Warfare Cooperative (WACO) v1.1.1

[Doomguy 0]

Well I have sorted the auto-rearm at Paraiso airport if you are interested.  Need to work on the deadly AAA vehicles !

You now NEED to concentrate on taking out aircraft as soon as they appear.  Will keep fly-boys like me on my toes !

[TAO] Kremator

PS next I need to put Mando Missile flares onto your aircraft !

Hi Kremator,

Some thoughts:

- I think the ACE aircraft have the Mando flares already... at least I'm sure some of the helo's do.

- The re-arm thing... I prefer the ammo trucks for re-arm, they bring a little bit of logistical problems to the game. I can imagine you want to have something more convenient though.

- If you want deadly AA things you could re-enable the Warfare AA tripods. They can't be spoofed with flares (I think) and will shoot down most any plane within seconds

Doomguy

[Anykey 1]

the best Ace Warfare for me , but it needs Command Center with Air Strikes and ICBM , and harder RAC

[lockjaw-65- 0]

Had a good game last night all works well, nice one

[kremator 1065]

but it needs .....harder RAC

Well, once TonyRanger releases FFN MOD fix you will have your wish

I think his mod will transform WACO.

@Doomguy.  Loving this 1.16e version (with modded airport rearm, of course    )

Whats next .... whats next ?

[TAO] Kremator

[EDcase 87]

Hiall,

Best warfare mission

Using v1.16a

How can I change default viewdistance?

Cheers,

Ed

[Doomguy 0]

but it needs .....harder RAC

Well, once TonyRanger releases FFN MOD fix you will have your wish

I think his mod will transform WACO.

@Doomguy.  Loving this 1.16e version (with modded airport rearm, of course    )

Whats next .... whats next ?

[TAO] Kremator

Thanks!

I'm also looking forward to TonyRanger's work.

What's next?

I just implemented the ACE weapon-on-back feature in the gear menu. If you click Pack (now also available if you don't have a rucksack) you will get a slot for an additional primary weapon.

Also for the gear menu, I'm working on a feature that will allow you to buy weapons for your AI team mates via the gear menu. You will just get a list of team members that are close and that you can buy weapons for similar to the player.

I'm also adding some more crazy CAR and HK416 variants.

Doomguy

[Doomguy 0]

Hiall,

Best warfare mission

Using v1.16a

How can I change default viewdistance?

Cheers,

Ed

You can't really. What you could do is add the following in InitMission.sqf:<table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td>Code Sample </td></tr><tr><td id="CODE">setViewDistance x;where x is the viewdistance in meters.

Doomguy

[kremator 1065]

Doomguy,

Is there a way to force AI in your vehicles to fire automatically at targets without giving them manual targets ?

I can't find anyone to comment presently, but hope this is something you can force

Cheers,

[TAO] Kremator

PS don't worry about all those rifles - far too many in my opinion from ACE team.  

PPS okies heres an idea about refuelling/rearming - what about MIDAIR refuelling/rearming ?  Noone has done that yet - an aircraft flying a racetrack pattern where, if you get within 50m it refuels/rearms your aircraft.

[twisted 128]

any chance of adding strategic elements to AI that kick in when certain conditions occur?

for example, if AI is getting beat bad, it could muster the majority of its forces to attack out of the way towns one after the other in a blitzkrieg?

or if it is winning it could send AI hunter groups to ambush enemy on the way to attack or even attack human base (or to SF to scout for human base and then conduct major offensive)

In retreat the AI could lay minefields and set up claymores (ACE). nice surprise for over confident humans and closer to real life tactics.

Does the AI react to humans having armour by sending in anti armour teams and aircraft? i remember owning the AI simply by grabbing 2 bradleys early on in the game and then plowing through town after town (version 1.15 of WACO though so things may have changed)

as it is the AI plays too much by the rules which provides a nice tactical but strategically lacking engagement that gives humans the ultimate upper hand.

I cannot remember ever seeing artillery used by AI to soften up targets. not sure if arti is even available.

great warfare mod!

[nubbin77 0]

Quote[/b] ]any chance of adding strategic elements to AI that kick in when certain conditions occur?

I used to have a system in OFP (towards the end, a few months before Arma got released) that basically scripted specific missions within an ongoing mission or CTI game.

The idea was basically this upon certain events (be it lapse of time, completion of an objective, killing something, or whatever - even randomly) it would trigger a predifined mission. I know I'm not being real clear here so let me give an example.

... after 4 towns are captured, an enemy convoy is spawned to move between 2 points. Your team has to intercept it. If it makes it to point B - then the enemy gets XXX money or they some other reward - like a roaming helicopter - whatever you can be real creative with this stuff.

sounds simple enough but the key is to have some sort of mission generator system - remember the dynamic campaigns for OFP, its basically a modification of that.

The really neat thing though is with Arma, a lot of the scripting commands make it so nothing has to even be placed in the editor. It can all come from functions. Here's a rudimentary and tremendously oversimplified example.

1 need a mission list

2 need conditions that trigger a mission

3 need something to check if a mission is already active (can't have too much going on...You would have to keep these "side missons" small because there's already enough server load and FPS issues with warefare maps as it is. But even simple missions with a small amount of untis can be extremely fun, particularly in the context of the ongoing war.

4 need to create markers for starting locations, waypoints, end locations, and markers to tell the players where the mission takes place).

This is the tricky part - if you are good and patient (and I'm not sure if this is even possible) you can create markers at specific locations (I think I haven't tried this) if you know the coordinates. once you have create the markers via script, then you can script the creation of units, their waypoints (along paths of markers) then names of the units (if need be for trigger / reward / tracking purposes) and all that other good stuff.

5 Reward / punishment system

6 something to remove the units and markers once complete.

Ideally... what can happen is... your dedicated followers can design missions for you to drop in for you, and you barely have to do anything except add the sub-mission folders to your warefare mission.

In the init.sqf - you can tell it to look for an overview file called missions.sqf or whatever inside a folder called "events".

In that file, you would have a list of a conditions that trigger a mission - so once something has happened, it triggers mission X - give each mission a number and add missions folders as self contained folders within the events file - so it will seek out the info in that folder and viola, it auto generates the mission. give it conditions to end and tell that missions.sqf file to start looking for another condition to trigger another mission.

As a proof of concept, someone (not me, I'm getting in trouble just writing this much) take a blank multiplayer editor file, put in one person as playable, the try to create a "mission" where a unit gets created at a marker with a way point created, see them walk to the waypoint, and trigger that the unit and the markers are deleted once he reaches the waypoint.

Once you get the basics of the model down, its just a matter of getting people to volunteer to make more and more mission types. There's a lot of simple mission types that can get incorporated:

Convoy intercept

convoy protect

airborne assault on one of your towns in the rear

pow rescue

assasination

steal a laptop

blow up a radio tower

Obtain gasoline from fuel stations

etc.

the rewards & punishments can be just as creative beyond the obvious:

+ or - Money,

airstrikes

artillery barrages

reveal enemy locations

whatever you guys can think of.

again, if done right, the only thing doomguy would have to add is a line within the init.sqf to look for the mission generation system. Once a system is in place, then mission developers just have to say which mission number they are working on, and drop it in when done. All of the debugging should be done before it gets incorporated into Warefare. (the only problem being that certain missions would get triggered on the basis of what's happening in the warefare mission - you'd have to change the triggering event in order to test outside of the warefare environment and change back when put into the warefare mission).

anyway, just some thoughts to potentially incorporate / change up the gameplay into this fine mission. while warefare is good, there is somthing about a specific mission with goals that is missing from warefare. If something like this gets in there, you kind of have the best of both worlds.

[lockjaw-65- 0]

Since installing last version the game crashes after about half hour. Tried this several times and same every time. not sure if it might be latest ace or waco cos installed about the same time. Has anybody else had this problem?

[kremator 1065]

Had mine crash after about 90 mins.

Haven't pinpointed it yet.

[TAO] Kremator

PS FFN MOD is out ! Go grab it for major WACO goodness

[lockjaw-65- 0]

Just tried waco without ace mod and no problems so i think it might be a conflict with ace.

Also get an error message about 2 mins into game:

cannot open object ace_model_vehicles_static\m\cannon\m119.p3d

Now i feel really stupid, just noticed ace 1.04 update to resolve it, sorry all

[lockjaw-65- 0]

nubbin77 This sounds really intresting, a bit like the side missions in domination.

I would love to incorparate this idea but my skills in scripting are not good enough

[Anykey 1]

i didnt understand what does it add to play at the warfare with FFN except the AI ehanced

[awotter 0]

Hiall,

Best warfare mission

Using v1.16a

How can I change default viewdistance?

Cheers,

Ed

You can't really. What you could do is add the following in InitMission.sqf:<table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td>Code Sample </td></tr><tr><td id="CODE">setViewDistance x;

where x is the viewdistance in meters.

Doomguy

Hi Doomguy,

about the time you posted this a squaddie and I began testing somethings regarding view distance and the settings in video options. In Xeno's Domination! he has it scripted so you can change view distance on the fly (it always defaults back to 900m when you change vehicles) so I started playing around with adding that to WACO. I haven't quite got there yet but I'll pass it on if and when I do (I'm not up to speed on scripting, especially when it comes to adding dialog controls).

But the strange thing we are seeing is that in certain missions (according to my squaddie) like Warfare and Evo he says he can't up his view distance in video options to the max while playing in MP.

Both of us have confirmed that when you open a mission in Editor and adjust the slider you see the effect in real time and when I use setViewDistance in test triggers via radio channels it works.

It could be that one or both of us is crazy, but I don't think the default view distance of 900m is set in stone and can't be changed in your video options for MP missions unless you script it otherwise or could it?

[kremator 1065]

Just use InstantViewDistance addon.  Works perfectly.

You will need to search the forums for it.

[TAO] Kremator

[kremator 1065]

Doomguy,

Ihave been testing WACO 1.1.6 for a while and love it. Have you encountered any severe server lag though?

Even only using ACE I get quite bad lag when all the AI are doing their tasks.

Using #monitor 5 on the dedicated server shows that I'm getting between 5 and 10fps, when it starts off at 47fps.

Any advice?

[TAO] Kremator

PS its even worse on TESTING MODE

[Doomguy 0]

Hi Kremator,

Testing mode is crazy - and supposed to be that way. That said, I can still run the dedicated server and the client on my dual-core laptop and get an acceptable game. On testing mode the FPS seems to hover around 15 about 30 minutes into the game, but it depends heavily on which towns are being attacked (which determines the number of active AI units).

Advice: not sure really. Addons like ECS, SLX_GL3, FFN make things somewhat worse, but the most important factor is the number of AI units. Lowering the bonus you give to the AI should help. Get a bigger server  

To twisted and nubbin77:

Those are some really interesting ideas. I have been thinking along the same lines. The radar towers that you can destroy in towns are a start of a more structured mission system, but I guess what nubbin77 is suggesting goes far beyond that.

It would also be really nice to give the AI more strategic finesse... the thing is that developing that kind of behaviour, especially testing it out, is extremely time consuming. With ArmA 2 coming up -with acclaimed improvements to the AI- I don't think a major effort to build better AI in WACO now would be worth it. I'll probably finish up the improvements I'm working on now, bring the ACE, standalone, and addon version up to the same level, and leave it at that until it's clear what ArmA 2 is going to offer.

Doomguy

[EDcase 87]

Thanks for the replies guys,

Doomguy: I'll try and dePBO the mission to change the InitMission.sqf

(It would be great to be able to set a viewdistance for the ground and a different one for air vehicles)

awotter: You cannot change viewdist in video settings if its been specified in the mission.

Kremator: Thanks but I just tried 'InstantViewdistance' and it doesn't work in this mission. (1.16a) Perhaps it works with the newer version but I don't want to loose the Bradley just yet

Cheers

[kremator 1065]

Kremator: Thanks but I just tried 'InstantViewdistance' and it doesn't work in this mission. (1.16a) Perhaps it works with the newer version but I don't want to loose the Bradley just yet

As long as you have Extended Eventhandlers installed then it will work ......

However I do find that I have to enter a vehicle FIRST ... then it comes up as an option.

Once I do that its permanently in my action menu.

Hope this helps.

[TAO] Kremator

PS you could update to 1.1.6e but just keep ACE at 1.02.

[awotter 0]

awotter: You cannot change viewdist in video settings if its been specified in the mission.

Thanks,

I understand that, the issue is why does it appear that in missions such as Warfare and Evo, where the view distance isn't specifically specified or adjustable, that maximum view distance seems to be much less than video settings imply.

The issue reported by my squad mate isn't just in his imagination, he took a series of identical screen shots of Domination! and Warfare (WACO) in the same location and you can see a noticeable difference when 10,000m is selected in Domination! vs the same setting of 10,000m selected via the video options in Warfare.

I'm almost inclined to wonder if the difference is in the configuration of South Sahrani vs Sahrani but he says it happens in Evo also so I am stumped at this point.

I really wish I knew scripting better so I could port Xeno's scripts into WACO they do add to the game given that you can adjust distances for flying or areas where you need more long range views.

[Thirdup 0]

I'm almost inclined to wonder if the difference is in the configuration of South Sahrani vs Sahrani but he says it happens in Evo also so I am stumped at this point.

I'm thinking this is part of what he is seeing. At 10k vis on the Sara map, he's seeing the mountains of the northern island. That island doesn't exist in the SaraLite map (so it's fogged out).

[Doomguy 0]

Guys, just to make this clear: WACO, or Warfare, does not set the view distance. I don't know what causes the difference with Xeno's Domination, but it's not that a script in WACO or Warfare is setting the view distance.

Doomguy

[awotter 0]

Guys, just to make this clear: WACO, or Warfare, does not set the view distance. I don't know what causes the difference with Xeno's Domination, but it's not that a script in WACO or Warfare is setting the view distance.

Doomguy

I think we have solved the problem Doomguy. He was executed. Thanks.