KolgujevConflict/Arma

[23-Down 0]

Hi. didn't read anything here right now.

But your mission sounds good i remember your project for the ofp variant..

good to hear that u continue your project in arma.

But now a little question will u delete the damn gras in the mission?

i ask because it's very laggy for me and other people, not all have a high-end computer...

u can disable it with:

Quote[/b] ]setTerrainGrid 50

in a .sqs or an initline.

Arma Beta patch 1.05 required.

[Connors 0]

If its only in an initline or .sqs the you could do one with one and one without.

[Guest]

Sounds like a simple change to mission, I suppose I could make one with and one without -

Thanks for the replies everyone -

The helo reinforcement thing has been an interesting learning experience so far, the main structure of the script is done and built, and in testing phases, lots of oddities coming up with helos Im discovering here, but its going good

Lots of folks here have been kind enough to continue to contribute some time to reading some of all this mess about the mission, of course I feel indebted to you guys to a degree, so I would like to make another video once the helo thing is done and towns are all polished up, not that this will be soon, but it should be worth the download and watch.

thanks guys, really appreciate it

[CharveL 0]

So are ya done yet???

[Maddmatt 1]

Why make a seperate version of the mission to remove grass? From what I have read it's an SP mission, so the player can simply turn off grass in the video options.

[Guest]

So are ya done yet???

Quote[/b] ]

Maddmatt

Why make a seperate version of the mission to remove grass? From what I have read it's an SP mission, so the player can simply turn off grass in the video options.

Ya, I figured there was an alternative to making a whole new version, just really wanted to be accomodating to the question regarding that, really not something of big concern right now (nor prolly will be for months)

Helo script that boards/sends out/drops off/rtb's helos is almost finished, and still needs to be replicated 5 times, once for each helo, where a number of globals need to be changed for each helo's script.

The function is very dynamic, units, including pilots are spawned at the doorway of various barracks buildings around the helos landing area, and run to board helos, might seem easy to type from here, but it was not easy confronting all the possibilities of what may happen to units/helo during a boarding sequence if under attack - very lengthy and somewhat complex script.

After this script moving on to making a script that will send garrison troops dropped of to various positions within the town theyve been dropped at, which will include turning some units into patrols, some will man exisiting Mg's, some will get in watch towers, others will be static guards. The script is expected to be lengthy, but not as complex as the helo script was.

[Guest]

Just for a little fun here's a few issues discovered, and dealt with during the process of putting together this helo script that runs up to 3 helos at once

Join command issue - if the last unit in a group is joined to a new group, this officially destroys the wp plan stored for the group the last unit left, and possibly (unconfirmed) destroys the group name as well. This bug has caused all sorts of issues to deal with, helo scripts add units to temp groups to send them on various scripted waypoint plans, had to make sure this unit joining temp group was never last unit in an important group.

In Arma, all units Can die, or be deleted in a group with a waypoint plan, and that waypoint plan, and group, will still exist, you can join a unit to a totally dead group and it will resume that groups waypoint plan.

Locking player out of pilot seat of helos, can be done easily thru the method suggested to me by adding an event handler to the helo "GETIN", and boot the player out if in pilot seat thru this, problem, if AI pilot was enroute to the pilot seat, and player gets in for even a Mili second, then gets booted out, still the AI pilot will freeze in his tracks, never to board again unless re-ordered -

Solution, Lock the Helos, created a three script application that adds new action to the helo that allows player to get in secondary gunner seat, which was sort of involved, because added actions have like a 15 meter radius around their object by default, so a on/off switch sort of thing was created that allows the action to show at only 5 meters from helo.

Helo problems : heh, I wont waste the next hour typing all of the issues discovered with helo Ai behaviour problems, had to work out a number of bugs - and got CSL to create a new ForceHeloDown script that runs once helo is on the ground, which uses setVelocity, basically, these helos aint goin nowhere if that script is running, which has been very helpfull. Overall result of the helo script functionality for moving helos around?--> Works great, helos 90% of the time land within a few meters of their specified LZ's, sometimes off a little more, all three helos take off and later land back at base within 30 or so meters of each other, havent had one crash yet, I suspect it will always be a possibility, but ive reduced the chance about as much as I care to attempt to.

A silly little thing, a helo that gets the pilot killed with engine on will continue to run the engine forever, and the only way ive found to have a backup to kill that engine for an empty helo is setFuel 0

All of this dealt with, combined with a script that is 65 Kb, which there will be six of total, just need to copy and paste, change a few globals, plus the few smaller scripts in there as well, total weight just for this application will be around 400 Kb in script.

[Guest]

While im thinking on this, id like to post a few things ive decided not to have in the mission, primarily due to either complexity or time consumption, or both, or even potential impossibility. The reason im posting this is because of realization of how long the entire reinforcement application is taking, and how difficult it has been in areas, and once this entire function is complete, I want to move on and finish final "to do list" and then call the entire battle function DONE, and later be able to move on to beggining to create interactable ai units, put various missions in, etc -

Hers a list of things decided not to put in .... :

Helo Reinforcement stuff:

From the player group, only player can get in and "hitch" a ride on a freindly reinforcement helo. Normally, player will find the opportunity to pick up one, *maybe* two ai units later in the mission, so this is not a huge sacrifice. This position that player can take in these "special" helos is the secondary gunner turret, cannot pilot them (they are ai driven).

A bug that I have given up trying to fix - if player attempts to send one of their ai units into a reinforcement helo while it is enroute to DZ, or base, it can frig up the helo, so it will be stated in readme do not attempt tp send an ai unit to a freindly reinforcement helo, (prefferably, ever) cause it can cause that helo to not just fly in and try to pick that ai unit up, helos do sometimes get stuck in the air, flying in circles forever. Again, it is pointless to send an ai unit to one of these three helos anyhow, they will not be able to get in, scripts will deny them once they reach the helo.

A few other things:

There will be a few buildings, and in all towns a number of gaurd towers, and mg stations that will be litterally invincable. You can still kill the ai occupants of these buildings/objects, but the objects themselves cannot be killed. These objects potentially can be used multiple times by various ai units sent to them, or sent out of certain *important* barracks, so, to keep it simple and not worry about later having to deal with these being destroyed, these objects are indeed invincable to being destroyed. Certain barracks in the major enemy base that do spawn enemy troops on occasion can be deactivated by taking over that town, so they can be stopped... just not easily

Convoys -

I may end up not doing full fledged convoys moving from town to town, not sure yet, really depends on time and difficulty of the application. If they are not put in, then I will certainly at least put in roaming town to town individual vehicles. Anyone interested in helping? The convoy thing is a seperate application and the concept is laid out, if someone wants to attempt to put in a convoy system of course it would be called their application completely and credit to them totally for it in the mission.

Town taking:

It may remain that in order for a town to be taken over, all enemy presence must be removed, was considering allowing a unit or two, but its not that simple, having to descide what to do with residual enemy units left over, etc, so, basically just in the few really big towns, it may be a little time consuming for player to take their own town over- Idea, may end up putting in some sort of heart beat sensor that picks up enemy units in a small radius around player later, maybe....

Player does have to goto town flag to take a town, and can only do so if the town has been cleared, both an inconvenience and a help, as of course if the flag does not change, it means there are still enemies in the town. Ai clan groups only need be in a towns area to potentially take the town, that is if the town has no opposing side units left in it.

Player will not be able to ransack freindly ai manned tanks, they will be locked at start, and probably will remain locked to prevent players from stealing them. All enemy tanks are fair game.

For those that keep an eye open, there should be some sort of transportation reachable within reason from many places during *most* of the mission, major exception would be some time after the begining of the mission, where player may not have much more than a few rounds and a can of beans to start of with.

Thats the most important ones I can think of.

[CharveL 0]

Sounds great.

Now get back to work!

[Guest]

Sounds great.

Now get back to work!

I work on this when I feel the desire and have spent easily hundreds of hours on it, if someone is looking for a mission now or in a week, or even in a month, best not pay attention to this thread

[CharveL 0]

Just trying to work my inspiration.

You are doing a great job as it is so don't mind my impatience.

[Maddmatt 1]

Town taking:

It may remain that in order for a town to be taken over, all enemy presence must be removed, was considering allowing a unit or two, but its not that simple, having to descide what to do with residual enemy units left over, etc, so, basically just in the few really big towns, it may be a little time consuming for player to take their own town over- Idea, may end up putting in some sort of heart beat sensor that picks up enemy units in a small radius around player later, maybe....

Player does have to goto town flag to take a town, and can only do so if the town has been cleared, both an inconvenience and a help, as of course if the flag does not change, it means there are still enemies in the town. Ai clan groups only need be in a towns area to potentially take the town, that is if the town has no opposing side units left in it.

You could have the last few AI drop their weapons and surrender. The BIS coop mission 'Seize the Base' does this. As for what to do with them after that, I guess you can just delete them.

[Guest]

You could have the last few AI drop their weapons and surrender. The BIS coop mission 'Seize the Base' does this. As for what to do with them after that, I guess you can just delete them.

Now im thinking on this lol

Id still probably leave the ai groups that take towns to deal with all opposing side units, because (heh), after they have gone thru a lengthy waypoint plan in the town, once they hit a certain waypoint it will execute a script that will doMove left over units in the town after each other, which has worked so far in the event they missed someone -

As far as the player goes this could be an idea added for them taking a town, to make it easier, only, as with everything else, this would have to implimented very carefully, and deleting the units would be an appearance issue. Honestly, even with say 5 units left in like Bagango, or a few other larger towns, it could be tough to find even those tho - Im thinking on the lines more of having some sort of "sensor" avaliable (maybe a mission reward) that player could use, that, when turned on, would show direction from player to nearby enemy units, something similiar to what ghost recon has as a heartbeat sensor, where its limited in "exactly" locating units, but at least points u in the right general direction.

Whatever happens there, I appreciate the input Maddmatt

Quote[/b] ]

Just trying to work my inspiration.

You are doing a great job as it is so don't mind my impatience.

Thanks, had alot to drink last night after 5 hours of bug squashing in the new helo script, guess I was a little touchy and just took your post the wrong way.. (reminds self that he's human, not part human part computer ). I appreciate the support and interest

[CharveL 0]

bumpage

[liljb15 0]

Is special ed still working on the mission, I really hope it wasn't scrapped.

[johnny vet boy b 0]

Hey SpecialEd - how's it all going? Any news on your progress? It's gone a bit quiet and was worried you'd given up!

Johnny

[liljb15 0]

Hey if you just gave up on this mission could you at least release what you got!

[Guest]

Hello all

Been a long time, no, I have not given up on it, but I have taken a welcome break, it was essential because RL work picked up significantly and I managed to utterly burn myself out on the mission during the winter/spring.

Whats going on here now then, honestly, the main structure of the mission is indeed *relatively* near completion considering the time spent so far overall, but, as I had previously stated, this mission will not require "roleplaying" to get into, what I mean is that the town battles and such and the whole system is not going to be the end of the mission work, there must be personalized life breathed into the mission thru numerous missions avaliable in various towns of various types, and, this is where concern towards time length extension of mission completion comes in my face.

Consider this then, what we have now:

Fully functional across the island randomized town battles initiating. The system is somewhat strategic, allowing clans that take a town to "potentially" advance to attacking other nearby enemy towns, this goes for both freindly and enemy clans.

Basically the assets allowed to the various clans are also complete, most towns have artillery, larger towns have tanks, all have infantry. Artillery is fuly functional, dynamic, and ai will man the guns and barrage enemy towns during a town war.

Town battles that involve both towns attacking each other (some are attack/defend) have the most "interesting" locations picked for the two clans forces to meet and duke it out, I went to great lengths to make some really spectacular battle scenarios in a wide variety of unique terrian settings, although I have gone to great lengths to prevent tanks from getting stuck, in a few areas it is just a simple reality it is possible due to woods.

Player clan can take towns, and declare these their own.

Where its at now, moving towards finishing Helo reinforcements, which is now up and running, 3 helos in Corazol that sit empty waiting can be intiated thru scripts to be manned and boarded by troops (all units spawn at various barracks doors nearby and run to helos, very difficult script, fully dynamic).

A clan that takes a town will be allowed reinforcements flown in, Corazol is the home to freindly reinforcement helos, and will send in up to three helos to drop off troops in the newly taken town.

Thats that -

The helo App will still take considerably more time, helos right now merely drop off their troops and RTB, and even this needs to be finished, helo collision avoidance has not yet been done.

Once this is complete, a new script system will be implimented that will send theses troops dropped of to move to various defensive positions within the town, yep, this will take time.

Ok, so, say give another month or so to complete helo reinforcements completely (including the replication of various flight paths to all towns, replicating the current scripts for the enemy helos at their base)

Here is what I will have after the Helo thing:

Complete the town creation - A dynamic universal system (townCreation V1) has been created to take the hard work out of peicing together external appearances of towns, and putting in their inhabitants as well, nonetheless, this will be another month easy consdering were talking 13 towns.

Dynamic Town hide script - a script that will check on player distance to towns, and will keep most, if not all units hidden in towns that are a certain distance away from player, this will make gigantic difference in gameplay for lower end puters, and will be neccessary once all towns have been fully "populated" with units and objects. Another potential month here.

Ammo Replenishment script - I know, CSL made on already, problem is that it runs a script looping endlessly per unit, and its a nice script, but I need to make one universal script that runs on all desired units currently on the island, for simplicity and lag purposes. Prolly a week to 2 weeks.

Attack the bug list - I have a list of known bugs, most are small, that will need to be addressed, Id expect a decent month to clean upo the entire town battle function completely, some of the bug fixes will involve seperate scripts made, which remove certain island objects due to ai pathing problems even.

so

Talking potentially 4 months give or take, to actually complete the entire town battle function, including bug removal, I dont expect to get *all* the bugs, a mission this size will probably always have a few here or there, I am only 1 man.

Chances are most of this work may very well be truly completed this winter, when RL work slows down enough for me to have time to dive back into the scripting and get stuff done.

--------------------------------------------------------------

OK

So thats all done say, was huge work and effort, somehow I *actually* get it done

This leaves still a vast area open, the missions/quests - the detail, the personality...

Think about it

To just release it this way, it would be fun and dynamic, etc, but, everyone will have to do the good ol standby "roleplay" to get into it, to compensate for the lack of story, and personalization, the lack of "life" breathed into the various units, and overall scenario.

And HECK ya, were talking huge here man, frikkin big, Oblivion scale -

Initally, I had wanted to hand over the town creation to a number of people, but once I finished making the townCreation function, I realized that 1 - I can do this myself already knowing the entire layout in a month or so, 2 - people could, probably Would, have a hard time just understanding what they can/cant do in just placing units/objects that may severely interfere with the way the townbattle scripts function, and so I decided to do this myself (my appreciation still towards those willing to help )

So, here is what I am looking at:

I am intending to complete the entire town battle function solely, I know it inside and out, and to expect someone to try to figure it all out is asking to much, talking 5K some lines in scripts. This is still reasonably doable for me.

This huge area of creating missions/ dynamic dialogs involving npc's in various towns, this is a truly seperate application, a few small parameters to comply with for mission compatability reasons, but seperate nonetheless.

What I am leaning towards here is in the future is asking, asking around ALOT, for people to join in and start putting in missions on the island here, which will involve dialogs with npc's - using the already Arma converted SOW dynamic dialog (thanks to CSL for the conversion ), new npcs, missions. When the time comes, the missions is going to need help from the "gifted" mission designers within the community here, the mission I can see now will only be all it truly can be by having this help, I simply will never have the time alone to do all of the missions/npc interaction myself, I can only do a limited amount.

I know there are ALOT of very gifted people who can do great things with missions/npc interaction, and the mission is going to need you guys, I will only ask for the help once the town battle function itself has gotten close enough to completion where I can send the mission over and people can play thru it get all of the primary elements in their time, maybe buggy, maybe lacking a few elements still, but the mission must be very close to having the battle function complete, this is only fair, and this way all of you will know what the mission has to offer, wether its worth its weight in putting something in, and if the mission is close enough to completion to call it ready for the details.

I had already began a dynamic dialog system that complimented SOWs dynamic dialog, my script system allowed dialogs with npcs to happen in real time, covering issues with npc's getting shot during animations/dialogs, even npc's reactions to player being "bad" and attacking them during a dialog, etc - these functions will be easily implimented into dialogs with npc's, and prevent some really nasty potential results from player trying to mess around during an npc dialog. These dialogs function no different than in a high quality Rpg like oblivion, mutiple player responses can be allowed, multiple npc responses, npc animations can easily be put in along with their voice responses.

My only "stipulation" will be primarily on the voice files for npcs. Meaning they will have to be high quality. I spent about a month putting some dialogs together for a few npcs in the old Ofp version, and used dialog voice files from another game which I edited, and used to create the dialogs, and these were absolutely excellent, as of course the voice files were of great quality, and it ended up being good enough to be put into a real Rpg being sold on the shelf, with mission updates and all mixed into the dialogs, and, it was dang good fun to put it together with SOWs dynamic dialog, the animations put in here and for the npc's reactions was just icing on the cake.

Anyhow, I hope some folks might feel a tad of interest in helping out with this later on, heck, send me an email if you want, I cant offer up anything just yet, but someday in the future here, the mission just "might" get to where its time for such, where people can be free to put in their own mission content within the dynamic enviornment, be happy to hear from anyone if they might feel inclined to "potentially" contribute later on.

Thats pretty much it for now

L8er guys

[liljb15 0]

OH MY GOD you're back!! I thought you died or had given up, man I was planning or bribing the CIA to give me your personal information so I could torture you (not really). Good to see you back man.

[Guest]

heh

yes, ive been around, didnt really mean to leave people hanging, just needed to more/less stop on the mission for a while, considering the scope and scale, certain apps, like the helo reinforcements have turned muchly into work more than fun due to complexity, which was fine, but once RL work kicked in, I had to let this go for a while, just the way it goes.

The only consolation I can provide exists also in the previous post of mine, which is the same as here, this will still take alot more time to finish, and those few of you guys that have read this stuff and posted now and again, I appreciate your support, this entire thread has really made this mission feel a little (or a lot) more than just an unfinished *idea* sitting on my hd thru its progress, I appreciate that alot.

See what happens, I doubt unfortunately that I will be able to truly get any decent amount of work done thru the coming weeks/months due to Rl work, although this is actually a good thing, as Rl work does truly *pay* and its not easy right now to just peck away at it, as the helo scripts almost require an amount of focus to complete that I just dont currently have the time to afford...

If Bis would just "sponsor" the mission, then I could prolly get the whole thing done with dialogs and sub missions and all in 2 months! :P .... Prolly not going to happen lol

Do wish I could release some sort of sample mission, but it would end up consuming, again, more of my time to extract a mission with just a few towns, have to work with townCreation to spiff up those towns, etc, in the end, it would not do the mission justice really, the whole concept is to provide an island full of conflict - a few towns? There are plenty of high quality missions from creators here that would offer up the same, with even missions intertwined and prolly voice speech/intros/etc, I realistically cant see making a sample mission that would be worth its weight without wrecking the final product, to release a beta as it is would do this, in its unfinished state.

Just have to see waht happens in the coming months, really my guess is as good as anyone elses, this is just a game, a hobby, I chose a really huge project here, and I dont think I realized the scope until I was already half way thru it, but thats ok, its been very rewarding to see it come this far, just have to let it ride for now and see what time reveals.

[wolfflight 0]

I am still boggled by the fact that he says he has working artillery and that the AI will get in and man it and use it against you....

at ranges exceeding their sight? to support other units??

artillery has ranges in Kilometers (and miles!

don't usually see AI engage outside of about 500 meters.... even takes usually engage only withing about a kilometer

[Guest]

I am still boggled by the fact that he says he has working artillery and that the AI will get in and man it and use it against you....

at ranges exceeding their sight? to support other units??

artillery has ranges in Kilometers (and miles!

don't usually see AI engage outside of about 500 meters.... even takes usually engage only withing about a kilometer

your response is a little boggling, not exactly what I said regarding this, actually not at all

various towns do have artillery peices, thesse are actually artillery batteries, some with up to 3 peices, mg stations, patrols, and gunners on standby.

When a war erupts between two clans holding towns, these towns are usually right next to eachother, and if either town has artillery batteries still functional, the gunners will run and get in the arty peices and begin to barrage the enemy town... see now? lol

Artillery barrages can last up to half an hour to an hour, targets are randomly selected within the area of the town of the enemy.

I dont know the exact details on waht arty can and cant do, but I suppose in the event two towns fighting are spread out too far for what would normally be an acceptable distance for artillery to function, or for some reason due to LOS someone doesent like it, well, then maybe do some other mission? LOL

The addition of the artillery system HUGELY boosted the intensity of the town battles, in fact, it frikkin knocked my socks off for a while once implimented watching all these various assetts working together to create a symphony of combat elements. Even better, at some point planning to impliment CSL's burning buildings, so after a long barrage a city should look really awsome, with huge smoke pluming from arty struck buildings as well.

[liljb15 0]

Hey special ed I really want to try this and instead of waiting 4 months why don't you release a beta of what you have done and periodically update it with missions and whatnot. Maybe I'm speaking for myself but I hope alot of other people agree with me.

[Guest]

Honsetly the only way Id even consider doing such would be to spend the time to do the full town creation, where towns would have everything they should have, actually a fun thing to do -

Ok, so I do this. Towns now got all the 'cosmetic' fixes, gaurd towers, patrols, walls, mg bunkers, spotlights, etc, prolly wont even take a month.

You guys grab this thing up like hotcakes, in its unfinished state, and have fun with it till ur bored of it. Then I end up making various updates, but... guess what, no one really cares about updates cause theyve already played the heck out of it, seen all the towns, and participated in the battles. Basically, what will happen is, once released that will be the end of the mission, updates im sure will draw "some" people, but how many folks are willing to play the same mission over, and over, and over just because of new updates, it would only get older, and older, and older...

My suggestion, if u enjoy missions of large scale, try Mike Melvins CTI, even alone, its a great mission, I used to love spending hours just playing a cti game even alone in Ofp, and it looks like its finally been properly converted in Arma, but I think eventually people will get bored of my mission in its current state, there is too much unfinished business to hand it out.

[liljb15 0]

Well then...umm let me beta test, you need beta testers right?