ANNOUNCE: PVP script pack released

[Tom_Anger 0]

Hi Mac - I know you have alot on your plate. Just wanted to throw up another option for these MP missions. This is very low on the priority list, but I'll add the post anyway.

I wanted to see what the possibilities were for a triggered helicopter air strike. The script would basically just use a server parameter for the admins to choose to use or not to use the capability. It would use an ON/OFF parameter as well as a check to see if a team has a multiple of 10 kills which will invoke a heli attack in the fight zone.

This would mainly be used as an option in TDM, CTF, and TKOTH as an option for gamers.

So take for example TDM with Air attacks turned on with the check for a multiple of 10 kills to invoke it. Both teams are fighting against each other and one team reaches 10 kills. At that point a heli on their side should come from a remote location and fly to the fight zone and it will attack any opposing team members. Same goes for the other team if they reach 10 kills. If they reach 20 another heli attack should come out.

What this should have is a check to see if a team heli is already alive. You don't want to send more than 1 at a time to the fight zone.

This kind of goes along the lines of Call Of Duty Modern Warfare except you don't have to wait for someone to call in a heli or place a location on the map. For simplicity (lol) the heli should fly around the fight zone. Just a thought to see in the future this can be added. We'll chat later :-)

[sbsmac 0]

Interesting idea. Fairly straightforward in principle but I fear that the AI piloting may let things down. We can give it a try though :-)

[AceOfSpades 10]

Hey Mac, was wondering is there a way to make the "loading..." splash screen stay up for a set amount of time? I was thinking of making a custom splash and basically make it somewhat of a briefing, but would like it to stay up long enough to read it all, then maybe make intro shorter or something.

***edit ... well had pretty much a fully done and tested by myself co-op mission minus a few enemy. this is were it just gets wierd....I tested it in single player, played 3 hrs by myself to finish it, exported to multiplayer, everything seems to be working but did not play thru it all, put the mission on our dedicated server for testing, got around to testing it a few hours later, luckily no one else was with me at the time cause the respawn is just plain broke, nothing else, just the respawn. So I remove mission off server, I go into single player editor and load up the mission expecting to see it worked and something just went wrong in the exporting, nope it did not work, respawn busted, checked objectives,paradrop,ammo boxes alll of it works except respawn.Now it gets even stranger...So I pour over the cfg's thinking I must of changed something a typo or something in making the final adjustments to export to MP like turning off testing ect. I find nothing...so I then take a copy of the script pack and copy over the script pack files in my mission folder, thereby giving me completely new cfg's and scripts. I test it in singleplayer editor and still no respawn, everthing else is reset to the defaults so I know that the script pack copied over successfully, so now im just plain stumped.

****edit...ok loaded up a training mission I made with your script pack,respawn worked fine, so I erased the script pack out of the mission folder that did not work and copied the script pack again, still no respawn. Is there something I could have done somewhere the break the respawn? The only changes I can remember making was the removal of some vehicles, moving the respawn maker and players to a corner of the map and added paradrop marker and some map markers to show the players info on thier map. I used the name mapmarker_1 ect for those. I did test the paradropping but cannot remember if I teseted the respawn as this was after I had run thru the entire map and it all worked, must have died 15+ times. I have no idea if this helps any lol I am grasping at straws.

Edited September 29, 2009 by AceOfSpades

[sbsmac 0]

Hey Mac, was wondering is there a way to make the "loading..." splash screen stay up for a set amount of time? I was thinking of making a custom splash and basically make it somewhat of a briefing, but would like it to stay up long enough to read it all, then maybe make intro shorter or something.

I can add a configurable timer. The new version of the scriptpack also allows for the addition of a Notes section in the map screen (thanks to Tom Anger for this) which might be more useful in the long run.

***edit ... well had pretty much a fully done and tested by myself co-op mission minus a few enemy. this is were it just gets wierd....I tested it in single player, played 3 hrs by myself to finish it, exported to multiplayer, everything seems to be working but did not play thru it all,

put the mission on our dedicated server for testing, got around to testing it a few hours later, luckily no one else was with me at the time cause the respawn is just plain broke, nothing else, just the respawn.

Can you explain what you mean ? Do you know respawn at all, in the wrong place, or something else ?

A few random thoughts off the top of my head.. .

1) If you save the mission as a different name, ArmA rather stupidly only copies the mission.sqm file to the new mission folder so you might not have all the files you need.

2) If you are using Vista, it can't deal with symbolic links when exporting files (unlikely this is your problem unless you have set up a symlink to the scriptpack).

3) Respawn is a fairly fundamental aspect - in fact the scriptpack has very little control over it except to control the position that your respawned body is moved to and the length of time you are held in camera view. Assuming you are not respawning at all, the most likely explanation is that your mission just doesn't have the appropriate respawn_east or respawn_west marker. From the sequence of events you describe I wonder whether you might have been caught out by anotheraspect of the arma editors poor UI. Basically, if you preview a mission then export or exit without saving, you will lose any changes you made since the last save. Is it possible you created the mission, added the respawns , previewed and then forgot to save before exporting ?

If you are really stuck, send me a pbo/zip and I will take a look.

[AceOfSpades 10]

1) I noticed this fact awhile ago, you might remember me making a post on the topic for you to include a note regarding saving under a new name in the manual.

2) I am using vista but I don't know what a simlink is LoL so not sure if that is the problem.

3) My training mission still works completely and this co-op mission in question was totally working in all modes SP preview,MP self hosting. I have even removed all players and the respawn_west marker, inserted just one player in a new respawn_west marker and respawn still does not work. All other functions of the script pack are working, just not the respawn. Also my standard practice in exporting is to first save work as user, then to export to mp. So I don't think that was the problem as it worked in MP once.

It really seems to be NOT related to the script pack itself, I mean the exact same script pack is working in another mission that has also been exported to MP. But all thats left is the mission.sqm and I can't find nor think of anything in there that would cause this. I mean this is a real stumper. I really hope somehow I can salvage this cause it took several hours to get the enemy placement right since many are placed on top of buildings so I used RTE(real time editor) which is horribly slow but allows for easier placement of enemy in the verticle sense. It can't be RTE cause all that does is modify the mission.sqm and it was working just fine after inserting those enemy with it.

If none of this information helps then just reply for me to send you a copy and I will send you a fresh exported to MP .pbo of it.

If it comes to that can I send just the finished .pbo? Or do you need the editor version with the mission folder zipped? I am not too sure I know how to zip files, but I know how to unzip them so I can probably figure out how to.

Edited September 29, 2009 by AceOfSpades

[sbsmac 0]

Yes, I think you will need to send me the mission. PBO is fine.

[AceOfSpades 10]

I fixed it, don't know what the problem was exactly lol but something in the process I used, unbroke the respawn. Mission is up on our dedicated server and fully playable.

Was thinking a bit ahead of myself on another mission idea but is it possible in placing arty markers that you can have the arty only fire for a set amount of time? I have not placeed arty yet or anything just something that popped into my head a few minutes ago. Is arty marker made with elipse or like an ammo box placement? If done with an elipse will the arty fire its salvos randomly dispersed within the elipse?

Really looking forward to the release with the notes addition for briefings. Will be out in perfect time with me needing to finish up the details on this mission I am working on( the one that was broken ).

Thanks

Edited September 29, 2009 by AceOfSpades

[sbsmac 0]

Glad you got it working again although that really is a bit of a mystery. If you ever manage to break it again, send me the mission and I will look at it.

>but is it possible in placing arty markers that you can have the arty only fire for a set amount of time?

That's a good suggestion and I will think about adding it. (Alternatively I could allow for script-triggered artillery.)

>If done with an elipse will the arty fire its salvos randomly dispersed within the elipse?

yes, it'a either an ellipse or rectangle and each shell will land at a random position within it.

[AceOfSpades 10]

oo script triggered arty would be grand :)

[sbsmac 0]

V2.08 released.

I've been a bit busy with www.armaleague.com so sorry for the delay. As well as the usual bug-fixes, this release has some really nice changes to improve the presentation. A huge thank-you to Tom Anger for contributing his load-screen templates. You can see an example below which gives you an idea of the quality of these. All example missions now load-screens based on this and you can find template 'blanks' as well as instructions on how to use them in a new graphics directory within the zip file.

I've also borrowed Tom's diary/notes code and used to to create 'notes' sections for each example mission. You can read these notes in-game by bringing up the map and clicking on 'notes'. You can supply your own text by modifying the CTF_notes variable within the ctfConfig.sqf file.

Last but by no means least, it is now possible to change the view-distance, terrain-detail (grass) and mission time-of-day both from the config file and also from lobby dialogs.

This is probably the last 2.x release. I'm currently working on a fairly major rewrite of the 'regions' system which will enable things like progressive respawn and much improved client-side control of the features. That will emerge as 3.00 in the next couple of weeks.

*Edit* - I've just realised this thread is about to break the '10K views' barrier :bounce3:

Changes since 2.05...

* View distance, terrain detail, and mission time-of-day can now be set from the lobby using DLG_TERRAINDETAIL, DLG_VIEWDISTANCE and DLG_TIMEOFDAY

* Hugely improved loading-screen images and templates - thanks to Tom Anger

* CTF_notes section added, all example missions have appropriate example text

* Spectator-cam 'previous' arrow now works correctly

* TDM HUD scoring fixed

* preventDamage areas now work for vehicles, 'things', and buildings.

* Fixed bug where borders and minefields didn't work !

* Make sure the game ends when tickets run out

* Games with one side (DM,KOH,FF) should now end when only one player is left

* Players who have run out of lives have a negative score added to ensure they do not appear on the leaderboard in DM/KOH

* CTF_terrainGrid and CTF_viewDistance variables added

* Objectives system now halts on game-over

* Score is not shown at end of game if CTF_hudNoSCore is set

* TDM and KOH now show up in browser as TEAM and CTF respectively

Edited September 30, 2009 by sbsmac

[Tom_Anger 0]

Good stuff mac - I'll get my missions updated to this release hopefully be the weekend and put out a public release.

[AceOfSpades 10]

Good work, getting rdy to put the new pack to work. We tested my afghan mission last night , everything worked very smoothly on the script pack end, although had a we bit of a problem with my enemy palcements hehe but everything was a go, now you got the notes part up, woohoo now I can get to wrapping this mission up.

There was minor thing noticed in the testing last night tho, the space bar limiter, ever so often someone would spawn/respawn with the space bar working, this happened to me after one of my deaths, respawned and space bar worked for that entire life, died and went back to not working like it should. This seemed to be pretty rare, was 5 of us testing and it was reported maybe 4 or 5 times through the coarse of 20 or so team deaths. So not a big deal since it still keeps people from cheating most of the time.

Was wondering , if I remove the signs say for a minefield will that also remove the map marker seen by players during a mission? I like the signs but can see several reasons and instances where other than the in game little signs in russian I would not want any players to know in advance about a minefield. Is there a way to set so the map markers will not be visible?

[sbsmac 0]

@AceofSpaces

Thanks for the bug-report - will look at that !

>Is there a way to set so the map markers will not be visible?

Hmm, good point. At the moment you can remove the signs but not the markers. I'll add the ability to remove markers in a future release.

[AceOfSpades 10]

I was trying to set my own intro and outro music and could not get it to work, this is what I did. Made an edited version 35 secs long of the song I wanted for both intro and outro. Saved it twice under names introSong.ogg and outroSong.ogg within my mission/sounds folder. In the cgf for intro and outro I put "introSong" and "outroSong" respectively. End result was nothing. Now the music editor I was using did not offer the file extension .ogg so I had to rename the file and change .mp3 to .ogg. Is this what caused the break? Still not the right format?? I put it all back the way it was until I hear from you again.

Also think I found a co-op bug, before my mission each player was limited in lives but decided to change that and make it an allotment of lives shared using the ticket system. I also changed the game length time but don't think this is what caused the break. Anyhow mission would start but almost exactly 2 minutes into mission it would end and goto outro saying that the mission time had run out. I kept lowering the time, finally I found that 120 minutes would work, but also removed the ticket system and went back to player respawn count at the same time. After making those changes mission works fine again. So somewhere in there it broke and somewhere in there it unbroke. Sorry I can't give more details, it was not til after I had it working again that I realized I should have paid more attention to what I was doing and un-doing so I could report to you.

[sbsmac 0]

I was trying to set my own intro and outro music and could not get it to work,

'Ogg' is a file format (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogg). So you can't just rename an mp3 file to an ogg file ! You'll need an mp3 to ogg converter program - there are various free ones available.

Also think I found a co-op bug, before my mission each player was limited in

lives but decided to change that and make it an allotment of lives shared using

the ticket system. I also changed the game length time but don't think this is

what caused the break. Anyhow mission would start but almost exactly 2 minutes

into mission it would end and goto outro saying that the mission time had run

out. I kept lowering the time, finally I found that 120 minutes would work, but

Interesting - I'll have a play with this. Even if you can't remember the exact values that were used, do you have any idea what kinds of time-limit/ticket-numbers you might have originally tried?

[AceOfSpades 10]

yes, I started with a 3 hour game so 180 minutes I believe and the ticket system was set to 50. With the individual respawn count "//" again so it would not mess with the ticket system.

I kind of figured it was a special file format, you wouldn't happen to know of a name of a decent free converter would you?

[draeath 10]

dbpoweramp is pretty decent.

Otherwise, just get the real deal: http://www.vorbis.com/setup/

Look under encoders.

[Tom_Anger 0]

MISSION PACK HAS BEEN RELEASED FOR VARIOUS GAMETYPES

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?t=87786

For anyone who decides to host these regularly, I thank you in advance. I hope to schedule an event soon to get some 8 vs 8 SEIGE, TDM, and TKOTH sessions as well.

[dustoff 0]

havinbg troubles setting the time of day from the server . defaults to night using toms missions

Edited October 5, 2009 by dustoff

[sbsmac 0]

NEW FEATURE - one-key grenade select!

I just added a rather cool new feature (even if I say so myself). I've got fed up with fumbling with the weapon selector when I need a grenade in a hurry so I've added the following feature to the scriptpack....

Tap the spacebar once to select 'handGrenade'.

Double-tap it to select 'smokeGrenade'.

After 2 seconds the weapon selector returns automatically to your primary weapon.

It doesn't sound much, but believe me, it makes a huge difference to CQB PvP and I expect this to be a very popular feature. As such, I'm releasing it as a hot-fix which you can download here ... http://dev-heaven.net/attachments/download/2672/disableCommandMode.sqf

Just copy the downloaded disableCommandMode.sqf file on top of your existing ctf/disableCommandMode.sqf and you should be good to go.

Happy fragging.... ;-)

[AceOfSpades 10]

Well got the music working right after finding a file converter, didnt really think changing the format name but thought what the hell I will try it.

Is there a way in future releases to make a destroy objective also a capturable objective at the same time? I tried the flag keyword, the pole appeared but it captures nothing after everything has been destroyed. yes I stood very close and waited for 2 minutes to make sure it was not working.

Also noticed in the briefing area under tasks that the check boxes never turn green when completed, not really a huge deal though just thought I would mention it since I am on the same topic.

Thanks

[sbsmac 0]

Thansk dustoff - will take a look at this.

Is there a way in future releases to make a destroy objective also a capturable objective at the same time? I tried the flag keyword, the pole appeared but it captures nothing after everything has been destroyed. yes I stood very close and waited for 2 minutes to make sure it was not working.

How woudl you want this to work ? I'm guessing you would want it so that the objective was neutralised after destroying the contents but then effectively turned into a normal objective ?

Also noticed in the briefing area under tasks that the check boxes never turn green when completed, not really a huge deal though just thought I would mention it since I am on the same topic.

Indeed- the task are WIP but thanks for the report - I'm more likely to work on stuff that I know people care about :)

---------- Post added at 11:26 PM ---------- Previous post was at 11:13 PM ----------

havinbg troubles setting the time of day from the server . defaults to night using toms missions

Hmm, I just tried with a simple mission here and the time-of-day dialog seemed to be doing the right thing. Could you let me know what you are actually setting ? It might also be useful if you take a look at the end of your arma.rpt file. You will see a few lines there starting with

===============PVP SCRIPT PACK=====================================

then there should be some information about which dialog options were chosen for the mission. If you could paste them here (and tell me which mission you used) I may be able to get to the bottom of this faster.

[celery 8]

NEW FEATURE - one-key grenade select!

I just added a rather cool new feature (even if I say so myself). I've got fed up with fumbling with the weapon selector when I need a grenade in a hurry so I've added the following feature to the scriptpack....

Tap the spacebar once to select 'handGrenade'.

Double-tap it to select 'smokeGrenade'.

After 2 seconds the weapon selector returns automatically to your primary weapon.

It doesn't sound much, but believe me, it makes a huge difference to CQB PvP and I expect this to be a very popular feature. As such, I'm releasing it as a hot-fix which you can download here ... http://dev-heaven.net/attachments/download/2672/disableCommandMode.sqf

Just copy the downloaded disableCommandMode.sqf file on top of your existing ctf/disableCommandMode.sqf and you should be good to go.

Happy fragging.... ;-)

Do you mean that you assigned the feature to space bar itself or its default action? Some people (including myself) have defined another action than quick command/whatever to space bar, and since I use it to switch weapon modes, it could cause quite a headache.

[sbsmac 0]

Technically, the feature is assigned to whatever key you have bound 'command-mode' to. That is space-bar by default but could be something else. The rationale is that since no-one has complained about me disabling command-mode, they won't be too unhappy if I use the key for something else ;-) So you shouldn't have a problem.

[dustoff 0]

2009/10/05, 16:55:25 "Parameter CTF_timeOfDay set to 600"

2009/10/05, 16:55:25 "Parameter CTF_scoreToWin set to 5000"

2009/10/05, 16:55:25 "Parameter CTF_smoke set to 2"

2009/10/05, 16:55:25 "Parameter CTF_grenades set to 3"

2009/10/05, 16:55:25 "Parameter CTF_gameLength set to 30"

2009/10/05, 16:55:25 "Parameter CTF_deathCam set to body"

2009/10/05, 16:55:25 "Parameter CTF_viewDistance set to 600"

trying to set it by using para 1 etc in the missions packs mad by tom anger