JTD Ambient Civilian Traffic module

[TRexian 0]

I have a relatively low end system, and can kinda tell when I cross the boundary into an area where the ambient civs spawn (both BI and mine). A slight stutter - not even a pause - is how I would describe it. Sometimes, though, I don't notice it at all.

[vasmkd 12]

Ahh cool i'll try and report back soon, it should be ok in that case but i'll test it soon.

My system runs ARMA2 very smooth and with AA on medium. other settings are on medium and high and i usually play self made editor missions with big battles.

cheers

[Aelin 10]

lol and shame on me:unable to understand how to install it and why it requires jtd fire and smoke....

[TRexian 0]

hehe

It probably doesn't require FireAndSmoke. :)

In terms of installation, unzip it someplace, then copy all the folders in your ArmA2 root folder (with all contents). That should work. :)

[manzilla 1]

Ahh cool i'll try and report back soon, it should be ok in that case but i'll test it soon.

My system runs ARMA2 very smooth and with AA on medium. other settings are on medium and high and i usually play self made editor missions with big battles.

cheers

I really haven't noticed any performance hit when using this. Mind you that I have a fairly good system but I still don't notice any FPS drop with this Mod active in a mission or not.

TRexian,

I haven't said thanks yet. My apologies, this is a wonderful Mod that really adds immensely to the game. I love seeing all the traffic. Well done sir and thank you!

[TRexian 0]

Glad you like it. :)

After you play it awhile, let me know how it can be improved. :D

[vasmkd 12]

Mod is cool

Didn't notice any performance hit :)

[Master gamawa 0]

Dude I spent the last hour hitchhicking around Chernarus. Those bastards can't drive for shit.

I also found a truck full of civilians carrying guns (armed civilians addon). Even the doctor had an AK. It was surreal. As if I stumbled upon some secret underground organization. Teacher by day, guerilla by night.

Good stuff!

Now if I find that script for the combat module I'll just get on a bicycle and become a war reporter.

[TRexian 0]

hehe

Glad you are enjoying it.

The ACE2 release* (while I don't actually have it yet) has inspired me to revisit an idea I had for this. Rather than having a user-selectable set of cars, just derive it from the config, selecting any vehicle that belongs to the "civ" faction.

I'm open to ideas from everyone as to whether this would be a good idea or not. I guess another avenue (pardon the pun) would be to have it as another user-selectable option in the hpp.

* Regarding ACE2, I have no idea if there will be issues or not. I suspect not, but you never know. :)

[mr_centipede 31]

About the civ with guns, I noticed the civ will engage the side that are unfriendly to them, but the enemy wont engage the civ... or that was a fluke on my end?

[bushlurker 46]

I noticed that too... The armed civs have no hesitation setting about Russian forces for example, but the Russians will ignore them every time as they're mown down, no matter how many casualties they take, they don't react to the armed civs as "enemy"...

B

[Master gamawa 0]

How come armed civs spawn in groups? I never see them alone.

[TRexian 0]

WRT the civs being enemies of Russians, check the general settings of the mission (the thing where you click on the date). I believe if it is set to being the enemy of East, then they will attack Russian forces no matter what, but the Russians won't be their enemy until a certain number of civs have killed a certain number of Russians. I don't know for sure what the ratio is, though. I have seen Russians, or maybe Guerillas, shoot civs before, though.

@ Master G - what you may be seeing, at least with my mod, that if a group forms, there's a greater chance that there will be several with weapons. If a car has only a driver, he may or may not have a gun.

[desusa 10]

Hey, I do not understand how to get to the JTD and work on other islands :confused:

[TRexian 0]

It requires that the island have certain information in the config that the Ambient Civilian module uses. The Ambient Traffic module requires the Ambient Civilian module.

There are some threads in the Visitor (the island development app) area that talk about how to add the important parts to the config. I've never done that, though.

[desusa 10]

I read that it can not because it is not the same buildings as the Uthas? but I get the animals out!

Isla duala I will have civilian :j:

[Harlow-16AA- 0]

Apologies for dredging up an old topic, but I had a question I'm hoping you could help me with.

First off - Really nice work with this!! The difference this has made is really incredible - it's amazing how tense people can get when they see a few cars driving towards them, knowing that they could have hostiles inside -- or maybe just civilians :)

I do have a question or two however-

We're putting together a campaign for our unit and a big part of that will be civilians presence. Ordinarily it would be fairly straight forward - place ALICE+this addon + a few manually placed civilians with animations to make it all feel more real.

But -- we want to use a specific set of civilians (the FAA Arab civilians to be precise). I know what they're called so all set on that front.

My first question, is more a request for clarification:

- Does this addon only affect the civilians in cars, or does it also affect civilians walking around normally?

My second question is dependant on the first's answer I guess:

- I was able to get the arab civilians to spawn alongside the default Chernarus ones, but how do I get ONLY the Arab civilian ones to spawn? I've modified the custom civilian line and removed the ones that were in there by default, replacing them with the arab ones, but it still is spawning all civilians.

Is this even doable?

Thanks a lot, and again - great work with this!

[TRexian 0]

No problem bringing this up again! :) I've actually revisited it for another project, so it is useful for both of us!

In looking at this, I see the problem. In the spawning script, I use the BI functions spawnVehicle and spawnGroup, which I suspect rely on the default config groups for the drivers and groups....

Off the top of my head, the only way to change it would be to write my own function, that uses the civ array in the hpp to choose from. I could probably use the BI function as a template to do it, so it may not be that hard.

I could also add in a couple other tweaks. :) What kind of time frame would you need a new version by?

You are doing MP testing? And it works? :)

Edited March 24, 2010 by TRexian

[Harlow-16AA- 0]

Heya mate,

I have no idea how complicated this would be (and salute you for having wrapped your head around this :)), so not sure what type of timeframe would be realistic in all honesty.

That said, we are aiming to kick the campaign off in 2 to (more likely) 3 weeks time.

Multiplayer wise, it seemed to work okay in MP, but only did some limited testing last night. We'll be doing another mission this Sunday which I want to use ALICE+your addon. Will let you know how that reacts :)

Thanks for the help offer Trexian! Really appreciate it!

[TRexian 0]

I'll do this on the condition that you give me some feedback about the MP-ness of it. :D

Something else I just thought of - part of the "problem" may be ALICE. You may need to look at civilianRarity and adjust all the default BI civs to be VERY rare, and create rarity values for the new civs. Have you tried it with just the ALICE module and checked what kind of civs are generated?

Otherwise, I'm working out how to spawn from the custom array. Having not looked at the basic script for several months, I'm also seeing how I need to clean it up! :D

[Harlow-16AA- 0]

Nice one Trexian!

I'll definitely let you know how the multiplayer-ness works out. Anything else you think a group of 20 to 30 can run through on this for you, let me know!! :)

I haven't tried adjusting the rarity bits yet actually. Must look into that tonight! Will let you know how that goes.

[icebreakr 3157]

TRexian: I'm soon to release civilians for Duala, but I would like to keep white women from "CIV" class. Is there a way to pick them out for the module or only mixed groups will appear (CIV=chernarus civs,DUA=my african ppl)?

[TRexian 0]

That's a good question... ultimately, I'm not sure.... :)

Well, with regard to my module, I'm re-organizing it so that all of the civs it spawns will be generated from the user/mission-maker array.

With regard to ALICE, I've looked at the resources for it, and I *think* it will take from whatever the cfgGroups entries are for civs. If you are creating a different faction for your Duala civs, it might really confuse ALICE. The only way I can think of to fix it would be to maybe make a config change to ALICE itself? I have no idea how that would work....

In digging deeper, and this may help you, too Harlow, ALICE has a function - BIS_ALICE_fnc_civilianSet - that is vaguely documented. It looks like the config support for it is:

class cfgFunctions
{
class BIS_ALICE
{
	class Default
	{
		class civilianSet
		{
			description = "Adds civilian unit to ALICE system.";
			file = "\ca\modules\alice\data\scripts\fnc_civilianSet.sqf";
		};
	};
};
};

I looked in d-h at that script, and it doesn't look like it supports an array of civs to be passed to it. So, that may be a dead-end, too. :/

From the ALICE main script, this looks like it might show where ALICE derives the civs from:

///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
///// Civilian Classes
///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
_unitrarity = if (format ["%1",_logic getvariable "civilianRarity"] == "<null>") then {[]} else {_logic getvariable "civilianRarity";};
_logic setvariable ["civilianRarity",_unitrarity];

_classlist = [];
_totobj = count (configfile >> "cfgVehicles");
for [{_i = 0}, {_i < _totobj}, {_i = _i + 1}] do {
_actual = (configfile >> "cfgVehicles") select _i;
if (isclass _actual) then {
	_class = configname _actual;
	_vehicleclass = gettext (configfile >> "cfgvehicles" >> _class >> "vehicleClass");
	if !(_vehicleclass in ["Sounds","Mines"]) then {
		_scope = getnumber (_actual >> "scope");
		if (_class iskindof "civilian" && _scope == 2) then {
			_rarity = if (_class in _unitrarity) then {
				_vehiclerarity select ((_vehiclerarity find _class)+1);
			} else {
				getnumber (_actual >> "rarityUrban");
			};
			_faction = gettext (_actual >> "faction");
			_classlist = _classlist + [[_class,_rarity,_faction]];
		};
	};
};
};

And at the end of that, it looks like there is SOME way to establish new civs, but it looks like it hasn't been implemented (it is all a block comment):

///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
///// Custom Civlians
///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
/*
{
if (!isnull leader _x && side _x != "sidelogic") then {

};
} foreach (synchronizedobjects _logic);
*/

Ice - were you going to release the Duala civs as a separate addon, or integrated into the next release of the island? (Which looks awesome, BTW.) :) Not sure if it makes a difference, I was just curious. :)

Edit: Also, with all the great custom islands, if there is enough interest (and no easy work-around), I can probably come up with a way to make it non-dependent on ALICE.

[Harlow-16AA- 0]

Hm, shame its looking like a dead-end :(

I wonder if _classlist = []; would allow anything to be entered (e.g. dualacivs). I'm probably being completely naiive here and showing my complete lack of knowledge on the scripting side :)

I'll still let you know how the rarity thing goes.

Ice - that's great news indeed! Looking forward to it! Our unit campaign we're working on will be set on Isla Duala so using your civs would be absolutely brilliant :) Great work on that island as well, by the way and the other 'unit' addons you've made for it.

Probably cheeky for asking, but do you have an estimate on when the civs will be released?

[icebreakr 3157]

Harlow & TRexian: no ETA yet, I'm still drawing their shirts, models are done by IceWindo (big kudos to him!). They feature long pants+tshirts and shortpants+tshirts.

My priority is to release Panthera 2.5 now (too bad none of the houses are closed, so Alice doesn't work!), but vehicles spawn normally on streets.

Then I'm off to finish new Duala update, civs will be included. Next stop: two new islands (1. desert & 2. jungle/urban warfare)