them.

I encourage others to make their own versions of RTS so long as they make sure to name it with their own tag so ppl will realize that it's a custom design.

You still need to have some knowledge of scripting, i.e. how to use arrays and such, but even with a little knowledge you can change several things in it.

Most of the other scripts simply interact with info from the global scripts, so in most cases there isn't a need to go into them.

Oh, also the territory capture scripts are separate from the RTS ones.  They have a prefix of TW-.  In the TW-Init script you can change the territory names and adjust the number of territories.  You must also go into the mission editor and move around the triggers and markers as well.  You can also use those scripts without RTS if you wanted to make a Capture and Hold type mission.  I also added in scripting so it can handle Resistance if you wanted them in the game.

[Baphomet 0]

Interesting I'll have to give it a look-see then.

Quote[/b] ]Some things are hardcoded simply because there wasn't a good way to make them into a simple modular design, like the research that you do at the command HQ.

So I'm assuming the technologies that can be researched can't be altered. (such as say researching new buildable vehicles?)

At any rate It sounds good. I'm definitely interested in this now. One critical thing that has probably been mentioned before, however I'll just mention it again. After a fair amount of time, there's a serious problem with game performance and corpses/hulks of destroyed vehicles littered about the battlefield. Especially when playing against the ai. I'm not sure if it's possible to write a general script that scans an area within a trigger and simply identifies things with damage =1 and deletes them at timed intervals. However idealistically that seems to be the most conceptually efficient way of doing it.

On a subsidiary note. This may have been asked as well... since I haven't played that much of the game. There is or will be a method to limit the amount of units each side can build in total, maybe? The AI churns out vehicles at an astonishingly horrendous rate.

[KaRRiLLioN 0]

Technologies can be altered, but in order to add more technologies than the ones that exist, you'd have to edit description.ext and change the research dialog to allow for more buttons, or simply change it to a listbox which is what needs to be done anyway.

You'd also have to edit the individual global variables that signify if a technology has been researched and edit it as well. Also, in the primary buiding script, it checks to see which technologies have been researched to see whether or not you can build certain things, and the Dialog script for building (which makes the build menus) has to check on those global vars as well.

All dead vehicles can be recycled. You can build AI scavengers which will go out and recycle dead vehicles. In the latest build of RTS3 (which is only on my dedicated server ATM) I put in a new delete dead bodies script--actually two of them to see what works best. One of them uses an event handler for "killed". The other is a script which searches for all dead bodies near the Players (not AI units) and deletes them. So far the 2nd script works better because the "killed" event handler seems to get lost somewhere with lag. The main issue with the 2nd script is that if the body of a player is deleted too soon, then that person won't respawn. I'm trying to correct that, but it seems that lag is sometimes causing a player's body to be deleted by another player before the other player who is lagging has respawned. I'll simply have to increase the time wait for deletion to a greater value I suppose.

The AI only builds a set number of vehicles, and it depends upon how many of the AI squads you leave available when you start the game. If you leave all AI on, then yes, the AI will build at a very high rate, because that's 11 squads with about 6-8 units each.

The Ai commander stays and base and makes 2 choppers for capping territory, 3 choppers for a air offensive, 1 squad of tanks for a land offensive, and 2 jets for another air offensive. He also makes a covert ops squad of 3, puts them on a chopper, and they try to HALO out over the enemy base and then satchel it. Unfortunately, most of the time they seem to just go prone and shoot ppl.

He then builds 4 AA tanks, and 8 SAM sites for defense.

Whenever a unit is destroyed, the AI commander replaces it after a delay, depending upon certain variables.

As time passes, the AI commander builds more advanced units. I'm delaying the introduction of the jets offensive until later now. The AI is admittedly very dumb and hard to program to do things right, this is why they get a big advantage in speed. You can control your AI squads, however, using the Command and Control menu (available when you click on Mission Control in your action menu).

The mission briefing contains a lot of info about it that should help you muddle through it, and I think I've explained it at length somewhere in this thread. I'll try to dig it up some time when I have time and stick it on my website.

Right now I'm working on better handling for some smaller things, like cargo carrying for the big choppers is getting a makeover. I'm hoping to add in paradrops for tanks and such, but from what I can tell, even if I place them in the air, they drop to earth immediately with no delay, so I'm trying to figure out what to do about that.

I'm also tweaking the AI and I'm going to change the way that bases are built. Soon the buildings won't pop up immediately. Instead they'll take longer to build.

Anyway, that's the crux of things now. I'm renovating some rooms in my house, so I can't spend as much time programming RTS as I'd like. We still play it every night on my server though.

[Baphomet 0]

I've looked through some of this and hm. It's not as clean cut and modular as I would have hoped. If you wanted to change one vehicle so that it builds something else from how it looks you'd have to track down a -lot- of references to specific vehicles already in use... Which is a pity as I was just sort of getting to like the idea.

I found references to certain units in:

init.sqs

rts3-build-speacial-loadouts.sqs

vrs.sqs

So my initial concerns are right. You'd have to do an ungodly amount of reference chasing from script to script to do a large scale replacement. Oh well.

I don't suppose anyone knows in particular the process you'd have to go through to replace things, which scripts hold which data. etc.

[KaRRiLLioN 0]

Well there are certain workarounds that you have to do to get actions and such to show up on all clients, thus I have certain global variables that do that.

If you simply want to change the vehicles that are built at the tank factory for example, you just add or change them in the trucks, tanks, etc. arrays.

Some vehicles have special loadouts and some have special actions added to them when they are built. Those vehicles have a special section in the special loadouts scripts. 90% of them don't have anything extra added though.

What exactly are you trying to do? Granted, you will have to chase down some references to special vehicles, like the CH47 and the Mi17 have cargo actions added to them, so if you wanted another chopper to be able to do that then you'd have to change their reference in the special loadouts script, but that's the price for having everything work in MP.

[Baphomet 0]

Basically remove any trace of ofp's standard infantry weapons. Replace them with weapons/units carrying them of my choosing. Unfortunately because of the way the scripts work I don't think that the vehicles manufactured would just place the new units in the new vehicles correct? So that means a pack of vehicles specifically made (which I have) that come standard with units already using the weapons.

I have to do this basically because the ofp weapons would create a general conflict of interest with the weapons pack. So any trace of them must not be found in the game... crew, infantry or otherwise.

It sounds like it'd be quite difficult to do for someone not used to doing a lot of tricky scripting. Or understanding it. Heh.

[KaRRiLLioN 0]

When you talk about vehicles manufactured coming with those weapons, are you talking about the vehicles coming with those weapons in "cargo", i.e. so the soldiers could grab them from that vehicles weapon pool?

If you need to replace the standard soldiers with new ones, you can just change the soldier arrays in the script with all of the vehicles and such in it. You'd have to change the players' soldier type in the mission editor though (or manually edit the mission.sqm).

After that, you'd need to change the weapons arrays for the loadout menu by changing the values in the arrays in the weapons arrays script.

Changing soldiers and weapons available at ammo crates would require no other reference chasing in other scripts.

To replace all of the vehicles in the game with new ones would require some chasing. There are special vehicles, like the Construction Jeep and the Mobile Construction Unit (MCU) that definitely have other references since they're integral to building units.

The vrs.sqs script is not being used, I don't think. I just had it in there for references. There are a few scripts in there that are obsolete now, I just need to go through and weed them all out.

Ammo crates have special references as well, primarily because they have an action added to them so that the player can bring up the ammo crate menu.

Anyway, it looks daunting, I know, but most of it is relatively straight-forward.

[Baphomet 0]

What I mean is. Not the weapons themselves in cargo but the cargo as in passengers. If you have the choice to create a unit already in the vehicle... is there a portion of the script that determines what unit spawns inside the vehicle? If not then I have to use my custom cargo pack which is basically all the regular vehicles in the game using my weapon pack for the drivers.

[KaRRiLLioN 0]

You have the choice to build manned or unmanned vehicles, but I default the manned vehicles to crew soldiers. I was going to go back and re-write it to be more specific, depending upon what kind of vehicle it was, etc, or else I was going to make a submenu pop up after you chose manned vehicle that would give you a choice of units.

I never got around to it, so all manned vehicles come with 2 crewmen units. If you look in RTS3-BUILD-Unit.sqs then you'll see the CreateUnit stuff for it.

At the barracks, however, when you build units, it draws that from a soldier unit array which can be easily changed to just about anything. Each team has 1 soldier array.

[Baphomet 0]

Well damn. It appears I've run into an inexplicable problem. This might well because the addon is just messed up somehow but when I add the weapon to the list specifying both the ammo and the weapon. Then I try to order it from a crate in game. I can get the weapon but when I click the button to add the ammo, nothing happens.

If you or anyone else comes across this problem I'd be interested to know the circumstances of it better so I can get to the root of it.

[update]

Interesting. I tried adding a weapon from the HK pack (beauty patched) just to test it. It did the same thing. Yet I tried with a micro uzi addon and it worked just fine.... very strange.

[Raw 0]

I've finally got time to reinstall OFP and RTS.

After playing around for a while, I have a request. I would like to be able to release control of men under my command, leaving them following the last orders they got. I would also be able to walk up to men (on my side) which are currently not under control and take command over them.

This would allow me to leave a defending garrison in the cities I take and go back for more units before taking the next. Now, most of the time, the cities are left undefended or lightly defended. This leads to the game becoming a race between cities with tanks or APCs (or even single soldiers on MC's or in sports cars). If I could order some people into the buildings and put a tank in the city square and leave them there, the opponents will have to start thinking.

[D.murphy man 0]

Yes i agree,Maybe some sort of multi squad script where u could command more then one squad of men like the CoC command engine (but simplre )

[Raw 0]

Yes, perhaps you could order your men to build vehicles/men, which they would control, creating an heirachical command structure.

Oh, by the way, perhaps the wrecks should be automatically removed after a certain time. The performance is a problem and having hundreds of wrecks littering the landscape probably don't help...

[BBSmith 0]

Well, it would have to be a very long time for it to dissapear.. Salvage workers would have to have time to:

1. Drive all the way acrros the map and then salvage b4 it dissapears.

2. At the end of the time limit, if sum1 hit repair 2 seconds b4 the vehical dissapears, it will have to restrain from dissapearing then get repaired... otherwise it would dissapear and you would have lost yur repair money.

3. A better computer wont lag you at all, (mine never lags, no matter how much shit u got layin all around)

..What was wrong with the "Kill yur unit command", If you had a man all the way accross the map, and u needed 1 more man for your attack group, u would have to drive all the way across the island (possibly into enemy territory-radar, and die in the process of recovering a man). Thats why i would like a "Kill your unit" command, so if u kill the stranded guy, u can make a new and freash 1 off the press by training another 1.

-----------

What about that new F18.. that nuke is actually reasonable for rts.. unlike marines f15 tactical nuke.. No point in explainin since u prob seen it.

nvm, l8erz

[Raw 0]

At the rate money rolls in, you have to be a really crappy player to have to salvage stuff far away. I salvage when I stumble on something (often not even then) and I still don't run out of money.

I think either the prices or the income must be altered, right now you can build pretty much whatever you want.

I want the heavy pieces to be expensive. We play it guerilla style, and if the prices were at a level where it actually was worth the trouble to have a scout with binoculars spying on the enemy base to see what they were building, it would suit our style much better.

[D.murphy man 0]

maybe the ammount of income and prices can be adjusted at the begining of the mission before it begians,You know where its got "time" and "weather" in most missions.

but i agree i all ways seem to have a shit load of money,when the only things i buy are troops and black hawks or trucks.And then u get some dude in a attack heli jus conquering the intire island single handedly.The mission is way too much about air power then land.Most games of RTS3 i play there usuall no tanks or troops just choppers.

[Raw 0]

Also, perhaps it is a good idea to require a ground presence for a territory to be captured. Would make aircraft much less useful.

[killswitch 19]

Sweet. Tried it in "SP:ish mode", need *much* faster computer :-) (Currently: XP1900+). Then again, I tried to play with all 23 extra AI groups enabled. Won't do that again...lol.

Couple of things:

<ul>

[*]Please consider using the 1.3 release of the F-18

[*]I see a lot of extremely tightly timed loops in some scripts. Waiting for 0.0001 secs in one place, IIRC. Try easing up on the timings. I did and I noticed some improvement in the CPU load. Not much though, but still...

[*]As others noted, the balance/economy might need some adjustments. It quickly deteriorates to "Air Quake".

[*] Sometimes (using an AI cmdr) the base gets positioned in a way that puts a building over a piece of road. This hinders the AI's driving. Consider moving some of the "near-a-road" base points a bit further out.

[KaRRiLLioN 0]

Sorry it's been a while.  I've been remodeling my house.  I'm releasing Beta 5G of RTS-3 since it's been in testing on my server for quite a while.

There are now 14 different RTS-3 missions spanning 9 different islands.

The newest things are the lite versions of RTS-3.  This removes a vast chunk of the Jet and chopper addons but keeps a lot of the addon ground units.  Here's some other changes:

-Researching basic and advanced air is much more expensive

-Aircraft is much more expensive in general

-Versions with @r are "lite" versions and do not have as many aircraft

-VTOL can now be controlled by your keyboard rather than clumsy action-menu commands

-Other tweaks that I can't remember....

I'll be getting back to RTS sometime soon.  I need to add in some updated addons, and I'm also working on a WWII version of RTS, but there are SO many addons to sort through, and I'm having problems finding good quality WWII plane addons, although the Corsair is really nice.

Anyway the updated link for RTS is in the first post of this thread.

[BBSmith 0]

WHAT IS THE RAD MAUSER_27mm?

WHERE CAN I GET IT?

Is that the F-18 that was supposed to updated?

What Version?

Where?

What ever, l8ers

[killswitch 19]

WHAT IS THE RAD MAUSER_27mm?

That is part of the old, 1.0 version of the F18. The current 1.3 has a different config and another name for its main gun.

You'd have to find the old F18 to use RTS-3 as it stands today. I believe Karr. has the old one on his site (see first posting, I guess)