Novajev CTI + DAC

[dmarkwick 261]

OK, for a thoroughly more complete CTI experience here is a BETA of the advanced version. SP again due to large numbers on the entire island, but again you're welcome to try it out in MP if you have the bandwidth/CPU/memory etc.

Grab it here:

DM_CTI_Novajev_DAC_advanced.rar

New elements are:

Ground troops have manually placed waypoints as part of their random patrols. Bare in mind I know the best ways to attack most villages so it made sense for me to patrol these weak areas although you would need to be pretty unlucky to meet a patrol at these areas at those times.

Unarmoured patrols are almost exclusively patrolling from town center to town center, using roads between. Very nice activity and very realistic.

Armoured patrols no longer spend time on the coast/beaches etc, so there's more chance of meeting them.

Also, as this is a beta, the DAC markers are enabled so you can see map activity. Mining the waypoints is cheating remember (but good fun nontheless.)

If anyone gets an error message about a BAS_OPFOR addon please let me know. I never get this error but one of my friends said they did.

It can be a very, very busy game indeed and most of the first half will be a desperate struggle for survival, which can be quite tense sometimes. I've been holed down in bushes & hollows while vehicles and ground troops search the area for me. And more often than not finding me too, but not without a fight

[fasad 1]

Firstly, great work!! DAC and CTI are a perfect match. Keep it up : )

Now, some bugs. I've been playing single player as the West on the BUSY version for the past couple of hours and have noticed the following problems :

- towns that have changed from east to west or visa-versa display both markers on the map. I can't tell who owns which town. The green proximity circles aslo remain indefinately.

- some start points are unplayable, such as in forests or on steep hillsides. the ai can't cope with this.

- as commander, group names and their radio callsigns do not match. abc are fine, but delta report as echo and so on. hotel radio as kilo.

- some east vehicles (crew wear black suits) cannot be salvaged. their wrecks and dead crews remain on the map.

Mods used : MFCTI 1.16, ECP

[dmarkwick 261]

Quote[/b] ]Firstly, great work!! DAC and CTI are a perfect match. Keep it up : )

Thanks I'm constantly tweaking & updating it. The advanced version is the new one I'm putting time into, lots of behaviours are improved.

Quote[/b] ]

Now, some bugs. I've been playing single player as the West on the BUSY version for the past couple of hours and have noticed the following problems :

- towns that have changed from east to west or visa-versa display both markers on the map. I can't tell who owns which town. The green proximity circles aslo remain indefinately.

That seems to be a CTI problem outside of my control.

Quote[/b] ]

- some start points are unplayable, such as in forests or on steep hillsides. the ai can't cope with this.

I too worried about this, but as far as I've seen the AI handle forests & hills well enough, can you elaborate on a specific circumstance? I'm not adverse to moving them, in fact each time I update the mission there's usually some amount of shuffling with start points, flag positions etc.

Quote[/b] ]

- as commander, group names and their radio callsigns do not match. abc are fine, but delta report as echo and so on. hotel radio as kilo.

Again a CTI problem outside of my control. Sounds like something that should be fairly easy to fix though. I could try & fix it, but then it stops being CTI v1.16A, and it's not my code. But I accept the findings

Quote[/b] ]

- some east vehicles cannot be salvaged. their wrecks and dead crews remain on the map.

The reason is that the DAC units are not part of the CTI "world" and are not recognised as salvageable items. I might try & change this if I find out how wrecks are tagged to be recognised, but I don't want to break anything by mucking about in someone elses code. Actually I quite like the permanent quality of DAC wrecks & bodies, they add a battlefield quality after a good long scrap, but I understand that manually trying to salvage these items could get frustrating

Quote[/b] ]

Mods used : MFCTI 1.16, ECP

Yes, ECP is the best one I've tried it with too.

Thanks for the feedback

[fasad 1]

Regarding the starting points - I'm assuming the AI has the same troubles as it had in Nogova MFCTI 1.16a - The AI commander never builds a heavy vehicle plant or aircraft hanger. I would have thought that any AI starting in a vehicle inside a forest would get stuck, but I've simply restarted the game if I start in a forest or steep hill, as mfcti has trained me to do. I'll have to do some testing...

Quote[/b] ]

The reason is that the DAC units are not part of the CTI "world" and are not recognised as salvageable items. I might try & change this if I find out how wrecks are tagged to be recognised, but I don't want to break anything by mucking about in someone elses code. Actually I quite like the permanent quality of DAC wrecks & bodies, they add a battlefield quality after a good long scrap, but I understand that manually trying to salvage these items could get frustrating

I can't salvage these wrecks at all. Surely any wrecks and bodies would reduce performance. Also the permanent bodies are definately East. Does this mean that if I play as West, then East start with DAC units on the map?

[dmarkwick 261]

I can't salvage these wrecks at all. Surely any wrecks and bodies would reduce performance. Also the permanent bodies are definately East. Does this mean that if I play as West, then East start with DAC units on the map?

I don't see any performance drop, I assumed that the resources used in moving them about & controlling AI are more than merely keeping still objects in one place. But if it really is a performance killer I can lose it.

In the version you have the resistance units in DAC are indeed eastern units. I was just being a bit lazy and used config 0 in the DAC unit config script, because it had the vehicles I wanted to use. I've since changed this and added a custom config which has actual resistance units but with a mixture of east & resistance vehicles. This means that although the units look like east, they are in fact resistance. Sorry for the confusion I was concerned with activities more than appearance but now it's fixed. This is available in the advanced version.

[fasad 1]

I've just downloaded the advanced version.

I recieve a "missing addon : bas_opfor" error

[dmarkwick 261]

I've just downloaded the advanced version.

I recieve a "missing addon : bas_opfor" error

Sounds like you don't hav the BAS Tonal islands addon

Actually this is a real bug at the moment, I cannot work out what is requiring that addon, it never needed it before. I'm assuming it's something to do with using resistance crews in eastern vehicles but I can't be sure. However I have a hacked version where I simply remove the reference from the mission script. You'll get an error message still, but you'll be able to continue.

new hacked version for peeps without Tonal islands:

link removed because of fix

[fasad 1]

The mission starts, but comes up with a "bad class SoldierGminer" error during the creating units stage of DAC initialization. Many, many zero divisor and bad type errors follow, freezing the game.

Can I recommend version numbers : )

[dmarkwick 261]

The mission starts, but comes up with a "bad class SoldierGminer" error during the creating units stage of DAC initialization. Many, many zero divisor and bad type errors follow, freezing the game.

Can I recommend version numbers : )

OK that was very helpful thanks, I got rid of the miner and now I don't see any errors, and no bas_opfor dependancies. Re-download the regular advanced version, it should be fine now.

And yes, version numbers is a good idea now that I have the first working version that I'm happy to see being used, I think I'll call it 0.5.

[dmarkwick 261]

Improved version.

DM_CTI_Novajev_DAC_advanced_v051

v0.51 has tweaked DAC patrol makeup (re-added T72s & T80s so some armour takes more than 2 hits, all the better for promoting teamwork), tweaked some start & flag positions (no more steep slopes or forests).

[fasad 1]

okay, after getting myself sunburnt today i can't test this for longer than an hour, too tired, my eyes are blurry...

Loads perfectly : )

Playing with average opposition, the start is very hard. The sheer number of dead res tanks around our base (15~20) must be having some negative impact on performance. I feel that the permanant wrecks create some inconsistancy and confusion, and it would be best if all vehicles were treated the same.

Investigate how mfcti identifies wrecks as salvage, then add these wrecks to the array. It seems they are stored in a global array called "resisanceVehicles" (note incorrect spelling = bug in mfcti?) and/or "vehicles". I've never done any MP scripts so I'm out of my depth...

These mfcti scripts seem relevant:

main\addVehicleToServerList.sqs

main\EmptyVehicleCleanUp.sqs

main\VehicleCleanUp.sqs

main\InitServer.sqs

Of course DAC reduction would complicate things a lot. I assume DAC allows you to use an init line every time a unit it "built up"? This init would need to add the vehicles to the array every time they are spawned, and they would need to be removed every time they are reduced. This is getting complicated..

If that's not possible, maybe make a script that simply deletes any dead resistance or civilian vehicles after a certain amount of time (mfcti seems to delete any dead vehicle after 10 mins).

Keep it up : )

[dmarkwick 261]

okay, after getting myself sunburnt today i can't test this for longer than an hour, too tired, my eyes are blurry...

Loads perfectly : )

Playing with average opposition, the start is very hard. The sheer number of dead res tanks around our base (15~20) must be having some negative impact on performance. I feel that the permanant wrecks create some inconsistancy and confusion, and it would be best if all vehicles were treated the same.

Investigate how mfcti identifies wrecks as salvage, then add these wrecks to the array. It seems they are stored in a global array called "resisanceVehicles" (note incorrect spelling = bug in mfcti?) and/or "vehicles". I've never done any MP scripts so I'm out of my depth...

These mfcti scripts seem relevant:

main\addVehicleToServerList.sqs

main\EmptyVehicleCleanUp.sqs

main\VehicleCleanUp.sqs

main\InitServer.sqs

Of course DAC reduction would complicate things a lot. I assume DAC allows you to use an init line every time a unit it "built up"? This init would need to add the vehicles to the array every time they are spawned, and they would need to be removed every time they are reduced. This is getting complicated..

If that's not possible, maybe make a script that simply deletes any dead resistance or civilian vehicles after a certain amount of time (mfcti seems to delete any dead vehicle after 10 mins).

Keep it up : )

I hadn't planned on adding the DAC wrecks to the CTI salvage logic, as I quite like the permanent nature of them. It makes certain hot spots look like, well, hot spots, but that's a personal preference. I could be persuaded

In fact the DAC code is already changed for this project in that I removed the bit that removes them from the battlefield after a short while. I find that the permanent bodies at least provide some emergency ammo & weapons that occasionally save the day.

Yeah the build-up and reducing nature of the DAC units complicates things quite a bit, but as wreckage becomes permanent upon unit destruction I wonder if they can be added to the array at that stage instead. There must be some logic applied to destroyed units to remove them from DAC arrays etc so maybe I could inject a little code there. It would mean that, at least at some very minor level, CTI and DAC starts to become integrated. At the moment they are very separate, I view them as "layers".

Thanks for the code tips, that'll save me some shoe leather I'm sure

[fasad 1]

all seems to be running well : )

Perfermance was pretty low, but that's to be expected using one puter as the server and client. With average resistance I was getting around 20 fps to begin, then a slow reduction down around 7 fps after an hour. (p4 3ghz northwood)

I did a quick test by placing a few hundred east and west units in the mission editor. When they are all alive and moving around, I get ~9fps. Kill them all with a script and it goes straight back up to 75fps. I think you're right, dead bodies have almost no impact on frame rate when they are not on screen. However I still suspect that the wrecks around the bases may cause trouble for AI commanders.

I can imagine that any intergation between DAC and mfCTI would take a lot of research and script work for minimal gains. Even if every unit on the map could be DAC reduced, I imagine it would not happen very often when being used for MP anyway!

The last thing I'd suggest is to remove the DAC radio comms and map clutter. Nice work : )

[dmarkwick 261]

The last thing I'd suggest is to remove the DAC radio comms and map clutter. Nice work : )

Already done for the next minor update the DAC seems to be acting pretty much as I wanted them to so no need for map & radio anymore.

I don't suppose the wrecks around the base have much more impact than complex trees, but I take your point about the commander maybe having problems working around them. And maybe it would be a nice touch to be able to get some cash for all that work

I'll see what I can crowbar in sometime in the next week or so.

[dmarkwick 261]

'Nuther update. No radio hints from DAC, no longer see all DAC units on map.

DM_CTI_Novajev_DAC_advanced_v052.rar