[SP] Punishment Battalion, scored 9/10 at Ofpec!

[ThudBlunderQ8 0]

Lee,

Thankyou for the reply. Managed to complete it today; was surprised/delighted by what you had done with the "venue" for the endgame. Having been to that location many times in other missions/campaigns, it was jaw-dropping to see what faced my straggly band as we moved into visual range!

Having decided to hang onto the US aircrewman (I needed the extra manpower for my convoy! ) I never did get around to arranging his extraction/US supply drop. Is that where the mortar would have come in to play? No worries - the mission was capable of being completed without the new toy. Amazing how accurate a captured PKM on single-tap can be when you're up in a lofty perch!

Much appreciated - a good advert for ArmA and its possibilities as a medium for talented editors. Must give it another go to try out some ideas I picked up first time around...

[leehunt27 1]

hey ThundBlunderQ8,

Hahah, glad you enjoyed the endgame finale! It was a lot of fun to create that.

Its ok if you never extract the pilot, but yes that is where you can find the mortar. Where did you use the PKM from at Pita?

Thanks again for your feedback, much appreciated! And congrats on unlocking the code word for a complete victory!

[leehunt27 1]

hi SS9,

Sorry you are having problems.

Hmmm.  As you can see a lot of people have played it so far successfully, but i don't know about 1.14 patch. I also don't know much about system requirements so i'd be speculating there. PB was created and finished during ArmA Patch 1.08.  One option could be to reinstall ArmA (save all your save games and editing stuff in another folder) and then only use patch 1.08.  

I don't know much else about what to suggest other than that really. Anybody else have a good idea? thanks...Lee

[tourist 617]

Hi there,

first of all I want to thank you for your effort in creating a mission for ArmA in the tradition of Thobson's Abandoned Armies for OFP.

I enjoyed playing punishment batallion very much, until I was struck over the forehead by a vicious bug right in the most pleasant gaming flow.

As soon as I had recruited Maria, the framerates dropped drastically to a point where the game became almost unplayable, like 7 to 9 FPS.

Now, I am of course aware that my rig isn't the most powerful; to be honest it is a generally weak system which only got a decent GPU because at the time I bought that one I neither wanted to spend money for a soon outdated Dual Core technology nor pay the then still beefy price for a Quad Core CPU. Therefor, I now play on the following system:

Windows XP

AMD Athlon 64 3700+ @2200 Ghz

Geforce 8800 GT 512 MB PCI Express

2 Gigabyte DDR RAM in Dual Channel Mode

This is, of course, what the guys over there in the performance and tweaking thred would call a misbalanced system.

Practically, it means I can use ArmA, a game designed to simulate Combined Arms Combat between regular army units with up to 100 Soldiers with Aircraft and Armor for each side, only as a Resistance fighting or Special Forces Simulator, because my CPU defines the point from which on there is 'too much folks walking around' way below the game's maximum number of units at the same time and place is reached.

While I can get decent FPS (18-60) most of the time up to 20 v 20 skirmishes, it gets real choppy during real battles.

BUT: If I could play punishment batallion up to the point of Maria's recruitment without lag, why went the mission down like that afterwards?

Just keep in mind I had reduced the total number of enemies continuously until that point (about 20 or 30 soldiers, a T 72 and a BMP were down at this time), even one patroling chopper wasn't straining the CPU anymore with it's flight path data because it had crashed while pursuing my car. A second one crashed shortly after the first while I fought my way through the lag after Maria's recruiting.

What could be the reason for this bug? Maybe the fact that the female civilian Maria is implemented as a male fighter (at least her voice becomes male as soon as she joins the squad) puts

too much script mess on my poor CPU?

No, seriously, I play with a shitload of addons (in short: the content from the Addon Compilation thread. All of it. Period.), but if they would be too much, then the mission might be lagging from start, but that is not the case.

Hope there is a workaround for the Maria Situation.

kind regards,

tourist

[Wolfrug 0]

Sounds like a script issue indeed - usually caused by for instance a script that updates without necessary sleeps inbetween, maybe some kind of monitoring script for Maria?

I know it might not be possible since ArmA doesn't support multiple save-game slots and you've probably saved after saving her, but otherwise you could check to see if it always lags down your system to save her, no matter where in the mission you are.

Although Lee will probably be able to help better I don't remember any special lag when rescuing her - I just remember popping out of the doorway seeing an UAZ coming down the road..which I then promptly relieved the previous owners of, and used it to ride me and Maria with her riding as gunner into the fog

Oh, it might also be other scripts that are started when Maria is saved, such as various reinforcement scripts or "escalation" scripts or whatever - tried waiting a little while somewhere off the radar (like in a forest) until the bee's nest quiets down?

Regards,

Wolfrug

[Griffon2-6 0]

Oh my god, I totally get the Robert Jordan reference!

It's the same name as the main character in Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls! That book is about the Spanish Civil War, and Robert Jordan is a member of the Foreign Brigades supporting the Republican Guerillas.

I didn't even read the book and I already pick up allusions to it. Yeah, English class has had that kind of effect on me, unfortunately.

[leehunt27 1]

hi guys, sorry i did not receive e-mail notifications of these recent posts, otherwise i would have responded sooner:

Tourist) There are no special scripts after Maria. I don't know what happened frankly. Lots of add-ons can cause problems. I backup my save games to different folders in case. Recently i've re-installed ArmA (my PC crashed a million times) and started playing PB on 1.14, so far so good. Sorry i don't know what to say except add-ons and finicky ArmA.

Griffon) Did you catch the other references as well? El Sordo was teh guerilla leader in For Whom the Bell Tolls as well...Beria.... etc Its a great book. I almost was going to make this mission originally simply a bridge destruction gambit like the Hemingway book.

Thanks Wolfrug for your comments and help as always!!

[tourist 617]

Thanks for answering, leehunt,

at least I can indeed move around this bug by using various savegames I had stored before recruiting Maria.

As I mentioned, I played Abandoned Armies in OFP and that one had a limited number of saves, so I started storing different saves when preparing for grave decisions like starting the war between the two armies by a certain action or actually attacking an occupied village.

I think I will simply go back to the save I had stored right before going into Marias house. That one will do, because just before recruiting her I have 13-22 FPS (lots of corpses around the house, a burning chopper nearby) and as soon as I move out to the street with her, it drops to 7 FPS. It happens everytime I check it again. So, I use that one.

Probably I will finish off most of Berias forces before going back to Maria. I hope she leaves the group after reaching the hideout, so I will only have to suffer from one terrible car ride during the annual lag festivities before I can ride into Berias bedroom on a burning motorcycle and finish this great mission

kind regards,

tourist

[leehunt27 1]

hi Tourist and others,

Just FYI, you don't need to rescue Maria to win the game. You will not get a total victory, but you will still get the final cutscene finale etc.  

If you enjoyed PB, you will probably also really enjoy Wolfrug's "Operation Dawning Hope." Very well done and professional attack mission.

http://www.ofpec.com/mission....rt=scod

PS I'm really glad you enjoy the mission. It means a lot to me as PB was definitely a ton of work!  I am playing it now after not looking at it for 6 months so its proving very fun, especially with the 1.14 patch

[Griffon2-6 0]

Hey Lee, unfortunately, I didn't play this map yet, and therefore I did not see the other references, nor did I read the book - I only read about it in a synopsis. The only Hemingway book I have ever read was The Sun Also Rises, which was basically slow death.

Sounds like an interesting mission though. I'll definately try it after exams are finished.

[ravenholme 50]

Hey Lee, unfortunately, I didn't play this map yet, and therefore I did not see the other references, nor did I read the book - I only read about it in a synopsis. The only Hemingway book I have ever read was The Sun Also Rises, which was basically slow death.

Sounds like an interesting mission though. I'll definately try it after exams are finished.

Excuse me, but did you ever play a game called "Comanche Gold"? It's just I'm CERTAIN that Griffon 2-6 was the players callsign in that.

*Cough*

The mission is great, hadn't been able to play much because I had exams, but mine are finished now, intend to make a good go at this weekend.

[Griffon2-6 0]

I got my name from Comanche 4. I was 12 at the time and thought it was a cool call sign. The name stuck.

On a more relevant note, I played a bit of this mission yesterday, and the intro is pretty dramatic and well done. The only thing is, you still use Sahrani Liberation Army as the army's name, implying that the regime is communist. However, in Hemingway's book, Robert Jordan is fighting on the side of the communist Republicans. So do we have communists fighting communists here?

[ravenholme 50]

I used to watch my Dad play Comanche Gold, didn't realise that they kept the call sign in the later games.

*sigh*

I want to play them now

[coma73 0]

hey guys i dont know what causes it but everytime i play this mission my game crashes, seems to be something with memory. anyone else have this problem?

[leehunt27 1]

hi coma73,

Sorry you are having troubles getting PB started. It has been betatested by over 100 people, and i've played it successfully on patch 1.08 and patch 1.14, so it may be a problem with add-ons or memory on your PC unfortunately. But don't give up! A few other people have had problems but managed to tweak things to get it to work. Tons of addons or mods might be a factor.

Are you all patched up? What mods are you running?

Lee

[coma73 0]

hey guys i figured it out i was running slx mod just cuz ya had the slx people. thanks for the attempt at help though. and so far its been an excellent mission. very different from the usual linear missions. very very good. now excuse me i m afraid i must go save my gf no time to chat

[leehunt27 1]

Great!!!!  Glad you got it working Coma73.  Good news .

Well, I'm taking a day off from work and playing my own creation, and I think you all may get a laugh out of the PB author getting himself trapped!!  I attacked the radio tower to help out Floyd and found myself trapped by the tank QRF on the other side of the bridge.  In this youtube clip you can see the attack, followed by Beria's men hunting us down with helicopters, tanks and infantry!

[Griffon2-6 0]

Boo yeah! Look what I salvaged!

Bet nobody's done that before!

Anyway, this has been a great mission so far. I really feel like an insurgent when playing this mission; I find myself trying to rip off equipment any way I could.

I'd like to report, also, that Diego's voice files are missing.

[leehunt27 1]

Griffon2-6, well done!!

I never caught a chopper on the ground before. Can you get in? I can't remember if i locked them or not.

Its true Diego's voice files are missing-- i didn't get around to it and wanted to get the game finished. That was probably the only major oversight.

By the way, though ArmA has some random bird sounds etc, has anyone noticed the randomized Environmental Sounds when you sit still for a little while? It was THobson's idea and i found a way to get it into ArmA. The sounds change based on whether you are close to buildings or not or in daytime or nighttime...

[manzilla 1]

Griffon2-6, well done!!

I never caught a chopper on the ground before. Can you get in? I can't remember if i locked them or not.

The first time I ever played I caught the heli on the ground near the tower with the snipers in it. After killing the sniper, I climbed up and took out the chopper pilot with a lucky shot. The chopper was near the House/Compound just across the road/valley. Unfortunately when I got it to it and attempted to fly, the cavalry was in bound and blasted me out of the sky as I ascended.

[Griffon2-6 0]

Actually, I shot it down, and the pilot got out. I then brought a repair truck over to fix it.

I have noticed the environment sounds, especially those erie wolf calls.

And speaking of cavalry, I'm at the part where I just finished destroying the radar tower and Shilka and the cavalry showed up. Marco and Augustin somehow got separated from me, and I'm in a situation where a T72 blows them up every time, whatever I try to do.

Both of them have RPGs, but it doesn't seem like they can get them out in time to fight the T72 before it turns them into barbeque (even though it's a good minute or so after I tell them to target the T72), and if I tell them to take cover, they don't seem to know where to go. Also, SF troops are also showing up behind them.

Anybody have any tips on how I can save them so that I don't lost "a valuable resource in this guerilla war"?

Thanks

[Griffon2-6 0]

Never mind, solved it.

And I'm really good at this.

[leehunt27 1]

Excellent, I just managed to capture an Mi-17 near Bagango myself. Of course, i got shot down trying to approach Pita in the rain (first by a T-72 patrol, then by a Shilka)....

[Griffon2-6 0]

Lol.

***Warning - SPOILERS FOLLOW - Do not read on if you do not want spoilers***

I just finished, and I have to say, this was a very good mission. However, I don't think I played it to the fullest, as I took out most of the armor on the map with the Ka-50 I salvaged. I also did not do any assault on Bagango because I used Carla's satchel charge to blow up the group of infantry located there, then let Diego's men do the rest of the work. After that, I returned to mop up and rip off all the weapons I could, and killed every remaining enemy (Diego's men somehow got slaughtered by about three riflemen). Following that, I attacked the Pita base with the Ka-50 and "Destroyed the effective power of the base" there.

However, at the end, I didn't see the code word you were talking about.

Just some suggestions now, (not that they can be implemented now)

- lock the helicopters. The mission was very easy for me with the Ka-50, as I played with the knowledge that I would never run into a tank/BMP-2/Shilka again.

- Murder Joel. He is extremely annoying as he seldom follows orders. He does follow them eventually, but by then, I would have had new plans in mind. Also, as Joel is a civilian, no enemies fire on Joel, and that makes him a very useful scout/assassin/cheat.

But all in all, this was a lot of fun. Good work, I'm looking forward to your next mission.

[leehunt27 1]

hey Griffon2-6,

Yeh i agree on the choppers. I think I did lock them but the game somehow ignored that. And the AI squad control is tough, i have done a lot on my own as well. That's an ArmA issue.

I think when ArmA II comes out i will make a sequel to PB, i've enjoyed it so much and now that over 500 people have played PB i'm even more motivated. Still get emails from people etc.

The code word only is released if you win in a certain way...