Abandoned Armies 1.4

[major grunt 0]

I have completed AA twice, once in a purely task oriented mode to achieve a favorable outcome in the shortest possible time and the second time in an exploratory mode to see what all the author may have included in the mission. My times were 13 and 18 hours respectively. Each run through is unique. This is not the typical run and gun type mission and it has no arcade characteristics. It is easy to get immersed in the story line and even consider actions that would benefit the islanders after you defeat the armies. What happens next in the play depends on what already has happened. The fact you can get another medic if you lose the first is just one example of the numerous twists in the play. The author has composed a complex plot with a great deal of randomness that involves large numbers of a variety of units. The mission stretches the capabilities of OFP and the player.

[Nicolas Eymerich 0]

Thobson, thanks again for your reply.

Quote[/b] ]

I suspect you either have an unofficial addon on lurking in your addon folder

That's true

Quote[/b] ]

you are not using the correct Malden

That's negative

Quote[/b] ]

2. Accelerated time. As for fog. Also – I provide you with a police jeep and car a motorcycle and a truck – and you walk!?

You've given player the ability to save up to 42 times (just a little curiosity: why 42 and not 40 or 50 ?). I've often seen a lot of armored units attacking one each others along the road... What Can a little jeep do against a big big tank?

In other words, setting a limitated save make the player to be more cautios... and more runner

[su27 0]

Quote[/b] ]why 42 and not 40 or 50 ?

You haven't seen "Hitch-hikers guide to the galaxy", have you?

[thobson 38]

Quote[/b] ]You haven't seen "Hitch-hikers guide to the galaxy", have you?

42 is indeed the answer to life the universe and everything. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ultimate_Answer   As I was calculating how many saves I should give the player my calculation steadily homed in on this number.  I assumed that any difference between 42 and the number I had calculated was down to my calculating error.

I have yet to see the film.  I heard the original radio broadcast back in 1981 (I think it was), I read all the books as they were written and I saw the TV series.

Major: Thank you again for your kind comments.  Many players fail to find the second medic, let alone make us of him.  Well done.  I was beginning to think I had hidden him too well.

[XCess 0]

haha the medic, the only guy i had in my squad when I assasinated both leaders before 9am

Love this mission THob, gonna play through it again when I can be bothered to lower my settings.

**btw** did you correct the bug that happens after killing the leaders early?

[thobson 38]

Quote[/b] ]**btw** did you correct the bug that happens after killing the leaders early?

Oh yes. I paid very particular attention what my beta tester's did.  It wasn't a bug as such it was just that all the dialogue made very little sense after you killed Andropov before even talking to Tatyana - you were indeed one of my most awkward beta testers  Imagine - who would climb the hill, ignore Vigny and everything in it and then go and kill Andropov in the airbase at the other side of the island before doing anything else??

[XCess 0]

Quote[/b] ]**btw** did you correct the bug that happens after killing the leaders early?

Oh yes. I paid very particular attention what my beta tester's did.  It wasn't a bug as such it was just that all the dialogue made very little sense after you killed Andropov before even talking to Tatyana - you were indeed one of my most awkward beta testers  Imagine - who would climb the hill, ignore Vigny and everything in it and then go and kill Andropov in the airbase at the other side of the island before doing anything else??

Someone awkward.... like me

I meant the slowdown bug due to what the units do afterwards, trying not to give too much away here lol.

With the kind of operations you generally conduct in Abandoned Armies, I preferred to have as small a team as possible. The way I played it, most of the time it was best for me to go in alone with a few stolen weapons.

When you have a squad of AI under your control, I can only get them to operate the way I want them to under very controlled circumstances, AA never allowed this, which I loved. So if I ever brought anyone with me they'd end up dead.

So I thought, right let's go and do this alone.. what's the best way of defeating an enemy... destroying their morale... how do you destroy morale... kill the leaders. Or atleast, that's a quick and (relatively) easy way of lowering morale.

It's much better than going crying to your uncle about being hungry

I'm surprised nobody else (AFAIK) has tried the same approach.

[Twistedpretzel 0]

I have, tried a sort of the same approach.

I refuse to go anywhere near enemy forces with AI, they always cause me trouble, so instead I have been using them to go on foot and scout some locations out while I do the same, just waiting a bit until the fog lifts to make any large moves.

[thobson 38]

I use my team quite a lot - mostly though to protect me. A typical arrangement would be for me to have an M21, my soldiers to have PKs and my medic and civilians to have Bizons. I flush out the enemy at long range, the PK gunners bring them down as they come after me and the Bizons provide short range protection in case anyone sneaks round the side or rear. Later on we all have Bizons as the engagements become short range. Finally I use my team to crew my tanks. They are also great for brining down choppers in a hurry.

In addition I use the AI as pack mules to carry mines and satchel charges (these are my preferred weapons against armour, LAW/RPG being too dangerous when there is infantry about)

It is fair to say though that all my team or on Hold Fire for a large part of the mission

[major grunt 0]

It must be the purist in me but I attempt to play this mission in concert with the given scenario. First the leader/player is an inexperienced kid wearing his dad’s uniform and initially carrying his pistol. He is not likely and neither are any of the civilians or militiamen going to know how to operate a M1A1 or T80 or any other piece of complicated equipment. Driving a truck is about the max of their skills. Also an RPG/LAW requires considerable skill to be effective and in general you only get one rocket at a time unless you have an ammo truck. It takes two satchel charges to take out an M1A1 and 4 RPG/LAW to take out either a T80 or M1A1. Hence, stay away from tanks and armor unless you can predict where they will go or you are brave enough to try and sneak up on it. Hopefully when there are no ground troops around to take you out. The two times I won I never used armor nor took any out. Likewise, maybe the militiamen might know how to use PKs or M60s, but believe me in the hands of inexperienced troops they generally just make a lot of noise and attract a lot of attention.

Also Bisons and any other 9mm suppressed short barrel submachine gun are extremely short-range weapons since they must use subsonic rounds and have barrels less than 8-inchs long (the suppressor doesn’t count as barrel length). OFP doesn’t recognize this restriction but I try to play it that way. I do agree that the best use of the team is 6 o’clock cover at some distance behind the kid. The medic should be even further back.

[thobson 38]

Now that is what I call a very realistic way to approach the mission.  If only I had thought of it I could have scripted their inability to operate complex weapons - oh well that is for next time

[Zanzibar 0]

(Yep it’s my first post ever since 2002, but never stopped playing & reading …)

Hi Trevor,

Compliments for your mission. It even triggered me to post in this forum, hardly to imagine with all ArmA and game 2 developments. I need to complete this game; addiction is the right wording I think.

I’m stuck due to a crash that occurs every time. Can you tell me what I’m doing wrong? Writing from a different location without my PC so perhaps mixing-up names, places and so, apologies upfront.

What I Have:

AMD 3500+

GF 6600GT

1GB mem

Win XP2

OFP + resistance 1.96

Clean installation, no add-ons apart from editor update in res. add-on folder

Settings: Normal

Mission version: 1.40

What I did so far:

After Tatiana was killed moved to Pessange where I killed some guards and took a Jeep with gun. Rescued some groups of civilians got a soldier here and there and moved to the mountain lodge without any problems. With the team now equipped move South  (Dourdon?). Found a (Russian) soldier in a village that joined us. Left the truck and Jeep and on foot further south through the mountains. Passed an empty village full with mines (with signs). Eliminated forces at the southern Fuel station. Tried several ways to attack the main villages and tried to kill Andropov or is it Stamonov in the Southern village.

Only left with one guy (Medic) who is still hidden in the mountains. Managed to kill a lot of soldiers (Crawling & hiding in buildings). Killed most Machine gunners and destroyed the T80 and BMP that arrived later on. Also managed to kill the officer in the House kidnapping the lady. Made a save there.

Problem:

After killing the Southern officer, no problem. Killed already a lot of soldiers. When I now start to kill more soldiers, they start running away. The subtitles also make me aware that they are afraid and start running away. At that exact moment OFP crashes every time with a normal Win XP message (do you want to send report etc.) and OFP stops, back to my XP desktop.

Reinstalled OFP fresh, no add-ons, only editor updated in res. Add-on folder. Settings to normal. Is there anything I can do to prevent this crash?

Rgrds

Zanzibar/KvD

[thobson 38]

Interesting. I have a Dell/Intel computer with video card drivers that are out of date but I can’t get better ones from Dell. I occasionally get crashes (in any application, not just ofp) which are reported as being caused by the ATI video drivers. I also occasionally get a crash during this mission at the point and in the way you describe. I put this down to my flaky video drivers, it cannot be an addon issue as I don’t have addons apart from the editor upgrade.

This problem never occurs when testing the ending of the mission, only by playing it through from the beginning. I have lost count of the number of times I have played through from the beginning to the end and I have only ever had his crash on two occasions. Both times my solution – which worked both times – was to go away and deal with the soldiers in the north – then come back and finish the southern army. I don’t know why, but it has worked on the two occasions I did it. I put it down to things being in different places when I come back south and so avoiding the bug in the video drivers. But that is a guess.

It may be that other people have also suffered from this and not said anything, but so far though it looks like it is just you and I.

I hope this helps and I am sorry for the frustration this may be causing you.

[General Barron 0]

Well, I got a *slight* upgrade to my crappy computer, and I've picked up this mission again. Yippee, sometimes I get 8 fps now!

Anywhoo, I'm running into the same error some others have hit. I get this message when I start the mission:

It only seems to happen if I abort the mission and start it again. That is, if I load OFP and start this mission, I get no errors. But if I hit 'retry' (before saving), or abort and restart the mission, I get the error. I hope it isn't vital to the mission, because I've continued on regardless.

But now I'm running into a second problem. I got to the mountain lodge, listened to the radio, and drove a truck out to the civillians alone. Then I got back in the truck, waited until the resistance fighter said "okay we're all in", and drove back to the lodge. But when I get out of the truck, the civillians just keep following me!

I've tried running all over the lodge area, to no avail. What is supposed to happen? What makes the objective 'tick' off?

Could one civillian have been left behind somehow (even though the leader said it was clear)? How many civillians am I supposed to have with me? I have 2 females, 2 males, and the resistance fighter.

[thobson 38]

The only other people that have had errors similar to this one were able to fix them by ensuring they have NO unofficial addons (except your Editor Upgrade) in their addons folder.

To be specific:

Quote[/b] ]Could one civillian have been left behind somehow (even though the leader said it was clear)?

No.

Quote[/b] ]How many civillians am I supposed to have with me? I have 2 females, 2 males, and the resistance fighter.

That is what you should have.

Quote[/b] ]I've tried running all over the lodge area, to no avail. What is supposed to happen? What makes the objective 'tick' off?

What should happen depends on whether you arrive back at the lodge on foot or in a vehicle, in either case you end up in a cutscene.  This is triggered by being close to the lodge - as determined by a distance command, not a trigger.  The actual line that does it is:

<table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td>Code Sample </td></tr><tr><td id="CODE">if ((Alexi distance (object 17468)) < 80) then {goto"gotthere"}

This condition is checked every couple of seconds

This problem of not getting the cutscene at this point is so common when people have unofficial addons that it makes me think that some of the addons might be changing the ID of objects on the map.  That would kill this mission.  It is so large that to avoid the large savegame bug and to keep down lag I have made a lot of use of object IDs to define locations rather that place markers or give objects names.

8fps?  Have you talked to Planck?  He barely manages 4 - and he played the mission through 3 times!!

[major grunt 0]

Have you checked that the islands are the default OFP islands and not enhanced ones?

[thobson 38]

Indeed, any modification that changes object ID numbers on the map of Malden would be incompatible with this mission.

[karantan 0]

Hehehe, you could give this mission a subtitle "Back to the roots" in relation, how this mission persistently and 'proudly' denieing all those mighty mods, addons, visual enhacements, and all that kind of stuff, and how the people are purging their ofp folder as whole because of it!  

How you can play with 8fps or even 4fps!? That's cruel torture (of yourself), that's what it is! You have my symphaties, lads.

[Pathy 0]

Great mission, i'm only about 3 hours in.

[XCess 0]

I think I'm gonna et rid of all of my addon and mod folders, set my settings down to 64x64 textures, turn off everything except clodudlets and try again. I loved this mission when I first played it but my version of ofp seems to be getting laggier than ever (my ofp folder is currently at 7.77gb ). If I don't get a decent framerate with that, I'm going to clear out a spare 40gb hdd I just found the other day sitting around my room, take out my normal hdd, and make an abandoned armies dedicated drive

THobson, you should write a book about Abandoned Armies. Would be the greatest military novel of all time, it's definately the greatest military game of all time.

I can't remember who said it first, I have an idea it was either Planck or GuiltyRoachKiller, but they were right, Abandoned Armies is not so much a mission as it's own game. I would certainly go out and spend Å30 on it.

[thobson 38]

Karantan/All:  It is not necessary to get rid of all your addons – just tidy up your addons folder as described on Mikero's site here and here.  This will have a beneficial effect on all your missions (or so I am told).  Given all the problems that even unused addons can cause I am now so pleased that I kept my machine free of all except General Barrons Editor Upgrade.

Pathy: 3 hours in.  If you rush it you probably have another 6 to go, if you play it the way I do you have more like 23!!  Best of luck, I hope you enjoy it.

Xcess: A dedicated Abandoned Armies hard drive!  I am sure you jest.  I believe the comments you refer to were made by Mikero.  I do appreciate your comments also – despite you giving me such a hard time when you were beta testing it .  The problem about writing it as a story is that it would only be one person’s idea of what happens – it would be linear – and everything would be included – no nagging feeling at the end ‘did I miss something?’, ‘what if I had …’ sort of thing.  What I tried to do with the mission was make it so that each time the experience will be different.  After Vigny I always drive like hell over land to the lodge.  I won’t tell you what I do then just lets say it is rarely before 11:00 that any soldiers are killed (excluding Tatyana’s guards and murderers – they all have to go obviously) and by then I have a full (one medic) team and I also have been given a map.  Other players stand and fight at Vigny.  I am sure we each play different missions with a different storyline running through our heads, that couldn’t be captured in a single book.  Perhaps we should have a competition – the best novel based on… sort of thing  But then again - they would all be spoilers for new players so you can't win.

[XCess 0]

Bah! Anyone that hasn't played Abandoned Armies already is a heretic!

I am actually giving serious consideration to the dedicated Abandoned Armies hard rive... Thing is, the jumper switch seems to have gone missing

Hmm, maybe we could make a website with a password that you are told at completion of the mission. Then only cheaters and completers can view the stories.. woo a rhyme. Ok, maybe not the greatest idea, but it's 8:30am and I haven't had any sleep

Quote[/b] ]I do appreciate your comments also – despite you giving me such a hard time when you were beta testing it

That's my job

[karantan 0]

It is not necessary to get rid of all your addons – just tidy up your addons folder

I know that, it was just some kind of a mid-call (I'll do some more of them also here), what some people are prepared to do (even to reinstal OFP! ), to play this mission satisfiently. What do you think, how many such missions is out there, that the player will do all those things 'for her'?

Given all the problems that even unused addons can cause I am now so pleased that I kept my machine free of all except General Barrons Editor Upgrade.

Not that I'm some kind of an addon freak, far from it, but I don't know to which extend can you be pleased with a such 'conservative' or limited approach towards OFP; you're missing loads and loads of a great missions to play on such way.

@XCess

I know you're jokin' about the heretism, but be asured, there're even people out there, which don't like this mission one bit, and that's quite normal you know. The difference between them and us is (beside of the playing habbit and the playing taste of course), that they (usually) don't go on forums, and criticise the mission(s) -it's much much easier and less 'risky' and 'stresful' to praise the mission(s) when you think it's apropriate,  than to criticise them-, they just stop playing the mission, and (usually) that's it, no feedback.

About the book ... heh, just go back down on the solid ground again, will ya, mate?

[XCess 0]

Why have solid ground when we can make THobson into a millionaire so he can buy a game engine and make a full standalone game! Ok, maybe I am in the clouds a bit

[Pathy 0]

Pathy: 3 hours in.  If you rush it you probably have another 6 to go, if you play it the way I do you have more like 23!!  Best of luck, I hope you enjoy it.

Hopefully its not going to be over that quickly. To be honest, i'm rather lost atm, as in lost for direction as to what i should do next. Before you say anything, i am well aware that you wanted the player to feel such things as part of the atmosphere

It's great, i'll say that for free. Only thing that annoys me is the default BIS soldiers being typically crack shots.....i'm too used to HD Means i have to pick and choose my fights though, so its all good.