ANNOUNCE: PVP script pack released

[Tom_Anger 0]

Hi mac, it looks like by default missions will end when all of 1 side is dead no matter what gametype or config is used. In other words, no one can start a mission with them in it. I could be wrong, but please confirm. The problem with that is if a player wants to get a game started and starts up the mission with them in it until others join in, it will not stay up long enough to get others to game.

I don't even know how to turn that off so I think it may be something with the script...

To get an idea of what I mean, run your CH or other mission templates with test mode off. I believe the other gametypes have this same issue. If I am wrong please direct me in the right direction as I would like to get my missions out to the public soon.

Cheers

[sbsmac 0]

Yes, you are right. This is 'by design' although it does currently break CO-OP mode and I can see that the obvious workaround of waiting in the lobby for a second player may not be desirable :)

There are a number of ways for me to change this behaviour but none of them are perfect...

1) Implement a grace period at the beginning of the game before the 'in-play' counter starts.

2 Don't consider the game to have started at all until a certain number of players have joined.

The second option was suggested some time ago by Dustoff - see http://dev-heaven.net/issues/show/3045. That looks like the better way to go.

[Tom_Anger 0]

I'd go with option 2. Maybe use a CTF_ command for minimum # players to start. That way if the number was 2 you would expect 1 on each side. Will be looking forward to that. Thanks bud. I'm glad I wasn't seeing things, lol.

---------- Post added at 07:47 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:49 PM ----------

If anyone is interested, I will be running some test runs of Attack & Defend(Recon), Capture & Hold (Team King of the Hill), and Team Death Match on the Urban Resistance (PVP/TVT) server on and off today and tomorrow. Each mission cannot start unless there are least 2 players or it will end so that is being worked on. With 2 or more I would like to get some tests completed. Much appreciated to anyone willing to swing by.

This will get me closer to a public release. I would like to see a few groups look into getting together for regular gaming events and possibly scrimmages for fun even if it means pickup teams. Here are the loadup screens for the AAD version. There are similar loadups for the other gametypes...

[rome 0]

ill give it a try..

---------- Post added at 08:26 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:04 PM ----------

i dont get how to pbo my mission... I searched the forums but didnt find a clue..

Help?

[Tom_Anger 0]

Save as Multiplayer and it goes in your game directory MPMission folder automatically.

[AceOfSpades 10]

Hi, I am very new to mission making and would like to use it to make some co-op missions for myself and some friends. Problem is I am incredibly stupid. Could someone do a tutorial for a co-op mission? Or put up a completed co-op mission using the script pack so I can backwards engineer it?

I checked out the co-op temp but it did not seem to contain any objectives, targets or AI. How does that all come together?

Thanks alot for anyhelp that can be passed my way.

Thanks Mac for being a champ and doing this. It is people like you that makes good games great.

[sbsmac 0]

Co-op in 2.03 is a little broken (cough) because of the wonderful new ticket system but I should have that fixed in a few days. What kind of thing do you want to do in the co-op mission ? Feel free to PM if you don't want to discuss it here.

Oh, if you just want to play a bit to get the feel of the objectives system whilst I'm fixing up co-op, I suggest you use the C&H example in the single-player mode.

Edited September 14, 2009 by sbsmac

[Defunkt 431]

Here are the loadup screens for the AAD version.

Nice, I think this sort of polish can prove quite influential on players' perceptions of a mission and is often missing in ArmA.

[TechnoTerrorist303 10]

First off, excellent work. This is exactly what I needed :)

Apologies if this is in the thread before but it's late and I need to go to bed so I haven't read through the whole thing yet, but... Is the score for each side kept as a variable that can be queried by a script throughout the game? I want to add actions to players based on the score their side has at the time the script runs.

[AceOfSpades 10]

Co-op in 2.03 is a little broken (cough) because of the wonderful new ticket system but I should have that fixed in a few days. What kind of thing do you want to do in the co-op mission ? Feel free to PM if you don't want to discuss it here.

Oh, if you just want to play a bit to get the feel of the objectives system whilst I'm fixing up co-op, I suggest you use the C&H example in the single-player mode.

Thanks for the quik reply.

I will start messing around with C&H examples as you suggest. From the tutorial I think I kind of get the gist of how to use the objectives ect.

Basically what I plan on building most of the time are small co-op missions with paradrop or respawning vehicles for infil with 1-5 objectives to either destroy or clear of enemy. From there I may work up to larger co-ops for my squad. The part that was confusing me was the AI part. How are they inserted when most or all of the tutorial pertained to live opfor and blufor rather than AI opfor. Also a list of what features/scripts can be used with

co-op and which ones won't work. Looking at them I see some scripts that look like they would not work in a co-op mission or if they could might have to be implemented differently? As for ideas if you felt like expanding the co-op area of your wonderful script pack the only thing that currently comes to mind would be a way for AI enemy in a set location to respawn if an area within "X" amount of meters is not occupied by players.I supposed that might be possible already but I am too dumb to know LoL. Also maybe a way to have an AI chopper ferry. Lands in one location drops off in another and returns. I saw that once in a co-op mission I did notice that the chopper did not fly the entire distance, it would land at base wait 30 seconds then fly a short distance where it would teleport itself and passengers to an area close to the drop off point, drop passengers off then repeat. Maybe that was to avoid AI chopper acidents enroute. Don't know.

I will look foward to the release with the fixed co-op. Thanks .

[sbsmac 0]

@Defunkt & Tom

Yes I agree that the presentation can make a huge difference to players perception and I'm _really_ looking forward to including those templates. Unfortunately graphic design is definitely an area where I am very poor so I appreciate all the help I can get in this area.

Tom - I'd definitely interested in joining a few test sessions but probably more to drop in to see bugs if that works for you.

@Techno

Assuming you are referring to C&H... On the server, yes there are east_points and west_points variables. On the client, those turn up as the 0th and 1st elements in the scoreArray variable.

I have been thinking for some time of providing some kind of API to some of the internal functionality to allow people to provide plug-in extensions through scripting. (Originally I thought it would be useful to provide more flexibility for artillery strikes.) I would be interested in working with people like yourself on this.

@Ace

Sounds like what you want is mostly supported. It would probably help if I added auto-generation of tasks/briefiings for objectives. Adding (enemy) AI is actually quite straightforward - just go to the editor and add non-playable AI units and groups. You can give them all the normal waypoints etc. Objectives can be held/captured by AI so this aspect should all work correctly.

Off the top of my head, I think all features should work in co-op. The kind of co-op you describe is really pretty similar to a C&H/AAS except there are no human players on one side ! Therefore all aspects of the objectives system should work.

You should be aware though that features such as minefields and no-flyzones ONLY work on human players at the moment. I have some ideas to extend these to AI but won't become a priority until someone definitely says they need it for their mission :)

>AI enemy in a set location to respawn if an area within "X" amount of meters is not occupied by players.

Very interesting idea and would be a good extension/variation of the current AI guard zones.

>Also maybe a way to have an AI chopper ferry.

I have some ideas very similar to this for the paradrop and progressive-respawn features :-) Watch this space...

[AceOfSpades 10]

If AI are placed in a C&H area, will the scripts recognize them and count them towards completion or non-completion of that C&H objective? I am at work ATM so dont have any reference to the scripts handy, but with a C&H objective doesn't it have to be set as either blufor or opfor? Can you tell me what exactly is broken with the AI until it's fixed? That way if it happens while I am working on a project I know not to report it since you are aware of it. Looks like I might actually have some real free time later today(first in over a week) so gonna start working on my first mission using your script pack today. Thanks again for all your help.

Oh.. was wondering if using mods to create a mission such as caa1 to use arma 1 islands is there anything that has to be done special other than have the mods running while designing mission? Or does the compiler in the editor take care of that when you "save to multiplayer missions" ?

[sbsmac 0]

>If AI are placed in a C&H area, will the scripts recognize them and count them towards completion or non-completion of that C&H objective?

Yes, AI will be counted towards completion (ie objectives will count the presence of AI units when calculating who owns an objective).

>with a C&H objective doesn't it have to be set as either blufor or opfor?

Not sure I understand the question. Objectives can be held by east or west or be neutral. By default they _start_ neutral but their initial ownership can be set using the 'east' or 'west' keywords.

>Can you tell me what exactly is broken with the AI until it's fixed?

Nothing is broken with AI. However, AI can currently travel through minefields, borders or no-flyzones without dying. This may or may not be a game-breaker depending upon what you want your AI to do in your mission.

>Oh.. was wondering if using mods to create a mission such as caa1 t

Should work fine (famous last words!).

[TechnoTerrorist303 10]

Aceofspades, I am currently building a mission using the pvp script pack and caa1 mod. No problems here....

...yet

[AceOfSpades 10]

Sorry about the one confusing question...what I meant is when placing AI at a C&H objective, west being the players side, do I set the objective as east or neutral?

Hehe the only reason I have yet to start was because I thought the AI were broken in a way that they didn't work, thanks for that info, just got home and finally have time so starting work. Would imagine most questions will be answered on thier own as I work with it. Thanks alot.

[sbsmac 0]

>what I meant is when placing AI at a C&H objective, west being the players side, do I set the objective as east or neutral?

Assuming you are talking about a standard hold or capture objective (rather than one of the advanced destroy variants).....

The starting state doesn't matter in the sense that if you place east AI in a neutral objective, it will change to east after the capturetime (default 10 seconds) has elapsed.

However, thinking ahead to making your co-op, you will probably want the mission to end once the players (assume west) have captured or neutralised (if you are using destroy objectives) all objective areas. That means that at least one objective on the map will need to start as east to prevent an immediate 'mission over' It will also look a bit cleaner if you start with objectives set as east since you won't then get a flurry of 'east has captured the objective' messages at the start of the game !

[AceOfSpades 10]

OK, I really hope I am not being too much of a pita, bear with me I am old lol.

On the objective thing, should I then also make an objective for the players side that they own at the outset to prevent an immediate loss?

I noticed AI can be turned on/off, off by default, this AI only pertains to AI players and not AI enemy I may place, correct?

If I am making a co-op for my squad and wanted say... several 3, 5 man squads would I just do that thru having them linked the way I want but still as "playable" , I noticed in one of the configs has squad size and allow squads.. do I need to change those?

I have started to create my first co-op, hate to say it but have a few questions as I am going...

I started editor = fine, got respawn_west set up and a starting guy as playable, saved mission and transfered your script files over, added my own title ect, previewed mission and went off and fragged myself, respawn worked. Then I started to have problems, probably something dumb on my part...

I noticed when I did first preview that words came up saying title not being displayed because I am testing and if I want to see it then to add variable CTF_testing=false to cfg. Now the cfg I copied was the co-op template one you supplied because I noticed it was a bit different that the one in the script pack folder. The only CTF line in the co-op template is CTF_preservePlayerSpawnPos=false; so I added under that CTF_testing=false and saved. I previewed, this time the words didn't come up but the title did not either. BUT, I think being a super novice at this I forgot to include ";"

at the end of the line. I removed the line and saved , previewed and still no screen regarding testing and no title either. Did I break things by leaving out the ";" ? I am going to start completely over with all new files copied this time making sure the semi colon is there. Two other things popped up tho..

I obviously did the respawn right cause it worked when tested, I went to make an ammo box using "guns" as the name, no elipse or other changes, saved and previewed and had nothing, also tried allWeapons as marker name since I want all weapons available anyways, still no ammo crate.

Also went to put in a paradrop spot, used paraDrop as name, make elipse marker as suggested in manual. saved and previewed, nothing. What am I or where am I typing wrong? The respawn worked by making elipse marker with name respawn_west. So I am a bit confused.

[sbsmac 0]

>On the objective thing, should I then also make an objective for the players side that they own at the outset to prevent an immediate loss?

Good catch! :-) There are two variables that can be used to control the end-game condition:

CTF_allowDominationWin=true;

If you set this, the game will end when either side owns all objectives

CTF_allowNeutralisationWin=true;

A slightly 'weaker' version of 'domination'. The game will end when all objectives are owned by one side OR are neutral.

So to answer your question, yes it woudl be sensible to create a 'dummy' objective on the player side.

>I noticed AI can be turned on/off, off by default, this AI only pertains to AI players and not AI enemy I may place, correct?

In description.ext ? Correct.

>If I am making a co-op for my squad and wanted say... several 3, 5 man squads would I just do that thru having them linked the way I want but still as "playable" , I noticed in one of the configs has squad size and allow squads.. do I need to change those?

CTF_useSquads is a bit of an experimental feature that never really went anywhere. It was intended to spawn squads of AI for each player. It probably still works but I can#t guarantee it. Assuming you want squads consisting of human players, you can ignore this option and, as you say, just ensure that the units you place on the map are 'playable'.

>I noticed when I did first preview that words came up saying title not being displayed because I am testing

Yes, this is a feature - it get's a bit tedious sitting through the intro every time you want to try out a minor change.

>I went to make an ammo box using "guns" as the name...

Basic respawn is handled by the game engine so this will always work. Your other symptoms are typical of a syntax error in the ctfConfig.sqf file. If you have an error here, none of the pack features will work at all ! A common error I have seen is that people change the number of lines in the "titles" array and either forget to add commas for the new lines or forget to remove the trailing comma from the last line. I would strongly recommend using the C&H template for the moment in any case since I know that works and am less confident of the co-op one.

[AceOfSpades 10]

Ok , I feel kind of dumb....lol

All my problems regarding ammo and paradrop markers ect are resolved. As it turned out, yes a syntax error. saving the cfg once with out that semi colon broke everything I did thereafter and was not reversable. Started completly over re-transferring the script pack and perfect.

On the AI squads if you wanted to know, they still work, tried it out and then turned it back off.

Was trying out the CTF_testing=off and noticed something tho. Did it, saved cfg, previewed and the flyby was flying all over the place in kind of a spastic mode. Imagine this is because no objectives yet? Also even tho I have music on as far as I can tell (intro/outro uncommented ect). I hear no music during the flyby and when the flyby ends it onyl gives player control for about 3 secs then starts the flyby and titles over again.?? Locking player in loop of flyby.

*edit Was re-reading your last post, Yea the only thing different between the script pack cfg and the coop template cfg is the lack of CTF lines to uncomment if you so choose, which isn't that important since you can add/remove those at will, but there is one other difference, the set game type in the cfg of the main script pack does not have the gametype "coop" listed, the cfg in the coop template does. Does this make a difference? Refferening to the #define lines at the end of the cfg. Oh and also in one of the other cfg's, there is map on or off, I noticed this turns on the map instead of black screen in the preloading stages. Is this the only feature of that or does it show players things they shouldn't see?

Thanks again for all your help, other than the title flyby thing,I seem to have a grasp on all of this, which is a testament to you cause this old dog has a hard time learning new tricks lol.

For now titles back off and also skipped for the mission itself as well, until I hear further from you.

*edit several hours later...

I seem to be having trouble setting up a no para drop zone. Para drop works fine, created a marker with name "noParaDrop" placed it where it was wanted, previewed and I can still drop there.

Although this was a mistake on my part this might want to be included in the manual if it's not for the "not so brite" people like me...If you save a mission by using version numbers to save as you go and have a back-up you must copy all files except the mission.sqm file into the new user mission folder. Otherwise when you preview after a new save you have no scripts at all. That I think was my whole problem with not getting things to work in the beginning. Took me awhile to figure out why my mission scripts where there, then gone.

Edited September 16, 2009 by AceOfSpades

[sbsmac 0]

>On the AI squads if you wanted to know, they still work, tried it out and then turned it back off.

Thansk - that's useful to know

>I hear no music during the flyby and when the flyby ends it onyl gives player control for about 3 secs then starts the flyby and titles over again.?? Locking player in loop of flyby.

Err - that doesn't sound right. Are yo usure it's not just giong straight to game-over ? You can PM me a link to your config if you like - something may be broken here.

>he set game type in the cfg of the main script pack does not have the gametype "coop" listed,

No - just an oversight on my side- no affect.

>Oh and also in one of the other cfg's, there is map on or off,

Ditto

>I seem to be having trouble setting up a no para drop zone. Para drop works fine, created a marker with name "noParaDrop" placed it where it was wanted, previewed and I can still drop there.

Congratulatins - you have found a bug ! The last change I made to noParadrop zones to allow then to discriminate against either east or west broke the default behavoiur which was to stop anybody parachuting into them. For now, just use the 'east' or 'west' keyword to tell it which side not to allow.

>Although this was a mistake on my part this might want to be included in the manual i

ha - yes even I fall for this or a regular basis!

[AceOfSpades 10]

Well great! I am glad my slowness to learn is of some help lol.

When I tested the intro/outro I had no objectives or anything so maybe you right I will test that out now that I do have an west owned and east owned objective. Which bring me to a question which might already be answered but will ask anyways. Turned domination mode on, have east and west owned objective. I go and kill the unarmed ai opfor I placed there in preview mode and turn the red to neutral then to blue, game should end but doesn't. Is that becasue I have intro outro stuff turned off or // at least so it's whatever default is. Or does preview not let a mission end?

Related to that, I noticed objective could be turned to blue without killing the AI and with him standing in the objective area with me. Is there a way to make sure all AI are dead before objective starts to change sides?

Making flyby's can you have one flyby marker with multiple random planes or do you need to make a seperate marker for each plane type with like a random interval so they don't or hopefully don't all flyby at once?

Is there a way to change the marker type that shows on players maps for objectives? Rather than the black circle X.

And finally..whew..sorry..Is there a way to turn players HUD crosshairs off forcing them to use sights?

[sbsmac 0]

>Turned domination mode on, have east and west owned objective. I go and kill the unarmed ai opfor I placed there in preview mode and turn the red to neutral then to blue, game should end but doesn't.

Err that is worrying. Just to double check, you are using

CTF_allowDominationWin=true; ?

I always test in single-player editor so it's possible there is some interaction with MP editor I haven't spoted. Basically as you say, the game should end when you have taken it.

>Related to that, I noticed objective could be turned to blue without killing the AI and with him standing in the objective area with me.

That's not right either - assuming you are using an EAST unit, it shoudl definitely prevent you capturing the objective. I don't hve time to check this tonight but you have me worried. A very quikc look at the code says there really shouldn't be any differentiation between human and AI units in this area. If you can still reproduce this tomorrow, perhaps you could send me a copy of your missions so I can double check ?

Flybys only handle one plane at a time so you will need multiple markers.

>Is there a way to change the marker type that shows on players maps for objectives?

You can use the 'flag' keyword but otherwise you are stuck with the standard 'mil_objective' marker for now. It woudl be fairly easy to add configurability to this though.

HUD - this is actually a server-side setting and not a property of the mission.

[AceOfSpades 10]

ok gonna come back here mac , I have sent you enough PM's this morning lol, but my mind is still going thru the last 24 hrs of events. The problem I am having now after some thought plays right along with a problem I told you about earlier, the fact I could stand right next to an AI opfor soldier and turn an object neutrual then blue. I think looking at everything the AI are definately not being "sense" in anyway at all. Not smart enough to fix a problem but trying to help out by eliminating things it might or might not be.

I think I have done all the testing I can think of and will leave the ball in your court. Was wondering do you think this has something to do with latest

.04 patch? You dont think because I did this in MP editor that its like forcing there to be 2 playable sides? I will try one last thing and open and preview in single player editor.Thanks again

*edit First PBO'd file to single player missions, this being files with the cfg so AI off and no russian playable units. So ie. mission that would not work in mp editor or mp mode. Went to single player and wouldnt let me play since no "player" unit on blue. Transfers copy then of MP editor un PBO'd files to single. Opened it up in single player editor, made a blue unit as "player" started a preview and still got a loop. Safe to say not editor related either.

Edited September 17, 2009 by AceOfSpades

[sbsmac 0]

See my email. I can't reproduce the objective problem with the files and info you have given me.

Please ignore the intro-looping issue - this is expected with some of the things you ahve been doing - and just concentrate on testing the mission design in the SP mode for now :-)

All features except for respawn work in this mode so there is very little disadvantage in using it.

*EDIT* Ok - just tried in MP editor and objectives are still working as expected.

---------- Post added at 08:12 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:27 PM ----------

ARGH - not having a good night. Rubbish Virgin broadband is giving up the ghost and my gfx card just went t*ts-up so I won't be on very much at all for some time...

Edited September 17, 2009 by sbsmac

[Tom_Anger 0]

Mac - Ran a full test the other day with 2 players in TDM and although there were unlimited respawns, if the 1 player on the other side died, the mission ended. Am I supposed to have this line represented som that this doesn't happen or is this a problem with the ticket system? I'm assuming this is the same result I will get for CH and CTF, but may run tests just to be sure. Been busy lately as have you :-)

CTF_allowNeutralisationWin=false;

Also for the gametype TDM the serverlist shows it as DM. Is there something in the template or some instructions for folks to let them know how to make it so that TDM shows up as mode TEAM, TDM, etc? I will be re-testing possibly later today as I look to finalize my missions and let you know if adding this line helps, but I am thinking this may be an issue due to the ticket system settings. Thanks.

Edited September 20, 2009 by Tom_Anger