KolgujevConflict/Arma

[Guest]

Well, been mulling over wether not to post about this mission for about the last week or so, as it would be nice to feel some sort of rewarding feeling after so much has been done.

This mission started in Ofp (hence the name) and havent gotten around to changing the name yet (low priority ), it did take up the entire map of Kolgujev, although I expected once it was ported into Arma, it would leave a vast gap of unused territory, that has proven to not be true, the entire northern main island is being used, from Corazol to that lil town in the far NW corner.

Porting it was alot easier than expected, but Armas complexity of towns and cities has created quite a challenge in trying to defeat problems with units/tanks stuck in towns, and that in itself has caused tons of extra scripting added.

Other problems and bug fixes have been addressed, details have been added, huge time testing has been spent, so far, so good - although id expect once the whole town battle function is complete in all primary areas, beta testing of that function of course will reveal some more things to be addressed.

Yes, this is single player, although it had originally been dreamed as mp, I decided I didnt want to spend the next 2 years on it, so it went from that to single...

What is this mission?

KolConflict Ofp

A complete selection of photos from Ofp version of Kol Conflict, on this page at bottom and a few more on page 3 as well

KolConflict Photos

To make a long story short (for those of us that hate long stories)

The idea was to make a mission that does two things :

Have a continually moving 'alive' envionrment, ever changing, and immersive.

Within that envionrment, make many opportunities for interaction with other ai units, and make sub missions, and even some sub missions that are integrated within the system.

theres 25 or so various town battles possible, involving 13 towns,of which there are 14 various 'clan' factions of all sides which initally occuppy various towns, some freindly, some not.

As time goes on, battles will erupt between various factions holding towns, which may result in a clan taking a town over - the player will be able to assist freindly clans in a battle, or can try to take a town themselves (difficult, but possible), and will have that town as their own, which could then be reinforced by garrison troops choppered in (yes, the enemy nearby may not like their new neighbor )

Theres alot more involved, not gonna go on forever - but, all of the above paragraph, aside from the helo part (not put in yet) IS TOTALLY FUNCTIONAL

Anyhow, aside from all this, heres what else has been done.

All towns have been populated with proper clan groups, all clan group paths are *almost* complete, only remaining parts there are 3 more battle areas to be refined (paths go thru, but wp positions and triggers need refining)

Those paths, some of them go thru up to like 5 or six towns.

Towns under attack now send their clan groups to defensive positions depending on where they are being attacked from.

Huge work was put into scripting for tankers, its not quite finished, and still needs to be throughoughly tested, but its looking really good - most tankers initally start outside their vehicles, more-less hanging out, and when a battle starts that involves that clan, if they got tankers, they will get in, and assist the ground units in defense or offense.

Huge work has been put in to address lag issues, some scripts that could have more easily just been ran multiple times have been compressed into one larger script (more complex), and VERY pleased to say, so far, there is very little lag at all in comparison to a clean map with nothing going on!

Also, return to town function is now working (flawlessly so far), which sends clans back to their towns during a battle under 'certain' circumstances.

Artillery script, which is ColonelSandersLite's script, is fully functioning, needs fine tuning for the mission application (my job ), but during town battles there will often be artillery barrages of towns involved - the actual artillery itself hasent been put in, but thats really the easy part.

ColonelSandersLite has massively contributed to the mission, having created a large number of scripts directly for the mission, unfortunately most of which have not yet been implimented, but that is not far off now as the primary townbattle elements are nearing completion.

His scripts:

Helo Reinforcement - a large, complex appliction that will allow the two "main" bases (freindly, enemy) to send in reinforcements to various clans that have depleted unit strengths.

Barrage - already explained this, basically a very refined system for barraging towns which randomly selects certain targets and allows for desired randomness in accurracy as well.

DynamicUnitReduction - a helpfull tool for lag management, allowing for the hiding and showing of editor placed group units

Also theres a ton of 'utility' type scripts he made, from unlimited ammo script (only used once in a great while, dont worry ), to random selection type scripts for a few applications, to 'incriment move' scripts, which actually take a given destination for a group or unit, and moves that group in 150 meter doMove position incriments, which removes the chance of DoMove failing because of long distances.

Theres a ton more thats going into the mission, but a ton has been put in. Corazol has been selected for the freindly merchant town (basically, freindly main base really), and it will be quite a task fully populating and making that place alive when the time comes, actually, I cant wait for that, should be a mountian top experience, but thats a ways off still.

As time goes on, id like to post some screen shots, right now, ive had some time off of work, and having pouring that time muchly into the mission, and dont want to get distracted.

Any input, feedback, questions are welcome.

Some time in the distance, there will come a point where addons will be introduced into the mission, not only to individualize various clans, but also to enhance appearance of towns, making them look more like town 'bases' rather than just towns.

[Guest]

Well considering the huge response towards this mission, which has been in the making now for about 6 months on and off, again have gone into the advertising business and made a ton of screen shots, and refined them all to be less than 100kb (only took totoal of 3 hours solid )

So here you go, all these shots are from one town battle instance, and these shots have not been edited nor re-created for appearance, their directly from the mission.

Keep in mind this is one battle, from a total potential of 25 or more, and that all of these battles are randomly chosen (although once a clan takes a town it can continue to advance thru more towns from there after being reinforced), so, hence, every mission is a totally different experience.

First, a few shots of the map from the editor

btw - most of the wp's seen here look kinda big for some reason - thats because theres actually like 3 -5 waypoint plans going thru each wp position for various groups from various towns

Editor view of map, with markers on (all of these will be hidden markers in mission)

mapview1

Editor view of map with marker view turned off, most of the triggers shown are actually temporary, showing radius distance checks around marker and gameLogic positions used in scripts

mapview2

editor map view of Eponia

Eponia

the two closest towns on map, showing all the waypoints, markers and townbattle area between them

2CloseTowns

Lovely view of the hard work put in to get all this running right

Current mission folder size with only .sqm and mission files is almost 1 meg

MisFolder

To the battle sequence

Tankers hanging out near tank in Bagango

Tanker scripts are now up and running, this is the first application of tankers in the mission, only need copy and paste paths now

Tankers In Bagango

Morkan clan ground forces in Bagango

Ground troops in Bagango (enemy)

2nd group of Morkan ground forces in Bagango

Ground troops Bagango 2nd

The battle is then started, both clans, Morkan (enemy) in Bagango and Povar (freindly) in Naritus move to the battle area to settle the dispute

There is always a global chat declaration of each battle, didnt show it because of all the debug stuff sourounding the declaration right now, nonetheless, each battle is currently declared via 'ErudinFM950' (radio station located in Merchant town (Corazol))

Freindly Povar Clan units moving to battle area to confront Morkan

PoverMovesIn

Following Povar Clan (freindly) to the battle area(between towns)

Following Povar To battle

Freindly Povar clan units hit the dirt in preperation for the oncoming battle

Povar Gets Down

Povar Clan returning fire against Morkan forces (Morkan forces in distance)

Povar Returns Fire

Povar Clan taking heavy casualties

Povar Gettin Hit Hard

Enemy forces (Morkan Clan) engaging remaining Povar Clan forces at battle area

Morkan Engages Povar

Morkan Clans tank shows up along with a second group of ground units

Morkan Tank Moves In

Morkan forces moving into the battle area

Morkan Advances

Morkan forces moving thru battle area 2

Morkan Moves In battle Area 2

Final shot of Morkan forces moving into battle area

Morkan In battle Area Final

Morkan Clan forces (enemy) has secured and taken over Povar clans town (Naritus)

Morkan Takes over town of Naritus

Morkan forces moving thru Povars previously held town searching for stragglers

Morkan Searching

Morkan now holds the town, showing what was a group of 12 enemy units holding in the town, with the tank still roaming the streets in the background

Morkan Settles in

Player at flag in Naritus, new flag texture shows for Morkan Clan symbol, whom now holds the town

Player at Naritus Flag, Morkan Symbol Shows

wow, that took friggin forever to transfer into URL's, anyhow, if this doesent give a small peice of what this mission currently does (and it is a small peice of it) dunno what does...

Primarily what remains, again, is putting in Helo reinforcements script from CSL, completing the barrage app (relatively easy), and putting in a Garrison spawn script (not too difficult), and, (to my astonishment) thats basically it for the whole town battle function, aside from a number of details.

Right now, if one let the mission run, it will progress itself thru all battles possible, there are also 'attack' type battles, which occurrs when a clan has considerably depleted forces that is involved in a battle, in this case that clan will hold at their town while opposing clan attacks them...

Anyhow, I do hope this gives a picture of whats going on here, alot of work has been put into this mission, and not just by me, but also from ColonelSandersLite to get it where its at now, and alot more will be put into it.

[NeMeSiS 11]

Ok it was quite a read, but is seems very interesting, and its good to have a few missions which use a large part of the map

[Guest]

I am sorry about the extremely lengthy read, although ,to accurately describe much of what the mission does, requires a lengthy description.

[Guest]

Maybe quoting myself looks bad, but quote from previous post->"Tanker scripts are now up and running, this is the first application of tankers in the mission, only need copy and paste paths now"

lol, what part of this mission is 'only' copy and paste, did just copy and paste some pre-made wp plans directly into the mission.sqm for the tankers, although, refining these paths in areas where tankers getin/get out is (of course) taking alot of time, and is kinda finicky work...

Ah well, about half the work is now done for those tankers paths, a few of them go thru 5 towns ....

[Guest]

Can kind of understand the lack of responses due to the fact the pics are sort of 'standard', as I recall in the Ofp version for this mission, practically all the addons where already in, therefore the pics were very 'eye candyish', and almost as soon as the pics went up, there were a bunch of responses, there will still be a time to re-insert the addons again, spiff up towns into bases, individualize each clan with their own unit addon type, and all that other stuff - although, truth be told, I did things backwards in the Ofp version and did all that 'fun' stuff first, this time, that stuff will be put in last-

Only thing I can really offer up, in pictures, is the potential possibility of a short video being released once all the major elements of the town battle function are in (helos, town garrison troops, artillery placement) - this is a while off still, but either way, for this mission to be completed 'properly', the right way to do that is to do that addon stuff last, so, ya, picks are gonna be simplified right now, still, just to give a little feel, an average battle consumes about 30 - 45 min of mission time, and theres potentially 25 + battles possible, just to give a little scope of the mission here..(not including down time between each battle)

Of course, I truly enjoy seeing this thing slowly transpire into a fully functional dynamic mission, my desire to make a mission that comes close to fully utilizing much of Armas/Ofp's capabilities has been a dream for a long time, I guess when the going gets tough (which it does often), its nice to at least put something down during various stages of progress.

O, btw - OfpForum gets the 'FirstAndOnly' award for posting (and actually reading all this ) on this mission

Either way, c u guys around, takin a lil break and gonna see what free-Video editors there are out there and see what I can throw together for future use

[OrLoK 20]

Looks great!

cant wait to get my paws on it.

keep up the good work

rgds

Lok

[Guest]

Thanks Orlok, muchly appreciated

Took all of half an hour to figure out how to form a video thru multiple clips from fraps, and with music put in - pretty cool stuff, already got me geeked about gettin a video up (just need to snap my fingers and have everything ready for it..) *snap*..... *snap*..., hmm, think im gonna hafta get this video up the hard way...

Thanks again for the response

[johnny vet boy b 0]

Wow. This is EXACTLY  the kind of mission I would fall in love with, the attention to detail is quite staggering and really shames BI that they couldn't have done something like it to be honest. I mean, what is the point of having such a large beautiful sandbox to play in if you know what's going to happen next and moving away from the "mission" will just moving into a sterile, non living world where people AREN'T trying to slaughter each other?

Thank you  so much for this. Seriously. I'm sure interest will pick up when more people have the game (and hardware to do it justice) and they want a more real experience. But, you've got my vote and support.

Do you think the mission is perhaps a few weeks/months away? Not that I'm going to hold you to it or anything. Just really really excited!

[Timblesink 0]

Looks great!

Keep up the good and incredibly time-consuming work!

[cavtroop 0]

WOW, this looks great! I can't wait to see it in action!

[Killerwatt 0]

OMG! I cant wait for this to be released. This is the kind of mission ArmA was made for. Cudos for the immense amount of work that must have been put into the creation of this mission. As I lie dying on the battlefield I will offer a final thank you up just for you lol.

Cheers,

Stewart.

[Guest]

Wow. lol, thanks for the responses

Time to target, really, that is dependant on how much time is put into the details once the remaining elements of the town battle function are implimented completely. This would really be moving into a whole new area, of populating towns with civies, making sub-missions, putting in addons for various areas - it will certainly be months, not weeks , lol, but, better time taken to completion for this to be done right rather than rushed and lacking in areas.

Spent all day working on a 'demo' video, which is pretty lite (11 megs), see if I cant get it hosted over the next few days, should be much more revealing than 'still' photos.

Great stuff, cheers to all of you for taking the time to read/look at this stuff here, really makes my day - yes, its been a long road to have gotten the mission to where it is, thanks for the good cheer

I fully intend to update this thread regularly as things continue to progress, and will try to do it in a manner that is non- spoiling to the mission.

Thanks again guys

[sniper pilot 36]

cool man...ill be looking forward to its release!

[cavtroop 0]

Yeah, really looking forward to it! Any chance we can get a 'tech-demo' or something? Maybe just three towns, with three factions?

[Guest]

Sounds like a good idea, but the mission is planned to have alot more in it than just the town battles occurring, and so it wouldnt really do the mission justice, and would not result in the final atmosphere im looking to attain, and it could spoil the mission early as well.

No way around it, gonna take a while still, this is one of those projects that, every time I get a day off work and think im gonna crank out a list of 4 areas to complete, the mission slaps me in the face and I end up maybe getting 1 area done, with this many factions mixed in, theres alot of checks, duplication of various apps, etc for each faction-

c u's around

[Guest]

Much thanks goes to El Nino Foxhound for hosting this video

This is a short video, which runs thru one battle scenario, from start to finish.

In this battle scenario, it is an 'attack' type, meaning the enemy town will attack the freindly town, the freindly town forces will find defensive positions once the battle has been declared via ErudinFM950 radio station

The video is only 11 megs

KolConflictArma Demo1

The script debug stuff still shows btw, but anyhow, its my first video, should show a little more than pics of one battle scenario playing out in the mission within its current state, hope you like it

[Guest]

A fine example of time consumption for certain apps-

Working on finishing the refinement of the battle areas in the editor, there are 3 left including current one.

Started on this one at 10:00 am, its now 12:30 pm, and have just finished the editor work for battle 3 area, leaving testing, which will take another hour at least -

Battle 3 area

might just look like a jumble of waypoints, but theyre not, every waypoint is specifically placed for a reason, a number of them wait on globals, or initiate globals that are registered in the scripts-

This is actually the first attempt to put a battle right in a heavily wooded area, with tanks running the road, hopefully tests reveal it will work, really neat place to have a battle, although if tanks start running alover/getting stuck, will have to move the battle area out of the woods...

[cavtroop 0]

thanks for the movie, provides for an interesting snapshot! Keep up the good work, looking forward to this!

[Guest]

Thanks for the reply, glad you liked the video

The battle in the woods is up and running, working really good even with tanks (suprisingly), although with all scenarios involving tanks there are problems because of Arma's bugs, unfortunately tanks of opposing sides sometimes like to go right by each other and wave, without firing a shot, other times tanks in combat will run alover the dam place even when their target is clearly in view, as if their trying to find a better spot to fire at them? Even more odd, I find often that a tank sitting in a defensive postion will get killed by a tank moving into its feild of view.. where that tank sitting there *should* have easily killed the enemy tank moving in, wierd stuff.

Simply can only do what can resonably be done with Arma's current flaws, maybe 1.5 patch will make it a lil more realistic...

[Guest]

Well what the heck, while im on a posting spree for the last week here ...

Spent prolly about 16 hours this weekend, and got alot done (of course, time consumption estimation for tasks completed far exceeded expectancy)

As with any amount of work done in the mission, "done" does not always mean done, later 'Beta' testing may require tweaking/editing

ALL waypoint pathing has been finished, including battle areas, spent huge time testing those battle areas to ensure (within reason) that all is functioning well, and scenarios play out in appropriate manners

Fixed another issue with units slipping thru battle areas and running off to opposing towns too early (good greif, how did that guy get thru? ) which took some time,with a seperate script app (had *thought* I already completely addressed this issue)

All 'advancable' clan units on map have been refined to various types (which werent after porting from Arma- they used to all be rifleman)

Bmps have been removed, because the dumb things dont fire on ground units, guess theyre broken...

thats knocks alot down off the current toDo list, oh the joy, get to go thru each town and write some ID numbers down of offending fences on Sahrani that cause in town units to get stuck, and knock a few sections down...

Gettin close to being ready to put in the artillery peices for clans towns now, the script that lands the rounds is already 'near' completion (needs refinement)

Now... time to look at some fence iD's

[johnny vet boy b 0]

Just a quick note to say that this campaign you are making is the number 1 mod that I'm bursting to play with ArmA, I'm sure once it is done and word of mouth (and forum) spreads it will become very popular. You should work for BIS man!

Cheers

Johnny

[Guest]

Thanks for the positive feedback johnny vet boy b, although this isnt *truly* a campaign, its one mission, but many missions within this mission

A quick update, have been working on the artillery added for towns (batteries are spawned), kinda slow finishing the test bed, then will integrate it into the mission. Many, if not all the arty batteries will be spawned in random positions, so one mission play wont reveal all these positions for the next. Not just the artillery is being spawned, these will be fully created batteries, defensive gaurds, a patrol group, and later will prolly put in some eye candy stuff (camo nets, bunker, etc)

[Guest]

Great to know everything is going ok with your mission

Definatly on my "to play" list.

About the artillery, is it active AI artillery or is it just there for eye candy together with the patrols and guards?

If you need some help making AI use artillery on the players gimme a shout, have made something past few weeks

[edit]

Sorry, forgot to mention.......it still needs to be tested in MP and SP.

I have done local tests but more are needed.

[Guest]

Artillery is an essential part of the dynamic town battle system, and is fully functional in town barraging enemy towns. So ya, when two clans begin 'fueding', provided both still have functional artillery (hasent been destroyed), they will being barraging each others towns.

This is a single player mission only. As stated before hand , the original idea was Mp, but I quit on it because of massive complexity and time consumption.

Thanks for the offer for testing, will get in touch with you m8