KolgujevConflict/Arma

[nubbin77 0]

Just out of curiosity... since this is such a large mission, how are you going to handle saving? Will the variables and game state be saved? Seems like they removed some of that functionality in Arma. Is it like some of the dynamic missions of the past where you have to save in base?

[Guest]

Honestly thus far there has not yet been an issue with saveGame, there are about 100 globals (I think) or so atm. Can only say again, that thru testing occasionally ive saved game, then loaded, and have never seen any issue with lost data.

I suppose when the time comes, if there is an issue, then it will have to addressed, by whatever means, Ive heard of a few fixes in Ofp to the possible saveGame bug, including creating a file to hold globals. Being able to save game properly of course is a must in this sort of mission, but I have no fears that if any issue arises, before release it will be addressed.

[Guest]

Alright, here we go.

Ive been giving this some thought, and its time to ask the community for some help.

Before I go on, Id like to describe in simplest terms what this mission does now, and what it is projected to do, also, I have NO desire to make this mission appear in some way better than others, I do have a desire to show how unique it is, and that it certainly is worth a peice of someones time to assist in its creation. Also, anyone who participates will have credit given to them in the initial credits, which will show at mission's begining intro sequence.

Both Ofp and Arma have given the potential for a mission to be created that is the size of a meduim scale Rpg. Those that have played games like Star Wars Galaxies, Oblivion, etc, have a good idea of what Im refferring to here. The difference in this mission concept tho, is I wanted to make a fully functioning dynamic *backdrop* within a large scale Rpg type mission, my complaint with really all great 'personalized' Rpg's is that there was always a dead feeling to the enviornment. This mission goes far beyond what those games provided, to allow ai clans to battle it out over days or even weeks of mission play, and in a realistic way. This part is almost done now in its main functions, there are bugs and whatnot, all of which are documented to be addressed, but it works, and works darn good.

Heres what im getting at, if this mission in its final stages even comes close to what is envisioned, it will be something people can enjoy for a very long time, and be able to be played over and over, and things have been done professionally, put alot of time in to make things happen in a realistic/believable way.

As this townbattle function slowly draws to a close, it leaves a vast area incomplete in the mission. This is the complete and thourough population of towns, and also turning towns into bases to a degree. The towns currently are occupied by attacking forces only, which can potentially advance across the entire map, but, there are still garrison troops and civilians to be placed.

This is where the mission can use some help

Theres a total of 14 towns that are to be populated, 13 of those towns are primary towns which are involved in the town battle system. Now, I had done part of this work in the Ofp version, it took me at least a month just to turn those towns into base like atmospheres alone, aside from populating them with garrison forces/Civies, which hadnt been completed. Of course it all has to be done again, cept this time the towns are bigger, some of them very large, yep, this mission can use your help.

What I have in mind here, I want to offer to the community, for anyone willing to contribute some time to the mission, that each person can take on a town of their choosing, and, basically call it their own. That person can be creative as they desire in turning the town of choice into an alive atmosphere, put in objects, paremter walls, bunkers, guard towers, doodads, whatever, and populate it. That towns creation will be fully credited to that person in the inital mission credits. I want to also say that by splitting this up in this manner, a town a person, should keep the load lite, might take a week or two to do a town up, rather than trying to take em all on.

Now there will be some parameters to go by, a limitation to number of garrison units in a town, and civies as well. But this seems like a thing that some folks with some experience modding might enjoy, will get full credit for that towns creation, and wont have to devote some massive amount of time to the mission, and, if enough people are willing to asisst, this can easily take off months from the missions time to release, which is huge.

Really, every town that is populated is another peice of this puzzle put together to really start making the enviornment come to life.

Basically, what is needed tho is a simple commitment to the particular town that is chosen to do a quality job on it, I dont want anyone to rush it. One might say, all these different people working on different towns, wont that kinda make the mission unbalanced, see, this is the beauty of it, every town should be unique, as each town is held be a different clan, and I think it will turn out quite nice this way.

So far, two people have joined in the project in different areas, ColonelSandersLite and El Nino Foxhound, which has helped significantly.

Its really this simple tho, if you would like to donate a town to the cause, just drop me a Pm, or a post here, and Ill send you a copy of the parameters document, and a testbed mission templete to put your town together on, which will include the current units in it now, artillery and any tanks (not all towns have tanks). There are currently three towns which are left out of selection, Corazol, the Mil Base to the far NE and also "town14" (unnamed as of yet), town 14 being unimportant atm as its not involved in the townbattle system. All other major towns on the main northern Island are fair game, please dont take on a large town if your not prepared for taking the extra time for that size of town. There is no time limit either, you can take your time, if you want to spend time here or there on it, and if it takes a month (not that it should), then fine, only please try to complete the town, as no two people will of course be working on that, so if it doesent get completed I will have to finish it I also reccomend experience with editing, this is primarily editor stuff, but there's alot of waypoint usage involved.

I do need to decide what the best approach is on using a universal Editor Update everyone, Im leaning towards using the G85 editor update, only because of its simplicity in (apparently) not needing to be updated constantly as Arma is updated, but I need to confirm that it allows placed buildings/objects to collapse, if not, it will be 6th Sense EU then.

Cmon Guys! Lend a hand, contribute a town, make that puppy your own, I assure you this mission is worth its wieght in gold. I know just from the views that people are interested in this concept/type of mission, and considering the scope and scale of it, its really almost rediculous to think one person (me? ) can do it all in a reasonable time frame, kind of why games like Oblivion, Kotor, etc, were created by *more than* one person, its like one person trying to make a movie while being camera man, director, editor, designer, etc, etc

Im going to spend some time and compile what is needed to send over to you guys for creating each town, which will certainly be some work on my part, and will make it easy to understand and do.

Heres a few shots of the old version from Ofp, when some of the towns were actually completed, just to give a little feel for what this can turn out like with your help

KolConflict Photos

Theres photos there on bottom of that page, and on the next page as well. Please do take a quick look at a few, they are worth it

I await your responses gentlemen (hope there are responses )

Regards

Special Ed

[Guest]

A huge thanks to a few people (wont names names yet ) who have offered to help, cheers!

Been bustin me tail this evening working at completing this TownCreation mission templete, which will not only make creating/populating a town alot simpler, but will also allow anyone to give civilians their own *homes*, that they can go into and out of thru waypoint plan just by merely executing a script ive created in the activation line of a waypoint that is placed next to the door of a non-enterable building. (script handles the rest)

Hoping to have this ready to go by tommorow evening for you guys

Thanks again for the offers to help so far, really makes my day.

Nice to see people in the community lending a hand here

[johnny vet boy b 0]

SpecialEd - If I new how to use the editor I would definately lend a hand! But, I'm more of a "5 minute mission maker" kind of guy...

Keep up the sterling work sir.

Johnny

[Monkwarrior 0]

A very impressive idea.

Support this guy gents: adopt a town inside his map and make it a deathtrap for the rest of us

Monk.

[Guest]

Alright guys, heres the scoop

Been working on this town creation mis. Ive decided to go for broke and make this as easy and less time consuming as possible, and, its going very well.

Im going thru and setting off to the side all units that are to be placed per town, everything is done for them as well - any code in Init feilds is put in, any waypoints that have specific code is in, tower guards are placed in their towers, ready to be moved, Mg gunners are in mg's. Civilians and patrols have waypoints set aside as well for easy placement, with any code in wp's already in. Of course waypoint plans can be edited/added to as desired.

Basically, what this amounts to is, if you want to help and take on a town, all you will have to do as far as unit placement goes, is just drag the units set off to the side to your desired positions, again, this includes tower guards, mg stations, etc. Of course you can still change unit types, tower types, mg bunker types, add/remove waypoints for units.

Im also setting up a reference town, that has most of the military buildings provided by 6ThSense EU, these buildings also will have MapFacts lights in them for nightime use. All one has to do is copy and paste to use one. Street lamps for lighting towns up at night will be in that reference town as well, again, just copy and paste.

So, basically, most of what most people will probably use will be in the editor, to either move to your desired position, or copy and paste.

Again, the main thing here is quality, even tho Im making this alot easier, I still need time taken to make each town alive, good looking, and good experience with editing is still required.

This is the best I can do to provide you guys the easiest way to put a town together, once this is done, the time that would have been taken to do a town has probably been cut in half.

Being that im doing all of this, Im realistically hoping for either tonight or tommorow to have this finished and ready to go.

This is the last attempt on my part to get some help in this area, I understand that im asking people to spend their time on this project, but I also consider this not just *my project*, as a number of people are participating in it, and everyone gets credit for their work.

I'm going to look into getting a link up here for the TownCreation mission, if I can get it hosted, once its done, to make things easier for everyone. If I do get a link up, heck, you can even just download the thing and check it out, see if its something for you or not.

Stay tuned guys, and thanks for the support

[CharveL 0]

If I wasn't new to this game I'd love to help out but I haven't fired up the editor yet. I've done this kind of thing in a few other games before but I'd end up slowing everyone down getting used to the interface.

I'm going to have to stand by the sidelines and cheer you guys on.

[Guest]

Still finishing up the work on the TownCreation mission, everything is a go actually, except Ive ran into a few problems with the civilians new function of going into/out of their homes, and had to change the script due to lag that was being caused by teleportation, and now deleting/spawning instead, its up and running good now, just need to hardcode faces into it, so each time a civie comes back out of his/her (well, no her's yet ) home, their facial/skin appearance is same as when they went in.

Aside from that, its done, and should be putting up a link soon to anyone interested in taking part and helping with this project.

[johnny vet boy b 0]

SpecEd - when you say "the rest is done", does that mean the project is almost ready to play, or are you talking about being ready for a beta testing session? I had a feeling it was still several months away?

Regards

Johnny

[Guest]

Sorry, meant rest is done as far as this TownCreation mission goes, didnt realize I might have been misleading on that, sorry

[PaveQ 0]

I could do one town. Are you using urban patrol script for patrols and civs walking around?

[Guest]

Thanks for the offer m8

No, a randomized script would not present the appearance Im looking for in the mission, all units that are not static have waypoint plans.

Once I get the TownCreation mission up here, you can check it out, and if still interested you can choose a town a take on.

Thanks again

[Guest]

Because of the number of people currently participating in the town creation area, and also because after spending a week (week and a half actually) on this town creation mission, Im going to stick with the current number of people assisting and decided not to put up a link to the town creation templete for possibly more people to join in. Really even just having a few extra is helping alot, and I dont want to get overwhelmed by trying to take on too much too fast here.

Thanks a TON guys for your help, and also thanks to PaveQ for offering as well, I would have taken you up on that, but as I say, I just think I came to the realization that for my comfort zone there are probably enough people for now, but again, big thanks for offering

Really, its neat to see people coming up being willing to help here on the forums, just confirms what ive seen in the past as well, lots of good people here

[PaveQ 0]

Sure, np. I just wish this would be out soon as possible, as it sounds one of the best missions that arma will have.

[Guest]

I appreciate your support PaveQ, ya, there really is no way around the time factor in this sort of mission, certainly both Mike Melvin - creator of Cti and Thobson - creator of Abandoned armies (both Ofp), proved this to be true - in fact I know Thobson spent around 2 years on his mission, and im not sure about Cti, it may have been more than 2 years on that before the most recent more/less final versions were released. Kinda just goes to show, the more time put into large scale missions, the more u get out of it before release, its a double edged sword I guess.

Working on the Helo reinforcements now, yup, decided to go for broke and fly in all reinforcements rather than spawn, using three helos, just got the base script for spawning waypoint plans for each town fly in, working dang good! As a backup, just gotta make a collision avoidance script that changes altitude if too close to each other.

[Darkseed79 0]

This mission really sounds outstanding, I just wish it could be played as a coop with perhaps 5 people max. How much extra work would that be?

[Guest]

35 scripts right now, with about 600 Kb of script material alone, mission sqm wieghs in curently at 850 kb...

Estimated wieght once just the townbattle function is done, prolly 650 - 700 kb scripting material, 1 meg for mission sqm.

At least to me, it would be an impossible task. Did want to make it Multiplayer originally, but really, it would have taken much longer to do, and Im very uninformed in MP scripting.

Honestly tho, Multiplayer would have taken out some of the good stuff too, planning on having lots of ai interation with player (dialogs), similiar to your average SP Rpg, and, in a multiplayer form, of course this gets messy, having to re-spawn interactable ai units, having dialogs repeat for various players.

But anyhow, once this thing gets done (some day ), people are welcome to do waht they want with it, add missions, even try to convert it to mp, although I suspect it would be too large a task even for a Mp scripting pro.

[PaveQ 0]

As a backup, just gotta make a collision avoidance script that changes altitude if too close to each other.

Why not group the helos to the same group when they are flying.

[Guest]

I appreciate the input, sounds good, but -

Each helo is really to itself - each helo leaves at a different time, once it is fully boarded, theres alot of checks for each helo individually, also there are specific landing zones for both DZ and base, some very distant from each other, some within 50 meters. Theres actually a seperate script for each helo to manage its boarding proceedures, wp plan, etc -

no worries, its actually going really well, helo scripts are building quicker than projected, although also heck of alot more complex than expected as well - alot of checks involved in just dynamically boarding reinforcement troops at base (most of these checks due to the possibility of the helos under attack during boarding process)

[Guest]

On a good note here, due to all the questions about what might need to be done about the potential save game issues, I went ahead and took the current mis version, dropped it into Arma missions, and did a little test...

I waited until a town battle started up in the mission, which at that point is running basically the most scripts at once, and went ahead and saved right in the midst of it..

Loaded saved game, and it completely picked up where it was at during save in the scripts, no crash, no issues -

Only thing I did notice, I wanted to test this after closing Arma, and starting it back up and loading save as well, when I clicked on 'resume', it picked up where I aborted the mission at, and there was an error message ('value' is not a value, revert to old 'value' something like that, so I clicked ok, and noticed nothing wrong with the mission state, then from there I went ahead and loaded the actual saved game, which brought up no error, and worked fine -

That error that did come up upon 'resume' might be an indication that players must actually load a saved game, not just run from 'resume' point (resume point being of course most recent abort mission), Im getting the feeling that manually saving the game is working great, but the auto save done when aborting the mission may not be as thourough in saving precious mission info - either way, its all good, as long as manually saved game's work in the mission, good enough for me, considering I was kinda expecting the worst

[johnny vet boy b 0]

Ed - have you tried playing the current version yet, just to see how it's panning out? What does it feel like? Does it feel unpredictable in what's going on around you? (which is what I'd really like, never knowing what might be around a corner or in the next town etc).

[Guest]

Absolutely, each town is unique in its setup, they are not simply replicated

Dont really know how to explain it, ive gone to huge lengths to make each mission different as well, even after playing it thru once.

Right now, due to testing I have the town battle selection selectable thru a radio command, now, in a regular mission, all I have to do is drop in a random 1 - 5 number, and at each mission start the battle between two towns first off is randomly selected from 5 initial battle scenarios.

Now, thats not just it, if a clan wins over its enemy during a battle and takes the enemies town, once it has been reinforced the scripts will attempt to move that clan forward thru more attacks on nearby enemy towns - hence player does not constantly have to traipse alover the place trying to join in battles, clans will advance thru enemy towns progressively.

The sort of testing you are refferring to was actually done alot in the Ofp version, spent litterally weeks seeing how the battles worked out thru the scripts, ya, its not predictable, and now with artillery batteries randomly spawned, its even more unpredictable.

If you cant tell just from this short description, to get these results has been a heck of alot of work - but its worth it to me if it makes re-playability that much better.

The artillery put in has certainly also put an intersting twist on battles , I find it alot more immersive now when advancing with a freindly clan to assist in battling an enemy clan while hearing distant artillery firing and rounds landing in towns.

Even more impressive should be the implimentation of CSL's building burn script once he gets it refined to allow smaller radius fires/smoke on various building types. I envision something on the lines of the video shot from Enemy At The Gates when u get the over look of StalinGrad on fire when Vissili gets his ammo clip with no gun Of course towns will probably not be quite this "lit" up normally, but even a few smoke/fire plumes should make it look pretty wild after being barraged for a while.

When I think of how close this is to having the townbattle function complete, well, it makes me want to kick back and see it there, but theres still some more work to be done here to get there...

egghhhh back to the helo script here

[johnny vet boy b 0]

Thanks for that description Ed, sounds great. Salivating at the thought of all that tactical freedom.

[CharveL 0]