Evolution V1.0 Large scale respawn coop

[Mobious 0]

Is it just me or in 1.4a there are alot more AI in parasido(sp)? Last night after I put 1.4a up on my server 5 other people and myself tried to take the town. It seems like ai just kept coming and coming. At 1 point I was on the hill just north of town and saw dozens of ai troops pour over the the southern hill. I think I found atleast 3 or 4 BRDMs maybe 2 T72s. It was like AI from other towns came to help defend the town. It was fun!

[shiner 0]

I definitely wouldn't change the game mechanic of having to spawn at base and take transports back to the mission point. To me this is one of the most "realistic" aspects of ArmA and yes the penalty for death is having to sit out the next X minuets so it does make you play more tactically and safe.

While I like the the idea of having to also care for assets.. I still think having to drive or even having to carefully WP AI across the map in repair/refuel trucks is a sad way to spend 30 minutes especially if it was someone else that crashed the unit (as often is the case with a server that has 10+ pop throughout the day). I think respawns aren't the perfect solution as they encourage using the LB as a disposable unit. Having a chopper doing the repairing.. or using the chopper as a airlift platform (scripted in the RTSIV mission) to deliver trucks would also work wonders to reduce the burden on the recovery team, but still maintain the pressure to utilize resources appropriately.

[CaptainMurphy 0]

What if you made a "taxi" little bird that would fly to predesignated points near the latest town that is being taken (i.e. the closest occupied town). Maybe have unseen helo pads in a safe area not too far from town that the AI "taxi" flies to over and over. That way the real pilots can still be forced to recover their birds but the CS fans can get action a little faster.

[Jack-UK 0]

@ April 19 2007,15:20)]...

Dwarden I will do somthing with the outer islands , one idea i was thinking of was a grand finaly face of with the dictator and a big army. once all towns are cpatured you have to beachhead one of the islands. More boat patrols around these places would be good, its just annoying how they have green radar icons as ther eis no armed enemy boat. In the submission the brief reads "the enemy has stolen some of our boats" to try to explain this. Im not fond of the idea forcing people to download content to play servers or missions. Maybe a little later in armas life I will be interested in addons.

...

That sounds really cool man! Make use of Ramadi or that Vassal island or whatever it is up in the north would be cool you'd probs have to stop people getting there until all cities/missions have been completed if you want it to be like a 'final fight' i think it would be cool, it would require coordination and teamwork to get a team in and form a beach head.. maybe you'd need a few bombing runs followed by some boats of infantry to take out anti air and then bring in some attack choppers to support infantry to conquer the island and destroy the main governmental building or something?

[rekster 0]

@Kiljoy

Fully understand you want a finalized version before porting it over. I would do the same, if I were in your shoes. I am glad that you are at least thinking about it.

The version I tested was 1.4. I will post 1.4a at our server and post my test results.

Thanks for the hard work, and great mission.

[KilJoy -SFG- 0]

Seems 1.4a is prone to more client crashes. I think i may know what this is and im working on a solution.

[froggyluv 2136]

I love the Grand Finale idea. All squads unite for the final charge. Too many servers I've played on where gamers clan off into niche groups not wanting to work together. i've got nothing against lone wolf/small group action but it would be great to have everyone have to work together to finish this thing (which i've never done -married )

[strango 5]

@ April 19 2007,09:20)]About transport, here is the basic mechanics. The reward script is triggerd when units bord the chopper at BASE only. if somone boards your chopper out of base if disables the script. Its to prevent farming. It would be nice to reward players for transporting from one town to another, But hard to prevent abuse. Also you only get the points if you are sitting in the driver/pilot seat the moment they get out. To reactivate the transport points just fly to base and land and pick up some passengers and fly more then 500m and drop them off.

How about executing a script when someone gets in the pilot seat and exiting when they get out.

The condition checks would be the crew count of the helicopter being greater than 1 (meaning more than just the pilot) and the speed of the helicopter being above speed 20 (or some other number). While these conditions are met you can have a temp number increment at some set rate. The rate will be based on how high the crew count is. When the temp number reaches certain thresholds award the pilot points to his overall score.

EDIT: I can see where this can be abused with people just flying around and not landing. Perhaps only award the points when the crew count goes back to a lower number.

[CaptainMurphy 0]

@ April 19 2007,09:20)]About transport, here is the basic mechanics. The reward script is triggerd when units bord the chopper at BASE only. if somone boards your chopper out of base if disables the script. Its to prevent farming. It would be nice to reward players for transporting from one town to another, But hard to prevent abuse. Also you only get the points if you are sitting in the driver/pilot seat the moment they get out. To reactivate the transport points just fly to base and land and pick up some passengers and fly more then 500m and drop them off.

How about executing a script when someone gets in the pilot seat and exiting when they get out.

While it's running monitor the crew count of the helicopter.  Any time that it is greater than 1 (meaning more than just the pilot) and the speed of the helicopter is above speed 20 (or some other number).  While these conditions are met you can have a temp number increment at some set rate.  The rate will be based on how high the crew count is.  When the temp number reaches certain thresholds award the pilot points to his overall score.

Sounds like an idea, but it won't account for people that just load up on people then just fly circles until their rank goes up.

Just a thought, maybe make it so the pilot class can "request" a new bird. So it takes off points or something from their score every time they ask for another one. Essentially the requested bird locks everyone else out of the pilot seat except the person that "bought" it. Once those are completely destroyed they need to disappear and force them to buy another. Just leave the original "unkillable" birds in as well for those that can't "afford" the cost.

[shiner 0]

I REALLY like the idea that you could spend "points" to get another asset, but that is a totally different approach and I'm not sure you could blend it with the existing spawn and/or repair style of play.

[KilJoy -SFG- 0]

Version 1.4b is available from the first post. I am mostly focusing on the client crashes in this version but there are some mission bugs fixed too.

The transport system the way it is encourges pilots to go back to base to make points on pickups. Any free rides out of base be it re spawning choppers or AI flown choppers will leave human pilots with even less to do. But i can see how on a server with few people no one wants to hang around waiting for people to die to transport them. At the moment abandoned choppers or choppers that were not fully destroyed don't get markers so there can still be problems locating one too if there all lost that way.

[CaptainMurphy 0]

The real bummer is taking a round through the windshield at tree top level and the helo goes down in a forest. Short of dozing the area around the bird and bringing in repair and refuel it is a nightmare to get it back out of there. Or worse yet in the middle of a bunch of buildings that for some reason won't go down with explosives. Been on a couple servers in that condition that looked like someone intentionally did it and there was no admin around to reset.

Too bad there isn't the CH-47 built in anymore. At least then you could lift it out, there were a few scripts written to do that.

What I was thinking for the AI choppers was to check if there was a pilot in game, if not then the AI would supply one. Then again I am of the mind that only pilots should fly.

[Fu-ion 0]

something I noticed today, 8 people on the ( professionally hosted ) server, 6 of them around Somato.

It starts to rain, I check the stats for players and everybody in the rain area has an instant 10k desync. The rain moves on and desync disappears.

I thought this was just coincidence but it began to rain again a few minutes later .. same result : 10k desync for a few seconds then back to normal.

Also, our server crashed twice while playing with 1.4a and 2 of us had a crash to desktop 3 times in 2 games.

I think if Pita and Masbete were removed it might help and it would be good to experiment with NO weather.

my 2cents

Otherwise it is the only mission I play at the moment !

[mattxr 9]

How did you make it so you cant Upbo the mission, may come in usefull :P ive tried everything lol

[Dwarden 1125]

single trick ...

[Mohsen 0]

Hi, I'm new:

Me and my mates have really enjoyed playing Evolution and think that it is by far and away the best Mission out there, thanks for all the hard work.

Small suggestion:

When going around clearing towns we didn't find any SLA Ammo crates in the camps, that would be cool and useful. Unless there is some already, in which case nvm.

Question:

If I wanted to change the name of the mission would that be against your wishes?

e.g. one of our guys has setup the server so that all the missions we play are numbered, he unpacks the pbo and edits it somehow, so when they come up in the mission list they read :- #1: Seek & Destroy (Coop) #2: Open ground (Deathmatch) #3: Etc etc.

So whats the rules on that?

[PaveQ 0]

Isn't anyone bothered with clouds going way too fast when short day is used? IMO it would be better to disable rains/clouds when it's used. Also, the weather changes way too fast if you fly to rain with chopper.

[december 0]

Concerning the respawn choppers. Would it be possible to use an engineer to fix the choppers?

That way you could fly an engineer to a downed chopper and get it working again, handy if there are no repair trucks near or the chopper is down in the mountains.

[insomnianshadow 0]

@KilJoy [sFG]

Since I really fell in love with ArmA and especially with Evolution I recently bought a whole new dedicated server just to be able to host your mission at acceptable performance.....

Since I really want to contribute in making the Evolution experience as bug free and smooth as possible I thought posting my experiences as a Clan Leader, Server hoster and Game Modder could be constructive.....

So after about 2 weeks of heavy internet hosting, testing and monitoring here is my feedback.....

A 14 player dedicated server (regularly full in no time)

ArmA version 1.05

Evolution version 1.4a

-Squad getting fubared when squad leader dies

Actually this is the most anoying issue, where the squad leader dies and someone else of the team becomes squad leader.... It's really a pain in the ass and tedious as hell if you have to make every squad member rejoin your new squad at the transfer house just because the leader got KIA.. It seems to me that this happens about 7 out 10 times when I am squad leader and absolutely screws our missions and rewarding....

-Client and Server regularly crashing

Since you already seem to have been paying attention to that hopefully soon I will be able to tell if all the crashing is gone with version 1.4b

-Buggy mission assignment

Now that you seem to have fixed the mission premature ending.. a new bug appeared where you successfully assign a mission as a squad leader .. but neither the destroy tag appears nor the enemy convoy marker is displayed on the map.. I tried assigning the boat mission when this bug occured  and obviously the enemy boats were not placed on the map  

-Head movement bug

Once in a while me and other players experience the bug where no matter what we press or do we are stuck with looking around (stuck with moving our heads not beeing able to properly aim or identify) this bug always appears after having driven in a vehicle .. and once happened getting into a vehicle near by gives good chances of being able to get back to normal (pressing the * key DOES NOT HELP)

-Chopper being displayed as a wreckage without rotor sound

Plenty of times it happens that a flying chopper appeaers as a wreckge to other clients lacking of sound too. A way to fix this bug for the clients is if a client just shoots the chopper once .... the model gets updated .. the rotors start to rotate and the rotor sound is kicking back in

-Extreme Client Loading\Joining Times

This is a little bit odd since I couldn't find a pattern behind this ... but it just happens sometimes that some clients take literally ages to connect to my server whereas others connect in no time .. the funny thing is that this also happens now and then to my gaming client which is latest hardware and connected through a 100 mbit connection to the server (LAN)

-Rearming Ammo Bug  

We witnessed strange behaviour when trying to rearm choppers at the base with the ammo truck ... for a couple of seconds it seems to rearm the chopper's ammo but then drops to the original depleted value.... very stange

-Mission Rewarding Bug  

Now and then it happens that when we successfully complete a mission (mostly when it is our first mission as a squad), only the squad leader gets the reward points whereas the squad members don't get rewarded at all

-Interaction bug  

Now and then it happens that squad members suddenly cease to be able to interact with vehicles or ammo crates, also squad member names or general player names cease to be displayed when aiming at them...

Only fix so far is Respawning

In case you want to try out new betas of Evolution before officially releasing them and you need a  clear documentation and testing platform, feel free to contact me and I would be glad and honored to help out....

The software I am using is:

Windows XP Pro SP2

ArmA 1.05

Evolution 1.4a

The hardware I am using is:

Dedicated server: 3 Ghz Core 2 Duo Conroe, 2mbit internet connection, 1 GB Ram

My Clients Hardware

Athlon X2 Dual core CPU, 2 GB RAM, Geforce 6800 GT  

The server settings I use are:

arma.cfg

Quote[/b] ]language="English";

adapter=-1;

3D_Performance=7389.000000;

Resolution_W=640;

Resolution_H=480;

Resolution_Bpp=32;

MaxMsgSend = 256;

MinBandwidth = 1536000;

MaxBandwidth = 2304000;

server.cfg

Quote[/b] ]passwordAdmin = "XXXXXXX"; // password to protect admin access

password = ""; // password required to connect to server

hostname="Conroe 3Ghz 2Mbit 1Gb ArmA 1.05 Server";

motd[]=

{

"Welcome to Oneofthe8devilz's Conroe ArmA 1.05 Server",

"Hosted by Oneofthe8devilz",

"Please be patient and stay connected, It will definitely be worth the wait",

"Connection loading times sometimes may take several minutes",

"We are about to found a new Multi-Gameing-Clan, in case you are interested to join...",

"Contact us at oneofthe8devilz@hotmail.com",

"Once loaded and connected please carefully read the mission notes and instructions !",

"So good hunt soldier and happy fragging ",

}; // Welcome message

motdInterval=10;

voteThreshold=0.33; // when one third agrees, this is enough to confirm a vote

reportingIP=""; // private server - no reporting

//  voteMissionPlayers=3; // start voting when 3 players connect

// checkfiles[]={"HWTL\dta\data3d.pbo","dta\data3d.pbo"}; //list of files to check for identity

kickduplicate=1; // do not allow duplicate id

// equalModRequired=1; // require equal mod

maxPlayers=13;

[Dwarden 1125]

i just discovered that You use relative aggresive cull on enemy vehicles ...

i suggest until armed vehicles (uaz with mg, gl, bmp, t-72 etc) are completely destroyed to keep them for extended period of time (~30m) ...

it's no fun driving back to base for repair truck to return back and discover that UAZ is gone

p.s. maybe add menu option "mark for repair/use" which removes the cull counter from it ...

[aussie dave 0]

The side missions don't work in 1.4b now

[DragoFire 0]

The side missions don't work in 1.4b now

I've checked this with Dave and notice in the error window the follow is that same in all error, the first part changes, but this doesn't.

<table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td>Code Sample </td></tr><tr><td id="CODE">

file mpmissions\__cup_mp.sara\missions\mwpat.sqf, line 126

It says it's missing. This is from selecting the Water Patrol mission. After leaving mission hut, no waypoint is available and if you travel around the area where the 3 boats are normally spawned in nothing.

I'll check some of the other missions a bit more and try to get more info for you killjoy to fix the issue.

DragoFire

[RogueRunner 0]

Played on a public server for the first time last night having only been on my LAN before that. AWESOME fun!!!

Like I mentioned before, I'm not for the heli respawn thing but what I saw now on the public server is that if a heli goes down in the south of the island and there is relatively few guys on the server it will not be recovered since it is just too much of a mission driving the trucks down all that way. My suggestion is that you have some trucks in the towns that can be used to recover and refuel the heli's.

[DragoFire 0]

Played on a public server for the first time last night having only been on my LAN before that. AWESOME fun!!!

Like I mentioned before, I'm not for the heli respawn thing but what I saw now on the public server is that if a heli goes down in the south of the island and there is relatively few guys on the server it will not be recovered since it is just too much of a mission driving the trucks down all that way. My suggestion is that you have some trucks in the towns that can be used to recover and refuel the heli's.

That's the half fun of it, you have to use the ones from the main base or the few you get from forward bases or captured towns that have them.

[rekster 0]

With v 1.4b I have seen sum bugs I have not seen before.

Ammo Bug

- Near the Ammo crates and other parts of the Air Field, we had ammo all over the place. Not sure if someone tried to put ammo in a MH6 or not. (It looked like someone tried to put ammon in an MH6 and the MH6 did not like it)

- After awhile, when I went to the ammo crates, they were empty. I killed myself a few times, to see if this was the issue, but that did not fix it. So after playing for over an hour we could not get weapons or ammo, from the crates or ammo truck.

Client Issue

- We had several client crashes. They would start with getting a high dysnc, then crash. (Others that were playing had no dysnc issue.)

Is it possilbe to add a ammo remover script? This would help, with people who try to overfill a vehicle with ammo.

Suggestion:

I do not know if this is possible, but I have seen it in other missions, were you get ammo via a Menu vs getting it out of the box. You might want to consider in the future allowing people when they spawn to chose the weapons and ammo from a menu. You could attach that script to the ammo truck, and that would allow people to re-ammo, or change out weapons from an Ammo Truck.

Ver 1.4b seemed to not run as smooth as far as dsync / lag compared to ver 1.4.