The Cause Campaign

[Kamikaze666 0]

I loved the voice acting, that drill instructor with the irish accent made me laugh

[sepphyrion 0]

Just finished playing the compaign, voice acting is magnificent, would have thought there are at least 3 people doing it.

As for suggestions:

- A bit more complexity to the missions, more twists and turns, they felt a bit straightforward, like go meet up with squad X and go/stay kill some enemies (Dont' get me wrong, I can tell mission 5 for example took a great deal of time to create, but it's still just about going to kick some enemy ass on foot with the regular weaponry).. So more objectives of different types and more running around to make the missions longer, maybe some night missions.

- Making use of vehicles and more weapon types + starting gear. Now that the character has developed a reputation in the SLA forces that should come as a normal consequence.

Keep up the great work!

[Rejn 0]

Thanks guys

I will definatley take that advise on board Sepp thanks

[Guest Ti0n3r]

Btw, what kind of people did the voice acting? Friends of yours? Or actors?

[Serclaes 0]

As far as i understood it, he does it alone

[malick 0]

I just tested this campaign.

First of all, I'm very impressed by the voice acting quality. Lot of work and it fits perfectly into the scenes. The cutscenes were alright, I particularly like the introduction, where the camera starts above the island and dives slowly to the platoon at Bajo Valor.

However, when the major goes to interview the BBN journalist, he fell off the pontoon and was there, swimming in the water, while talking with him

I return playing ! Thanks for you work. I hope other campaign will have the same quality and immersion. I hope BIS campaign had the same quality

Malick

[Yeb 0]

Btw, what kind of people did the voice acting? Friends of yours? Or actors?

Rejn himself, there are some infos provided by the readme, i copy paste it (i just removed some infos for obvious reasons):

ARTIST INFORMATION

I do commerical voiceacting and am very affordable. Will consider any offer.

Have done voices for:

Warlords Battlecry 3 (Infinite Interactive)

E5 Brigade Jagged Union English version (Strategy First)

Chessmaster (3rd party devloper)

Taleworlds (www.taleworlds.com)

I conduct business either by cheque or paypal and send my files via ftp. Am very flexible.

Recording equipment:

Tube Ultragain Mic100 Preamp

SM58 Mic and Condenser mic

[Guest Ti0n3r]

Oh so you're not free then?

[Rejn 0]

THankyou for the feedback guys

Quote[/b] ]However, when the major goes to interview the BBN journalist, he fell off the pontoon and was there, swimming in the water, while talking with him  

Darn D: I tried to avoid that by turning the move ai off right after a setpos command, because the Major tends to walk off on the right hand side for some reason otherwise. DisableAI is turned off during save/loads but mabey it just triggered off to late.

They won't be talking on the pantoon in future cutscenes.

The cutscenes arn't fantastic as of yet.. Im still learning alot of tricks and tips and I suspect that you will get much better overall quality in chapter 2 because chapter 1 has been more or less my entire learning ordeal of scripting in Arma.

Quote[/b] ]

Btw, what kind of people did the voice acting? Friends of yours? Or actors?

I do it myself

Quote[/b] ]

Oh so you're not free then?

Depends on the project. I do need cash but I do voice acting on the side as a hobby. Im using my missions to generate a bit of advertising and am making them out of fun. I hope to generate enough awareness of the campaign somehow that I might be able to convince some gaming mags to include it in their mod/mission distribution files.

Again thanks for the feedback guys! Please keep it coming, makes my day

[Rejn 0]

For those of you wanting more of an idea of the mission outline I've posted a brief description of each mission in the first topic post.

[dialupsux 0]

good job creating these missions!

feedback -

1-sometimes music is louder than voices,especially first intro

2-at the dock cutscene 1 guy falls off dock then swims in the air with his head through the dock while talking - quite entertaining

3-good music (accordian? lol)

4-mission 3 there were so many enemies spawned near the end it slowed my computer down to a crawl,

5-weapon selection should be greater as you progress thru the missions, i think the ak is boring.

6-mission 5 near the end the first time i played it I got a fatal crash and had to restart the mission which played fine the second time ( seemed to be a sound problem or using night goggles i took off an officer)

7-all in all great job - cant wait for more

[Rejn 0]

Thanks for the feedback

1) I will in future lower music volume as many people have mentioned its to loud. You didn't miss much in the intro the guy said: "Tiger Tail to BLue Liberty, Come in Blue Liberty! Over!" x2 + "There's the rendevous point, keep your eyes open!"

2) yeah I have the guy walking along the pontoon and then I setpos him into place and turn off his movement ai unfortunatley you and someone ealse have mentioned he falls off/though the pontton so in future I won't have him there D: .

3) Thanks I used an accordian like instrument sample for some of the tracks due to the russian influence., if that makes sense lol

4) Just out of curiousity what are your system specs and what version of arma are you using? I need to know system specs from anyone who is having problems in their mission performance because I had someone with a single p4 tell me he suffered no performance hit on this mission D:

Let us know if you have time your system specs as it gives me an idea of performance curves. Thanks

5) My missions I guess are standard infantry based and there will be opportunitties to pickup special weapons off corpses but I might give the player the ability to choose out of the basic weapons at the beginning of the mission.

6) It may be the ammount of global variables. Im not 100% sure, or it could be that there are to many radio commands coming in all at once (Havn't explored that), This mission is still rather experimental but in future I will test these mission combat scenarios and try and limit global variables and keep radio chatter a little down in close quarters.

7) WIll work on Chapter 2 soon as I get back home

Again thanks for yout feedback

[Second 0]

This is one super campaign

Starting 4 mission and this far i share opinion of dialupsux complitely.

About 3 mission and respawn. My system is Athlon +2800 with 1.5 gb and ATI X800 and at some point my fps were hit down (had to shoot alot of enemies to get fps up again ), though i played campaign with modded config (adds some scripts to AI groups) ... So my opinion and hardware should be left ignored

Nice amount of info in map. Divisions and such marked on map gives good spice and feel of something bigger... But how can there be atleast 5 divisions in front line... Which isn't much longer than 2-3 km (catched my eye)

Voice acting is truly great Altough hard to hear sometimes.

[Rejn 0]

Thanks Second

Your feedback is highly apprectiated and helps me to target what I need to be aware of in the next chapter

[-Snafu- 80]

Im going to echo most of the comments made in this thread about the campaign.

This is what I was expecting from the stock ArmA campaign - story, background etc. mixed in with some good action. The last mission was the best, a tough slog through urban terrain mixed in with the rainy weather - bloody brilliant. The background you gave to N.Sahrani with the many different nationalities involved and the various other characters breathed some life into the history of the island.

Voice acting was very good and further enhanced the experience of the campaign.

This campaign combined with Chammy's sound mod has finally got me into Armed Assault.

Cheers.

[Rejn 0]

thanks Snafu That is some high praise thankyou very much

[Rejn 0]

I just read a comment on armaholic regarding my campaign and I thought it only fair to post it here:

Quote from Smokedawg:

Quote[/b] ]If you are looking for a heavy-handed anti-Iraq statement, here it is. Besides that, its kind of boring. Overly long intro, bad music, ect...

My response to that is that its a fair comment as it does in fact seem like Im parralleling the Iraq war.

However I would argue that I am attempting to send a strong anti war statement within my campaign rather than a singled out war. I hope I made this evident by the brutality of the SLA's leaders in mission 4 outro.

I do understand the sensitive nature of war and that some of you may be offended by the campaign's material.

Please be aware that I am using a fictional event on a fictional island (Sahrani) and that the opinions of my charachters ingame do not reflect my opinion.

In future chapters I will draw more attention to that.

Thanks everyone

EDIT: I also want to add that the story that revolves around the main charachter also serves to perpetuate the idea that the player has a reason to fight on the side of the fictional SLA and its fictional conflict.

Anyway hope none of you out there are to offended  

[Maddmatt 1]

I just read a comment on armaholic regarding my campaign and I thought it only fair to post it here:

Quote from Smokedawg:

Quote[/b] ]If you are looking for a heavy-handed anti-Iraq statement, here it is. Besides that, its kind of boring. Overly long intro, bad music, ect...

...

I think that he is just upset as he sees the campaign as anti-American

He probably didn't pay much attention to the story, his comment just seems like more of an insult than actual criticism.

Ignore it IMO.

The campaign isn't offensive.

[Yeb 0]

Talking of an anti-americain campain is really silly (i always dreamed to post this .jpg ), especially with no argument. And about the intro and the musics, does he know the skip button and the options?

About your campain, it's "just" brilliant, very very atmospheric and very cinematographic with your wonderful acting voices, the several cutscenes and your own musics. All of your missions are still based on the same concept: a big firefight and at each mission, i wonder how you will renew the principle of your mission, and every time, i'm impressed, each mission of your campain are finally different though the principle is still the same, each mission has its own music, atmosphere, etc...: brilliant. The best exemple of what i'm talking about is certainly the 5th mission: every time i play this mission, every time i live a different but good experience, a different atmoshpere, but still this feeling of being astomached, etc..., you got a nice talent there. Replayability is the key word of your campain.

The cutscenes are also excellent, especially the ones from the 4th and the 5th mission, very cinematographic and impressive. The intro is good, i did not notice the guy falling into the sea, but i'm sure you'll fix it. The outro of the 4th mission really blew me away though i usually hate slow-mo, especially in the movie, but there, it was perfectly and beautifully used.

I've got some suggestions/disapointments/other:

In the 2nd mission, you should add a save point after we take weapons in the truck.

About the 4th mission, i was a bit disappointed by the 2nd part of the mission, a bit unrealistic, i'd have added a kind of reinforcement racs/us convoy and you would have to prepare an ambush or something like that, but it's your campain^^.

Finally, you did a very good job onthe 5th mission, the last version of this mission made me crash the game even without reloading, very very good job because now, everything is ok.

I'll edit wether i find further ideas.

[Rejn 0]

Thanks maddmatt, Thanks Yeb

I should have posted that its an SLA campaign

Thanks Yeb that is some VERY GOOD advice

I will probably release a v1.00 sometime of the first Chapter.

For now I will work on the second chapter and use all the feedback/suggestions and comments to guide me

[Alpha-Kilo 36]

I think that mission-making is about unorthodox ideas and twisted plots which keep the audience entertained in an intelligent way. I welcome missions and campaigns which can be discussed controversely because of the stories they tell.

Mission-making should not be a competition in political correctness because in works of fiction p. c. tends to lead to boring and repetitive stories.

Regardless of whether there is any anti-Americanism in "The Cause" or not, you should be able to make the next part exactly the way you want it to be. If some of your characters (who don't necessarily represent your opinion) might hurt anybody's feelings, you could easily write an appeasing readme. Or you could make an ironic statement by rephrasing a complicated legal disclaimer which has to be accepted before playing your campaign.

[Rejn 0]

Thats a good idea Alpha.

In future I'll put a disclaimer in my campaign readme.txt

This may be needed especially as I continue to explore more controversial elements/events and charachters within the story.

Thanks alpha

[Yeb 0]

You should also be careful on typographia (hope it's the good word: well what you type on your keyboard for dialogue boxes ^^), i know there's a huge amount of dialogues, but i admit i'm a bit fastidious.

Another idea i had for the 5th mission that you can add to a further mission is a "CEASE FIRE! CEASE FIRE!" or something like that at the end of the 5th one, as i was told you're talented for voices , it could sound awesome, a very little idea though.

You could also add some artillery/air support, my favor would go to artillery support (i'm talking about sla).

Still about this 5th mission but my suggestion would need a totally new mission, your campain shows (retranscribes?) well the chain of command with several dialogues, etc...But what you could do is, for instance, once the radio operator (or group leader, etc..)of your group dies, you would be cut of your superiors and other groups, hence you would be lost, and would have to get out of this shit and return to your base or something like that. A bit hard to explain with just few words (and my english skill...) but i hope you get it.

[-Variable- 0]

Rejn, I would just like to say- BRAVO. Your campaign should be a model for imitation by ArmA mission creators. Without artists like you, there was no purpose for me to keep playing this game. The atmosphere was so intense, I don't remember thrilling so much from a game, not to say from a user made creation! I'll take this opportunity to say thank you very much for your efforts, investing so much time to the purpose of others' enjoyment, with only feedback as fee, is honorable in my eyes. Keep up the good work!

In the sequels It would be nice to see some special operations action, vehicle driving (maybe even aerial missions?).

I suggest you avoid using too long 'shots' in an intro, it could make it a bit idled away. Just to make myself clearer, I don't mean to create shorter intros, just each shot (the period between each cut of 'film') should be shorter.

About the music- it was just great, but personaly, i think maybe less dramatic tunes will fit the campaign more properly.

If I'll think of anything more, I'll let you know.

And again- Thank you.

[Makake 0]

Definetly one of the best campaigns/if not best user made for ArmA out there. Especially the voice acting and those epic battles gave it that very special "touch". Absolutely recommended. Can't wait for the sequel. This and Chammys Soundmod? I second that. Good combination.