Shiden's ARMA GDCE (1.10)

[shinden1 0]

First off, this is NOT GDCE2.

this is a conversion of GDCE 1.10 for OFP to work in Armed Assault.

I will be doing improvements to my version once in a while, but having a family and all I won't be working on anything radical.

features, for those unfamiliar with GDCE:

GDCE is a rework of other dynamic missions made by the DMA team a while back. Most of the rework was done by Kutya who gave permission for this conversion to be released once complete.

Most of the scripts and the mission itself have been converted and modified to work in ARMA and includes the following:

- first, GDCE is meant to be a template for other mission makers and for players to customize to their tastes and favorite addons, basically there are 4 folders that will be released: 2 templates and 2 'demo' missions (east and west)

-the templates are meant to be modified by a mission maker in the mission editor, involving moving triggers and markers to desired places. There will be a guide to doing this in the readme. GDCE can be used on different maps using the templates.

-the 'demo' missions are missions with triggers and markers moved to various places in sahrini to demonstrate what GDCE can do. these are fully playable and functional and use vanilla units by default, the demo's can also be easily modded with your favorite add-ons by modifying a global.sqs file:

-the global.sqs file contains a majority of the object arrays used by the mission, thus providing a way to change the units and weapons used in GDCE by changing class names. a minimal knowledge of modding a script will be needed and a guide to this will be in the readme, knowledgable players will find it pretty convenient. There are other functons in the global file as well.

-GDCE starts with a ten man squad and missions are selected by talking to an officer as in other dynamic missions. A mission will be randomly generated and a pilot will be available to insert, or available vehicles can be used to get to the mission types. Various missions are included: assassination, capturing enemy officer, defense and assault, POW rescue, convoy ambush and defense for example. The locations for the mission are randomly picked from among several triggers placed for each mission.

-GDCE keeps track of your teams' kills, skill level, time of day, enemy support level and your squad's value level. with time your squad will get better and you will see their skill level rise by checking your status at the tent. The tent is also where saves and loads take place, bypassing ARMA's save bug by saving values in an objects.sav file. ARMA GDCE will run in the campaign folder of ARMA, but will be only one ongoing mission.

-I added a rearm dialogue box that will allow you to pick what loadout you would like to take for each mission. the contents of these options is moddable in the global.sqs file so you can make it easy to change your squads loadout and pick among several options to fit the situation. As your squads level goes up, more options become available allowing a mission maker to allow players to 'earn' better weapons or different options...

that was quite a mouthful! or keyboardful...

anyhow, everything is almost ready, I need to write the readmes and cleanup a few files before release...plus I need a host

Let me know what you think and I'll take any suggestions and bug reports after release. I have 2 kids though so forgive me if I'm a little slow, I have to work this on my spare time, and honestly I'd rather be playing this than working on it!

[frogg 0]

I can't wait for the release =D

I love these "Dynamic Campaigns" and this sounds like one that I will be able to modify with my limited skill level

[colligpip 0]

Cant wait I made some missions with the old ofp g.d.c.e so i will be looking to do the same with this one , thanks for converting it.

[kutya 0]

Won't there be phases? It goes to the campaign folder, but a mission? By the default setup of GDCE it is a one phase "campaign" which is actually a mission, but it can easily be converted to a multi-phase mission (or a campaign in this case).

Will this be supported in your conversion?

Anyway, I'm glad you made this conversion

EDIT: And what about DAC? Is it supported?

[.kju 3245]

top notch

can you please go into details a bit how you did the conversion - cheers!

.. as i did a "program" to automate the conversion process a lot.

[liljb15 0]

Umm maybe I just missed this part in your description but when is this coming out.

[Commando84 0]

sounds great, will this work in lan game? ( MP )

[shinden1 0]

kutya:

I hoppe so, it should be, I'm concentrating on bug-fixing the mission as is right now, but multi-phasing campaugns is one of GDCE's important functions especially when tools come out allowing additional maps. because I generally converted everything (except most of DAC) I'm hoping multi-phase campaigns will work straight out once I get around to testing it. I moved it to the campaign folder (one mission) as a necessity to make the objects.sav work in ARMA. Right now a player can play a mission in GDCE, save at the tent, restart (or revert) the campaign and reload his values at the tent. Resume however will NOT work (due to variable limit 'bug' and this is a necessary work around, but better than any other option at the moment.

frogg:

That's the hope, at the very least GDCE allows a person to plug in their addons, and play something dynamic, GDCE shows it's true value by being adaptable to different maps and addons.

colligpiip:

your welcome!

Q:

you had a program!? that would have saved me some time!

I plan to go into this in pretty good detail in the readme, originally I had planned on just using Frontline Assembly's old PDF manuals which were very good, but I think with all the changes in the conversion, I should go into more detail so I decided to write my own.

Some of the conversion necessities were just frustrating such as the use of waypoints. the old method of "setwp" to create waypoints in OFP just had enemies standing around doing nothing, I had to replace these with "addwaypoint" and then setwaypointtype = "MOVE"...groan. Honestly, addwaypoint really is better since both x and y (plus z) are included. code brackets...yadayada...hopefully my notes in the mission maker readme can add some insight into converting ofp missions to ARMA.

liljb15:

All right! I can finally say the words every addon/mission maker longs to say!!!

when its...duh...probably monday or tuesday (next week, not december 2015).

Unless my son goes stumbling into poison ivy in the woods saturday. Other than hiking this weekend with my 4 year-old, I'll be working on the readmes than monday find host, armaholic hopefully and release.

caommando84:

I hope so, mp scripting is a deep dark world I'm very scared of. but GDCE would make an outstanding co-op experience I hope so, but it's down the list a ways as far as me working on it. Mission makers for GDCE are allowed of course to alter the script to make this work on their own as long as credits are given.

[.kju 3245]

@shinden1

OAC project page

Goal of OAC

Quote[/b] ]Between Operation Flashpoint and Armed Assault there are some technical changes which don't allow a seamless transfer of content from OFP to ArmA. There are various different technical parts, yet OAC solely concentrates on the conversion of the CWC + Resistance class system, description.ext and scripts - in summary the technical side of missions.

At this point the goal is not an one-to-one mission conversion to Armed Assault. This is not possible due to the missing content in various aspects. The goal is to convert mission scenarios, templates and script systems. This means in detail that its main purpose is to make OFP content work in ArmA, not behave exactly the same. The process is meant to be as much automated as possible, still human interaction will still be required at some point. The project aims for doing the job as complete as possible. However in more complicated cases it will be a decision between effort and use.

So in summary the goal is to convert complex and advanced missions or scripting projects.

so if you feel like having a use in the future, give it a go

[shinden1 0]

A little news, will have a slight delay, as I had less time than I thought this weekend, all should be done by friday at most.

The east and west demo's and templates are done...not bug free of course, but other bugs can be found easier with a release. Other features (such as removing the direction marker on the player icon) I'll leave up to other mission makers.

the readme's are a bear, because I want the readme to be comprehensive to aid mission makers and user's to customize the program to their like. The mission makers guide I hope to give enough information to even make an amateur scripter (like me) be able to make simple mods to get around problems or add things he/she likes without an incredible effort.

Q:

thanks for the link Q, It looks awesome, I'll learn a lot more from that work than you'll get from me! GDCE's scripting was very clean and tight, making it easy for me honestly, you'll see if you compare the original to my release.