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Gunter Severloh

Realism or Semi realism whats preferred and how to? Need feedback for a mission

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Hey guys Gunter here,

I need your guy's opinion, feedback, so i can make a decision on what to do with my mission.

 

I have a mission i been working on and off for some months, nothing special just been messing around, but this past weekend

i got serious with it and put in 30hrs into it, and a good portion of that was research, and testing on how to do things,

and trying to get things to work.

Just to let you know building a custom mission like this is not something i normally do, im either compiling something, or organizing stuff

here in the community, just something new i wanted to do to give to the community.

 

Heres the run down of what i have:

  • The mission is set on Kunduz Afghanistan map, modern war type mission not WW2 or anything else
  • A 4 player coop, but can be played with 1 person
  • Can revive a fellow player if there are others players playing
  • Mission uses mods - Iraqi-Syrian Conflict, Kunduz (Fixed Door version), and RHS which is required anyways by the first mod
  • Mission has 9 objectives, all which have tasks setup
  • Briefing
  • Loading screen - which for some reason seems small like half the size of the box, (whats the size of the pic supposed to be and should it be in paa format or is jpg fine?)
  • access to artillery to call in 3 fire missions

 

So heres where my indecision comes in:

Whether to make this more realistic, or keep it like it is, or make 2 versions?

Currently when you start the mission:

  • Your player will randomly spawn somewhere around the AO at markers i placed, every start of the mission you will spawn in a different spot, objectives are the same regardless.
  • With the player on his start he has a dune buggy from RHS mod which also gives you access to arsenal, the dune buggy also acts as a mobile respawn, and when your on foot, you can view your map and see the location of the dunebuggy via marker.
  • When you die you will respawn at that dunebuggy in 5 seconds no matter where its at.
  • When you complete all the objectives, (should take you about 1-3 hrs depending on your skill) the mission will end completed.

 

Now i have play tested this mission many times, and got everything working, its almost ready to publish on workshop, and post here but....

 

The Realistic idea

This is what i want to do, and am undecided and not sure on some things on how to go about it, the previous way is fun, but i want

the mission to be more appealing to 2 types of audiences, so for the realistic idea:

 

i want to:

  • Have a base where the player/s starts like an FOB somewhere
  • have a chopper transport you to an LZ you choose
  • have a chopper drop ammo
  • call in air support to drop bombs or do CAS if needed
  • be able to drive to the AO
  • do a paradrop into the AO

All those i know how to do and can already setup np.

 

The real problem - player vs players questions

1. For one player i dont like to have the mission where its to easy, like the access to arsenal through a mobile respawn is imo to easy even tho its fun,

realistically it takes away from actually trying at the mission to a degree. The mission still has its challenge regardless but such access to me makes you more careless.

    So for this i think the player and players can loadup their gear, ammo, etc,. at base like in real life.

 

2. For multiple players like say 2 or more i have revive setup, but then

what if all players are down (waiting to be revived mode) they have no choice but to die so my

question is how do i set this up where they can play again, respawn at base only if all players are dead (in needing to be revived mode), or what?

 

3. When 1 player is playing, question - do i just respawn back at base and work my way back to the AO either by driving, chopper transport, or halo?

or do it like this idea where you have

4 lives you can use to complete the mission, if you use up all your lives its mission over, so for that i was thinking of having

all playable characters back at base, and then have teamswitch on, or should i do like respawn tickets?

=====================

 

So what do you guys think, should i have a version i have currently, and a realistic version as described at the bottom too?

 

Other then my Ragnarok'44 mission series, and my IFA3 training arena

This new custom mission will be part of a new series of modern war missions i will be creating, these missions will be new arma3, and mission

ports/ideas i created in arma1, Arma2, and arma2oa back in the day.

 

Thanks for any help and insights into this!

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Hi Gunter.  I appreciate your compilations and contributions to the community man.  Regarding your questions, I guess its all personal preference.  But here's mine...

Just now, Gunter Severloh said:

1. For one player i dont like to have the mission where its to easy, like the access to arsenal through a mobile respawn is imo to easy even tho its fun,

realistically it takes away from actually trying at the mission to a degree. The mission still has its challenge regardless but such access to me makes you more careless.

    So for this i think the player and players can loadup their gear, ammo, etc,. at base like in real life

I personally  prefer a bit more realism, and would rather not have a mobile respawn and for sure not a mobile arsenal.  I guess mobile respawns for really large geographic areas are good though, as no one likes driving 10 minutes to get back in the action.  I personally like Group Respawn for one player.  It gives you more lives, but is realistic as once the team is dead  its over.  And you can add an AI revive script so player can get team mates back in action (I use this in my Last Tango in Tanoa missions so AI critical to story don't get killed off, but there is still a penalty that they go down in firefights and are no longer able to support you until revived).

Just now, Gunter Severloh said:

2. For multiple players like say 2 or more i have revive setup, but then

what if all players are down (waiting to be revived mode) they have no choice but to die so my

question is how do i set this up where they can play again, respawn at base only if all players are dead (in needing to be revived mode), or what?

I'm not sure how to go about that, but isn't that how the Tanoa campaign works?  You can wait for revive or choose to respawn back at respawn point?

 

Just now, Gunter Severloh said:

3. When 1 player is playing, question - do i just respawn back at base and work my way back to the AO either by driving, chopper transport, or halo?

or do it like this idea where you have

4 lives you can use to complete the mission, if you use up all your lives its mission over, so for that i was thinking of having

all playable characters back at base, and then have teamswitch on, or should i do like respawn tickets?

That all sounds viable to me.  Once again I do prefer Respawn to Group.  But its harsh when all playable slots filled with players, and once you're killed you are out.

 

Good luck man.  I look forward to seeing your mission.

 

 

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Getting back to this late no thanks to work :h:

Thanks for your Compliments, and feedback much appreciated!

13 hours ago, johnnyboy said:

would rather not have a mobile respawn and for sure not a mobile arsenal.  I guess mobile respawns for really large geographic areas are good though

Ya i can kinda of agree, i mean i like mobile respawn to a point as you stated if the base was real far, and their were a few AO's then it would make more sense, its a good point though.

   When i was play testing a bunch of times, a mobile respawn made you not as focused and careful in terms of what tactics to use, recon, ect,.

so if you got killed you could be back in action within a few minutes.

 

Having the arsenal attached to the mobile respawn, made you careless so must agree with you, i guess having someone else's perspective on what

you already know makes it more revealing and enlightening lol

13 hours ago, johnnyboy said:

I personally like Group Respawn for one player.  It gives you more lives, but is realistic as once the team is dead  its over. 

You know all of Major Mayhem's missions for the Iron Front game when i played with him and the group on his server had that setup, it would be about 5-7 of us

and we had a limit of so many tanks, and like 2-3 squads worth of infantry, revive was enabled, and when you died you team switched into the next AI, and when

they are all gone was nothing you can do its game over. I've played about 40 missions with the group since august 2015 and all the missions were like that.

 

      I think i will do that for my own, i like the "scarcity" feeling it creates where you have limits, thing is my mission is only 4 players, now i beat my own mission without dying once

but you had to have your shit together to pull that off.

Think i will keep it at 4 but then thats really thinking about a person playing it by themselves, for the actual 4 players playing....

14 hours ago, johnnyboy said:
15 hours ago, Gunter Severloh said:

2. For multiple players like say 2 or more i have revive setup, but then

what if all players are down (waiting to be revived mode) they have no choice but to die so my

question is how do i set this up where they can play again, respawn at base only if all players are dead (in needing to be revived mode), or what?

I'm not sure how to go about that, but isn't that how the Tanoa campaign works?  You can wait for revive or choose to respawn back at respawn point?

I never played the Tanoa Campaign so idk how it plays out.

Well im thinking that if all 4 players or more if requested, will have the revive option mission already does, but if all are incapacitated then respawning

at base would have to be the only other option to at least keep the mission going, however, without making it to easy i noticed in the editor under attributes --> Multiplayer

that you can set up a base respawn with tickets, never tried it so not totally sure how it works, but my guess is lets say you have 10 tickets when they are all used up then its game over.

          So for 4 players i'd give at least 2 tickets each for total of 8 and then once used up game over.

 

So a quick rundown of what i have in mind for realism:

  • Player starts at an FOB
  • Arsenal is setup at the base
  • Player has access to a few assortment of vehicles that will not respawn when destroyed
  • 4 player limit unless more are requested
  • Group respawn for SP
  • Group respawn w/revive for more then 1 player with ability to respawn at base if all are down, but then respawn at base will be limited to a number of tickets, less the better ( work for your life)
  • access to helicopter transport - limit so many calls
  • Artillery support
  • Air support - bomb/cas limited

Any other ideas for realism?

 

 

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Just now, Gunter Severloh said:

So a quick rundown of what i have in mind for realism:

  • Player starts at an FOB
  • Arsenal is setup at the base
  • Player has access to a few assortment of vehicles that will not respawn when destroyed
  • 4 player limit unless more are requested
  • Group respawn for SP
  • Group respawn w/revive for more then 1 player with ability to respawn at base if all are down, but then respawn at base will be limited to a number of tickets, less the better ( work for your life)
  • access to helicopter transport - limit so many calls
  • Artillery support
  • Air support - bomb/cas limited

That balance definitely works for me.

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Playing with addons  or not...

That's my first worry. Because, some players don't like too many mods, other ones are fond of big ones. So, usually, I try to make a couple of Vanilla and modded missions (CUP, RHS...), based on the same scenario.  That leads to me for scripting generic arrays of vehicles/weapons classes for limited arsenal, spawned units... With some experience, I have got some adaptable generic scripts. But I don't care for too specific mods, breaking Arma's engine/menus. That's the problem of the players.

 

MP or SP.

I definitely made the choice to script for both. SP is absolutely too restricted but doesn't need LAN/Internet. The MP solo is a good alternative. Anyway, I always place the player in a leading group unit. It's easy in SP, that demands little scripts in MP. The most difficult, IMHO, is to cope with all possibilities for the player like the switch between units or the fact you can't respawn (SP). You can save game... I do prefer adding a heal/revive for AIs SP/MP.
In MP, scripting difficulties apart, the mission parameters are fine for the hosting/admin player who decides if the mission will run with arsenal or not, loot or not, civilian life or not, time of the day, weather, even positions at start, FOB or not, respawn configuration, respawning vehicle or not...

So, on my mind, MP is the best solution.

 

Personal added scripts.

What I'm adding on my scenarios:

- the revive/heal SP/MP for Ais (group or side);

- the  FOBs + playable units respawn positions. (BI didn't make this mix but it seems to me useful to respawn on bros or base(s))

- respawning with the current loadout at death (same mags, same counts, same weapons and current weapon). For more realism, you respawn as you died. It's possible to add in mission parameter, an option for respawning with start loadout...

- the arsenal choice, but also the anti-cheat arsenal if not chosen;

- the enhanced turret for each cannon, making AI gunner to select HE bullets and fire to infantry, without losing AP shells for armored threat;

- the civilian life (spawning / despawning along with players' distances)

- enemies area, centered on locations (existing on map or added by script), randomized enemy groups patrolling at random and reacting (splitting in combat mode). Density depending on number of players. These areas add for immersion, even if you need to accomplish an objective with its own enemy units.

- in some cases:

    * replenishable UAV,

    * supports available with radio backpack only,

    * solo/group HALO jump,

    * vehicle/crate drop,

    * vehicle taxi (you jump into AI driven vehicle (helo or else) and you can order a destination, alter it, return to base)

...

 

Have fun with your scenarios.

 

 

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13 hours ago, pierremgi said:

- respawning with the current loadout at death (same mags, same counts, same weapons and current weapon

You have a link to this script, only thing i have used is the set load, save loadout script which one needs to do before they take off but then when they do respawn

they go back to the ammo box and load loadout which gives them what they saved, like arsenal in a way but a script, looking for something simpler, like you mentioned.

13 hours ago, pierremgi said:

* supports available with radio backpack only,

Love this idea, couldn't get any more real then that, you have a script for this?

 

One thing i really like is logistics, about a year ago me and a friend worked on a mission where everything you had to do was manual, we would have boxes of ammo crates, and many other things setup at our base.

We did use the R3F script for logistics, there was a script in arma2oa i used in one of my missions it ws also r3F script and this one had a manual artillery setup where you had to have an actual

cannon somewhere, and then with your laptop you dial in the coordinates that someone on the front lines would give you numbers, from there you'd shoot, you could run that with AI being the gunner.

 

Good post Pierremgi thanks for the insights both of you!

I do want to do a time, weather, view distance, enemy skill settings for parameters in the description.

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For respawning with same loadout as death:

 

Spoiler



addMissionEventHandler ["Entitykilled", {
  _victim = _this select 0;
    if (isPlayer _victim && local _victim) then {
      [_victim, [missionNamespace, format ["cur_inv_%1", name _victim]]] call BIS_fnc_saveInventory;
      _victim setVariable ["MGI_ammo1",_victim ammo (primaryWeapon _victim)];
      _victim setVariable ["MGI_ammo2",_victim ammo (handgunWeapon _victim)];
      _victim setVariable ["MGI_ammo3",_victim ammo (secondaryWeapon _victim)];
      _victim setVariable ["MGI_mags",magazinesAmmoFull _victim];
      _victim setVariable ["MGI_weapon",currentWeapon _victim];
    };
}];

addMissionEventHandler ["EntityRespawned", {
  _unit = _this select 0;
  _corpse = _this select 1;
  if (isPlayer _unit && local _unit) then {
    [_unit, [missionNamespace, format ["cur_inv_%1", name _unit]]] call BIS_fnc_loadInventory;
    {_unit removeMagazine _x} forEach magazines _unit;
    _unit setAmmo [primaryWeapon _unit, 0];
    _unit setAmmo [handGunWeapon _unit, 0];
    _unit setAmmo [secondaryWeapon _unit, 0];
    {
      if (((_unit getVariable "MGI_mags") select _foreachindex select 3) <= 0) then {
        _unit addMagazine [_x select 0,_x select 1]}
    } forEach (_unit getVariable "MGI_mags");
    if (({_x == "laserDesignator"} count assignedItems _unit) == 1) then  {_unit addMagazine "laserBatteries"};     // always lost on respawn with BIS function....
    _unit setAmmo [primaryWeapon _unit,_unit getVariable "MGI_ammo1"];
    _unit setAmmo [handGunWeapon _unit,_unit getVariable  "MGI_ammo2"];
    _unit setAmmo [secondaryWeapon _unit,_unit getVariable "MGI_ammo3"];
    _unit selectWeapon (_unit getVariable "MGI_weapon");
    {deleteVehicle _x} forEach nearestObjects [(getPosATL _corpse),["WeaponHolderSimulated","groundWeaponHolder"],5];   // no more remaining weapon on ground after ragdoll anim
    deleteVehicle _corpse;
  };
}];


 

 

Coming back with support available with radio backpack.

 

 

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For support along with radio backpack:

 

place your modules as usual, do not sync players and requester. Name the module.  Here: req for requester, arty for provider (the module, not the artillery).

in initPlayerLocal.sqf (or init.sqf when player is not null)

 

MGI_RadioBpkArray = ["UNS_alice_FR","UNS_USMC_RTO","UNS_USMC_RTO2","UNS_ARMY_RTO","UNS_ARMY_RTO2","UNS_SF_RTO"];  // example for Unsung mod
player addEventHandler ["AnimChanged", {
  params ["_unit", "_anim"];
  call {
    if (Backpack _unit in MGI_RadioBpkArray && !(req in synchronizedObjects _unit)) exitWith {
      [_unit,req,arty] call BIS_fnc_addSupportLink;
    };
    if (!(Backpack _unit in MGI_RadioBpkArray) && req in synchronizedObjects _unit) exitWith {
      [req,_unit] call BIS_fnc_removeSupportLink;
    };
  };
}];

 

I chose an animChanged EH, which often fires, but you can place it also in a while {true} do {sleep 3; ....} loop. I don't know what is the best bet for performance in this case.

The EH is persistent on respawn.

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15 hours ago, pierremgi said:

For respawning with same loadout as death:

Do i add it a initPlayerLocal.sqf or init.sqf?

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Just now, Gunter Severloh said:

Do i add it a initPlayerLocal.sqf or init.sqf?

As missionEventHandler, init.sqf or initPlayerLocal.sqf  is fine.

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On 11/15/2018 at 7:23 PM, pierremgi said:

For respawning with same loadout as death:

This works fine for base respawn but im using side respawn, i tried group respawn and apparently testing by yourself even tho you have 3 other Ai to spawn into ends the mission,

with side respawn i can switch into the next avail AI which is what i want.

For a sp mission side respawn to me is like respawn tickets where its limited to the number of AI you can spawn into, so it still forces you to be careful and weight your tactics.

anyways thats my setup.

 

My issues right now are the following:

  • Delete only the player's body equip,gear, weapons i tried pierremgi's code which i quoted above and that only works with base respawn.
  • i have arty, cas, transport, and airdop supporter modules setup, works fine til you die, i tried syncing to the other 3 AI too, so when you choose one of them after dieing you will still have the support, but it dont work.
  • How to end mission when all players (4 playable AI) are dead,

i have a win after all objectives are completed (tasks completed) using this:

in a trigger:

Condition:

!alive c1 && !alive c2 && !alive c3 && !alive c4 && !alive iscom && !alive AA && !Alive iscache && !Alive truck;

Activation:

"c1", "c2", "c3", "c4", "AA", "iscache", "truck", "iscom" call bis_fnc_endmission;

==============

Each c1, c2, truck, ect,. are tasks and areas, as well as units or vehicles to clear or kill, this works np, i just want the option now to have the mission fail when all players are dead,

if in SP then all lives are gone, and if Coop idk what to do here.

 

I might just make this a SP mission only, i mean you can play it in coop, but the respawn is set to side so you need AI to switch into, and if all 4 AI are being used by players,

then if i add more playable AI then adding more AI defeats the purpose of limit 4 AI if theres only 1 player, its a catch 22, what do i do here?

 

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