creating a realistic radio/chat sytem

[highwave 1]

Hello there,

i was minding on it and looking for informations, but ive found nothing yet. I would like to create a realistic radio/chat system that should be impacted by :

1- Distances

2- Weather

3- Topology (mountain, obstacle)

So my question is :

1- Is it possible to tune the standard chat system (global/side/team) with a script that may degrade the chat writing depending on the upper parameters ?

ie.

Distance between sender and receiver = 2km

Optimal reception distance = 1km

Sender message = "Papabear, what is your situation ?"

Receiver message = "Pap***ar, w**t is **ur si****ion *"

Thx for your help and dont hesitate to leave your opinion

[fasad 1]

It will be possible for scripted communications, although performance may be an issue. Great idea though. Topography rather than topology will be the greatest challenge. You'll need to quickly check terrain height every certain distance somehow. Invisible objects can do this, but speed may be an issue.

Check out Kronzky's string library for "on the fly" string manipulation.

Over-writing the games engines default radio communication strings (and audio?) with the appropriately degraded radio comms for the situation will be a lot more tricky! Depending on the mission this might not need to be addressed. Long-range HQ communications are all scripted, whereas the hard-coded ones tend to be local.

[crashdome 3]

@Highwave

In OFP, you could disable the radio text completely. Problem, is that you also disable the ability to see debug messages. If your mission is strictly built around this idea and includes no need for debug messages it is actually very easy to accomplish. The problem is simply making the scripts for others to use... because many people use the text as a way to see other information. Personally, I don't like to use that method and prefer hint/titletext for that purpose (although others say you can see more lines with chat, I think it is messy - one can create a very nice dialog to do logging).

OK, I got a little OT there...

Anyways, you can check terrain mapping with logics and not only is it possible... I've actually done something similar in OFP but ran into limitations.

Also, most modern communication systems are very advanced and generally you'd be doing alot of ground-level checking for nothing. IF, your mission is based around using the radio in such a fashion as to need to check between units and is an integral part of the mission plot, then I would say go for it!