[sp_camp] Dark Tides

[Undeceived 392]

Hi AZCoder, I have a problem with the mission Resolutions. It shows the intro

 

Spoiler

"You will play as Mr. Gray"

 

but then the briefing section looks like this:

 

Spoiler

 

When I start the mission, the cutscene doesn't work, the music is played but it stays like this:

 

Spoiler

 

 

Can you help?

[AZCoder 921]

10 minutes ago, Undeceived said:

Hi AZCoder, I have a problem with the mission Resolutions. It shows the intro

 

 

but then the briefing section looks like this:

 

 

When I start the mission, the cutscene doesn't work, the music is played but it stays like this:

 

Can you help?

 

Weird. I'll look at it after work.

 

[Undeceived 392]

I extracted the mission and it works in the editor. Can I play it there without worries and resume the campaign in the campaign menu after that (with the campaign cheat)? Or are there variables and stuff that is needed for this or after this?

 

I want to play!! 😁

[Undeceived 392]

Ok, finished it. Really a great campaign. 👏 Mixture of a good political thriller like Tom Clancy or John le Carré, the series Six about the SEALs team 6 and classical military Arma gameplay. A lot of good humor, wide scope, plenty of details, great plot (which I would very much like to re-read somewhere in detail as it was quite complex) - all in all a very recommendable project! And a huge amount of work was invested in this -  this was very remarkable and impressive. I wonder how you managed to finish this in two years - and then in such a good quality.

 

Is has some small technical flaws (which I unfortunately didn't write down as I played this to just enjoy and not as beta tester)* and being a lover of good stories here's some small feedback on what I missed most at a certain point:

 

Spoiler

 

The biggest letdown for me was the lack of feedback after the "Kill Denmark" decision. This decision was pretty hard to make. After having killed Ayrtom earlier as ordered by command I really had problems with killing Denmark because I remembered that cutscene where Mr. Gray wanted the chemical weapon improved and ready. So I left Denmark in peace and went to the exfil, but halfway there I turned back, thinking, this guy killed so many innocent people, he has to die!! (I played him as a real bad ass - killed everyone, e.g. the guy on the jetski, the camera man on the other side of the bridge, etc.) And then, half way back to the warehouse again I hesitated, because I love books and movies where dark intrigues in governments or by big people are unveiled. So I said FUCK IT and went away. This just to demonstrate how difficult this decision was.

 

And now the letdown. There was hardly any feedback on this difficult decision. The only things I read in the briefing for the next mission was that Mr. Gray vanished and Master Chief himself will join the team. But why did Mr. Gray vanish? Was my decision right and did Denmark demask him? And how? And why is Master Chief coming along? Does he want to check if Knight does his job correctly (kind of a last chance)? Or doesn't he want to miss the fun catching Mr. Gray? This wasn't mentioned.

I would have imagined a cutscene where Knight gets suspended for letting the most wanted terrorist on earth escape, then Denmark leaking some info to the right people and Knight getting another chance in the team. Or at least some text about to what this difficult decision has led.

 

 

But all in all this campaign was really good and impressive. The appearance of 

Spoiler

El Cojon was the icing on the cake 😁 Many traces of @johnnyboy found, btw. 

 

Thanks a lot, AZCoder. This was a lot of fun. 👍 

 

* I remembered some bugs. Maybe I will add more later...

• At one point that (cool) international map covered other things, I think some subtitles. Unfortunately I don't remember where this was.
• From a certain mission onwards (sorry, also don't remember) the subtitles from others (not from Knight) appeared only for a short moment (half a second or so), then disappeared. This is ok for native speakers but I had to pay a lot of attention to understand everything (especially with background noise).
• And this of course (being a showstopper)

 

 

Edit:

So can I read the plot in detail somewhere? Also the credits were to fast to follow. There is so much interesting stuff in there but I couldn't read it in time. Ok, I know, I could open up the stringtable, but maybe there's a small and nice website for it? 🤩

[AZCoder 921]

1 hour ago, Undeceived said:

Thanks a lot, AZCoder. This was a lot of fun. 👍 

 

* I remembered some bugs. Maybe I will add more later...

• At one point that (cool) international map covered other things, I think some subtitles. Unfortunately I don't remember where this was.
• From a certain mission onwards (sorry, also don't remember) the subtitles from others (not from Knight) appeared only for a short moment (half a second or so), then disappeared. This is ok for native speakers but I had to pay a lot of attention to understand everything (especially with background noise).
• And this of course (being a showstopper)

Edit:

So can I read the plot in detail somewhere? Also the credits were to fast to follow. There is so much interesting stuff in there but I couldn't read it in time. Ok, I know, I could open up the stringtable, but maybe there's a small and nice website for it? 🤩

 

The credits are in GAM505.gsep_miros\scripts\credits.sqf. Easy to read format.

 

You know the new cool way to do image overlays is to name the layer, instead of using a number: "MapAltis" cutRsc ["MapAltis","PLAIN"];

The problem is that you have no control over layer priority doing that. Also I did this on a 2K monitor, so anyone running on 1K or (gasp) less may see overlay where I don't see it at all. I know a couple places to look at this, though, and can always switch back to the number system if it helps.

 

People keep telling me about subtitles vanishing early. I honestly need specific examples, because I don't see this problem, or I've seen the text so many times that my brain just fills it in automatically and I don't notice :D   Even my playtester reported it and I had trouble finding any examples. I'm sure it's just me not processing the issue when I see it.

 

Regarding the decision making mission:

What I was trying to get across is that we are counting down DEFCON and don't have time to worry about what choice you made. Things are so bad that Master Chief joined the mission to help make sure it was successful. Afterward, for the path you took, Knight gets discharged from service. Basically he made the right choice and gets punished for it, but he doesn't care anymore. I mean ... Knight doesn't know if he made the right choice either, and I don't want to give it away. Your reaction is what I wanted :). If you want another ending, go back to the Denmark mission and do what you were ordered to do. You'll have to repeat the following mission, but it will end differently, and the mission after that is totally different. And more fun IMO.

 

I have a long and outdated plot written out from when I started on the campaign. If I get it updated, then I will let you know.

 

Further, I am working on Shadow Fall 2.0. My original plan was to merge all campaigns into one. Now I think maybe it's too hard to troubleshoot and maintain that large size. Either way, SF will see a major update. I hope by Winter. I mention this because it will better show the story that I had written out long ago. I will remove one mission that I never liked, completely redo another mission that I find boring, and massive changes to the Chernobyl missions. The other missions will see some changes, mainly the first one. I have rewritten parts of JBOY dogs, and now we have both rabid packs and friendly dogs (still under massive testing and refinement). The friendly dogs bark and behave differently from the bad ones. And I made them run a lot faster, so they are kind of terrifying. They are really hard to hit!  I completely redid the radiation system, now with a working UI display that has been tested on multiple resolutions and ready to go. I have been working on a couple anamolies as well, so it will have some Stalker vibes, and a few things I can't mention yet.

 

So ... Black Lands in A3 coming? :)

 

 

 

[AZCoder 921]

In the upcoming updates, I modified how the text displays on the screen. It is inspired by Chernobylite. Here's a pic from Gambit Royale:

 

 

 

 

This is the Shadow Fall 2.0 main menu replacer for Arma 3. Warning: It's really loud.

 

 

This demonstrates the new storm system that I built from scratch, and also one of the anamolies. This anamoly is a modified version from the work of Alias who does an awesome job. I used several of his scripts in Dark Tides (the volcano, dripping water, nuclear explosions, that sort of thing). For this anamoly, I added a scintillating color pattern, and force it to turn red when near a person as a warning.

 

BTW - 3CB updated today. This fixes the severe uniform bugs that were introduced by an RHS update about 2 months ago. They also added some cool new stuff.

[Undeceived 392]

48 minutes ago, AZCoder said:

I honestly need specific examples

I remember this happening in the radio chatter with HQ where that Dr. is captured, when the nuclear shit starts to hit the fan. I think even the sentence with the tactical nukes was one of them.

 

 

48 minutes ago, AZCoder said:

So ... Black Lands in A3 coming? 🙂

Well, I say yes, but don't ask when. I am one of those who got addicted to DayZ. Spent countless hours in this damn game and hardly got back to editing. Last year had a good editing phase though and also a very productive and long one earlier this year. And now I'm kinda wanting to get to it again. Let's see...

 

 

48 minutes ago, AZCoder said:

I have a long and outdated plot written out from when I started on the campaign. If I get it updated, then I will let you know.

That sounds good. 👍

[Undeceived 392]

Nice, I didn't play SF. I wanted once but didn't get to it somehow. Definitely looking forward to the new version.

[AZCoder 921]

@Undeceived  I'm not sure what caused the problem for the last scene you had. I did find a bad script reference that threw an error, however here's the problem. The version of Dark Tides on my computer has changed a lot from the steam version. I just haven't released it yet. The changes are mostly behind the scenes, including how the inventory system is built. I'm not comfortable releasing it without a full regression testing, and that takes 2 full days :-D   Therefore I like to get all my changes rolled in at once, like the subtitle timing problem.

 

Shadow Fall is the story of how Denmark became Denmark (not the country). It's actually a mix of both new ideas (back in 2015) and things that I had put into the never released Dark Tides for Arma 2. The entire campaign is from Pyotr's point of view. Then Gambit Royale was entirely from Ian Jones' point of view. I wanted to contrast how the truth can be distorted and mislead the player a little bit before Dark Tides.

 

[jonstyle 49]

@AZCoder is it not possible to change loadouts of the different placed units in the editor after I depboed it?

When I do and load mission, the changes I've made doesn't show. I can't find any coded files in the mission folders either for loadouts.

I was looking really forward to this campaign but it kinda ruins it for me when I can't change loadouts.

[AZCoder 921]

4 hours ago, jonstyle said:

@AZCoder is it not possible to change loadouts of the different placed units in the editor after I depboed it?

When I do and load mission, the changes I've made doesn't show. I can't find any coded files in the mission folders either for loadouts.

I was looking really forward to this campaign but it kinda ruins it for me when I can't change loadouts.

 

There's a function library that handles loadouts. In the initFunctions.hpp file, look for anything that starts with 'AZC_fnc_load' and comment those out. (might also be called AZC_GOA_fnc_load ... depends on which version of Dark Tides is in the wild)

I used to do custom loadouts but honestly, it's a ridiculous pain that made me want to quit mission making.

 

[DNDSTUDIOS 15]

On 10/13/2021 at 7:06 AM, jonstyle said:

@AZCoder is it not possible to change loadouts of the different placed units in the editor after I depboed it?

When I do and load mission, the changes I've made doesn't show. I can't find any coded files in the mission folders either for loadouts.

I was looking really forward to this campaign but it kinda ruins it for me when I can't change loadouts.

 

 

@jonstyleThere is a way to do this without doing anything with the PBO. Play the campaign as you would normally and use 'Benargee's Simple Single Player Cheat Menu' on the steam workshop which enables the debug menu and run arsenal with this command:

 

["Open",true] spawn BIS_fnc_arsenal;

 

Loadout yourself to your hearts desire! Not sure, but you can probably use team switch to outfit others on the squad as well by enabling it through the debug menu.

[SlovakianLynx 82]

In mission Dead Weight the doggie camera can't be used. It pops up an error when I activate it. When I try to deactivate it, another error pops up and the two keep overflashing each other until the mission's end.

 

[AZCoder 921]

4 hours ago, SlovakianLynx said:

In mission Dead Weight the doggie camera can't be used. It pops up an error when I activate it. When I try to deactivate it, another error pops up and the two keep overflashing each other until the mission's end.

 

I wonder how that happened. It's the classic waitUntil bug, but never seen it with the doggy cam before. Did you try restarting?

Unfortunately I cannot really support this version of the campaign anymore. It's completely broken and incompatible with my "home grown" script libraries. I will eventually replace the campaign but that's a long ways off. I will probably hide it on the workshop soon.

 

[SlovakianLynx 82]

I've restarted the mission 2 times, but the bug always occured.

 

You are right about the campaign being broken. I can't past the Four Horsemen mission.
After completing the first objective all friendly units freeze and never get to the rendezvous point.
I've tried assaulting the power plant on my own, but there are too many enemy tanks.
Also I've tried to restart and revert the mission, but it was always the same scenario. The last option was ENDMISSION cheat, but that returned me to the menu, as if the campaign was over.

 

Well, it's good to read, that you will replace the campaign with a new version and don't give up on it, at least.
 

[honger 116]

EDIT: Nevermind, wrong campaign thread lol