Abandoned Armies 1.4

[Timblesink 0]

This mission is the culmination of everything that OFP should be. God himself couldn't make a better mission for it than this.

I demand Abandoned Armies 2 for ArmA!

[thobson 38]

Well thank you Timblesink.  God is quite important to many people so I will just settle for the thought that you quite like this mission.  Thank you.

Abandoned Armies for Armed Assault?!  Ha! I think I will leave that as “an exercise for the reader† In fact through my e-mail correspondence I suspect that at least one person is making moves along these lines.

Whether or not that comes to fruition I do make a request of all mission makers.  If your mission only involves town A, or camp B, then why not put a few groups doing some realistic stuff in all the near by towns and camps.  It will scare for crap out of the player if he were to wander over there.  Even better, make them respond realistically to the actions of the player.  

[savedbygrace 2]

I believe that was what made the mini campaign such a hit, Trevor. Most maps only include locals with the objectives as part of the playing field but you have brought to life the whole of the island. Instead of passing through a ghost town, you find yourself sidetracked from your current objective to recon the patrol routes and observation directions of the new units that you just encountered at the next local. It's a simple effect that everyone seems to overlook. Just little details that are so simple to incorporate have seperated this labor of love from all others. In fact, not finding everything in the mission does not make it a waste but a highly replayable mission with the potential of immersing the player into a different style each time he/she plays it. I for one have enjoyed the sidetracking and having to adjust my approach style for each grid of the map. Having to improvise to adapt to ever changing environments "IS" reality....................... All of the life that you have brought to the island would only be moving targets without your storyline. Two seperate factions, with differing strengths and weaknesses cooperating for mutual survival that inevitably results in confrontation is a reallistic story. Throw in some innocent bystanders and you have the planet Earth. 

Just one concern....I have been playing with ECP so the weather is unreal. It rains off and on in an inconsistent fashion. Have you made the mission to be clear most of the time? If so, I think I'll restart without ECP.

Thanks for the Mission, it is greatly revered. I stand in awe at mission makers such as yourself.

[thobson 38]

Well thank you.  It is always a pleasure to find someone that enjoys the mission.

As for the weather:  The overcast level, the fog level and the rain intensity remain static for random periods at the start of the mission.  After the random waits (one for the fog and one for overcast) the fog level and overcast level each begin to cycle continuously between maximum and minimum levels.  When the overcast gets to some specific level I make it rain and when it reaches another level I make it rain even more.  So that the weather is different later in the mission I reduce the maximum levels of fog and overcast as the player makes progress, but the cycling continues throughout.  Although the overcast level and fog level each vary on different cycles I have arranged it so that they are both at a minimum around 16:00.  The sun is setting at that time (the mission is set in December) and it looks quite pretty.

As to whether the weather is consistent, well there are two points on this that I considered at the time of making the mission.  Firstly after a global nuclear exchange I suspect the weather might be a bit odd, and secondly I live in the UK and I defy anyone to spot a pattern on a showery day!

So the fact that it keeps raining is no reason to abandon ECP, though I understand that ECP has a random weather capability so I suggest you turn that off.

No reason to be in awe.  Have a go yourself.  When I started making that mission I was quite a novice.  There were many things in the mission that I had never done before, sounds, voices, dialogues, etc etc.  I just learned how things worked and then did them.  Also OFPEC and especially the beta testers there were a terrific source of inspiration and ideas.

[R0adki11 3949]

One of the best OFP missions, so much replay ability

[thobson 38]

Apologies for the delayed response.  Many thanks for your comment R0adk11.  Much appreciated.  

Just in case anyone is still playing this mission and thinks they have found everything, there is a complete spoiler document to be found on this thread.

[-Variable- 0]

THobson! Thanks for this great mission. Let me join to all of the compliments that were posted here.

I have a problem. I rescued the civilians from their hideout after I heard their distress call over the radio. I got them all (4 civis, and one resi leader) to the uncle's mountain lodge. They disembark from the truck when I do, but they act like they never got there- they keep following me and get inside the truck when I do. Any ideas?

Unfortunately, i dont have a retry point before rescuing them, and I don't want to start the mission from scratch...

[thobson 38]

Coincidentally someone has just e-mailed me about this (was it you?)  I have been away on holiday hence the slow reply.  Here is my e-mail reply, which did solve the problem:

Quote[/b] ]Once you get the civilians back to the lodge you should get a cut scene and the civilians then leave you.  Please make sure that you do not have any unofficial addon and are not using a map of Malden that has been modified in

anyway.  Some people that have had problems found they went away if they did a new install of OFP + Resistance + 1.96 and then used General Barron's Editor upgrade.  I am sorry to say that if you get to the lodge and do not

get the cutscene then something is wrong and you will need to start again.

As a test you could try finding object 17468.  The cutscene starts when the player is close to this object.  In the standard map of Malden it is near the lodge.

The mission is so large that I had to make a lot of use of the location of objects on the map rather than use triggers to help cut down on lag so any modification to the island that changes object IDs willcause problems. I have also found that some other unofficial addons also cause problems even though they are not used in the mission.

[-Variable- 0]

It wasn't me that emailed you, but I do use retexstured versions of BIS islands. Oh well, guess I'll just start over again. It's not that well into the mission... Thanks Thobson!

[.kju 3244]

if you do use the "WGL CWC Islands Texture Replacement Pack" or

"WGL Nogova Texture Replacement Pack" (link), there should be no problem!

(as only the ground textures are placed. nothing else gets changed)

there might be problems with the "WGL CWC Vegetation

Replacement" and i am pretty certain that there will be problems

with the (FFUR) Mr. Burns AEC Islands Selection.

so it depends what you use right now.

ps: cant remember 100% if Abandoned Armies was on CWC islands or Nogova

(pretty certain it was Malden though)

[-Variable- 0]

Yes it takes place on Malden. I use the retextured islands that were released with FFUR, hence my problem.

[sanctuary 19]

From what i remember some island makers told me, the problem with modified island is that as soon an object (tree/bush/building..) is changed , replaced or modified , all the island objects ID will change.

And so mission scripts that use object ID for their scripts, like the Abandoned Armies mission does, will be broken by such modified island.

[thobson 38]

I suppose I could have used absolute grid references, but that would be seriously tedious.  Imagine destroying all those buildings, fences etc. without using object IDs!!

[liljb15 0]

I suppose I could have used absolute grid references, but that would be seriously tedious. Imagine destroying all those buildings, fences etc. without using object IDs!!

Hey Thobson are you thinking about making a mission like this for Arma I mean with Arma you could finally put in more than 12 people for your squad.

[-Variable- 0]

I think that 12 are more than enough. It cant get "personal" as it is right now with more than that.

[liljb15 0]

I think that 12 are more than enough. It cant get "personal" as it is right now with more than that.

Not to me a resistance army doesn't seem like a resistance army with just 12 people.

[-Variable- 0]

Well, Let's leave the decision to Thobson, it seems like he knows what he's doing hehe..

[thobson 38]

1) No I have no plans to make a mission for Arma

2) You are right a resistance army of only 12 is not right, but what I had here was not an army but a rag tag bunch of assorted resistance solders, desperate civilians and a deserter with a conscience.  I wanted the player to have feelings for each member of the team, I wanted it to be personal.  Originally I was trying for a team of only 7 then I could have made references to medieval Japanese samurai etc. but the plot flowed and I got a team of 10 (yes I know most people will only get 9, but it possible to get 10).

3) As for the limit of 12 in a group and 63 groups each side for east and west: I came nowhere near these limits.

[tourist 617]

Hello Thobson and hello to the other people still playing this mission,

I had played it some time ago with ECP 1.085e plus DMA Lean/Roll mod and that went like a charm.

Recently I restarted the mission with a highly customized OFP. Basically I have installed the two Island Replacement Packs (Modern OFP 1 and 2) from OFPC.de and I use ECP 1.085e in conjunction with GRAA 3.0 these days in the mod folder way. Also i forgot to change the Terrain Detail Settings to normal and started with high.

Ok, first things first: I do believe that you, Thobson, are a really gifted mission maker since inspite of all the no-no's I did to your mission Abendoned Armies, it remained playable somehow.

I started it, had a hard time defeating the soldiers in Vigny with all that heavy rain (which indeed reduced visibility to almost zero) and after my cousin had to die, I escaped in the police Jeep.

But very soon I had to leave the vehicle because I came under fire (at least heard shots close by) and continued on foot. I got lost and stubled over a hut (but not the mountain lodge) containing armed civilians. Maybe they were one of the groups you are supposed to find later on. Since they didn't talk to me, I went on and hoped to have identified this groups hut correctly on the map as an orientation point.

I headed North-East until I had to hide and crawl around two Abrams tanks. At that point, it became obvious to me, that the firing which had caused me to leave the Jeep was not necessarily meant to stop me; instead the fighting between the two armies had started already. I heard distant sounds of gunfire and grenades and while I was crawling I got a yellow text message telling me the world was a much better place now since Andropov had died.

Apparently, the factions had started to fight at a much earlier point than they did when I played Abandoned Armies the last time.

Now I would like to now if that happened because my addon-addiction screwed everything up or because of my wrong Terrain settings or if it is possible they started to fight simply because of the fact that all seven or ten soldiers (really, once i got a rifle they were doomed in this poor visibility and even more so at close range...) i killed in Vigny belonged to the same faction

To give you a more detailed report, I will make a second installation of OFP on a different hard drive partition; this time without the Replacement Packs but again with ECP and GRAA 3.0 addon folders to choose.

[thobson 38]

Quote[/b] ]Now I would like to now if that happened because my addon-addiction screwed everything up

In short - yes. Your use of addons is also causing you to have very poor visibility when it rains. From your description (finding the armed civis - but them not talking to you) it is clear that the object IDs on your map are different from those in the standard map - so a lot of things in the mission will now not work correctly. Also buildings that should be destroyed will not be and some that should not be will be destroyed, guards will be looking in the wrong direction etc.etc.

Best of luck with your attempt with a clean installation.

[tantajo 0]

Thanks thobson for a great mission. I got too wrapped up in it however and I ended up uninstalling OFP for the time being and making my wife hide the discs (I really had too much to do and this mission was sucking too much time). So I didn't get to finish but it was really fun while it lasted. At some point I will finish.

Anyways I'm kind of mad because I thought I wasn't getting anywhere but after reading this thread I'm realizing I was on the right track. I killed maybe 30-50 people in chapoi and temporarily had my run of the place, but I didn't think to search every building for the commander.... from the in-game dialogue I kind of realized that if I killed enough people the other army would come a knockin, but after I couldn't find the leader I just kind of got stuck and ended up having to give it up for the time being.

I tried to follow the story for a while but I ended up just wanting to kill a bunch of people... it's actually not too hard to clean out chapoi if you have an HK as people keep running onto you and let them kill you.

Anyways, thanks

[Black Shadow 0]

The Abandoned Armies mission is one of best SP missions out of date that player can play and plat it Really... huge amount of staff in old good OFP game... With the WTWE and Operation Black Mamba are just awesome

I don't completed that missions anyway but I played in it a lot and have some problems with strategy... few times I was very suprised... scripts work perfectly good One time when I clear the villige and try to pack some guns into truck two convoys get near city - a jeeps with HMGs and tanks... second time a infranty patrol...

That missions is hard but the dealing with it is most awesome thing in OFP world... Don't have any mojor bugs

[xxbbcc 6]

Thanks for this mission! I played it sometimes back but I enjoyed it a lot. Very well done, OFP needs more like this.

[thobson 38]

Given that a new thread has been started on this I thought I should bump this one to save people looking

[riffleman 20]

Iam playing this mission,but due to poor visibility i stop.at time of 11 oclock i did't get good visibility.so iam stoping.