ANNOUNCE: PVP script pack released

[{USI}_Zombie 0]

found the line that turns off the map, solved that one...map almost ready for release.

[.kju 3241]

sbsmac can you please mail me your skype acc. Thanks!

[sbsmac 0]

Lol- typical that I go on vacation and there's a flood of posts ;-) I'm in eastern Europe right now with limited access to the network but will try to respond as best I can....

2 new issues though.

1) I don't like the map being disabled during briefing phase

can that feature be disabled so the map shows?

2) my .rpt is being filled up with

Code:

["border player at",[3371.8,4256.92,0.000919342],10,0]

and other locations. Debug feature? Can it be disabled?

That's a 'feature' - hiding the map during briefing is essential for insurgency or any other gamme mode that requires hidden objectives. It's also a lot neater for other gamemodes since the marker colouring doesn't take place until after the briefing. However if you want it back in, just change the line in description.ext that says briefing=0 to briefing=1.

On the report issue, ooops- normally I run a release check on stray diag_logs in the code but must have missed one. Look in border.sqf for a diag_log line and delete it. I will try to post a hotfix later.

CTF_allowDominationWin=false;

This is false by default so deleting the line entirely from your ctfconfig should have the same affect.

sbsmac can you please mail me your skype acc. Thanks!

Will be pleased to but I need to get one set up! :) That won't be until I get back -likely sunday next week.

---------- Post added at 09:39 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:15 AM ----------

Just added an updated border.sqf file to the files section which removes the extra diag_log.

Also, checked the lost-flag code. It only kicks in when the flag-runner is dead. This is by design - live flagrunners should not have the flag taken from them but I'm open to opinions on whether this is correct.

[{USI}_Zombie 0]

in description.ext that says briefing=0 to briefing=1.

Yep, found that one myself, thanks though

On the report issue, ooops- normally I run a release check on stray diag_logs in the code but must have missed one. Look in border.sqf for a diag_log line and delete it. I will try to post a hotfix later.

Will modify, thanks, figured is was some kind of debug option

Also, checked the lost-flag code. It only kicks in when the flag-runner is dead. This is by design - live flagrunners should not have the flag taken from them but I'm open to opinions on whether this is correct.

In my opinion, that is the correct behavior. Didn't seem to work before I updated to v2.02 but now works as it should. Expect a new ctf map using this scriptpack this week, just need a good playtest from my squad mates.

[Tom_Anger 0]

Hi Mac - I've found that the TDM score display doesn't give the same results as when you hit the 'I' key. I was on BLUFOR and got killed like 6 times by OPFOR and West was awarded the kill on the display, but if you hit 'I' it was correct on that screen.

Not sure what the issue is with the realtime scoring script but maybe that is something we can review at some point?

[sbsmac 0]

Tom,

The HUD should show the accumulated score (not just kills) for all players on each side. Is this what you are seeing ?

[Tom_Anger 0]

Tom,

The HUD should show the accumulated score (not just kills) for all players on each side. Is this what you are seeing ?

I am not sure what I am seeing, but for TDM I would expect it to show how many kills OPFOR has and how many BLUFor has so that as I play I can see who is winning. I know there is a bug where you may get 2 points for a kill, but that is not what this discrepancy is about. In TDM # of kills is what teams care about.

[sbsmac 0]

Tom, Unfortunately, the only function that BIS provide to query the score returns the overall score rather than the number of kills. It would be possible in theory to try and track kills instead but this is not supported directly.

[Tom_Anger 0]

Hi Mac - I am getting close to releasing my missions, but still have questions. I tried your template for DM and even took a simple TDM mission of mine and removed all east soldiers leaving just west. I enabled AI for testing and if I shoot the AI it is reported as friendly fire. I tested using your template for DM and got the same thing. Any input would be great....

Now onto what I have been doing and my goals....

What I am planning to do is take the mission designs I've been working on and making a series of gametypes for the community. This way a semi-decent design can be played with the gametype of preference. I try not to design un-realistic looking missions. They are carefully setup so that players will enjoy the locations for cover. I currently have TDM and CH (Team King Of The Hill) just about ready. For "Team King of the Hill" I layed out small yellow flags around the zone so that players can easily see the 1 zone as they play without the need for going back and forth to the hud. Sounds corny, but for the layed back gamer it may pay off.

In the release I am hoping to also include 10 minute elimintation style missions where the west team must get to a small zone and once captured they win. This means no respawn and only the west can capture it. Any chance you could work with me on that? It would be basically a CH mission, but only the west can cap the zone. These will be released with the name RECON. In RECON east are defenders of the zone and west are the attackers. In 10 minutes (or set longer if desired) west must get at least 1 member in the zone to win. Die and you're out until the next round. This is an elimination version and will be used for a small set of clans that want to have some fund rounds of gaming amongst groups. With RECON a mission can be setup for long range battles requiring heli extraction, to small scaled infantry versions.

I know some folks reading this may be saying I'm wasting time, but there are a small set of gamers who would enjoy these even if it only lasts a short while... The links below are some basic mission designs (as I said - decent for cover and movement tactics)

http://urclan.org/images/sample/1.jpg

http://urclan.org/images/sample/2.jpg

http://urclan.org/images/sample/3.jpg

http://urclan.org/images/sample/4.jpg

http://urclan.org/images/sample/5.jpg

http://urclan.org/images/sample/6.jpg

http://urclan.org/images/sample/7.jpg

http://urclan.org/images/sample/8.jpg

http://urclan.org/images/sample/9.jpg

http://urclan.org/images/sample/10.jpg

http://urclan.org/images/sample/11.jpg

http://urclan.org/images/sample/12.jpg

Thanks bud...

[Taxman 10]

He's on hols atm so im guessing replies will be difficult.. I imagine his family will prob have a say in whether he can come online or not :eek:

[Tom_Anger 0]

He's on hols atm so im guessing replies will be difficult.. I imagine his family will prob have a say in whether he can come online or not :eek:

hols?

[HitmanFF 6]

hols?

Holidays (vacation).

[sbsmac 0]

The hotel I'm now in has Wi-Fi :)

I tried your template for DM and even took a simple TDM mission of mine and removed all east soldiers leaving just west. I enabled AI for testing and if I shoot the AI it is reported as friendly fire. I tested using your template for DM and got the same thing. Any input would be great....

Could you be a bit clearer? Are you shooting units on the same side ? If so, then the expected behaviour for TDM is that it should count as friendly fire. For DM, it should count as a kill. DM only changes the rating of _human_ players so what you are seeing is probably expected. I hadn't expected anyone to want to play DM against AI but if so, it would be fairly straightforward to make them enemy as well.

For "Team King of the Hill" I layed out small yellow flags around the zone so that players can easily see the 1 zone

If it helps it would be trivial to add 'playzone' type markers that would add the flags automatically in the same way that borders and minefields currently do.

In the release I am hoping to also include 10 minute elimintation style missions where the west team must get to a small zone and once captured they win. This means no respawn and only the west can capture it. Any chance you could work with me on that? It would be basically a CH mission, but only the west can cap the zone. These will be released with the name RECON. In RECON east are defenders of the zone and west are the attackers. In 10 minutes (or set longer if desired) west must get at least 1 member in the zone to win. Die and you're out until the next round.

The experimental 'insurgency' mode in 2.02 should support most of what you want already if you want east to be able to respawn but not west. See http://dev-heaven.net/wiki/sbsmac-pvpsp/Insurgency.

Alternatively if you want both sides to have no respawns then just set up a standard C&H with the following parameters...

CTF_playerRespawnLimit=0;

CTF_gameLength=10;

CTF_allowDominationWin=true;

Set up your objective with these parameters....

The objective,hold,captureTime=1,east

set up a dummy objective away from the playzone (where east can't reach it) with these parameters

West HQ,west,score=0

That gives you pretty much what you want although west will have to clear the objective of east to win which may not be what you intended. If you really mean that the presence of a single west player in the objective is enough to win then you will have to use GAMEMODE_INSURGENCY with the following setup...

CTF_playerRespawnLimit=0;

CTF_gameLength=10;

Set up a single objective with these parameters....

The objective,east,captureTime=1

West should then be able to win by neutralising the objective by getting a player inside it.

Anway, these are just suggestions so you can playtest the basic concept. When I get back I'll make this easier to do with fewer workarounds.

[Tom_Anger 0]

Thanks mac. I may give these ideas a try and see how it turns out. The zone borders for the objective would help. Things to use could be cones, campfires (the light would show nice for night missions, or any other small items.

I am finding that folks can get too confused at the easiest things with the game. Coops are more tactical and require thinking where MP missions should be more gamer friendly. For large zones that isn't necessary but for smaller zones (20x20 or so) it helps to be able to easily locate it when you know you are aroudn the general area.

I am very interested in RECON so I will try some stuff out. Thanks a ton.

[HateDread 13]

Hey, wonderful work so far with this script pack!

Just a few questions;

-How do I hide the markers of one team's spawn, from the other? I don't want West getting an "East" marker on the map.

-How do I hide "Vehicles", and other area markers, from the map? I don't want checkered circles wherever I place those zones.

And for the mission I am making;

East has to get across Chernarus, to a small zone on the other side, and West has to try and stop them. Either East gets to the zone, or West kills them all, and they run out of respawns, or a timelimit (not sure yet). How would I go about implementing this?

And what if it's two different styles; one where one troop has to be in this zone, and one where the whole team has to be there. How do I do each one?

What about random spawn locations, around the map, complete with a vehicle spawning for the player, like a bike?

What about nightvision for only one team?

Cheers in advance.

EDIT: And almost forgot the most important question! How do I remove the physical barrier/markers around the edges of zones/editor markers such as "espawn", "vehicles", etc? They just get in the way. I wanna keep the ones for minefields, though. How do I go about doing this?

Cheerio.

EDIT#2: What about adding a marker to indicate that zone OpFor has to get to, that I mentioned earlier? How do I make markers placed in editor appear in-game?

Cheers.

Edited September 4, 2009 by HateDread
Forgot

[sbsmac 0]

Glad you like it. :) To try and answer some of your questions...

Hiding spawns... not yet possible in 2.02 but I am working on a new marker system that should allow this.

Ditto for vehicle respawn zones.

For your mission , it sounds like you need to use the INSURGENCY mode I mentioned in the earlier post to Tom Anger. There's currently no way to make it so that the _whole_ team has to be in the zone unfortunately but the rest of the things you want to do are possible. You'll need to have West as the ones trying to get to the zone for the moment since that's the way the insurgency mode is set up in 2.02

Random spawn locations are possible (I believe) by placing markers called respawn_west, respawn_west1 etc. This is an old OFP feature so i can't say I have tested it first-hand. Sorry - no randomly spawning vehicles as of 2.02.

Nightvision for only one team is probably best accomplished by placing ammocrates at the west spawns for now.

Physical markers are only placed for borders, spawn-protection and minefields at present. You can get rid of them quite easily by using the 'sign' keyword with an empty assignment. Ie,put this string in the text field...

sign=

>What about adding a marker to indicate that zone OpFor has to get to

Just use insurgency mode and set the zone up as a hold objective. This will be marked on the map.

Sorry about the brevity of the response but I'm typing this from a hotel room before heading out for dinner ;-) I'll put in some proper features to support the kinds of things you want next week when I'm back at the PC.

[Tom_Anger 0]

I'm having a bit of trouble with RECON, but I'll wait until you get back bro. The gameplay is simple.

No respawns - I can use the command you mentioned, but I don't want people showing up as birds to fly around giving clues so I may have a respawn, but in a holding place until the end of the match.

Objective - BLUFOR only has to get 1 player in the zone marker (for say 10 seconds with no indication to OPFOR that he/she is in it). OPFOR tries to prevent 1 player from getting in the zone.

That's pretty much it. Nice gametype to lock the server and have a few rounds on different maps to see if people can locate and eliminate players while trying to get in a location with a time limit. Usually the defenders have the edge so for scrimmages/matches this would be best of 3 type of thing with side switching.

[HateDread 13]

Thanks for the reply, sbsmac.

I tried your suggestion for the physical markers around protection zones. I added "Sign=" in the text for the zones. They're still there, and they look ugly in the West base.

So are you adding features to support such requests? That's awesome! My mission really needs East as the ones getting to the zone :/

I'll try the Insurgency mode.

Thanks.

EDIT: How would you suggest I implement some sort of revive? Like, a script, etc, to work with your pack?

EDIT#2: How do I have a dialogue option for difficulty? I'd like that + time-limit. Ahhh... but respawns! I can't fit all three in!

Edited September 6, 2009 by HateDread
Forgot

[sbsmac 0]

Right, I'm back from holiday - normal service is resumed :)

There were a lot of feature requests whilst I was away so I have tried to log them all in the project issue tracker. If you don't see yours there, I've probably managed to overlook it - feel free to add stuff directly there or to amend the existing entries with further explanation.

No respawns - I can use the command you mentioned, but I don't want people showing up as birds to fly around giving clues so I may have a respawn, but in a holding place until the end of the match.

That's exactly how the current respawn-limits work :-) You need to place a marker called 'internment' and players will end up there after exhausting all their respawns with all weapons removed. I'm looking at adding a spectator script to make things a little less tedious.

I tried your suggestion for the physical markers around protection zones. I added "Sign=" in the text for the zones. They're still there, and they look ugly in the West base.

Will take a look at this.

EDIT: How would you suggest I implement some sort of revive? Like, a script, etc, to work with your pack?

Hmm - it needs to be plumbed in quite closed with the existing respawn/rearm stuff. I have added a feature request for it... here.

So are you adding features to support such requests? That's awesome! My mission really needs East as the ones getting to the zone :/

Absolutely. My aim is to provide a 'toolkit' for mission makers that will support many different varieties of mission types whilst remaining easy to use. Since my imagination is limited, it's exceedingly useful to hear from other people about what they would like the scriptpack to do.

[HateDread 13]

Thankyou for your support so far. Without this pack, my ideas for missions would fall apart.

You may have missed this edit, it was a few minutes before you posted;

>EDIT#2: How do I have a dialogue option for difficulty? I'd like that + time-limit. Ahhh... but respawns! I can't fit all three in!

Thanks for adding my requests/issues to the tracker.

EDIT: Do respawned vehicles return with whatever code has been placed in their initialization field?

[sbsmac 0]

>EDIT#2: How do I have a dialogue option for difficulty? I'd like that + time-limit. Ahhh... but respawns! I can't fit all three in!

The new 1.03 beta (forget which build) supports multiple dialogs. I will add support for this when 1.04 looks a little closer.

What do you actually want 'difficulty' to do ? Ie, what aspect of the game should it influence ?

>EDIT: Do respawned vehicles return with whatever code has been placed in their initialization field?

I'm afraid not - I can't see any way to read the init string from the vehicle. What is it you are trying to do with the initialisation ?

[HateDread 13]

1.03? I only have 1.02.

>What do you actually want 'difficulty' to do ? Ie, what aspect of the game should it influence ?

I'm not sure about the difficulty, because;

-I'd like player markers off, at all times.

-I'd like to be able to change respawn count

-I'd like to be able to change gamelength

I need a way to do all 3, with 2 dialogue options. Maybe difficulty is respawns, and then gamelength is another, then somehow turn off player markers? Not really sure.

>I'm afraid not - I can't see any way to read the init string from the vehicle. What is it you are trying to do with the initialisation ?

I'm after respawning the vehicle with the lights on, but then whoever gets in can choose if they want them on, and when vehicle is destroyed in battle, and respawns, I'd like its lights to go back on. I've got "player action ["lightOn", this]" in initialization field.

Thanks so far.

[sbsmac 0]

Just to be clear, I'm talking about the Arma2 1.03 beta builds available from http://www.arma2.com/beta-patch.php

One of the latest changes was to support multiple lobby dialogs which would solve your problem. There's no point in me adding that to the script pack until 1.04 is released though since all players will need to be on the same version.

I will have to think about the vehicle init stuff.

[Flightster 10]

Hi mac,

I just recently made a map, using your awesome pack, and I have a request.. On the persistent loadout, would it be possible to make it so that it remembers the ammo missile launchers carry? Right now all it does is save the primary weapon (and reloads ammo for it), while the launcher stays in your inventory but with 0 ammo (it gives you grenades instead).

[sbsmac 0]

Hmm - sounds like a bug! :) Can I just check you are using v2.02 ? Also, do you see this with any missile launcher or is there a particular one that causes it ? I'll do some playing around here but if you can narrow it down a bit for me it would help.