The Cause Campaign

[Rejn 0]

Thankyou very much for the kind feedback Makake, Yeb and Variable

What a nice start to the day

Thanks for your suggestions Variable I will definatley try and avoid any pauses in the camera.

Expect some variations in missions from here on in.

Thanks again

[Rejn 0]

Here is a brief sneak peak at a partial section of the intro to Chapter 2 campaign via a wmv movie file.

Its work in progress and some things will be addressed like the camera work in the flashback scene.

The sneak peak is 3 mins or so and 18 megs... its more or less for fun since you wont see this intro for a while to come until I get another 5 or so mission completed...

Sneak peak includes dialog between 3 of the charachters.

WARNING: The sneak peak makes reference to the Iraq war. The point of this reference is not really to bash the U.S. but to illustrate the tension in the realtionship between two of the charachters... I wanted to use the 1991 conflict but different uniforms. So I ended up using a more modern event.

If your overly sensitive to any materials that may potentially insult your national pride etc then this warning is for you. Thankyou.

The short film has some mild language; s word and a word.

Thanks.

http://rapidshare.com/files/45727664/TCC2SP.rar.html

EDIT: Please note that due to FRAPS, the scene where the guy is walking is a ton longer than it should be... mouth sync is also a tad out of whack due to fraps Vsync being off.

[Yeb 0]

I uploaded it on Youtube, if you want me to change some infos on the videos, on you, etc...let me know.

[william1 0]

very , very , very good intro mate it's a movie , love it, and loved when the CIA guy gets out of the chopper with the music , it reminded me of Clint Eastwood in "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly"

[Rejn 0]

Lol thanks William I am heavily inspired by movies hehe

Edit: Love the music from The good the bad and the ugly.. have it lying around somewhere too

@Yeb Thankyou very much I tried uploading it to you tube but it didn't work for me D:

Thankyou

[l337Bossman 0]

Hi,

This is my first post but I felt I needed to tell you how much I enjoyed Chapter 1. This campagin was AWESOME! It really adds all of the character development that I thought was missing in the official campaign.

In mission 5, I somehow got stuck behind enemy lines and it was extremely intense. I was hiding out in one of the apartment buildings and it felt like there were guys all around me. I was down to 8 bullets left when my men finally caught up with me and we pushed them out of the east side of town. I ended the mission with 60 some kills, most of which I felt were very hard earned!

[Rejn 0]

Thanks Bossman Really glad you liked it.

Mission 5 is definatley one of those missions where you don't want to run out to far infront of your lines hehe

The main challenge of any mission making is to actually set out and create the atmosphere and events that one invisions for the actual missions. There are always limitations or problems to overcome.

Hopefully chapter 2 will provide you all with an equal if not better gameplay experience

[malick 0]

I've finally completed this campaign...

It is really very good material, excellent story telling and intense missions. I found it difficult, so had to scale down difficulty to Regular, as I suck big time.

I noticed some dire sluggishness in mission 3, when you defend the ridge. How many friendly and enemy units were there ? It managed to get my computer to 1 FPS ! OK, I have some addons (like 6th-sense, ArmA Effects and TrueMod), that may be an explanation.

During cutscenes, all characters would better be forced to stay UP, because they have a quite ridiculous tendency to lay down, get up indefinitely...

In the last cutscene, the hero is lying on the floor, not on the bed

During mission 1, the driver of the car keeps on getting in and out. That's an ArmA bug, I know.

As already stated, the musics are a bit too loud. Sometimes the radio gets a bit weird with hundreds of messages at the same time, specially in the last mission.

By the way, ArmA has a tendency to make thunder happen every other second. Can it be deactivated by mission creator ? Because I heard at least a thousand thunders during the mission in Corazol, which was pretty annoying to say the least...

Otherwise, this campaign is nearly perfect. You do have a real voice acting talent, no doubt. As well as mission creating !

That's a 5 stars campaign. I'll be waiting for Part II. Thanks for everything.

Malick

EDIT : and send your CV/Resume to BIS

[Rejn 0]

Thanks Malick Glad you liked it.

I will go back and iron out some of the bugs of Chapter 1 after I finish chapter 2. I've turned the music down in chapter 2 and my current version of Chapter 1 as well

[DUTCH-BUDDHA 0]

ferry good campaine

like that u select the russian site also ferry nice.

if u needt help in future campaines i folenteer

tank u ferry much i was ferry a boudt arma budt this campaine make me happy a cane

(douwnload this campaine its ferry good)

[Snake Man 401]

I promised to give feedback so here goes.

I did not write all technical or otherwise issues down on text file so there wont be detailed list. I completed the campaign without using endmission at all so needless to say all missions worked ok. There seemed to be few items that had the radio comms text bit wrong compared to the spoken text, but heh thats not a big deal.

Opening cutscene got stuck when the guys inside were shot, dunno if there was anything coming after that (I skipped the cutscene at that point).

Music was ok, it was nice to have custom music... however I could have definitely be satisfied with the original tracks also (as first mentioned about the campaign size etc).

Voice acting was good, very good. But on some parts where the voices that were spoken with accent or with high pitch etc started to sound a bit annoying after a while (I mean for example the last mission the repeated radio comms), this is understandable as there is only one voice actor. But all in all, voices were superb.

Overall missions were good, but the last mission was superb. I have not had a mission to impress me in a long time, this one did. I was "captivated" and motivated to play it through no matter how long it took for me. As I said this hasn't happen in a long time, very good mission. I dont go into details as it would spoil the storyline/etc.

Overall the whole campaign was very very good. Indeed, I cannot wait to get chapter two and to see what happens there.

There was my feedback

Mostly I provided few nitpicks, but as I am not a guy who posts "Downloading now!!1 ", I had to write something useful in there. If it happens by any means sound as said nitpicking or negative, consider that I could not have provided any feedback, but I promised so there we go. Keep up the good work and see you on chapter two (where I'll try to provide more detailed feedback), heh.

[Rejn 0]

Thanks Dutch Buddah glad you liked it

@Snake-Man

Thanks Snake-Man, I totally appreciate the fact that you took the time to post feedback and overall I am very happy with your feedback!

It helps me to understand what people prefer and like in missions and what I should be aiming for in future.

I am guessing that most people prefer the large battle missions that manage to pull off atmosphere and make you feel like your a small part of something bigger. Along with some dynamics in play so that your not always sure where the enemy is.

I'd love for people to post suggestions on what they would like to see in future missions and what they would NOT like to see haha.

Thanks everyone

[Rejn 0]

Just thought I'd mention why there has been little to no progress here.

Im currently in the Philippines for 2 or so months. I will probably be returning around end of November/december and will work on Chapter 2 then.

Thankyou everyone for your feedback, I have learnt alot of scripting in the first 5 missions and I will definatly continue making missions as soon as I get back.

In mission 5 of the campaign there have been known problems of crashing due to script intensive and the use of large non-local variables.

I thought Id just post this from Bohemia's site since they are planning to fix this:

Quote[/b] ]

Patch Plans

We're preparing a patch for ARMA, which will hopefully be released in one or two months. Currently we plan to include the following fixes or improvements:

* Some AI detection fixes

* Fixed fog on DX 10 cards

* Fixed anti-cheat signature timeout

* Added some additional anti-cheat measures

* More reliable VON

* Fixed CTD when resuming from a save in large and/or script intensive missions

* Fixed spontaneous death while driving a motorcycle in MP

* Fixed AI soldier can't fire behind the sandbags

* Fixed compatibility problems caused by various copy protections uses

Im hoping to test mission 5 again with the new patch when its released around november.

Thanks everyone.

[Fred DM 0]

i have just tried it out and played the first 3 missions. i like it quite a bit. here's some feedback, some of it may already have been pointed out;

- in the cutscene with the interview of the journalist, the Army character falls through the wooden pier and into the water below. he is injured and gets all bloody. he then continues to swim not in the water but in the pier while talking to the journalist;

- in the opening cutscene that has you in the hummer when it is shot up in an ambush, it takes forever for the cutscene to finish because they shoot the hummer with single rifle shots. it takes minutes for the hummer to explode and the cutscene to finish.

- sometimes there are long walks without anything happening. having a soldier tell a joke or discuss the current situation would help.

- the voice acting is pretty good. it ranges from average to very good. however, i don't know what to think of the mix of different accents; you got spanish, russian, irish and scottish. for the SLA, only the spanish makes sense. the irish and the scottish would be great for either a british campaign or a mercenary one.

- the cutscenes some times just take too long, such as the almost endless hummer drive in the beginning.

- the title art could need a change.

i'm really enjoying this so far. it seems like the missions work just as intended; AT soldiers hit the tanks, teammates firing accuratly at enemies, vehicles driving quickly on the road etc.

[Rejn 0]

Hi there, thanks for your feedback, glad your enjoying the missions

I will most likely fix alot of the issues in chapter 1 and take away alot of the feedback you and everyone else has posted and use it to help me make chapter 2.

Quote[/b] ]

- in the cutscene with the interview of the journalist, the Army character falls through the wooden pier and into the water below. he is injured and gets all bloody. he then continues to swim not in the water but in the pier while talking to the journalist;

A few people have reported this, you are using version 1.08 right? If not let me know. Otherwise I will have to address this when I revise chapter 1.

Quote[/b] ]

- in the opening cutscene that has you in the hummer when it is shot up in an ambush, it takes forever for the cutscene to finish because they shoot the hummer with single rifle shots. it takes minutes for the hummer to explode and the cutscene to finish.

Id better add a script to that which kills the vehicle after a few seconds.

Quote[/b] ]

- sometimes there are long walks without anything happening. having a soldier tell a joke or discuss the current situation would help.

I'll try and tackle that in Chapter 2. I hate long and uneventful walks as well. So far I kept it down to a minimum in Chapter 1 so that you don't have to walk to far without at least some shooting going on but I will work on keeping the player entertained as much as possible.

Quote[/b] ]

- the voice acting is pretty good. it ranges from average to very good. however, i don't know what to think of the mix of different accents; you got spanish, russian, irish and scottish. for the SLA, only the spanish makes sense. the irish and the scottish would be great for either a british campaign or a mercenary one.

Yeah the main problem for me was that I wanted a variety of voices with definite variation in charachters so I wrote in the story line that there are alot of expats, mercanaries and foreigners in the North. I will expand on this a little in chapter 2.

I'll try and do more spanish accents in chapter 2. Admittedly I need to pracitice up on my spanish accents.

Quote[/b] ]

- the cutscenes some times just take too long, such as the almost endless hummer drive in the beginning.

Totally agree I need to keep things entertaining. Short and sweet should be the policy. I'll try and space things out as much as possible in Chapter 2.

Quote[/b] ]

- the title art could need a change.

Definatley. My artwork sucks lol. I wish I had someone to help me on this D:

If anyone can make a The Cause Chapter 2 sign for me would be highly appreciated. D: PM me if anyones interested.

[opf12345 0]

Love it! great campaign!

[Rejn 0]

Hi there, thankyou.

Glad your enjoying the campaign. Saw your thread too : http://www.flashpoint1985.com/cgi-bin....t=69253

When I get back from the Philippines hopefully I will have a second chapter done.

[nate77 0]

This is the best Arma campaign I've ever played to date, and is much better than the BIS campaign. Too bad it's only five missions. You really did a good job of making the player feel like he was just an average grunt in a much larger conflict and that's why this campaign is so much fun and atmospheric. I Can't wait for chapter two, and hopefully you can stay with your current mission making formula. I just get sick of playing all of those one man army missions that everyone seems to make, where the player has to do all the work. The best part of your campaign is that it doesn't follow that formula and you can literally complete all five missions without firing a shot(with some luck of course), the A.I. will usually get the job done on their own. So, once again good work and bring on chapter two!

[Rejn 0]

Hi there. Thankyou very much for your kind feedback

I totally appreciate everyone taking the time out to give their comments/impressions and feedback.

I return to Australia in January and will continue work on chapter 2 then

I will definatley be continueing the forumla. In my campaign(s) The player is never a one man army.

[opf12345 0]

Im looking forward to chapter 2

[.kju 3240]

Rejn - your result - the cause campaign is art!

Impressive job mate.

It's is a perfect example that immersion is what it is all about.

Superb voice acting, sound effects and music very well fitting to

the mood, interesting and good story design, well crated in

terms of mission editing - all in all a stunning package!

PS: Some technical feedback

a) Make it possible to start the music via radio or so.

After mission reload a running music won't be played again.

b) Use Tags for markers, names, variables everything (like it is

common practice for addons).

This will make it very very unlikely to have your stuff conflict

with 3rd party addons.

(My problem was the unit name "b" in the first mission - some

addon I use doesn't use best practice either ).

c) Unfortunately I wasn't able to finish the last mission yet.

Damn savegame bug. I will patiently wait for 1.09 which is said

to fix the bug. I cannot play without the addons.

[Rejn 0]

Thankyou for your kind feedback Q

I'll try and add your suggestions to chapter 2

[Nicholas Bell 0]

Rejornorst-

I want to add my praise for your excellent campaign. I really enjoyed it, even though I "missed" the fourth mission (see below). In addition to the immersive nature of your campaign, I really want to say that you got the difficulty level "just right" for me. I acknowledge that I am simply not that good, so restarts and saves are the norm for me. But I have a limit, which far too many missions and campaigns exceed. More than 3 or 4 tries I get frustrated - the mission is obviously more of a puzzle than I care for. This did not occur, and even though did have to replay or save the missions 2 or 3 times, I always wanted to get back into it. I really appreciate being "small cog" rather than a one-man army. Heck of a lot more realistic IMO. And the fact that the AI was able to handle and complete missions despite its limitations is a fine testament to your mission making and balancing.

The missions have good replayability, which is nice given my lack of ability! In the first mission, on the third try I finally got into the town and just as I was to "finish the job" - some one else did it for me! I kind of felt cheated (stupid me) and went back to see who did it. Well, it never happened again the 4 attempts needed for me to complete the mission.

I missed most of the 4th mission...somehow. I followed the squad leader until we reached what must have been the start line. But nothing happened. The secondary was captured by other AI forces. And then we all sat and did nothing - for over an hour. I finally walked forward to the objective, into both towns, the world to myself. I finally went back to my squad and accelerated the time and another 2 hours went past. Then...as I was out of the room the mission started and the AI completed it without me! Obviously I must have missed a trigger somehow... Or perhaps an intermittent bug of some sorts. Maybe some interference by all the mods I have tacked on (?). Anyway, I can go back and enjoy that one later - I was too eager to try the final mission given all the good comments on it earlier. I agree, it was good.

Again - job well done!

[Rejn 0]

Thankyou Nicholas

I too hate excessive difficulty levels. I usually test my mission(s)

thoroughly to ensure that the player is never cast into an impossibly hard situtation. The 3rd mission gave me alot of concern so I added a minefield to help out in all eventualitites

Sorry to hear about the 4th mission. Never had any problems with it. What may of happened is that you may not have walked onto/into the trigger field left of the houses (just behind the fence). Thats if you got to the houses at objective 1. If your men were still stuck at a starting line where you can see the other platoons nearby then that may also be due to not having walked on the trigger but I will have a look at the mission when I get back after I release chapter 2. I will most likley release chapter 1 again with bug fixes.

[stegman 3]

interesting.

I was thinking of creating a SLA campaign, kind of an alternative ArmedAssault campaign.

still will i think. can't have too many