UNSUNG IS HERE

[cj525 5]

@ pathy

Listen mate I just reread that posting, it was a little sarcastic but I was getting a bit frustrated at the time at people talking about a problem which we are very aware of, and are currently working on and mentioned in the readme file.

So sorry for venting at your expense, it wasn't in the spirit of this forum. I've reduced my beer allowance for a week as punishment.

Atleast this punishment will give me a clear head to solve this problem.

[Pathy 0]

Well i finally got past the bit i was stuck at too and reconsidered my view abit - soon as i was stuck at the very beginning and had to die about 40 times to get past it, it didnt really help my first impressions (although i bounced up and down in my seat at the intro with the cool music, my first view of the jungle ect), but in the end me and my squad leader somehow managed to crawl through the VC and to the crash site. Not pretty but it worked. After that i was thinking "Damn, this is actually pretty good". I am glad i gave it another chance (couldnt sleep so.....), because its got alot of potential.

The atmosphere is fantastic (although the "charlie could be 10 meters away and i couldnt see him" bit was lost because i knew if charlie was within 200 meters i'd damn well know about it ), and when things were working, they were working. I kept loosing my squad leader even following him closely, so the most common command used was "where are you?"

I don't play in Cadet so that might be why i'm finding it so hard.

2nd mission was alot better - i shat myself when i realised we were heading back into the jungle, although i only got one kill and my squad only lost one guy, it felt alot better and alot more "fun". Even in a war like vietnam i do not believe that every patrol encountered 50 vc, killed them all, and took losses of, i dunno, 25 KIAs, or whatever the ratio flashpoint would have it if you played out such a scenario. Most of the time small patrols probably encountered each other, maybe killed a couple of each other from either side, and retreated back to report the contact, rearm ect. If they had any contact at all.

So this mission, in my minds eye, is much more closer to the bone. I'm no vietnam expert i'll admit that though, so correct me if i'm wrong.

What i conclude from this is, missions do not need tons of enemy in the jungle to make it effective. I personally do not need every patrol to be a bloodbath for either side. Just a couple of VC every now and then is enough to make me hate being in the jungle and hate having to go back into it (and give me a kick when it happens/i make it out), while not being too much to deal with. Of course you are going to have your rather larger assaults, but then you have plenty of freindlies to back you up, too! I think when you are making a mission you just need to find the sticking points (those points you have to play 40 odd times till a combination of things swings it in your favour) and adress them somehow.

I know its not your guys fault, the OFP engine isnt built to be a jungle warfare simulator on this scale, and you are doing the best you can! I'd say keep it up, because once the bugs are ironed it, it's going to be fucking class A.

[Pappy Boyington 0]

i mentioned the M60 sight is the M16.... i said all the west weapons, m60, m14, all of them have an m16 sight.

but anyway. althou i died twice in the demo campaign.. both by mystery killers. i am not upset or complaining about the not being able to see the enemy.

from those who know, will tell you thats how it was. you didnt shoot at faces, people, or even shadows... you shot simply at sounds.

Tell us some more Pappy, did the enemy headshot you from 200 meters when you were behind dense foliage, moving slowly, and not firing, back when you were in 'nam?  

hey! i stormed the jungles of veitnam during the gulf war, you werent there man!

actualy i do sympathize with you... however: ive had the whole "head shot at 500m from a machine gunner with a PK as he was running, gun pointed to the side" in regualr OFP. from day one when i installed it.. i have on several.. thousand, occasions seen the AI running at me, gun at hip, not even pointing my way, fire off one round, and one round alone. and next thing i know im reading death messages.

jam's HD soldiers are the only ones that arnt as lucky.

however in the jungle here.. its only happed once in the missions provided. the rest of the time i used the suggestion, before it was suggested, to hide behind anything hard and randomly fire at where i think they are. ended the one mission with 8 kills

[OFPCAT 0]

Just try to play unsung addons in ECP Mod, very nice experience...

[offtime 0]

after unpacking some pbo's from demo release, ive noticed that some of vegetation doesnt have proper selections in viev geometry, some dont even have viev geo at all

but mostly those are bad selections (components)

isnt this the case why AI can see thro foliage ?

[Messiah 2]

Quote[/b] ]Seriously, its made a legit point, good mod, but the ofp engine isnt built for jungle warfare. I played the mission about 10 times, getting churned up by the same invisible enemies every time, no matter how stealithily i moved ect. Because the AI can see through foliage. As AKD said earlier, if the AI could hav ethe same restrictions put on them it'd be awesome

Pathy.

Actually, OFP is built for anything. The problem of the foilage lies in the geoLOD. If the foilage has no geolod or not working geolod, its a disadvantage to the player, for while the player cant see behind the foliage, to the computer AI, there is nothing in between the player and AI.

I am sure the mod team is aware of this and is doing something about it. However......a problem will arise when u put in geolod for the foilage - it increases the load and create havoc with yer ram considering the amount of foilage had been placed on the island.

A partial solution would be perhaps to focus only a small sector for squad base missions on the island for dense foilage? eg - 1km by 1 km and try to cut down as much unnecessary objects and foilage as possible? Utimately it boils down to the question of importance since day1 of ofp - game play or aesthetics?

isnt it actually the view geo lod, not the geo lod? the geo lod will give it mass and something to bump against, the view geo tells the AI what they can and cant see through

[MI_Fred 0]

It is indeed the geo lod that the AI wont want to fire through. You can observe it's effectiveness in the trench bases I made for VTE, AI wont even shoot into the smallest fortresses and only when you stand up do they shoot at you in the higher one. There's another drawback with the geolod in this case: AI wont walk even close to it. Forget being overrun, sigh.

The strange thing with Unsung FB objects are that they seem to have very fine view geo lods. When I walk to a corner in a fortress on the edge of a the base so that I see nothing else but the corner, my fps jumps up to great numbers. That is, from 9 to 36 or the likes, me likey So for all I know that's what view geo is for; nothing to do with AI?

Personally I like what your aiming at, the colour and shape of the jungle. But what's with the ground textures? They do kinda blend with the vegetation but the overtly bleached texture could be ditched. Otherwise playing is like watching old photos... be that bad or good.

[esti_the_big 0]

Just an Idea about the final island... ever thought about lesser dense Jungle elemts? Its not that you should change all jungle forests into lesser denser ones, please don't, I really love that thick dense jungle and it adds a whole new element of danger to ofp (yeah, you kinda get scared of entering a jungle which is a good sign when a player gets scared. VC were kings of jungle warfare so its alright to fear them jungles ). But maybe create less dense jungle elements that blend in nicely with the more dense jungle elements. You'd then have some few spots (surrounded by dense jungle elemts) where you could "rest" with your squad before continuing into the denser, more evil jungle parts. Would also bring a lot of diversity into the island and its jungles, if those new elemts would blend in correctly. I'm not a addon maker, I don't know how it would hit performace if ofp had to load yet another vegetation type. But as said, it'd be great if the jungles had some few "clearer" spots in them with lesser ground foliage so you can see further and rest your squad, maybe anbush the enemy. If the player sees he won't survive the fight in the dense jungle parts, he could to try to escape with his squad into those clearer spots where his chances would be better. And then continue into the dense forest.

I've been repeating myself I know... But to me its a good idea

Another thing that I personally missed in the island was a nice river, not too wide, surrounded by thick jungle on both sides where you'd have to pass through with your patrol boat. But thats just a detail!

Btw, its great you didn't make the island too big. It really helps performace, and since the game already has such a slow pace its not something that a player will notice (he's just a tiny footsoldier anyway). The size is in my opinion just right. Great to see that you haven't made the same error Bas did with tonai, since that fantastic island was simply too much a performace hit due to its size and object count. Being able to make compromises isn't easy, and you've done a great job there with ghost island!

[akd 0]

@ akd

Your right in your comments but thats not the type of jungle I was aiming for, I was working on a triple canopy with very large root systems and more open on the ground level but the face count was just to high, I'll be revisiting this type of jungle, as it looks like a good challenge to get ingame, but for now the smaller more dense jungle systems is what is losely represented here.

I've done alot of research, and collected volumes of photos of vegetation for the areas in vietnam we are going to cover in the full mod. This forest section is a representation of a dense jungle environment within the constraints of the ofp engine. I was aiming at developing a dense jungle that would bring a fresh form of game play.

again I used photos and read discriptions of the environments these men had to contend with.  there will be alot of differing sections.

I believe "scrub jungle" might be the description for this type of forest, aka "the bush" (in a more specific sense). It is an excellent representation and I would love to play it online in a PvP situation. Could be really intense. Your environments are really superb, with natural transistions and convincing vegetation.

Since you are aiming for a realistic and immersive environment, you might consider tying some of the louder "jungle" noises (i.e. monkeys and such) to specific area triggers (but could just as well trigger a far away sound) and have a somewhat more low-key constant background noise of insects and birds. Also, I haven't tried it, but if there were a transistion from day to night noises (greatly increased insect background, minimized bird and monkey calls), that would be awesome.

[Bloodnick 0]

I sent a submittion to join the mod, but I did'nt get any answers from the team leader

[Shinbusan 0]

akd, good point. I forgot, but it is true that something is not right with sounds. Better idea is to add sounds in addon and to make maybe some template to place triggers with sounds (randomized maybe, mp compatible). Night/day sounds sound even better. Did you checked Vietcong for their sounds? Because I hear like your sounds have lower quality then how I remember Vietcong sounds.

I am preparing some attack&defend mission using Unsung for Polish MP society. Don't know how it will work, but if I finish it (well, I do not always finish what I start ) and if we will play it, I will give you some report.

[sim 0]

Hey Bloodnick. Erm I'm not sure why. But contacting me, CJ525 or CJE is fine. So if you wanna talk to me about it go ahead   PM me.

Quote[/b] ]I don't play in Cadet so that might be why i'm finding it so hard

No me either but that's what the demo campaign was designed in. The full mod one will be for veteran only.

@Shinbusan: do you mean the jungle sounds or the weapon ones?

sim

[Shinbusan 0]

Jungle sounds as akd said.

One more bug. But it is not Unsung, but UH bug. When it is destroyed (i.e. setdammage 1) it is still makings engine sound for some long time.

[cj525 5]

well back form a hard days work   .  

@ bloodnick sorry mate I've been on the road today and haven't had a chance to get to my mail. But your more then welcome to pm me or email me, we definitly welcome peps who are intersted in helping us out.

@ esti the big

Already doing that   . I think your going to like what is coming out in the first chapter of the full mod. There will be very differing environs to deal with and all potenially deadly. from seeing great distances to only a few feet.

[esti_the_big 0]

@ esti the big

Already doing that . I think your going to like what is coming out in the first chapter of the full mod. There will be very differing environs to deal with and all potenially deadly. from seeing great distances to only a few feet.

Nice to hear that. Keep to those extremely dense Jungle elements like in the demo, its such a great new thing in ofp! The big majority of the jungle should still be really dense like in the demo, just some lighter spots in it for gameplay and visuals! Its just important that the different jungle types blend in nicely together and that they don't differ too much in feeling. After all, its one big jungle in the end, it'd be unrealistic if there'd suddenly be a big change in colour and tree types. Just different kinds of jungle densities (more or less rgound foliage), that should result in an extremely natural feeling!

I guess you already know this, its just that I'm really excited about this jungle thing!

[armandobronca 0]

I love it.

More missions pls

Congrats

[scousejedi 0]

OK got to mission 3

(loved #2: fired 1 shot then realised it was at a squad member and then followed leader hitting the deck whenever anything happened. Hear shot - look for log to lie against - great tension and believable)

at start of cutscene:

Missing addon CSJMedEvac - I think

and then :

after cutscene ended with red mission failed -

missing addon editorupdate102 (I know what this is but Im using a clean install of GotY atm)

Also if the guys name is Norman Owens why does he sign his letters home Owen <- very picky but this is cool.

[Warrior Xâ„¢ 0]

at start of cutscene:

Missing addon CSJMedEvac - I think

and then :

after cutscene ended with red mission failed -

missing addon editorupdate102 (I know what this is but Im using a clean install of GotY atm)

Yeah ok that's probably due to the fact that it's a early beta release. And that means countless bugs we are all trying to fix. Sorry about that.

Also if the guys name is Norman Owens why does he sign his letters home Owen <- very picky but this is cool.

....erm...ok we might have screwed this one up if that is true. Wait.... i know a soltion to this problem...his buddy's in 'Nam call him Owen. Yes... Owen is his nickname  

<span style='font-size:5.8pt;line-height:100%'>Nah kidding we probably screwed it up....shit...can you read this?</span>

[cj525 5]

AI view distance in jungle is fixed (Thanks again to FAB), I've run several tests and if your very observant you can see the enemy before they see you, right now at about 50 feet the enemy might see you if they are facing you and your moving fast. I've come to around 30 - 20 feet before they open fire.

this fix will be in the update, coming very soon as well as the weapon smoke fix done by nightkiller[orcs]. plus a new ak47 sound is being used with it's distinctive bark. there will be a few more improvements aswell. Offtimes new units are being kitted out with the vietnam BDUs, and are looking very good (these wont be ready for the update unfortunately).

Cheers

[t80 0]

would it be some kind of full installer, so u just have to press next? with all mods and all grass.

[ALYGATOR 0]

Please make jungle sound in the mission editor

[sim 0]

Quote[/b] ]Also if the guys name is Norman Owens why does he sign his letters home Owen <- very picky but this is cool.

Nothing has been screwed up This is the nickname his family called him when he was younger.

Quote[/b] ]Please make jungle sound in the mission editor

The jungle sound if from General Barrons Realistic Combat Patrol Mission: Grab it here >>>> http://www.ofpec.com/missions/mission_detail.php?ID=901

Damn good mission

sim

[esti_the_big 0]

AI view distance in jungle is fixed (Thanks again to FAB), I've run several tests and if your very observant you can see the enemy before they see you, right now at about 50 feet the enemy might see you if they are facing you and your moving fast. I've come to around 30 - 20 feet before they open fire.

Good to hear that!

Is this achieved by area-based trigges? So you can define areas on the map (jungle parts) on the map where view distance is only 50 feet or so? and further viewing distances on open places?

[akd 0]

Quote[/b] ]Also if the guys name is Norman Owens why does he sign his letters home Owen <- very picky  but this is cool.

Nothing has been screwed up   This is the nickname his family called him when he was younger.

Quote[/b] ]Please make jungle sound in the mission editor

The jungle sound if from General Barrons Realistic Combat Patrol Mission: Grab it here >>>> http://www.ofpec.com/missions/mission_detail.php?ID=901

Damn good mission  

sim

Are y'all American? Really inconsequential, but if it is just a "cultural translation" issue you might want to change, American families don't call family members by their last names, or by nicknames derived from their last names.

[cj525 5]

@ esti the big

The Ai view distance is limited by the view LOD.