Quarantine

[D.murphy man 0]

Ok guys im not dead yet, just been quiet lately. Heres the current change log for the next version:

Quote[/b] ]V2.5

FIXED:Players not being rewarded when completeing a mission if there inside a vehicle

FIXED:Radiation LOW zones now much larger, giving you a chance to take action before entering medium/high zones.

FIXED:Geiger counter sounds, again.

FIXED:Players not being rewarded for zombie kills if shooting them with vehicle mounted weapons.

FIXED:Survivours randomly being deleted from your group

FIXED:Eliminate # of infected mission not counting reliably zombies being killed in area

FIXED:Using Medkits would take away antirads

FIXED:No longer go into a 'heal' animation when using medkits or antirads if you do not have any left.

FIXED:Soldiers not remanning M2's when convoy was deliverd to mil.base.

ADDED:Radiation now a server option.

ADDED:Land mines around military base that can be restocked via convoy.

ADDED:New "High" geiger sound - Thanks Ravenholm.

ADDED:New (Optional) ambient music - requires Quarantine_Ambient_Music.pbo addon to be installed.

ADDED:Border is now much more built up with sceneary and AI soldiers patrolling/relaxing. Now feels much more alive and immersive.

ADDED:Players can now 'Talk' to most AI soldiers in the military base and border.

ADDED:Players who kill fellow players within the border zone will be sentanced to death by firing squad.

ADDED:A small prison, players that end up here can talk to the AI convicts to pass the time.

ADDED:Players who kill friendly AI soldiers within the border zone will be sent to prison for 5 minutes.

ADDED:Players can now 'Call out' to survivours in the area. Players are then notified if they hear any survivours in the distance,close, or very close. Survivours that are very close will try to make there way to the player.

ADDED:You can now purchase Mercenaires, your group limit is 5 max.

ADDED:Zombies now have a random chance of hitting you to the ground.

UPDATED:Survivours now spawn INSIDE buildings, rather then in the streets.

UPDATED: Antirads now take off 20% exposure.

UPDATED:Players map markers now become less accurate and delayed longer the further the player is away from the border.

Currently working on : fixing dynamic time and weather and trying to figure out whats causing the seagull thing to happen.

[ravenholme 50]

Excellent! I cannot wait until the next version

[nubbin77 0]

Wow these changes sound like they are going to make a world of difference.

I was curious if you had any desire for help in expanding this mission at all (after you have the current set of features stabilized). I was thinking along these lines. If we develop some sort of system for in game mini missions I have some ideas how to implement that might be to your liking. If we do it right, people could generate a mini mission and if done right you can just import it into your mission.sqm and copy the related scripts over. The missions should just have their own scripts in their own folder.

We could make most of the missions triggered in a simple fashion...Put a civilian some where in the zone, if you come across the person and they are alive, you just go up to them and have a dialog appear. You accept whatever it is that they want you to do ("rescue my brother", "get something important to my family" etc.) and the necessary objects and scripting spawn from there.

If done right, the mini missions would work on their own and be able to be fully tested prior to incorporating into your mission. They should be kept fairly simple (at least at first until we get better at this type of thing) to keep any frame rate issues to a minimum.

I had a system set up like this that was a rather large and complex mp version of this that had mutilple missions that triggered from completion of different events, intereactions with npc's etc. I guess my only issue will be now I have to learn sqf because I did it all with scripts before.

I think having these types of simplistic things to do while in the zone will add a lot to the mission without causing too much additional overhead / lag and shouldn't be so complex that they never get implemented.

[weaselboy 0]

Definitely good news there! I tried doing a sweep of Paraiso in bus, hoping to get as many survivors as possible but they are not the brightest folks in the world. I chalk it up to shock.

Max I could bring home was 3 and they were all moderately nibbled.

[D.murphy man 0]

Nubbin, that does indeed sound like an excellent idea! I too however are still using .sqs rather then sqf. and im afraid anything to do with dialogs is way above my head, i have tried to learn to use dialogs in the pass but i am utter useless with it. (the dialogs for shop menus etc.. is thanks to Spooner and his SPON_Money+core package) But i would certainly be interested in expanding the mission in this way in the near future once some the major flaws are ironed out the current version.

Also update: Now added a Used vehicle buyer, you can now drive your unwanted vehicles here and sell them. You'll usually get 3 3rds of the price it was to buy the vehicle and deductions on how damaged the vehicle is. So now if your stuck without any cash or weapons you have the option to go out into the zone and jack some cars for profit. Or even steal fellow players vehicles.

[malick 0]

This keeps on getting better These fixes/updates do sound nice, especially selling used vehicles. I haven't played in a while : is it possible to repair a damaged vehicle ?

I hope I can find some public servers playing this mission, with a decent ping...

Thank you D.Murphy Man !

Malick

[D.murphy man 0]

I was planning on adding a repair kit like the current antirads and medkits. It would repair the nearest vehicle to you in a few meters radius (so you'd have to get out your car, stand next to it, then repair it) and cost about $600-$1000 to buy, so it wouldnt really be worth it repairing a damaged skoda, as they currently sell only for $800, however it certainly be more value for money repairing higher value vehicles like army 4X4's that sell for about $10,000 fully repaired.

[narc 0]

Hey Murph, I love this mission and I try and host it as often as I can.. one problem though, is it possible to alter the amount or frequency that zombies spawn outside the supply base/outpost?.. usually the base gets over-run before I even manage to pick my way through the radiation zones.

I've tweaked a few minor things myself.. I've added RH's AK47's to the gun store and taken out the Western arms MP5's and M16's ect.. also the NVG's, but left them in the out post store to add more incentive to keep the base's M2's stocked.

Also, would it be possible to use NEM Zombies with TCP anims instead of Yommies?.. and how would I do this?

Change log looks great, can't wait for next version..

Cheers

[tj72 0]

Ive ben following this mission and I enjoy the latest version alot!

In my SP instance of this mission, the military base was invaded early on. I arrived on site during the assault and aquired an m4 rifle from a dead soldier. I crouched next to the sandbag wall and reused my savegame a few times trying to get some headshots at distance against the advancing horde. Each time I fired untill out of ammo and then had to fall back for more clips.Often would get eaten/killed trying to heal/reload. Eventually the base fell and I was told I could no longer use the base. I got back to the safe zone and on the way back saved a lone survivor in one of the towns on the way back.

It would be nice to be able to win the base back after an invasion and I noticed all the MG nests were out of ammo and it was not obvious to me how to refill their ammo. I tried an eliminate infected mission and died as I find the Zombies seem a little tougher since earlier versions.

I would like to see more survivor activity as it is really interesting to search for survivors in the towns. I think unfriendly survivors/thieves would be interesting. Something like Agamoth's civilian units (Post Apocalyptic) would be interesting. These units could pester the player with armed resistance in the midst of dealing with the zombies and rescuing friendly survivors.

I also think the zombie groups could be a bit larger to make them more of a menace. Maybe there could be heavy and light version of the mission for users with different hardware specs. When ammo is short the zombies get a lot more dangerous. What would be sneaky would be a script that detects low ammo levels and adjusts by spawning more zombies then to create more panick and dread. Almost as if the zombies can smell the bullets and when they smell less of them they know to rush in.

Zombies should be able to eat as they do in the movies. I would think existing animations and a good "munching" sound effect would be interesting to test. I have some scripting knowledge so let me know if you wanted any ideas on how to do this if you are interested.

If the zombies were able to eat then dead bodies could act as zombie bait. Which makes an interesting idea of dumping corpses for the purpose of attracting or leading the zombies ( like Day of the Dead experiments were trying to do). Maybe a separate class of humans could be "bad guys" and actually working to spawn more zombies or baiting hordes of zombies to attack merc's or rescue teams for whatever reason. The zombie movies often had crazy people acting as such just to get the plot going and I think the same principles can be applied here.

I would love to see a dedicated server for this mission and I am interested in getting one set up for this community. I dont have a server but I know they can be rented and I think its a big waste not to have at least one 24/7 server out there running this.

[D.murphy man 0]

In the latest version the military base is surrounded by land mines (as mentioned in the change log up there ^ ) and as such now lasts much, much longer.

@narc

It could be possible to use NEM zombies but im not entirely sure how to do off top of my head as all the spawning etc.. is handled with the Yomies package and scripts that came along with it. It could simply be a case of swaping a few class names around editing out a few yomie related scripts. However for the 'Official' Quarantine i am sticking to using Yomies, as they are much more 'intelligent' then NEM zombies, as they can climb ladders and follow players into buildings, however feel free to edit it to use other addons and zombies if you wish.

@TJ72

Currently (since the base now takes much longer to fall) i do not want to add the ability to take back the base after it falls. As it should be a critical task for players to keep it supplied and running rather then a 'Ah dont worry we can always retake it later' attitude towards it. But trust me the base can now last much longer unassisted by the player in the newest version. Also you refill the M2s ammo (and in new version restock the mine fields) by delivering the supply convoy truck from the supply base in the safe zone to the supply depot in the base.

Current zombie groups are as large as i believe i can make them possible and still have the mission playable in MP. Its not down to performance but rather Arma 144 group limit. If i make the ammount of zombies that spawn in cities any larger then if player A is in a city, for example, spawning 140 zombies (each zombie is his own group) and player B is on other side of the island, entering another larger city shortly after player A, player B will only have 4 zombies spawn in that city. As the other 140 are being spawned in player A's location.

Of course if this was an SP mission that wouldnt be a problem since theres only one player to worry about spawning zombies around. But since this mission is also MP with a possibility of 12 players, i have to keep the number of zombies that spawn in each city and town down to a minimum. If i remember correctly the largest amount of zombies that spawn in any one city is about 60. Of course once you kill a zombie, another one spawns in its place some where else in the area. So you'll never clear out a city after killing 60 odd zombies.

All the other stuff you mentioned about detecting ammo levers, baiting zombies, etc... Is all way to complicated, especially in an MP environment, and with the limited levels of zombies i can currently spawn.

Also i do have bandit civilians planned, they will attack the player, most properly be implemented in the near future.

another small update: Repair kits have been implemented.

*EDIT*

Well! been a fast day or two when it comes to implementing features and improvements, after my reply to TJ72 it got my thinking on how i could go about increasing the group limit cap of 144.

well as you can see over at the yomies thread i have now worked out how to increase potential unit cap to roughly 576 zombies (and survivors)! So i can now increase the density of the zombies in every town and city without worrying about a rather small 144 cap, as well as the amount of survivors for you guys to rescue from the increased hoards.

I shall get on increasing the hoards and report back on my findings.

[omarslim 2]

Good to hear! Looking forward to see what you get worked out!

[narc 0]

@D.Murphy - One thing I didn't see in the change log was the problem with the random ammo crates, the Host can see the weapon that should be in the crate, but clients only see the default SLA weapons. They cant take the weapons but they can 'rearm' and take the ammo.  

Is it not possible to alter the yommie respawn rate then?.. or do I have to play about with the basattack.sqs 'cus I don't know what I'm doing.

@TJ72 - Some nice ideas there, but instead of 'bad' NPC mercs it would be better if players could acquire bad rep. Instead of locking a player up and fining him for a team kill, he could be given negative rep points. The more negative rep points a player gets the more bounty is placed on his head, other players could collect this bounty by killing or possibly catching that player. Other ways a player could get -rep would be by weapons smuggling, it's very lucrative so it should come with a penalty. And also it could be possible to rob the bank, it should be guarded by NPC's so once you kill them your committed, but you can only steal a percentage of the savings people actually have. Players with negative rep would obviously appear hostile to NPC's and would find it almost impossible to enter the safe zones, instead they will be forced to scavenge for everything they need. Once a player with negative rep is captured/killed by a bounty hunter he will respawn in the nearest jail and be detained for an amount of time relative to the bad rep he has accrued. Then he will be released with 0 rep(he could have the choice to go quietly or possibly acquire more bad rep by killing/wounding bounty hunter). At the opposite end of the scale, players who buy and sell weapons legitimately, rescue hostages and collect bounty will be rewarded with +rep that comes with perks.. maybe keeping a larger portion of the cash you lose when if you die, better interest on their savings, free ammo replenishment from soldiers and bases, better info on whereabouts of other players... when a player dies they also lose rep points, but not all.

[gsleighter 0]

Taking that further, how about a bandit base in the wasteland? So when you have a very negative rep, you have a safe zone, that's pretty heavily defended so players with a positive rep get attacked when near it.

[D.murphy man 0]

@narc

I wasn't aware of that bug, but i shall look into it, seems to be a simple local/global mix up with the random arming script of the ammo box.

and if by respawn rate you mean how often zombies attack the base then simply edit <table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td>Code Sample </td></tr><tr><td id="CODE">_randomtime=random 600

?(_randomtime<100):_randomtime=_randomtime+180

6th line down in the sqs. 600 is the random amount in seconds between attacks, (so any where between 0 - 600 seconds) where as line underneath makes sure to add an extra 180 seconds should the random time fall below 100 seconds (so zombies wont attack base straight after last attack). Just play with these vaules as you wish. 300 secs=5 mins, 600=10 mins, 1200, 15 minutes...etc...

I have previously thought about adding positive and negative rep to players in the past, and what there effects on game play and such would be. But currently any thing like will be in much later updates (as its quiet a large feature to implement/balance/get working right) if it gets added at all.

Players can always actually role play rather then rely on hard coded game mechanics should they wish to be evil or good. Especially in the latest version (when i get round to releasing it) there will be incentives for player conflicts with the possibility to sell vehicles (ambush and steal other players high value cars and such) gun smuggling, survivor stealing, etc.. Plus now players can hide there location better further away they are from the boarder. Id imagine players who have made a few enemies would have to stay away from the border in case they get lynched by players they have crossed out in the zone. Since your player marker is more accurate closer you are to the border.

[narc 0]

I wasn't aware of that bug, but i shall look into it, seems to be a simple local/global mix up with the random arming script of the ammo box.

If it's a simple fix could you please post instrutions before you release the new version?

<table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td>Code Sample </td></tr><tr><td id="CODE">_randomtime=random 600

?(_randomtime<100):_randomtime=_randomtime+180

Thanks!.. set it between 1200 and 600 doesn't fall right away now. I think the problem is when the yommies get close the AI end up shooting each other.. hence the '2 Cease Fire!', '4,5 Ceasefire!' all the time, so the gunners die before they even have chance to run outta ammo!

[canibalimao 0]

i cant play online with the 2.4

[D.murphy man 0]

i cant play online with the 2.4

Any specific reason why you cannot play online? any error messages, CTDs, etc...

@Narc

Just open up BoxArm.sqs, delete all the code init and paste this into it:

Quote[/b] ]_Armed=random 7

_box=_this select 0

clearmagazinecargo _box;

clearWeaponCargo _box;

_box setdir random 360;

~1

?(_armed<=1):clearmagazinecargo _box;clearWeaponCargo _box;_box addmagazinecargo ["15Rnd_9x19_M9",random 3];_box addweaponcargo ["m9",1];goto "exit"

~0.5

?(_armed<=2):clearmagazinecargo _box;clearWeaponCargo _box;_box addmagazinecargo ["30Rnd_9x19_tec",random 3];_box addweaponcargo ["RH_tec9",1];goto "exit"

~0.5

?(_armed<=3):clearmagazinecargo _box;clearWeaponCargo _box;_box addmagazinecargo ["32Rnd_9x19_Muzi",random 3];_box addweaponcargo ["RH_muzi",1];goto "exit"

~0.5

?(_armed<=4):clearmagazinecargo _box;clearWeaponCargo _box;_box addmagazinecargo ["30Rnd_9x19_MP5",random 3];_box addweaponcargo ["mp5A5",1];goto "exit"

~0.5

?(_armed<=5):clearmagazinecargo _box;clearWeaponCargo _box;_box addmagazinecargo ["30rnd_545x39_AK",random 3];_box addweaponcargo ["ak74",1];goto "exit"

~0.5

?(_armed<=6):clearmagazinecargo _box;clearWeaponCargo _box;_box addmagazinecargo ["15Rnd_9x19_usp",random 3];_box addweaponcargo ["RH_usp",1];goto "exit"

~0.5

?(_armed>6):clearmagazinecargo _box;clearWeaponCargo _box;_box addmagazinecargo ["33Rnd_9x19_g18",random 3];_box addweaponcargo ["RH_g18",1];goto "exit"

? !isServer: exit

#start

~0.5

_building= nearestbuilding _box

_noofpos=0

while {format["%1",_building buildingPos _noofpos] != "[0,0,0]"} do {_noofpos = _noofpos + 1}

?(_noofpos <= 3):_box setpos [((getpos _building) select 0) + random 40 - random 40 ,((getpos _building) select 1) + random 40 - random 40];goto "start"

~0.5

_box setPos (_building buildingPos random round _noofpos - 1);

#exit

exit

[narc 0]

Cheers mate!.. I'll have to wait till someone joins my non-deddy server to test it, then I'll report back. But I hosted today from 1400-1900GMT and not a sole connected. A few attempted (despite putting '@QG,Yommies,RH_WeaponPack' in the server name people still try and join without the mods   )

One more thing regarding the baseattack.sqs, does the 17th & 18th line dictate the duration of each attack?.. it's identicle to the 5th & 6th line.

[D.murphy man 0]

Yes it does, as soon as a zombie is killed, it is respawned again, this keeps happening for the duration of time then the spawn is deactivated and the zombies deleted. So you can play with that too to adjust the length of zombie attacks.

[D.murphy man 0]

Ok guys, good news is the increase in zombies hasnt seem to cause much lag at all (should be even better performance on a dedicated server) and increase the difficulty a lot, the zombies are now more numerous and lethal, especially with the newly implemented knock down feature (mentioned in the last update of the change log). I was busy shooting into a swarm of zed that where running at me and one the bastards snuck up behind me, got a lucky hit and i hit the ground, luckily my AI survivor managed to pick him off before he ate me, however before i managed to get back up the swarm where all over me beating me to death... So with the new random chance knock to the floor attack id highly recommend teaming up with either another player or AI. If your by your self and a zombie manages to hit you to the floor you usually don't stand a chance in less you got a buddy to pick off the attacker whiles you get to your feet.

At the moment the only thing thats holding back release is the strange respawning as seagull bug that seems to have every one iv asked baffled. However im tempted to just go ahead with the release and keep my fingers crossed the bug doesn't show up again/not often.

What do you guys think?

[anc 0]

Ok guys, good news is the increase in zombies hasnt seem to cause much lag at all (should be even better performance on a dedicated server) and increase the difficulty a lot, the zombies are now more numerous and lethal, especially with the newly implemented knock down feature (mentioned in the last update of the change log). I was busy shooting into a swarm of zed that where running at me and one the bastards snuck up behind me, got a lucky hit and i hit the ground, luckily my AI survivor managed to pick him off before he ate me, however before i managed to get back up the swarm where all over me beating me to death... So with the new random chance knock to the floor attack id highly recommend teaming up with either another player or AI. If your by your self and a zombie manages to hit you to the floor you usually don't stand a chance in less you got a buddy to pick off the attacker whiles you get to your feet.

At the moment the only thing thats holding back release is the strange respawning as seagull bug that seems to have every one iv asked baffled. However im tempted to just go ahead with the release and keep my fingers crossed the bug doesn't show up again/not often.

What do you guys think?

Wow, im crossing my fingers waiting for you to release this new version =D

I guess that you should release it even with the seagull problem.

Regards

[tj72 0]

If it has the base changes then I would say release.

Maybe make a final check through all unit/group/marker names in editor for any typos (just a guess at the seagull problem). Also check for any typos in any variable names in the scripts if its not inconvinient.

My idea for the bandits was armed civvies in groups that are enemy to all sides and generally attack in waves. Kind of like the Gang memebers in Assault on Precinct 13. They would be separate from the mercs. Somehow they get armed and establish strongholds in the Q zone.

The idea of negative rep making these places friendly to the mercs is pretty good. If your rep goes down you have do deal with the bandits for your supplies (maybe cheaper but less selection or something). If your good youcan get sanctioned/legal weapons with more selection but prices are higher.

[narc 0]

I've used the code sample from above for the boxarm.sqs and when hosting on a dedicated server clients can now see the appropriate weapons in the ammo crates, unfortunately now they are unable to take the weapons in them. The crates also no longer spawn in random locations, the weapons in them are random and so is the direction. In some instances I am able to take one weapon from the crate, but all subsequent crates don't allow there contents to be taken. It is odd because when Hosting non-dedicated at least the host can take the weapons from the crates and they spawn randomly as they should. Could something in the way I've got the server setup possibly cause the fault with the boxarm script?

EDIT: We've also noticed that we don't always see the same weapon that's in the crate either, and sometimes the weapon appears to be invisible in the other persons hands.

EDIT: Also, when I set the random to 1 (M9 pistol) I am able to take it from every box (obviously this is no longer random) so the problem must be related to the random factor, probably same for the locations the boxes spawn too..

[weaselboy 0]

My gang is so hungry for the changes you have made so far that I could care less if we respawn as seagulls.

"Mine Mine Mine Mine"

--- "Finding Nemo"

[omarslim 2]

Any release if fine with me, Murphy.