Evolution V3.0

[KilJoy -SFG- 0]

When the system is working as it should be this will become a none issue. The plan is to make it as it should be which is if on game start there is more then 15 players you will have to team to take a mission for the first 60 minutes after that you can go solo , if you jip after an hour you can go solo. Enough on this issue already.

I acknowledge the bug and plan to fix but want to wait and see if any more crop up before doing any updates.

Just remember stobsy WoW and eve server specs are like super computors for nasa.

[The Susser 0]

@Stobbsy I fully understand as I play Planetside and that has the options of play style you describe.

It seemed like you were kicking KillJoy in the nuts with that's it I'm never playing it again statement. Evo emcompasses many features and just because the side missions require more than one player now. Is it really a reason not to play? at least try to play as a team. Sounds like to me you have done too much grinding in WoW

My biggest gripe about evo is the terrible lack of team play on some servers. I am into coop in a big way and to finally get an open ended mission like evo is my gaming utopia. To see Evo being played by solo grinders just defeats the spirit of coop and the vision for the mission.

[satexas69 0]

KilJoy,

Have you had a chance to look at Norrin's Revive-Respawn script?

It would literally do "wonders" for your mission and really enhance team play (co-op) without any degration to your actual mission intent.

Seriously, it's one helluva script.

[Ceej 0]

I can only play this map for 10 minutes before crashing no matter where I go, what I do or what my gfx are... anyone else have this issue?

[KilJoy -SFG- 0]

The question of noone earning transportation points still looms.

Trust me you dont want the flyboys giving out , you aint heard nothing yet.

[frederf 0]

@KilJoy:

1. I haven't played 3.0 for very long, but maybe keeping track of the enemy in a town statistically might be good instead of despawning all and respawning 100% enemy forces next time.

Example: Somato has max unit strength of [100,5,2] (["Infantry", "UAZ MG", "BMP2"]) and somebody attacks it and killed 30 infantry and a BMP2. After they leave the mission decides for simplicities sake to reduce the town to statistics. The mission counts the number of enemy in the town and saves that data to an array again. [70,5,1].

Now I know you're thinking that this will allow 1 guy to eventually beat the entire island by "plinking" away at a town little by little. Now during the battle / during down-time the town would start to "regenerate" slowly back up to the maximum.

2. When someone takes a mission that spawns enemies, everyone within 500-1000m of the mission center should recieve a "This is papa bear, warning mission going on in your sector, be on the lookout for friendly and enemy forces." So at least if you happen to be a normally clear zone you won't be completely surprised when someone makes a mission on top of you.

3. Encourage people to play together by having revive via medic an option only if you died within 300m of your leader.

4. Encourage people to play together by allowing members of a squad to randomly gain access to weapons (handheld) one level above their current rank.

I initially thought unless you're in a squad you can't hold anything better than a 9mm M9

5. Expensive equipment should be locked up in sandbags until there exists a player on the server with enough rank to operate it. Maybe don't even spawn the AH-1s until there's a pilot to fly them?

[KilJoy -SFG- 0]

well thought out ideas Frederf came to the same conclusion on idea 1 and have it working well in my current test version.

As for the rest Ill think on them.

[longdaddy 0]

great work, KJ

I am seeing nice server FPS boost with this version, and the reinforcements/officer/prisoner systems add a nice dimension

some things we have run into on our server, in no particular priority order:

1. an odd humvee that would not despawn after being abandoned, it stayed there overnight with nobody in

2. sometimes fuel trucks would "run out", i.e. they have fuel to move, but would not refuel vehicles. not sure if this is by design. I've seen this in 1.5 too.

3. Cayo is hard to attack, enemies would spawn in and out if you try to engage from the hills in the N. was very frustrating until we sneaked despawn-preventing AI from another angle. wasn't a big problem in paraiso/somato/dolores.

4. the problem with prisoners in the vehicle. It seems that the only way to get both human and prisoners into the vehicle is to have humans load first. Also, if all humans leave the vehicle they cannot re-enter if any prisoners are inside. Or maybe it's the other way around. We struggle a lot with this. In addition, friendly AI will shoot at vehicles with prisoners inside

5. sometimes prisoners escape! . well, they wander away from the camp to where the trucks are and can be re-captured. odd.

6. AI from my squad will not accept orders to move, if it is in the driver position of a vehicle that has AI belonging to another squad in non-driver position. When I give "move" order, it says ",move to XY" instead of "1, move to XY" and no squad member number is pronounced over voice.

7. This is more of a request - it would be AWESOME to have squad leader reassigned back to the player who drops and then quickly re-joins. We all get occasional crashes, and it is hell to get things organized if leader drops and comes back, especially now that it is so critical to have AI staying put in the right places.

8. Another request would be to allow people who reached a certain rank to "lock" refuel/repair trucks, preventing their despawn. it's a chore to keep AIs in the drivers seat since they like to idle engine, turn on headlights, attract kamovs, take up valuable slots, etc. Engineering FARP is nice for resupply but it does no good for recovering destroyed vehicles. We always like to keep repair and refuel truck behind the lines - but it is not fun to manage AI to make sure they don't despawn (I noticed that sometimes the trucks would not despawn for quite a while and sometimes they do rather quickly, is there any system to this?)

Again, Thanks a lot for your work, me and my friends would not be playing arma if it wasn't for you. I hope you will find a nice, relaxing, well paying game designer job one day (if you haven't already)  

[thepiespy 2]

Hello, i just wanted to stop by and say thanks for creating such a great mission for us Co-op players, some of you might have seen me on the ArmA Chicago server as "Mike". I just got done playing 3.0 with mostly my friends on our teamspeak, we spent the most time in Cayo, and the new reinforcements gave a good challenge, we eventually had a whole supply area set up with a MASH FARP and ammo trucks. it was a blast. The night ended with one of the most hysterical moments i've ever had in a game where we did a massive paradrop into Cayo with a littlebird, i jumped out last, the littlebird fell to the ground, caused a massive explosion, and then simultaneously took out a city block and the radio tower. I laughed so hard i cried! I can't wait for the next version, are you thinking about making one featuring maybe some custom addons, such as maybe the Mapfact and RHS helicopters? Once again thanks and keep up the great work.

[satexas69 0]

3.0 Review :

1. Still a odd problem with AI sometimes not wanting to drive normal stuff like hummvs, strikers and such, even when you have plenty of rank. Having AI recruit AI for you seems also to mess up the whole "AI will drive" routine (You tell them to get in, they say ,'ok', try to get in, get in and immediately jump back out). I even left the game and came back and *still* had the same issue. Oddly another play on the serve at the same time had the issue, but a 3rd player, also on the server, did NOT have the issue of his AI driving stuff, and he was far lower rank.

2. The Engineer repair pad is *awesome*, and is a "major" plus to cleaning up vehicles after taking a city.

3. I still think Norrin's respawn-revive script would be *awesome* for your map, but not medic only. Medic only would be really, really ghey. There's no reason to restrict that - it encourages co-op.

Norin's script allows you to hit the button for respawn, or wait instead of revival (you can still hit button at any time). SO make it so that if you get revivied, it cost you a point, otherwise, you can respawn for free. See, everyone wins in that scenario.

4. I love the way the cities rebulk up and cull and call in reinforcements - seriously, please don't change that. Leave it as is, I really love it.

5. I watched players that were disconnected hours ago still gain points and rank. Gotta have a point leak somewhere! One guy logged out with 181 points and was at 220+ an hour later.

[Nikoo 0]

@ June 19 2007,05:09)]well thought out ideas Frederf came to the same conclusion on idea 1 and have it working well in my current test version.

As for the rest Ill think on them.

Still, I think this "revive" option is crap...

Let's keep a bit reality in this game, thx...

Respawn is required for players to have fun and be able too play a long time.

Revive wouldn't be suitable I think.

[stobbsy 0]

 Sounds like to me you have done too much grinding in WoW

hehehe that may be true

@Kiljoy. Maybe the problem with lag and server fps issues is something to do with something changed/added since you optimised the mission and script?

The reason I say this is that on the test versions straight after optimisation, we were getting 8 - 15 fps server side, and in the later test versions and version 3.0 we are getting 2 fps server side.

Has the extra triggers for monitoring the FARP areas (at the docks and farp areas) and engineer mobile Farps maybe caused this if they are each checking every x seconds whether something to repair is in there area? Has the monitoring for medics healing and engineers repairing and giving the points of added to server stress?

Has the merging of some seperate scripts into 1 maybe altered there performance?

A big factor on lag and server performance appears to be when people connect and disconnect from the server especially when its constant or there are 4 or 5 people joining/disconnecting. Do people running locked/passworded servers have lag/fps problems as they dont have people connecting and disconnecting all the time?

Maybe people who run servers could reply to this with there fps values and specs, whether its passworded or not, whether they get lag/fps issues, how often, how many people on average are on the server. Maybe this would help Kiljoy out with eliminating or highlighting this issue.

Surely when multiple towns are activated at the same time this is extra stress on the server. If for example some people are attacking Cayo and some people attacking Corazol and Corazol keeps despawning cause the 2 guys attacking it died. When the 2 people start attacking Corozol again they have to spawn the town again. Surely this constant spawning/despawning causes problems?

Would maybe making the towns only activate in a certain order eliminate this and only activate when the previous town is taken?

[KilJoy -SFG- 0]

Im in the process of looking into fps again stobbsy.

seeing thro hangers thro humvee glass is an arma bug

ai getting in and out of vehicles is an arma bug it was punctured but when it fixes the puncture or thrown track it is not updated with the ai. blow it up in evo fix it when it respawns and they will get in. If its an east vehicle your out of luck.

Just fyi an unmentioned fact in the briefing is that laser designator people get half the score of a sucessful air strike if they guide the bomb. They will also get half the TK points if there are any, be warned.

[jasono 0]

Evolution has some unique features and is a very good map. I played 3.0 on GOL server last night with publics and other members.

Dam the AI are freeking smart? Heading along a road and see some enemy. They see us and they move away.. so I think bah they ran off. 30 Seconds later we are being flanked left and right.

I like the fact that there is no desync when a player connects to the server due to the public variables now. I don't know if this is the 1.08 patch or your map, but it's much better now. I've also noticed a performance upgrade all together which makes it much more fun.

I see a lot of bugs in your map are mainly ArmA bug related now, so I guess your waiting too.

Great work KilJoy. Much appreciated!

Edit : Typo's

[castun 0]

Dunno who said that seeing through hangars through the humvee windows, pretty sure it's only the terrain and certain objects you see. When looking through the humvee windows it doesn't seem to show any trees, infantry or other vehicles for that matter. Pretty sure the hangar thing is the same way.

Besides its a game bug not an Evolution bug AFAIK.

[{USI}_Zombie 0]

@ June 19 2007,05:09)]well thought out ideas Frederf came to the same conclusion on idea 1 and have it working well in my current test version.

As for the rest Ill think on them.

Still, I think this "revive" option is crap...

Let's keep a bit reality in this game, thx...

Respawn is required for players to have fun and be able too play a long time.

Revive wouldn't be suitable I think.

Gotta agree on this one. Revive is a bit too far out of the norm. I think a better option would be selectable respawns. If I could respawn at a FARP in a friendly area, or even at a MASH, then that would save a lot of time, and I think would be a much better option than revive.

my 2 cents

[B-Stard 0]

Playing this mission is useless, AI are just like zombies spawning all the time, last night i was having over 800 kills and we didnt even made first town :S

[daikan 1]

What this mission *really* needs bad is Norrin's Revive-Respawn script.

i can support this 200%. best addition to evolution would be the revive script. a simple feature with a huge impact on gameplay.

every single mission i've played that made use of the revive script was light years ahead from everything else running on public servers in terms of teamplay experience.

here's my suggestions regarding revive restrictions as mentioned before:

Quote[/b] ]let everyone revive each other, but ...

a) give medics a higher score for successfully reviving others

b) let soldiers who have been revived by a non-medic spawn in a wounded state (but able to walk)

c) let the killed player (who is in waiting/spectating mode) decide if to respawn at base or not after a given timeout (say 1 minute)

[Control 0]

Playing this mission is useless, AI are just like zombies spawning all the time, last night i was having over 800 kills and we didnt even made first town :S

And when seeing over 80 pages of people praising this mission, and seeing how a majority of filled servers run Evolution... You do not suspect that it was a problem on your server or the way you act?

[caas1 0]

@killjoy

Could you perhaps look at the sniper role in Evolution? , because I can't really see any reason at all for picking him.

He does not have any bonus toward anything, He only gets a sniper rifle if he is ranked, like all the rest.

I mean, medics get point and abilities as do engineers... And I believe you were also looking at pilots and piloting.

Normal soldiers can carry a lot more.

Do you have anything special in mind for the sniper?

[satexas69 0]

Gotta agree on this one.  Revive is a bit too far out of the norm.  I think a better option would be selectable respawns.  If I could respawn at a FARP in a friendly area, or even at a MASH, then that would save a lot of time, and I think would be a much better option than revive.

my 2 cents

I used to be against Revive-Respawn until I saw Norrin's script.

Seriously, unless you've SEEN it actually used in a mission, you honsestly think you know what it would be like, but you really don't.

The fact that you want to keep stuff "realistic" by having a closer farp "to save time" but are against a revive option is far funnier on the "realism" argument.

I can see it now "It's not realistic to be revivied medically by another player in order to continue fighting, but it is realistic to respawn like a born-again-afterlife experience over and over a few hundred times". Yeah right.

Seriously, play a mission with Norrin's revive, then come back and tell me how horrible it would be to have that kind of team play and advancement in Kiljoy's mission.

What most people don't "get" (including me until I experienced it first-hand) is how much it REALLY improves the hell out of people actually playing "Co-op" in a "Co-op" environment.

... and all those 1-3 man server teams that play the mission in very small groups would be THRILLED because they work together and fight together and wouldn't have to worry about keep leaving the city over and over and over and all the AI respawns, etc etc.

[Atlas 0]

Figured I'd just show some support for one of the better mission makers out there. Thank You and keep up the good work. Also, don't let the whiners bring you down man, just take a look at the servers running and how many are running Evolution instead of anything else. There will always be some people who aren't happy unless they find something to complain about, don't let that discourage you from making your missions though. Once again I say Thank You for your hard work.

See ya around on the Evolution servers.

[impi 0]

I wonder if any one can tell me in really simple terms(step by step) how to play this in single player in the editor. Both as a grunt and/or an officer

cheers, impi

[SniperRedFox 0]

Sounds great, I'll try it if I can get ArmA running again.

With the FARPS and stuff, can they put them in or near towns so players can more easily repair the vehicles and take them to the next town?

[Telemachos 0]

Killjoy, Evolution is probably the best multiplayer map at the moment. You can tell a lot of work went into it.

The things I think that could use work are:

1) Enemy AA, it's too weak. Shilkas got dumbed down a little too much. It might of been with the 1.08 patch or change of skill setting with 3.0- I am not sure. Personally I think the Cobra helicopters are too powerful. I would probably add equal amount of aircrafts for the enemy AI or completely remove the AA blankets on the map to make it unknown.

2) The enemy capture, if you have less than your max amount of soldiers in squad, the enemy captives will take a slot that you can't recruit more soldiers until you remove the soldiers. Maybe not a script problem, but not sure.

3) The ending... the ending kind of lacks for all the time put into finishing up the mission. It doesn't make the game- but for a great MP map, I think there should be a rework to the ending.

4) Mentioned before are the respawn. I think it would be nice if the players got the option to respawn at a player MASH. I think revive is too much, might as well just make people invincible then unless you have the revive set to a longer time than a normal respawn.

5) Not able to run missions single player. I don't know how I feel about this- once in a while I liked to play a mission alone. I can see where you would need 2 human players to do it, I think personally I would like to keep it single player missions- or if possible, add a seperate set of single player missions also.

Otherwise, great map and just feedback from me on this. If you need someone ever to test for you- I usually run a private server for me and some guys to play on.