Dynamic Campaigns

[Drongo69 117]

The purpose of this thread is to act as a clearing house for information on Dynamic Mission Alliance (DMA) projects.

DMA is a loose-knit team of mission makers (Honchoblack, Sanctuary, TacRod) focused on producing gameplay-focused addons and missions. These missions use a variety of triggers and scripts to simulate a dynamic "campaign" (actually one mission with several random sub-missions). The player is a squad leader tasked with eliminating the enemy insurgents.

Current features:

- 7+ mission types

- Dozens of possible mission locations

- Very high replayability

- Hours of play per campaign

- Punishment for civilian casualties

- Medevacs/air support/fire support

Current releases:

Dynamic Afghanistan (by Honchoblack): Russian forces try to restore peace in Afghanistan.

Thread here

Sanctuary's brilliant DMA Animation pack

DMA Animation Pack

Original Coin (by TacRod): US Marines slug it out with Islamic terrorists on Mungari.

Thread here

Work in progress:

- Sanctuary's addon-free template

- TacRod's CoIn Coop Engine (totally rewritten for MP)

- Honchoblack's Dynamic Afghanistan - Delta Force

- ...

Goals:

- Simple templates that can be used by people with little scripting ability

- Modularity: Replace enemies, weapons, etc with simple cut and paste. See here for more details

- Replayability

- Community support, leading to an ever-greater number of modules available

If you haven't tried Coin yet, I recommend you start with Dynamic Afghanistan.

Finally, a note on modifying DMA campaigns.

If you want to modify these missions for your own personal use, go ahead. HOWEVER, you may not distribute modifications of this work without gaining permission from the original author first.

Just to be clear:

You MAY NOT distribute modifications of this work without gaining permission from the original author.

Modifications of modified missions CAN NOT be distributed without the permission of DMA.

Also, please try to offer a different product with new features, missions, units and islands. Simply changing a few units and leaving everything else in place does not really warrant a release. If unsure, please PM a DMA member.

Regards,

TacRod (DMA)

Current CoIn Coop Engine status:

Quote[/b] ]

This version uses default OFP units for easy modding. Scripts for SEBNampack 2 have also been done (using Iadrang). Alternate islands/weapon packs/OPFOR packs etc will probably be the last thing done.

Currently working in MP:

- Reworked win/loss system

- Mission allocation/resolution (S&D, Defend, Raid, Human wave, Convoy)

- Bad guys (AI, random weapons, etc)

- Self-contained artillery, flares and CAS (dialogue based)

- Campaign factors (enemy morale etc.)

- Rearm scripts

- Helo insertion/extraction/dustoff

- Better helo control (helo orders dialogue)

- Respawn

- Civilians

- Alternative unit scripts (GMER, PUKF, Nampack 2)

Planned additions:

- Airstrikes

- More missions

- General polishing/tweaking (seamless spawns, etc)

Other:

- Commented scripts

- Editor's guide for porting to your own units

Status of Sanctuary's template (scroll down):

Click here

[TA-50 0]

Tacrod,

I made a port over to Tonal during spring break. I'd like to send it your way to see if you can fix an problem I'm having with the placement of civilians. The scripting is sound so far, but the civilians aren't spawning near their markers.

I run EECP on my computer, so all the units are now HYK soldiers vs JAM HD BAS Tonalis. I number of BAS helos, SIGs tanks, and CBT vehicles are present too. PM me if you can spare a minute to see the adaption.

~TA-50

[honchoblack 2]

TA-50 -

which template are you using for this port, since there are several versions of the CoIn system available allready

check the city triggers, who are they set to go off for, set them to go off by the opfor, then the civis will spawn once the opfor are spawned

greets Honcho

[Snake Man 407]

I would suggest you change the topic name since this is not a campaign. Campaign is 2 missions or more in the campaign structure, this is one mission.

[honchoblack 2]

the beauty about this mission is that it is a campaign in a mission, so i think the thread titel fits well

for example "Dynamic Afghanistan" has 68 different possible mission locations with different missions to accomplish

the only thing seperating this kind of approach of mission programming to the classical one is that you dont have to load a new mission, the mission occur all in the one level, but they are different events

greets Honcho

[hellfish6 7]

the beaty about this mission is that it is a campaign in a mission, so i think the thread titel fits well  

for example "Dynamic Afghanistan" has 68 different possible mission locations with different missions to accomplish

greets Honcho

Quote[/b] ]I would suggest you change the topic name since this is not a campaign. Campaign is 2 missions or more in the campaign structure, this is one mission.

Yup. What Honcho said. It's not a campaign in the traditional sense, but a continuous battlefield operation involving many missions (sub-missions, if you will) and by definition, that makes it a campaign. Exactly what OFP has been needing for some time, IMHO.

[Drongo69 117]

I've been working on the new Defend mission. I'm currently developing using SEBNAMPACK2, as I was getting bored testing with default units. The final release will contain BIS only, SEBNAM and probably other versions as well.

The new defend mission takes place at your base. A number of enemy squads spawn around the base and assault.

Gotta love unambiguous orders

VC on the wire

This sector looks clear, time to sweep the perimeter. Don't forget those security rounds.

Playing without NVGs makes for some pretty tense night patrols too.

[hellfish6 7]

In the original dynamic campaign that I played on SEB Ia Drang, Bagel had made a bit of a different kind of counter-insurgency campaign. From what I remember, the VC had two bases on one side of the map and their mission was to infiltrate small teams from those bases and capture towns. Once they captured towns, more enemies would spawn from there and they would either defend that town or move to take another town. Once the VC was strong enough, they started to get NVA reinforcements. Once the NVA got strong enough, they would attack the American base at Plei Me (with tanks too, I think). I remember having tons of fun loading my command troops into a Huey and flying in between contacts to reinforce my blocking teams.

What I'm asking is:

Can something like this be done with your dynamic system? It would be useful for our Bushfires mod, as we can do a SWAPO insurgency in Namibia this way (your present system will work very well too). Actually, this would work very well for all kinds of African wars that relied on subversion of populations, etc. The enemy would also be, to a degree, unpredictable. You don't know which town they're going to.

The way your system works now, from what I've played so far, is that when you get an order to patrol a town you know that there will be enemy forces there. You may not know exact numbers and positions, but you're sure you're going to make contact. What if this wasn't always the case?

Or what if you made a hidden enemy facility that acts as a regional command post or transit point for the enemy? If you find and destroy it, the enemy only spawns 50% of the forces they would otherwise spawn.

Just ideas...

[honchoblack 2]

Hellfish6 -

keep them coming, those ideas are real good, i think this is what this thread is supposed to be about

a brainpool considering new possibilities to be implemented in the CoIn system

love the idea about the command post that can be destroyed to spawn lesser opfor, it should be easily implemented

also the idea about the different occasions to happen during patrol, a point i am not satisfied about now either, but expect new random events and additions to the next update of "Dynamic Afghansitan", thx to the cooperation between us three

working my way through the mission i will get by the patrol mission eventually, so i will give it a good makeover, too, like the changed heli-down event in version 1.1

greets Honcho

[Drongo69 117]

The new system is less focused on hotspots and more focused on zones and victory conditions. So for example, when you go on a patrol mission, your objective is in the middle of a zone patrolled by enemy squads. You may run into a platoons worth of troops or you may simply move to your objective without contact. The number of troops in a squad depends upon the type of mission too. So overall, the new system is much less "fixed" than the old one. In original Coin, the same mission in the same place is usually very similar. With the new system, the same mission in the same place twice will be very different. You will approach from a different angle, encounter (or not) different sized forces at different locations with different weapons, who may call in other squads to attack you from different angles.

I don't want to make a strategic game, but to add some depth, it would be easy to add:

- Seperate support levels for the enemies and the good guys (affects troop quality using setskill and allowfleeing), as well as rebel squad size

- Material levels (affecting weapon quality, support availabilty etc)

- Arms caches, financeers, etc to Search and Destroy missions. Eliminating these reduces enemy capabilities

Really these factors can be changed to anything, depending on what kind of mission you want. Change victory points to dollars and with a bit of extra scripting you have a mercenary campaign. Change a variable in one script and you can easily alter things like the negative impact of a civilian death, what increases/decreases when a rebel dies, etc.

Another thing I have been thinking about is different goals. For example, instead of just crushing the insurgency, you could be:

- A war junkie, trying to get x amount of total kills before your tour is up

- A conscript, just trying to make it to the end of your tour

- A mercenary, in it for the cash

- A glory hunter, trying to collect as many medals as possible.

- ...

[Snake Man 407]

Oh so its campaign, right right.... heh.

Ok tell me one thing, does it have enough scripts/stuff running so it triggers the OFP savegame bug?

[honchoblack 2]

since saves are only possible inbetween missions no bug has been reported so far

[Sinister-tnuC- 0]

just use the savegame cheat, ive had no save bugs with that, that bug was squashed in v.196 update.

shift key and keypad minus key a the same time , then type SAVEGAME. if you didnt know :P

[Drongo69 117]

I have introduced a number of new factors into the gameplay. Instead of one generic support level for the enemy, there are now:

- Morale: affects the quality of spawned troops. The higher the number, the better the AI and the less likely they are to retreat.

- Material: affects enemy weapon allocation. At low levels they get rifles only; medium gets rifles, MGs, RPGs etc; higher levels get SAMs, sniper rifles and grenade launchers.

- Popularity: affects the size of enemy squads

Currently these factors can only be adjusted by killing enemy VIPs in S&D missions.

Enemy VIPs:

- Hero: Killing him reduces enemy morale

- Financier: Killing him reduces enemy material

- Agitator: Killing him reduces enemy popularity

Of course, you have to find them first.

Killing civilians will result in enemy popularity increasing, convoy missions will decrease it, losing friendlies increases enemy morale, killing enemies slightly reduces their morale/material.

Next I plan to write an enemy_support script where if they have a high material rating, they get mortars, technicals, AFVs.

Thoughts?

[Placebo 29]

Thoughts?

Yeah the planned improvements sound fantastic

[sanctuary 19]

Thoughts?

Yeah the planned improvements sound fantastic

Indeed

[honchoblack 2]

Great new ideas that will push the CoIn system to another level, cant wait to play the variant

[hellfish6 7]

Thoughts?

Yeah the planned improvements sound fantastic

^ What he said... I can't wait. Brilliant!!

[Drongo69 117]

Most of that stuff was inspired by Hellfish6's earlier post. Thanks. The tricky thing now is the backbone of the system. These factors work in-mission, but how should they change between missions?

In other news, I've been playing Sanctuary's BIS-only template. It has some different mission types to those seen in Coin and Dynamic Afghanistan. But I think the biggest improvement is the scripting. Not only is it optimized, it is much MUCH neater than Coin. When released it should be the perfect starting point for DIY dynamic campaigns.

[honchoblack 2]

These factors work in-mission, but how should they change between missions?

I think they should influence the whole campaign, hence there should be events that are seperated from the missions, maybe predefined spawn zones all over the map, that are used for special events, triggered by a time of day or random, making it unpredictable where to find them, others could be as you said linked to the mission, to make it easier for the player to make them out

kind of secret mission objectives, if you make something out while beeing inserted, you could correct the course to the new event and check it out

[ag_smith 0]

Just a little idea to distinguish leaders from ordinary soldiers in raid missions - have them wear sunglasses and make sure the ordinary soldiers don't wear'em.

[honchoblack 2]

sounds like a good idea, until munk and where-is-my-rabbit come out with the new leader model (and civilians) but even then, sunglasses would look good on the leader

[Hawkins 8]

I've played the Dynamic Afghanistan mission, and I have to say that it's on the top five of my personal favourites. It's something OFP has been longing for some time now.

I'm eagerly waiting for the no-addon version. MP Coop compatibility will be good too (If I understood the first post correctly ). Can't wait to mod that with other addons.

The SEB NP2 version also sounds good, night patrols indeed can get hairy. Keep up the good work!

[honchoblack 2]

HawkinsDaFin -

thank you for the kind words of appreciation, in the name of the Dynamics Team (Sanctuary TacRod Me)

you can expect more version from us in the next time

as you said, Sanctuary is in the works for the complete addonfree version (not even a editor upgrade is needed) and TacRod has some ports planned, the vietnam port beeing one of them

and i myself will further work on "Dynamic Afghanistan" since there is so much more that is needed, and that needs fixing

greets Honcho

[sanctuary 19]

Quote[/b] ]'m eagerly waiting for the no-addon version. MP Coop compatibility will be good too (If I understood the first post correctly ). Can't wait to mod that with other addons

Just for the notice, the template "easy to port to any context" i am working on should not work online for COOP games.

I know nothing of MP specifics scripting, so it should work only without problems on SP (so far all what i have done seems to be working well there)

But, TacRod is making a coop compatible version, so you should really wait for it , judging his previous works it should really be a great mission