JTD Fire And Smoke

[Binesi 10]

I must say about this mod... if I had to choose only one this is it. Atmosphere and fun factor +50%

Great work. Now if only those burning objects would actually look burnt. I wonder if their is a simplified way of doing it? Like layering another shader on top of the existing textures.

[JuggernautOfWar 1]

I'm sure that would cause the shader to spaz out when you approached the tree or even moved your perspective at all.

[Simon C 0]

Only problem I get with this is that certain vehicles don't receive the burning effect, such as BMP-2s or T72s. BMP-3s and Urals do however.

[dmarkwick 261]

Hope someone can help me with this. i'm a huge fan of this mod but playing Benny's warfare this afternoon and an idiot AI chopper pilot crashed into the HQ zone, and the resulting fires spread across the whole base. I'd just nipped out to take a town and noticed the AI i'd left behind started croaking and things were being destroyed, so i rushed back to find that the area of effect from the heat had destroyed all but the HQ. IS there anyway i can reduced the effectiveness over distance. I don't want to play A2 without this mod.

Thx.

Well, I feel your pain bud, but really that behavior represents gameplay :) it's part of what I wanted to achieve. Real danger from fire damage means you might have to rescue stuff, or restart your base from scratch or something.

Sometimes, how you lose a game is as entertaining as how you won it :) it would be boring if the game played out the same each time, even with random start positions etc. Fire represents an added danger, remember that the enemy base is just as susceptible to this as yours ;)

Aside from that, as mentioned you can turn down the number of current fires to more control or slow things down.

---------- Post added at 11:52 PM ---------- Previous post was at 11:50 PM ----------

Only problem I get with this is that certain vehicles don't receive the burning effect, such as BMP-2s or T72s. BMP-3s and Urals do however.

By burning effect do you mean damage? Because I tested with those very vehicles and they do indeed take damage until they are destroyed. As does any object in the fire area.

[Simon C 0]

By burning effect do you mean damage? Because I tested with those very vehicles and they do indeed take damage until they are destroyed. As does any object in the fire area.

I meant the extended smoke effect actually, it looks stunning when it occurs, but the following vehicles (there may be more, didn't do too much testing) don't have the extra smoke:

• M1A1
  
• BMP2
  
• AAVP7A1
  
• T72
  

Hope it's just me being blind, really loving the smoke so far. :D

[BoxiouS 10]

You can actually turn the fire propagation off completely or make it slower in the .hpp file.

Well, I feel your pain bud, but really that behavior represents gameplay :) it's part of what I wanted to achieve. Real danger from fire damage means you might have to rescue stuff, or restart your base from scratch or something.

Sometimes, how you lose a game is as entertaining as how you won it :) it would be boring if the game played out the same each time, even with random start positions etc. Fire represents an added danger, remember that the enemy base is just as susceptible to this as yours ;)

Aside from that, as mentioned you can turn down the number of current fires to more control or slow things down.

Thanks. I took onboard what you said. I had another game and started out as commander, built the base over a wider area and then gave the AI control again. It was much better. I don't think the AI consider fire propogation. in fact they they are happy to park an LAV next to a burning wreck.:rolleyes: With obvious results.

One thing i would like to see is a way extinguishing the smaller fires before they become a problem. Even if it's simply a case of getting a support vehicle near to the problem. It would certainly help when friendlies shoot down enemy air assets over the base.

All in though i can't tell you how much this mod changes the game for me. With NIM's weather, a lot of bad guys and fire & smoke, the result looks like something out of the bible:cool:

[dmarkwick 261]

I meant the extended smoke effect actually, it looks stunning when it occurs, but the following vehicles (there may be more, didn't do too much testing) don't have the extra smoke:

• M1A1
  
• BMP2
  
• AAVP7A1
  
• T72
  

Hope it's just me being blind, really loving the smoke so far. :D

OK, did you notice any smoke effects at all? The smoke effects for each vehicle are not limited to the huge tall plumes, sometimes (about 50% of the time actually) the smoke is low-lying lighter smoke, designed to drift around the battlefield and give a generally smokey and hazy effect at ground level.These low-lying smoke effects can vary between darker gray smoke that might rise up gently, to paler heavier smoke that clings to the ground.

[Simon C 0]

I did notice the smoke effects you noticed on the Urals, BMP3, Civilian Cars, etc. Maybe it's my config file that I mucked up?

[dmarkwick 261]

Thanks. I took onboard what you said. I had another game and started out as commander, built the base over a wider area and then gave the AI control again. It was much better. I don't think the AI consider fire propogation. in fact they they are happy to park an LAV next to a burning wreck.:rolleyes: With obvious results.

One thing i would like to see is a way extinguishing the smaller fires before they become a problem. Even if it's simply a case of getting a support vehicle near to the problem. It would certainly help when friendlies shoot down enemy air assets over the base.

You're right in that AI units do not react to fire. It's not an "enemy" and so there's no FSM to deal with it, if it were an enemy it would surely be attacked :D and there doesn't seem to be an entity in ArmA2 that the Ai actively avoid or stay away from. Other than reducing the courage & morale for nearby units I don't know that there's much I can do about it. Arranging for the AI to intuit fire propagation in the way that a human player might intuit it (by looking at the current fire and the treeline it's following for example) would be difficult. It would essentially mean doing a fast calculation of the current fire and using the fire logic to speed up the propagation on a separate process, and look for vehicles or structures that might be of interest to that AI etc. Not impossible but might be fiddly.

I might look into some sort of fire dousing activity, seeing as the addon is generally behaving quite well and is well received. This might be on a per-fire basis and would be dependant on the AI not having any more pressing immediate needs i.e. self preservation or contact report etc.

All in though i can't tell you how much this mod changes the game for me. With NIM's weather, a lot of bad guys and fire & smoke, the result looks like something out of the bible:cool:

LOL, I know what you mean :) a bit of weather (especially wind) really sets the atmosphere.

[vengeance1 50]

There are many errors for JTD reported in the Dedi Server Report are you aware of these or do we need to post them?

Well here they are hundreds of these in Server_Rpt.

File JTD_FireAndSmoke\Scripts\FireAndSmoke.sqf, line 140

Error in expression <ct;

while {true} do

{

_nearestFire = nearestObjects [_thisObject,["firemarker>

Error position: <nearestObjects [_thisObject,["firemarker>

Error 0 elements provided, 3 expected

File JTD_FireAndSmoke\Scripts\FireDamage.sqf, line 30

Error in expression <ct;

while {true} do

{

_nearestFire = nearestObjects [_thisObject,["firemarker>

Error position: <nearestObjects [_thisObject,["firemarker>

Error 0 elements provided, 3 expected

Hope this helps.

Edited October 17, 2009 by vengeance1

[Potatomasher 0]

Thanks for this great mod. I though this kind of fire was impossible with this engine.

I tested this fire/smoke mod with the Clean sweep mission converted by Wolle. There is this ambulance BMP in center of the village. After the mission was over i grabbed enemy RPG and blowed the BMP. I leave the scene and thinked that those smoke effects looked really nice and i left the BMP on fire. Then when i leave with the chopper and watched out of the window i saw the near buildings on fire too. :D Very nice.

[Simon C 0]

Yep, no matter how I destroy them, the list of vehicles I mentioned don't generate any extra smoke. My config has the forest fires and birds disabled, with the smoke amount and lifetime set to 200% each. Is there something I've done wrong with installation, or is it just a bug with the addon? :(

[Alex72 1]

Why no birds? Damn those are awesome. Forest fires ive set the spread to "3" wich is "50" originally and its perfect for my crappy system. Basically 2-3 trees catch fire and then burn down. So i get a lot of smoke but not that crazy-burn-down-the-whole-forest inferno. My pc cant handle that well. :)

And i never seen that some missing smoke. I understand though that this is randomized so i never really pay attention. I think its awesome that not every vehicle burn with that smoke cause that would even further crap my FPS. And it looks better with more random smoke. But more or less if i add the ACM so there is tons of battle with vehicles i see 80-90% burning with JTD (rough estimate).

But maybe i just missed that some vehicles never use his smoke though... Will test this.

[Simon C 0]

I'd use the birds, but I already have a birds-flapping-away sound with that XAM Environment soundpack, and I don't want a conflict. :)

And yes, the thing where some vehicles don't seem to use the extra smoke is what I'm on about. :p

[Master gamawa 0]

Hope someone can help me with this. i'm a huge fan of this mod but playing Benny's warfare this afternoon and an idiot AI chopper pilot crashed into the HQ zone, and the resulting fires spread across the whole base. I'd just nipped out to take a town and noticed the AI i'd left behind started croaking and things were being destroyed, so i rushed back to find that the area of effect from the heat had destroyed all but the HQ. IS there anyway i can reduced the effectiveness over distance. I don't want to play A2 without this mod.

Thx.

Well my friend, there is an actual word you can use to desribe what happened!

It was "awesome". That was awesome! The kind of awesome that happens only in Arma 2 (plus crazy addons). The idiot pilot crashed in the HQ zone and destroyed everything! It's just perfect if you ask me. I dream of stuff like that when I play.

Those random (and pretty accurate sometimes) things that happen in this game! Wouldn't it ruin your immersion if the pilot crashed in the HQ zone and nobody got hurt... because hey, it's the magical HQ zone that doesn't burn and keeps away vampires too?

I was playing a custom mission with a friend using this addon. Our mission was to get near the dam inside a civilian truck, get out, kill everyone, hide the bodies, steal AT launchers from their supply and destroy incoming enemy convoy. Pretty standard stuf.. When we got there we faced a few enemy vehicles and I destroyed one of them with grenades..

The vehicle caught fire, some trees caught fire and suddenly the house in which the AT supply was hidden started burning.

Then the enemy tanks came and we were really fucking scared.

You what would make that even more awesome? If we could open the dam and let the water to extinguish the fire.

You know what I am trying to say here?

[dmarkwick 261]

I'd use the birds, but I already have a birds-flapping-away sound with that XAM Environment soundpack, and I don't want a conflict. :)

There will be no conflict :) it's a totally separate and independent functionality.

And yes, the thing where some vehicles don't seem to use the extra smoke is what I'm on about. :p

The only selection on vehicles is done by checking if they're "Landvehicle" class or "Air" class, that's all. So I don't understand why some vehicles are not smoking as per normal. Is this behavior consistent for these vehicle types, i.e. if you placed nothing but those vehicles in an editor and destroyed them, do none of them ever smoke?

---------- Post added at 12:20 AM ---------- Previous post was at 12:17 AM ----------

Well here they are hundreds of these in Server_Rpt.

I used to see these in the .rpt file too, I think it's when some objects are within the trigger area but somehow do not have a real presence. I don't know what these objects might be, whether they're ingame temporary entities like insects etc, or whether they're temporary ingame logic entities or something. They might even be other third party addon object presences. It is indeed annoying and if I find out what they are I'll exclude them :) but as it stands the reports are harmless.

---------- Post added at 12:22 AM ---------- Previous post was at 12:20 AM ----------

I was playing a custom mission with a friend using this addon. Our mission was to get near the dam inside a civilian truck, get out, kill everyone, hide the bodies, steal AT launchers from their supply and destroy incoming enemy convoy. Pretty standard stuf.. When we got there we faced a few enemy vehicles and I destroyed one of them with grenades..

The vehicle caught fire, some trees caught fire and suddenly the house in which the AT supply was hidden started burning.

Then the enemy tanks came and we were really fucking scared.

That sounds really... you know... awesome :D really good gameplay, and exactly the sort of thing the addon is made to do.

[Simon C 0]

Ah, I've figured it out now, I THINK it's a conflict with NiceBoat's tank damage mod. I think both addons are using the same eventhandlers, so I'll check that out.

[bad benson 1733]

hey DMarkwick

i got a lil kind of offtopic question. will u release your Arma1 island? should be easy to port with caa1. just wanted to know since it looked really promising.

[vengeance1 50]

I used to see these in the .rpt file too, I think it's when some objects are within the trigger area but somehow do not have a real presence. I don't know what these objects might be, whether they're ingame temporary entities like insects etc, or whether they're temporary ingame logic entities or something. They might even be other third party addon object presences. It is indeed annoying and if I find out what they are I'll exclude them :) but as it stands the reports are harmless.

Ok I think i know what caused it, the vehicle was next to a FARP in EVO, the FARP kept repairing it and the JTD kept burning it up. I could not move the truck or stop it. Had to stop Server it just cycled continuously.

Hope this helps.

[Simon C 0]

Yep, that's confirmed. It's definitely caused by the fact that NiceBoat's tank mod is using EventHandlers instead of Extended EventHandlers.

Oh yeah, and I did a beach assault mission with JTD running, I never knew that the bunkers smoked but it looks brilliant. :D

[CombatComm 10]

Hey guys, why dosent my JTD appear online? is there no server key out or what? I dont get kicked for hjaving it but no JTD smoke appears? Is this restricted for lag issues online or something? Maybe im missing an essential pbo file or something for online. It works just fine offline

[Alex72 1]

It is made for MP as well. Dont know why you cant see it?

[Master gamawa 0]

Well if the fires don't appear on screen, do they cause damage to anyone? I don't think this addon works unless everyone in the server does.

[jumpinghubert 49]

I like this mod but I have huge performance drop when lots of vehicles or the forest is burning compared to default.

[KeyCat 131]

Awesome work DMarkwick!

I know I'm a bit slow but just tried your latest beta version and love it! Nice touches with the wild fire, the birds and the lingering smoke effects. You have taken fire and smoke effects in ArmA II to the next level, keep it up!

/KC

Edited October 24, 2009 by KeyCat