Quarantine

[weaselboy 0]

Seeing as I was at Origins this weekend, testing was a little slow. But that doesn't mean that I didn't get to test at all...

I have had an open server going for a few days now. Look for Weaselboy's Target Range. It may be passworded from time to time when my gang runs missions privately...

2.4 Hotfix

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1. I am seeing what Xawery is seeing with survivors dropping from the group. I was on my way with a resupply convoy (more later) and I grabbed a military survivor of a crash mission. He swung up to the turret no problem and we continued on. At some point, he dropped from my group and I could not control him any longer. We continued to the outpost and I was unable to get my finder's fee.

2. I found that even though I got my supply missions into the base and received payment, no new humans were spawned for the guns/patrols. This happened a couple times. I had the base with only one or two manned guns and lots of Zombies around, I would get there in time, get my $6500-$8500 and no humans would spawn to save the day. The bases still fell.

3. Base mortality is still high. It takes about 15 minutes for a server to lose it's base with no active human players. I am not sure what the solution for this should be. Maybe spawn the zombies the old way in the base spawn zone but increase the numbers. Something weird is happening with the bases in general since I have seen zombies wiping at empty MG emplacements. I liked it as it was perfect zombie behavior, though.

4. I wouldn't mind being able to run a server without the radiation zones. I find that I like focusing on zombie action rather than "diluting" the zombie experience with rad-zone avoidance. Perhaps a checkbox in the startup screen?

5. Love medkits though I seem to always activate them by accident in the middle of a zombie assault. This is a personal issue though.

6. Love the Crash Rescue mission! It adds a great deal to the experience. Would love to see something similar with a group of survivors that you have to get out safely. That would mean getting a larger vehicle into a warzone where previously we were able to make do with a motorcycle or offroad truck.

That's it for now....

[xawery 0]

Hm not entirely sure, but i will look into it. Could perhaps be some issue with other players 'rescueing survivors' and some how instead of running client side (so only survivors under there command get unjoined/deleted) its some how ran on all clients would be my initial guess. Or it could be a bug when leaving a spawn zone, all the spawned units should be deleted, however i did make sure it wouldn't delete units under players command, but it might not be working as smoothly as hoped. (If a unit gets deleted when in vehicle it still stays inside the vehicle but your unable to command it, Arma bug.)

The last reason does ring true. If I stay in the area where I found the survivor, nothing out of the ordinary happens. If I move out on foot, the survivor diseappears from my group as well as the face of the world. If he's in a vehicle, he disappears from the group but remains seated.

The question is: why is this only happening to certain players? Karma? Scary facial hair? Custom faces??

[xawery 0]

Argh, frustration deluxe! The soldiers at the outpost still insist on shooting us when we bring the convoy truck. I thought the v. 2.4 and the hotfix fixed this..?

[weaselboy 0]

HAH! I forgot about the friendly fire incidents!

I think this may be because I had a survivor in the truck and the crashed helo is considered Resistance. I mean we ARE taking the survivors to a government base...

On my last convoy run, I was gunned down just before the wired-in depot. I respawned, stole a car and drove back to the base. I then grabbed the truck and collected the reward without incident. (Except for all the zombies...)

[D.murphy man 0]

@Weaselboy

1. I think i know the solution to this after a bit of investigating, and shall fix it swiftly! It is indeed the fact that players leave an area and the zombies/survivors are deleted as far as i can tell.

2.Confirmed this my self also while playing earlier. Will look into whats causing it and fix it.

3.I am planning on beefing up defences around the base with land mines (that can be replaced with each convoy delivery) and perhaps putting the M2s on top of watch towers (as long as zombies can still climb up and attack them) and perhaps lowering the amount of zombies (at moment its only 15 of them).

4.Sounds like a good idea, i shall add it in next version.

5.Ha iv done this also.

6.More and different missions shall be added in time, currently i am concentrating on getting a stable version before adding feautres.

As for friendly fire stuff, you do get a rating of +9999999 when you shoot or kill a zombie, i guess if you just hop in a car from begining and drive to the base running down zombies with out shooting any one of them you'd still get a negative rating. Ill make sure to add a rating of +99999999 from the get go to all players to avoid this.

Also i have noted some bugs my self whiles playing earlier today on a server:

1.Some extremely odd cases where i would suddenly die, especially when going back to a previous bodies of mine, id die instantly. NO idea what would cause this, but i am guessing its something to do with the radiation scripts.(Being as thats the only set of scripts in the mission that effect players health directly) - if any one else experiences this please let me know, and under what conditions.

2.Elminate # of infected missions body count killed zombies is a bit unreliable.

3.No geiger sounds playing when in radiation.

[ravenholme 50]

Well, as far as I can tell there is no problem with the Geiger sound effects (No breaks that cause them to be invalid), and I've used OGGs created with Audacity in game as well, so... *shrug*

[weaselboy 0]

Random Suggestions:

For the refugee camp...

How about letting a convoy restore it once it is overrun? Maybe bring it to half strength with one convoy and back to full with a second?

Is there an admin backdoor to give cash?

I'd like to jump around testing missions in a Little Bird. I know I can start the game with 100k cash but it would be nice to be able to experiment with weapons etc.

[Kirby 2]

Ever thought about making a slightly addon-heavier version?

Like, the Freedom Fighter units as playable ones, insted of RACS. And replacing rifles in there with RH stuff, not just adding RH pistols.

I'm having a little personal trial now but I cant seem to get my head around ArmA.. Im an old OFP git.

[D.murphy man 0]

@Ravenholm

Yes the sound do work, it was just me yet again being sloppy and rushing the release before i had to go to work seems i cocked up and missed out a few " " meaning the sounds wouldnt play.

@Weaselboy

If by refugee camp you mean the military base then im not sure about that. I really wanted players to feel under pressure to keep it going rather then be "ah don't worry if it falls we can always restore it". Of course at the moment it does fall rather easily, ill hopefully fix this so players don't have to baby sit the base 24/7.

And no currently theres not a way for admins to give cash.

@Blazin

Yes i have consider it, however for the time being i am going to keep it to a bare minimum whiles i iron out bugs and to keep the player base as wide a i can (as not all people like downloading ten ton of non essential addons to play a mission). But once i reach a stage where i can call it either final version or near perfect and bug free ill go about making an addon version as well as converting it to different islands.

Cheers again all!

[ravenholme 50]

Looking forward to the hotfix fix.

[weaselboy 0]

After a bit more testing I have decided that I don't like glowing in the dark.

I also had an interesting run. Had a regular survivor in an offroad 4x4. Went to a crash site and found a military survivor. Ordered him into the vehicle anywhere and he went into the driver's slot. I then lost control of the civilian survivor.

I LOVE software testing!

[weaselboy 0]

...And THEN.....

I died via radiation.

I respawned normally but I had no cash so I decided to re-log into the game. I respawned as a seagull to the South West.

cawwww cawwwwww

[RedJugo 0]

WHen I opened it and put the PBO file into Missions folder and went to play it it said I am not authorized to play/edit as it depends on downloadable information that has been deleted??

What do I do?

[weaselboy 0]

Make sure that you have Yomies and RH_Pistols.

The links are on Message 1 of this thread.

[D.murphy man 0]

Right iv been on the tinkering with the mission and so far:

Survivors being deleted from the your group - FIXED!

Geiger counter sounds - FIXED!

Eliminate infect missions counter not counting yomies death reliably - FIXED

Using med kits would take away Anti-rads by accident - FIXED

Can still use med kits when health - FIXED

Soldiers not remanning the m2 guns when convoy deliver - FIXED

Radiation now server option - ADDED!

Land Mines surrounding the base to stop it falling so easily that can also be restocked by a convoy delivery- ADDED!

New "high" geiger sound, thanks Ravenholm - ADDED

Anti-Rads now take off 20% exposure.

Radiation zones now larger so you'll stay in a "low" radiation zone for longer before hitting "medium".

New "high" geiger sound - thanks Ravenholm

Will look into : Seagull thing.

[weaselboy 0]

Oooooooo Land Mines! Are they linked to an IFF device or does anything set them off? This will make juts bolting out the gate and going cross country on my dirtbike interesting!

One thing to add about getting seagulled, I did notice that there were a bunch of players on an island to the SW of Sahrani.

Next time, I will fly back and report. Birdies move so slow and I got bored last time.

I am also seeing that the server, once it starts running and in persist mode, crashes overnight. I may change it so it resets when all players log off....

[RedJugo 0]

I got the RH_aks_&_pistol_pack and the yomies pack and I put the quarantine PBO file into the "Missions folder so I pops up when I click on missions and I load it then it says the I couldnt get in it because crap had been deleted

[xawery 0]

D.Murphy Man,

I found a somewhat different solution for improving camp survivability. I moved the MG's backwards a bit, while creating a kind of corridor using barbed wire. This creates a kind of killzone and actually gives the mg's a chance to engage the zombies before they come too close. I also placed a searchlight behind each MG: not only does this increase the atmosphere at night, but it also enables the mg's to acquire targets after nightfall. Given these changes, it took the outpost 45 minutes to fall without reinforcements.

Looking forward to seeing the mines in action

[D.murphy man 0]

@Weaselboy

Only men set off the land mines (so youll be safe driving over them in vehicles). The 'mines' are also pretty basic, its simply just a trigger that covers an area and sets a grenade off when it detects a man class unit entering the trigger area at the units location. This however doesn't make the mine field an impassable wall of explosions. As now and again when a lot of zombies are running at it at same time the trigger doesn't activate fast enough, only knocking out one or two of the zombies while rest run past without harm. Each mine field (4 of them covering 4 sides of the base) have a limited amount of mines, 30 max in each mine feild. Each time a mine goes off it subtracts from that total and adds 50 to the convoy delivery reward. Once it hits 0 no more mines will go off in that field.

That 'bunch of players' at the island might simply be the markers, there all placed there at the begining and only follow players round when one connects. On that note when players connect they should respawn into a playable unit and not into a seagull. I have set the spawn up like your meant to and how its set up on just about every mission with respawn. So no idea why you'd spawn into a seagull. Did you try disconnect, and reconnecting again when you was in seagull mode, and try different player slots?

@RedJugo

Sorry i have no idea what might be causing your problem. Try taking the AK pack out (i belive the AK pack requires Queens Gambit) and try running with just the pistol pack.

@Xawery

Ill certainly be looking into adjusting the layout a bit of the guns. However at the moment the bases survivability as increased considerably with then new mine field.

Also:New mirrior for the last hot fix release, Thanks big.

[Rmakowsky 0]

D.Murphy Man,

Thanks for the great work on this! I am moving household across country so will not be able to play for a bit but I am excited that when I get my computer back operational I will have some great Arma Zombie Action waiting!

Keep up the great work!

Magic

[D.murphy man 0]

I've got some ambient music to add the mission (ripped from Fallout 2), but the size of all the music files alone is 19.3 MB, plus 451 KB of the mission. I think this might be a tad big for a mission file (especially if players try to connect via the server and have to d/l the mission file) so i was considering either making the Ambient music a separate addon so you can download separately to the mission, then have server option to turn music on and off (so you dont have to have the music 'addon' to play) or release 2 separate mission files, one with music, the other without.

What do you think guys?

(Also any tips on how to make a sound addon would be welcomed)

[sparks50 0]

I hope you will include music one way or another, it is amazing how much sound can do in creating a atmosphere.

[Rmakowsky 0]

Just make it an mp3 or ogg and let us play it in vehicles using the vehicle music player mod.

Magic

[Spartan 163 0]

I get this strange ring noise when I play now. Dont what it is. Its like and old phone just going nuts. I never had it in other versions and now I cant option to rescue anyone.

Any ideas?

[ravenholme 50]

It might be the Geiger High Sound (Took it from a variety of Geiger counter that gives a squealing-wail alarm in areas of high radiation, a sign for you to get the Heck out.), but if you're not in High Radiation it shouldn't be occuring.