KolgujevConflict/Arma

[CharveL 0]

[Treelor 0]

DO NOT WANT DEAD

[Chip360 0]

Oh well guyz : (

[Guest]

Not necessarily dead, but right now on back burner due to real life responsibilities lately and the fact I still needed a break, this is a very large mod for one person.

I appreciate the support from everyone, we will see what happens in the coming months.

No matter what happens, it has been quite a ride, and very great learning experience in scripting, even learning some basic C++ coding, pretty cool stuff.

Please dont hang on this mod, I cant realistically say what will happen, even if it does get done some day, there is still so much to be done, it wouldn't be soon.

Thanks again for everyones support and time show interest in this project tho, its made it more enjoyable especially through some of the really frustrating parts to know people were *actually* interested

[Guest]

Mission is back online

Report :

Town Hide Script system Complete, removes nearly all lag from each town

Town Hide system, now that it is complete, is being worked into the mission (not fun! )

Projection:

Once town hide system is fully put in and tested, moving on to completion of the reinforcement scripts, something I enjoyed very much, and needs completion.

If things continue on in a reasonable manner in speed of completion, I forsee a new video on the way, which will include the amazing reinforcements system - large part of this system thanks to Colonel Sanders Lite for his original version of the system that I modified for the mission.

See what happens here, its a good bit of work to get the town hide system worked into the mission, but it will nearly clean out all cities of their occupants while player units are a distance away, basically removing about 70 percent or more of all lag IG.

There is a link also to the publicized version of TownHide, I can provide a link if desired, it enables the enitre island to be populated with virtually no lag.

Moving on, and glad to be working on this again

[R0adki11 3949]

Is it at all possible that you release what you have got, it might get other people interested in using it and helping you.

[Guest]

Until at least an alpha version is ready, there is no true purpose in a public release, it would only diminish the effect of the final product, and encourage the chance of someone else taking the hard work put into the mission and making their own before it was completed.

Anyone that were interested in helping can contact me via a pm, and if it seems like something that person may be interested in trying to help with I can then send over the entire mission as is for them to look at

I cant just publicly put it out tho for people to look at, even if it were just for sake of potential help drawn in, there are too many horror stories of people stealing other people work, and the norm for any big mission project is for people to come in and ask to 'check it out', etc, and the mission would be distributed to a few individuals for potentially joining/working on the project in a join effort.

I do feel the mission is far worthy of a team to continue work on it and its current stage is now quite far along, but there is a complexity level and some advanced scripting involved, I have never expected to have the luxury to find anyone, or even a team for that matter, of relatively highly talented scripters to join in, more often than not these people are already involved in projects of their own, or already in a team.

Colonel Sanders Lite joined in for quite some time, and his help has been huge, and really, I dont know how I could have gotten this far without him, not only have his scripts been implemented, but his knowledge he openly shared with me has been a gigantic help, but now I am on my own again, and its fine, its just the way it is

[Guest]

After 2 days of mind bending work integrating the town hide system, a welcome break I have found in making something new..

A video

I wish that U toob didnt seem to enjoy diminishing the quality of videos uploaded..

Nonetheless, here we go

Kolgujev Conflict Video 2

Edit- warning. watch video in the small box, do not expand to full size unless you enjoy a pixelated view!

This video reveals new additions to the mission, not revealed in the older video -

The still un-implemented helo reinforcement system, not completely finished, but its near completion and was a huge task. Its a combination of Colonel Sanders Lite's scripts and mine, combined to provide a fully functional, universal reinforcement system that works in real time, and as visually appealing as possible - units do not spawn in the helos, they spawn at entrances to barracks and move out to get in helos - pilots will board first and start up the engines, helos will sit tight and hold while running until all units have boarded, put this together with three helos in the flight pad area it makes a truly impressive sight to see during the boarding process..

Once a town has been taken successfully by one of the two opposing forces during a town battle, helo reinforcements can be called in, from either the friendly merchant city (Corazol), or, if enemy wins, from the enemy main base at the northern tip of Sahrani. This video shows a reinforcement execution from Corazol to Bagango. The appropriate troops are boarded, and flown in, and will be sent to defensive positions within the city.

A player can 'hitch a ride' on a helo and man the mg as well, which is what I did to finish up the footage of the helos taking off and dropping friendly troops to Bagango.

Also included, the new barrage script system, again, a system that combins both CSL's and my own scripts, to make a universal artillery system, that, again works in real time, no spawning, units will man guns when a strike is needed, and lock in on targets, and will disembark guns and return to standby positions when the strike is over.

Both of these systems are fully operated by ai, and the scripts, the artillery is already imbedded in the mission and fully running.

Lastly, a few final pics of units and tanks moving out during a town to town battle.

Seriously, if anyone was ever interested in joining in on a project that goes far into the realms of quality, and takes many of the major aspects and puts them into a realistic perspective, so the player can actually be 'wow'ed' by whats going on constantly, be drawn into the immersion, and find an island not just alive with life, but that life has a mind of its own.

The Ai intelligence added thru code has put quite a twist in the friendly and enemy behaviour, they know when to advance on a new town, they know when to take defensive positions, they know when to call in for reinforcements, and they know how to man static weapons left over in a city for defense, and they know alot more than that too!

Im happy to be working on this, it would be nice if some talented individuals out there might get interested in this and be willing to at least look at the mission as it is - Its worth it, I get a thrill as the creator just from doing IG tests constantly.

Anyhow, great stuff, moving on, need to finish getting the TownHide system de-bugged and properly working now thats its implimented.

Edit/

For those of you interested in the techincalities, heres, as normal, some of the universal capabilities of the ai involved here:

Real time boarding scenario while helos sit tight at full throttle on the ground

Kill the pilot, co pilot will disembark and board as pilot

Kill even the co-pilot whom is pilot at the time, and one of the boarding troops will move to the pilot seat (he might not be the best pilot around, but he will get the troops to the DZ )

Destroy a helo, kill the occupants, depending on what side the reinforcement was for, that sides town just lost that many reinforcements for that town (not recommended to do this against a freindly reinforcement in Corazol )

Disable a helo at the base while they are boarding/destroy it, and the troops that were boarding will take defensive roles, and hold, eventually they will return to their barracks

If a helo is shot down that has survivors, the scripts will send those survivors to the town to be reinforced on foot.

You can jump on a friendly helo as the gunner of one of the two mg's, you cannot take the pilot seat -sorry!

Undetermined wether stealing of enemy helos will be allowed or not, dependent on overall mission play effect Either way, you can sure as heck blow them up

Some might not like it, but unless the main enemy base is taken over, you can destroy enemy helos involved in a reinforcement call, but on the next call, the air barracks will respawn new helos for the next call -

Means you can basically completely disable a reinforcement call from the enemy base, but to completely stop them from makign further reinforcement helo calls, their base must be taken over completely.

Happy trails

Time to take a lil break

[Rak 0]

This mission sounds great, Total War meets ArmA Looking forward to it.

[Guest]

Thanks Rakgitarmen

Not real happy with what You-Tube did to the video, the orginal video is like twice as good quality that I uploaded - o well

[Guest]

Woot!

Finally got some "major' bugs worked out in the implementing of the TownHide system, and the first successful town battle has executed properly with it running

Ran fraps during the battle, before the system was put in I was getting from 15 to 25 fps while in the fight, now im getting from 30 to 50 fps!

Thats with all 15 cities populated with between 20 to 30 advance troops, and artillery batteries!

Im sure something will come up, at some point again, there's just too many things that can go wrong with this system put in to expect it to be perfect after finding the obvious bugs, but its certainly working now.

[Guest]

mk,,

Ill remove all the code -

Spending 5 hours between brainstorming and putting in code for what seemed to be a simple addition made it kinda irresistible

Last bit anyhow, time to execute this thing

And ya, wish I could put out a way pre- alpha just to show people what the mission has so far

Im not comfortable with that tho, and a big reason is because it is sp, not mp - I certainly dont want people to get bored of it after playing thru 20 times, then once the final release comes no one wants it..

Theres also a ton of debug code that comes in from like 20 scripts during the mission, and im not prepared to remove that until the mission is in an alpha stage, I dont think many people would like to see all that come up during their game play. Its not as simple as 'debug = false', much of the debug code is query reliant, so the only way to remove it is to go thru each script and comment it out, something saved for the Alpha version.

Sorry, its all I can do.

[Treelor 0]

No worries, I'm really glad to see that this is still going strong!

[Guest]

Thanks Treelor

Time to test the re- hiding of towns after a battle, lol, been putting it off for a few days, this will take some time, when one town battle takes at the very least an hour, and there is no temporary script short cuts I can make to speed it up for testing

[Guest]

5 hours of testing, fixing some typos in the script, and the integrated hiding after a town battle is over is working.

Ive discovered a new bug, one to be addressed way later due to low priority, but tanks that are alive from winning clan, of which once at a certain point in the newly taken town are cleared out, their crew disembarks and waits nearby, the tank engines are still running.. lol Stupid bug, I think its because I am ordering getIn False, and therefore it might force an eject command, which it seems leaves the vehicles engines on when no one is in it - later on I'll prolly need to put in some code that orders a getOut true or something, hopefully that will fix that, cant believe after a year of on/off testing I never noticed this.

Next area of attack in the mission, moving on to completion and implementation of Helo Reinforcement scripts! Been waiting a long time to get this far

Thanks again btw all for your continuing support

[Guest]

Three days of work, its working!

The huge bug of helos occasionally crashing into eachother during helo reinforcements is fixed.

Wow - a complicated delay system had to be installed, which made each helo wait on eachother before taking off from the base LZ or the DZ, but its all finally working..

Pheww..

Time to take a break and do.. something? else..

Next area of attack is to replicate the reinforcement scripts to work on the enemy helos, mostly minor adjustments, copy and paste -

Then move on to a new script system that sends the dropped off troops to either join advancable groups, split them up to various patrols within a city and split them up to man left over mg's and towers/tower spotlights. A new script system, but it should be pretty cool

Moving on

Edit/

For those of you interested in the techincalities, heres, as normal, some of the universal capabilities of the ai involved here:

Real time boarding scenario while helos sit tight at full throttle on the ground

Kill the pilot, co pilot will disembark and board as pilot

Kill even the co-pilot whom is pilot at the time, and one of the boarding troops will move to the pilot seat (he might not be the best pilot around, but he will get the troops to the DZ )

Destroy a helo, kill the occupants, depending on what side the reinforcement was for, that sides town just lost that many reinforcements for that town (not recommended to do this against a friendly reinforcement)

Disable a helo at the base while they are boarding/destroy it, and the troops that were boarding will take defensive roles, and hold, eventually they will return to their barracks

If a helo is shot down that has survivors, the scripts will send those survivors to the town to be reinforced on foot.

You can jump on a friendly helo as the gunner of one of the two mg's, you cannot take the pilot seat -sorry!

Undetermined wether stealing of enemy helos will be allowed or not, dependent on overall mission play effect Either way, you can sure as heck blow them up

Unless the main enemy base is taken over, you can destroy enemy helos involved in a reinforcement call, but on the next call, the air barracks will respawn new helos for the next call -

Means you can 'plausibly' completely disable a reinforcement call from within the enemy base, but to completely stop them from making further reinforcement helo calls, their base must be taken over completely. Without taking over the enemy base, this would be difficult considering their defenses, but anything is possible with planning.

Edit/ Do understand there is a inputted level of realism here

The enemy base is huge, and there is no reasonable way to simply plot to start the mission up, go over there with a few units and destroy it, and remove their abilities to reinforce their cities/towns - anyone that attempted to do this off the bat would be severely disappointed over time after being killed one hundred times, it will take time, and patience, to get that far, and with help from the allied cities (if they still exist provided the player assisted in town/city wars)

Of course you can attempt to plot against an enemy reinforcement, and guesstimate where they will land nearby their newly taken town, and shoot down a helo as it comes in, of course this wont be easy, there will likely be three helos coming in, and taking down one would reveal your position to the others - all enemy helos mg's will be fully manned, aside from being on top of the enemy city which holds x number of enemy troops nearby, A plan would be in order

Happy trails

Time to take a lil break

[Desiderius 0]

everything sounds amazing.. we cant wait until you release a first version Maybe we can help with betatesting if you want.

Greetings

[Guest]

Thanks

For sure there will be heavy duty testing required, Alpha testing will be the first phase, where the mission will need alot of help, then move from there to beta.

Impossible for me to reasonably alpha test everything to perfection.

I would imagine when the time comes offers for testers can be posted here and on Ofpec. Of course all testers will be included in the credits for the mission.

[Treelor 0]

This is really sounding amazing. BI ought to hire you.

[froggyluv 2136]

Quote[/b] ] Kill the pilot, co pilot will disembark and board as pilot

Genius!

Quote[/b] ] Rest of stuff...

Very cool!

[Nowyoudie 0]

Keep up the good work. There needs to be more people like you and you don't seem to spend a lot of time just on programming, but typing the posts on your own thread! You could always take a break and you don't need us to tell you to do that. But then again keep doing what you're good at. Making a game!

[Guest]

@Treelor

Thanks I think most of the mission makers here wish the same thing would happen to them

@froggyluv

Thanks Some of it is ideas to make things more dynamic, others are things that came up to keep the particular functions from being stopped by just one kill.

@Nowyoudie

When it takes over a month sometimes to finish just one area of the mission, its gratifying to post on that, as if a 'separate' mission has been completed, if I waited to post on the mission until it was at an alpha, there wouldnt be much to say for a long time Coming on year three since this mission was first started in Ofp lol

Not being in a team also tends to make it get a bit lonely now and then, and like everyone else that works hard at a project, its nice to share from time to time.

Thats why I post every so often here, I never really expect anyone to respond knowing I dont even offer up a sample mission yet, but its appreciated and nice when people do

O btw, time invested in posting here in comparison to work on mission, incomparable lol - maybe for every 5 minutes I spend posting here, there must be 20 hours or more of work spent in the mission :P

[Guest]

Being ive been on an update spree lately

New features/changes to helo reinforcement scripts :

New reset helos script made - after a reinforcement call, helos rtb, and land in a relatively small area next to each other, and did not leave the original 'conformed' look of them all facing same direction, and in exact formation positions on the ground. So -

All is the same, except once the player is 1000 meters away from the base helo landing area, after all helos have landed and pilots have left, the helos are reset to original positions. Was a good bit of work, but it makes things much more visually appealing. And of course its impossible to ever see them get re-set this way also.

New script added to cancel out 'player get in helo gunner seat' scripts, now player can only get in the helo's gunner seat during a reinforcement call - a lag reduction application, so those scripts only run during a reinforcement call

Currently working on the script to move dropped off units to various positions within a city/town - Quite an interesting application so far - my first need to use the 'set' command to modify arrays within a multi dimensional array (something like 50 total elements in the array) - This complexity due to the fact im trying to keep this system of directing dropped off troops to one script rather than one per helo, which both reduces any potential added lag and further avoids the save game bug - this is the last and final, major application for the entire town battle system - and she's kickin' back hard to get this done

[Guest]

New update

Current progress on Reinforcement_Unit_Manager -

7 days of work, over 20 hours of work, is progressing well -

Its big

Current size is 57 Kb's, which includes the inputted info for one town for testing.

Expected size, anywhere between 100kb and 200

Completion areas : (untested)

Universal, all towns and all sides reinforcable

Universal system, only need input specific info for each town reinforcement, if groups do not pre- exist, they will be created, along wiht any needed waypoint plans

Mg stations, SpotLight gunners, tower guards, and standard static guards, all are inputted into the universal assignment system - only need input certain info for them, and the town, and they will move to positions.

Yep -untested tho, quite certain some issues will arise, but the script build appears solid beyond reasonable doubt overall.

Next -

Need to refine the patrols area, for units dropped off to be sent as patrols, which adds the units to new groups

then a whole new area -

Check on units, any tower guard units, once they are at x distance to tower are to be teleported to their proper height and position (this due to the issues of ai units getting stuck trying to climb ladders, and some other problems) -

Any units that have not made it to their designated positions or designated gunner seats over a large period of time will be instantly transported, this fixes any random occurances of units getting stuck -

For those not informed up to this point -

This script system takes over once the (up to) 3 helos have landed and drops units off, and sends them to various positions for defense in a newly taken town - these positions range from Static mg's, spotlights on towers, tower guards, static guard positions, and potentially multitudes of 2 - 3 man patrols.

Of course, this system sends units to various defensive positions within a town, of 14 towns, in real time, the only teleporting is when a tower guard gets right to the tower, or if a unit is stuck for a pro-longed period of time, but normally, this is all done realistically in real time.

Mind is blown out tonight, moving on - next target area - complete patrol assignments tomorrow (hopefully )

Moving on

[Guest]

new update -

Primary phase of the reinforcements sent out script is working.. finally

Lotsa time spent fixing typos (cant blame me, its a big script )

Right now, during the test mission, the helos will fly to a mock up "Town1" and drop off units -

From there, the script will split the units up into various groups, and send them to various positions in the town.

The script requires inputting how many mg's, tower spotlights, static guard positions, and patrol waypoints plans are available for each town -

From there, (basically), it will send specified 'garrison' troops that were boarded on helos to those positions.

depending on how many 'garrison' troops were boarded, the script will assign units to all positions available in the following order, until it runs out of available units, first in the list being the 'primary' positions, last being least ::

1 static mg gunners

2 spotlight gunners

3 tower guards

4 static guards

5 patrols (with specified cycling/looping waypoints plans)

Any units left over are to be added to existing created patrols, normally by default each patrol is created as a 2 man, hence additional units can expand patrol sizes

The amount of garrison units available will depend on how drained the main 2 'advancable' groups are that have taken the ctiy/town.

If there are alot of units needed to replenish the 2 'advancable' groups in the newly taken town, there will be less units to left over to defend the town as garrison troops - there are three helos at both friendly and enemy main bases to send out, hence the troop limitation. (btw, there are a number of 'clans' that have 3 main advancable groups, the third being a tanker group, which is of course not normally needed to be 'reinforced', and not reinforced at this time)

Very happy to see it finally working, over 2 weeks of coding after work and on weekends, honestly very surprised to see the only bugs so far have been typos, lol, I expected worse

Pretty cool to finally see the mass of units dropped by the three helos take off running to various defensive position in the town, given a few more minutes, and a dead town becomes alive with life, from various static guards to patrols moving about in safe mode... it looks good

In the test scenario, the town has three mg nests, 2 tower spotlights, 1 tower guard position, 5 static guard positions, and 3 patrols available, the reinforcement call completely fills every position with the newly dropped troops.

2nd part of the script will need to be finished, teleporting tower guards once they are near towers, incorporating a fix for stuck units, and a few other things - but this is a huge hurdle to see it finally working, and in a universal fashion

Edit/

To describe a little bit about the reason why reinforcements are sent *first* to 'advancable' groups, lastly to defensive groups in a town -

Units in advancable groups of course will still remain as additional defensive troops as long as they remain in a town

Advancable groups are able to initiate attacks on enemy towns, provided there is enough units in their groups to execute an attack, therefore without enough units, they will just sit there and not advance to take new towns.

If a clan takes over a town, once they have been reinforced, if they have enough units in their advancable groups, and there is a nearby enemy town that is a valid enemy town to attack, they will proceed to push forward and execute a new town battle.

Moving on