PlannedAssault web based mission builder

[R0adki11 3945]

@_William i need to get round to send those files to include my Nogovan Units, i will as soon as i finish my armoured units and heavy chopper. Otherwise my units are abit incomplete.

:)

[_William 0]

Cold War battles (and nostalgia)

Behind the screens, I've been busy preparing a server software-stack upgrade, which should allow me to speed up mission generation and support many more map (areas) than today. You'll see that upgrade soon.

To test the server software-stack, I prefer to create new missions with new add-ons (catch two birds with one stone). In this case, supporting the CWR2 and P85 add-ons, this turned out be a large and nostalgic effort, with great results.

The CWR2 team did a great job recreating the OFP:85 units, missions and islands in Arma2. In the PlannedAssault unit database, I've expanded on that by adding proper squads and platoons according to the 1980's TO&E (thanks to Nero at Vilas' forums), for US, Soviet and FRG (West Germany) troops. I've also used Arma2's capabilities: that means M47 Dragon launchers and RPG-18s, AI using backpacks and tripods to move and man crew served TOW launchers, and AI manned howitzers and mortars.

Vilas P85 units and vehicles are great to complement the 1985 US Army units with camouflaged variants, and add FRG forces.

I remember from mid-80s news papers and TV clips the images of heavily camouflaged NATO infantry with blackened faces on exercises in German woods and plains. I've created a small script to pick and set camouflaged faces for a group of infantry, and added 'camouflaged face' variants of mechanized infantry squads to 1985 US Army and FGR Panzergrenadiere squads.

(I couldn't find images on the web confirming a Warsaw pact practice of camouflage faces at that time; if that was the case, please let me know and I'll happily add camouflaged cold war KLMK infantry squads).

I'd like to use Vilas M119 Palladins, but the config lacks a ballistic table and the life time for 155mm shells is set too short. I know how to fix these, but depend on Vilas to release an update of his P85 config. I also wouldn't mind adding more Warsaw Pact forces when given good TO&E data.

Having seen many Cold War era aircraft from close-up at the Hermeskeil museum this summer, I've added the Su-17 Fitter, Su-24 Fencer and the F4-E Phantom II.

See this post for more info.

William

Edited November 6, 2011 by _William

[grip 13]

Maybe add Celle william should fit fore P85 troops ;)

and have you added no opfor fore the p85? only the west germans?

Edited November 7, 2011 by Grip
clerification and adding contens

[_William 0]

Planned maintenance for Nov 19, 2011 - site unavailable during that time

I'll be upgrading PlannedAssault's software stack to handle more terrain and faster mission generation on Saturday Nov 19, 2011. During that time the server won't be available.

I'll let you know when I'm done.

@Grip: Celle indeed makes a nice addition. I missed the map when it came out. Several parts of Celle are very suitable for missions. If only the Arma AI could handle bridges and water better...

I'll also look into (your) Whiskey on the Rocks/SFP update.

Wrt Cold War OPFOR: I've added Soviet forces, with units from CWR2 and P85 and several other mods (BTR's, BRDMs, 2KS1).

I might add GDR NVA since they seem similar in TO&E to Soviet forces. The next one would be Polish units, which seem to have more original equipment.

Getting back to Whiskey on the Rocks: if you're able to come with 198x Swedish forces TO&E, that would be a Cold War nice addition.

William

[kuIoodporny 45]

Nice to hear about improvements. While you're dealing with such changes, please take my notes about waitUntil loops mentioned in my PM into account ;)

[_William 0]

Maintenance completed - 60% faster planning

I'm done. Mission planning should be 60% faster now. And even better, I'm able to find time again to enhance the planner and mission generator.

zGuba, your feedback and suggestions to improve mission performance by fixing the waitUntil's is much appreciated. I just had to get this 'server maintenance' stuff of my plate first. Will tackle it before end of the month.

William

[leathery420 10]

Thank you so very much for such a great tool, makes the game much easier to just jump into and play without having to make quick missions. I love the amount of different factions that it supports. One question, do you plan on adding more areas? If so which areas can we hope to see? Again thank you tonnes.

[grip 13]

@william just as it happens a fellow mod member posted a couple of army manuals from the 60s 70s, 80s and 90s a month back :) will work my way thro them and and translate it into a TO&E that wold be in use in the first years of the 80s.

But it will take some time since its alot of information.

Nice to know you are making more and more stuff avaible. And in a "hot war" in the 80s is somthing PlannedAssult relly can make missions in hundreds of :)

Cheers

Grip

[_William 0]

Canadian Army units, formation improvement

This updates adds Canadian Army units to Arma2, Arma1 and VBS2: CADPAT TW and CADPAT arid units from Operation Northstar for Arma2, along with AI manned L16 81mm mortars (through scripting). Operation Northstar's Arma1 CADPAT arid units have been added to Arma1 and VBS2. VBS2 itself features Canadian LAV-III's, RG-31 and (impressive) M113 ADATS anti-tank/anti-air units.

If I missed Arma2 Canadian Army vehicles/aircraft, please let me know.

In generated missions, formation paths have been improved. This shows up as units moving abreast with fewer changes of direction and keeping their relative position most of the time.

A first new map has been added (but for VBS2: Obregan area on Sahrani).

In addition to that, the web site received a few improvements.

See this post for more info.

Expect another map and some improvements to mission generation and scripts in a next update.

William

@Leathery420: expect West/North European themed maps (CWR2, SFP, Celle). Area choice is largely driven by the Arma2 AI tendency to get stuck in rivers, around bridges, on steep hills and dense cities.

[_William 0]

Defender deployed camo-nets, CWR2 Kolguljev island

One thing that excited me at the time of Arma2's release was camo nets. Camo nets are a powerful means to improve defensive positions and reduce hostile observation. It makes defending more interesting and attacking more challenging.

Sadly, Arma2's AI has hardly any "defensive" behaviors (compared to, say, Steel Beasts - search for 'Moving_Units_On_Routes'). Without defensive behaviors, it is hard to make the AI itself decide to deploy camo nets. And as a result, camo nets have seen little use outside 'FOB templates'. Solely some of Hexagon's French armor and Hcpookie's Russian vehicles came with nets.

With this update, we might have taken a small step forward. Triggered by Hcpookie's recent 'deployable camo nets' add-on and scripting example, I've created scripts, added info to the unit database and extended the mission generator to order defending units to deploy camo nets. The result has been a great experience for me (although we're still not close to realistic defensive tactics).

Have a look yourself! Can you identify the units just by looking at the thumbnail images?

I have followed Hcpookie's example by having a soldier perform a 30s animation to deploy the net. Whereas Hcpookie's add-on gives the action to the player, I need to pick an AI crew member to deploy the net. This turned out to be problematic: when an AI driver is order to dismount (so he can set up the net), all other crew members leave the vehicle and won't return. When the commander dismounts, deploys the net and mounts up again, the vehicle tends to follow its commander, moving away from the camo net. In the end, I've settled for dismounting the gunner. This yields good results, despite being the least realistic option.

See this post for more info.

The new map for this update is CWR2's Kolguljev. As an experiment, I've chosen a 8km x 6km area rather than a 4km x 3km area. Please let me know how that works for you.

William

[kremator 1064]

Thanks for all your hard work William !

Merry Christmas.

[_William 0]

Cold Winter Wars with Winter Kolguljev, winter effects and some P85 units

In this update, I've added mission generation support for CWR2's Winter Kolguljev is along with CWR2's Soviet and US winter units (infantry, mortars, howitzers, TOW teams, as usual).

In addition, as a test-case for the way I handle game, map and mod specific scripts in generated missions, I've tried to put in as much "winter" as I can think of:

- soldiers generate breath plumes on Winter Kolguljev when outside a vehicle

- CWR2's snow module is enabled if the weather shows clouds

- on Winter Kolguljev units that deploy HcPookie's camo net will use a snow variant of the net. This makes it more attractive to use non-winter camo units on the map.

Next to winter stuff, I've been going down memory lane adding more of Vilas' P85 units and vehicles. I've added West German Fallschirmjaeger and heli's, and all US 1985 vehicles (include the M577 HQ track shown above). Artillery missions from the Palladins now work, due to some recent improvements in Vilas' add-on. More to come...

HQ units now have a icon of their own, and exhibit hide behavior when on the attack or defense. There are a couple of HQ unit available for Arma2 including the USMC LAV HQ, HcPookie's HQ variants of the BRMD2, CWR2's BMP-2 HQ and Vilas' M577.

See this post for more info. All teething problems have been resolved.

William

@zGuba: several waitUntils have been fixed. I've got the remain fixes lined up for a next update.

[kuIoodporny 45]

Thank you, totally awesome work.

[Alvando 10]

hey William, plannedassault is getting better! very good work, but i have a problem:

i have placed transport helicopters, units in air cargo, and the LZ insertion point. but when i played the mission the LZ of the helicopter will still be planner-generated and not the LZ that i designated, no matter where i put the LZ. so please fix this. and also can u please remove the cargo seat on attack helis like AH-6J? they will add one more LZ even though i just put 2 transport helis and that makes me confused :confused:

Thanks and i hope Plannedassault will get better and will be the best :)

[_William 0]

This update beefs up the tactical ability of the mission planner, improving the selection of form up positions. Myself, I've had a couple of my missions going FUBAR just because attacking units assembled in plain sight of the defenders, and I wanted to fix this.

The planner now analyses the terrain and tries hard to find a form-up position that is both concealed (by buildings, by trees, or by a slope between the position and the defenders at the objective) and accessible at the same time. This should result in concealed form up positions most of the time, making the attacker strike harder, and increasing uncertainty for the defender. Unless the defender does a good recon job...

The picture below illustrates the terrain analysis part (click to see the bigger picture):

And these are some in-game results, showing tactically solid form up positions (the first shot coming from VBS2):

I'm looking into improving defender placement using similar techniques.

See this post for more info.

btw, this update also adds support for the GCam as an observer camera. You need to select the GCam add-on when creating the mission. GCam comes in handy when using PlannedAssault missions to record footage for a machinima movie.

William

@zGuba: all waitUntils have been fixed now.

@Alvando: sent you a PM for details. Will investigate and fix/clarify the issue here. I've seen Arma2 heli's land 300m away from the designated positions, despite invisible H markers on the ground, but want to be sure it's Arma, not me, that is ignoring your LZ choice.

[gunterlund21 10]

Any chance of implementing Rydigiers Hetman in here?

[Alvando 10]

William, i recently updated to Arma 2 CO version 1.60. but i dont think thats the problem. because like one month ago i can place the optional LZ just fine, and i created a few more missions using the optional LZ and i got the same result, the LZ is planner-generated and not where i placed it:confused:

just message meif u need to clarify more about this

thanks :)

[Dwarden 1124]

i was wondering are there any plans for supporting Take On Helicopters in PA web based mission editor? :)

[_William 0]

Any chance of implementing Rydigiers Hetman in here?

No. Although I think dynamic combat generations are great fun, I don't have the time or interest to support a second kind of mission generator from the web GUI to generate missions for Hetman. My planner itself can be invoked on the fly, for example to support a commander by generating orders for a complex maneuver on request. But that set-up fits better to VBS2 where interfacing with external applications is better supported.

William, i recently updated to Arma 2 CO version 1.60. but i dont think thats the problem. because like one month ago i can place the optional LZ just fine, and i created a few more missions using the optional LZ and i got the same result, the LZ is planner-generated and not where i placed it:confused:

just message meif u need to clarify more about this

thanks :)

You're correct, and good spot. I've broken the way these LZ hints are passed to the planner. The fix is now being tested, will probably be up on the site tomorrow night. Thanks for bringing the problem up!

i was wondering are there any plans for supporting Take On Helicopters in PA web based mission editor? :)

Not yet. Adding support shouldn't be too much of a problem once I'm able to parse the TOH worlds and turn these into terrain databases for the mission planner. Having a terrain database is essential, as you can see from the 'concealed form up position' update above, and the LZ placement discussion.

I fully understand BI's reasons to encrypt the .pbo's containing the world (and world config) data, but it effectively blocks me from parsing the .wrp and .config data. Arma2:BAF's Shapur also isn't supported yet in PA for the same reasons.

For VBS2 I received some help in the form of an in-game script that is able to export elevation data, surface types, and all objects (position, dimensions, model names / type) to file. With this, I'm able to handle any VBS2 map. I don't have something similar for A2/TOH yet.

If you see options to tackle this, please PM me.

Regards, William

[Alvando 10]

No problem boss;)

its nice to help :D

i will keep experimenting with Plannedassault and report any problems to you, and just contact me if u need anything :)

and btw is it possible to add Fallujah map and maybe Amphibious Assaults? :D

[=kct=blackmamba 44]

hey william just out of curiousity wat does a island builder have to do to make their islands compatible with planned assault ??.

[.kju 3240]

_William what problems do you have with TKOH pbos?

I can extract the united_states_h.pbo just fine. DeWrp seems to parse the wrp inside as well.

As for the OA DLC - what about the lite versions of the worlds?

[_William 0]

_William what problems do you have with TKOH pbos?

I can extract the united_states_h.pbo just fine. DeWrp seems to parse the wrp inside as well.

As for the OA DLC - what about the lite versions of the worlds?

Great input! I was assuming that since A2:OA DLC and VBS2 1.5 now have encrypted pbos, TKOH would have the same. Great to hear it's not the case. Do they happen to use OWRP24 or a newer format?

Anyway, I'll get a copy this weekend (despite being a horrendous pilot).

Wrt the lite content: I never bothered to check, since I have licenses for A2, A2:OA and BAF DLC for both my computers. I'll have a look. Lite content would be good enough for my purposes.

Another thing that I discovered since my previous post is the addition of the DLL extension interface in 1.60+ betas, which would allow in-game parsing of the terrain and objects, and exporting the results.

hey william just out of curiousity wat does a island builder have to do to make their islands compatible with planned assault ??.

Make sure the AI can reliably make its way around the island in tanks, in trucks and on foot! Which, I understand, can be a very hard thing to do given some of peculiarities of the Arma2 AI.

It simply doesn't make sense to generate missions for an island on which the AI won't be able to execute that mission.

The Arma AI tends to get stuck at:

- steep hills (AI vehicles apparently overestimate their ability to get up a hill and then get stuck instead of picking a less steep detour; many maps with scaled down real-world geometry, such as IceBreaker's Island Panthera, have this problem.

- rivers without frequent shallow sections/hidden roads (AI vehicles fail to identify good positions to cross the river, and destroy their vehicles; happens at Sangin, also on BI's Zargabad, south of the town - I submitted a bug for that)

- bridges (unless nursed across with 'FILE' formation waypoints, groups of vehicles tend to get stuck at or even miss the bridge entry - happens as Fallujah, and happened at older iterations of your beautiful map)

- long stretches of fence (AI infantry fails to identify to gaps in the fence, and gets stuck - happens at Old Bear's Quesh-Kibrul and even worse at his Vostok)

- trees that don't damage and break after continuous contact with a vehicle (Fallujah, IceBreaker's Maruko), especially in dense forests or on hills (near Krasnotav at Chernarus)

Narrow streets also are problematic for groups of vehicles since they try to hard to maintain the shape of their formation, rather than flowing with the terrain.

In several occasions, I can single out a 4x3km (or larger) area that is free of these problems.

I have a personal preference for supporting wide open hilly terrain (the Operation Flashpoint maps), and anything with (working) bridges or interesting tactical problems.

In some cases, I am to blame, as my planner isn't ready to deal with the terrain. Alvando nicely refers to two such cases:

No problem boss;)

its nice to help :D

i will keep experimenting with Plannedassault and report any problems to you, and just contact me if u need anything :)

and btw is it possible to add Fallujah map and maybe Amphibious Assaults? :D

Two things I cannot handle today are:

- amphibious assaults, for which I haven't developed the tactics

- urban combat, which is a really tough problem since you have to shape the attack to fit the direction and spacing of the main road system. Last December, I've completed the recognition of the urban grids and selection of 2 to 4 parallel paths through a city (Chernogorsk, Fallujah, Zargabad) to allow an armored attacker to fight through the city with mutually supporting forces. Turning this into an assault with proper MOUT tactics is requiring more work, as is making the decision between an urban attack or an ordinary attack given a user placed objective near a city.

William

*: the map examples given to illustrate the AI problems aren't meant to criticize their creators. Their maps bring great fun to many players; it's just that the Arma2 AI fails to properly enjoy it.

[.kju 3240]

united_states_h.wrp

OPRW Version 24 (binarised)

South_Asia_H.wrp

OPRW Version 24 (binarised)

shapur_baf.wrp

OPRW Version 24 (binarised)

provinggrounds_pmc.wrp

OPRW Version 24 (binarised)

These might be helpful:

http://community.bistudio.com/wiki/callExtension

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?131325-Arma2NET

TKOH only: http://community.bistudio.com/wiki/Java_Scripting

[_William 0]

These might be helpful:

http://community.bistudio.com/wiki/callExtension

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?131325-Arma2NET

TKOH only: http://community.bistudio.com/wiki/Java_Scripting

Thanks again! Yesterday I already succeeded in extracting the shapur_baf lite from the 1.54 patch and parsing it.