Ambient Civilians (Expansion) Query

[CerberusDog 10]

How does the OA Module "Ambient Civilians (Expansion)" work? I stick in on an OA map but never see any.

[kylania 568]

At least on dedicated servers it's totally bugged. They'll pop into existence and disappear after a moment or two.

[CerberusDog 10]

Hope it gets fixed soon. I really want Civilians hiding among enemy forces in this Zargabad village.

[SkyDice 10]

Same problem here, I've managed to get it working once or twice, but never repeatedly. Most of the time, you put them down and nothing happens. I'm sure I read there was a 500m AOE around the module (to calc the no. of doors), but even placing two or three over villages you want to use seems to do no good.

[CerberusDog 10]

Well the Arma2 one worked just by placing it anywhere on the map for the entire island.

[mugaben 10]

Seems to work like arma2, in the editor. When placing the module i have civillians everywhere. Works like a charm for me but I havnt tried it on dedicated.

[victim913 10]

Try searching this. I don't want to sound like some of the other grumpy people here and just say "SEARCH" but there is already topics about this exact issue. There are 3 pages of posts just from today, and important topics get pushed to where no one pays any attention to them because the same topic gets posted in a new thread over and over again.

Ok, done being grumpy. But I think there is a problem, Especially in Zargabad. It seems it works first when you only have a few things going on, but with more units, it seems to work less and less. One of the issues is, where they spawn. You might have civilians, but don't see them.

With OA having almost every building enterable, they spawn mostly inside buildings now. And sometimes stay in the buildings for a long time before coming out. And depending on the map, it can take a long time. They don't just spawn at once and there is a lot of space to cover.

Another thing I noticed was what was going on in the sqf file. For some reason I saw that the addon list, would say "Alice" and in the second addon section it said "alice2". One is for chernarus and the other OA. So i think it conflicted itself. I don't know why it did that but, anyway, if it's not working, look at the sqf and see if you see anything wrong with it.

On one map i had the town generator twice on the map and the game started without one of the cities and a few seconds later it popped up. So it may just have to do with how detailed your mission is.:confused:

[CerberusDog 10]

I did search for "Ambient Civilians" and found nothing about the expansion version.

The .sqm file only has the one Alice version - that for OA.

There is very little going on in the mission and I've been inside the buildings - I've never encountered any civilians.

Also this is locally rather than on a dedicated server.

[TRexian 0]

I opened up the OA stuff at Dev-Heaven, and it looks like the ALICE2 (which I think is the Ambient Civilians-Extension) does operate like ALICE.

One thing you need to make sure of is that when you place the module on the map, you should either be in or near a city/town, so that they spawn.

I think that if you had ALICE and ALICE2 on the map at the same time, it would get pretty busy, pretty quick. :)

[NorthStar 10]

So what's the difference between the original and the expansion versions?

[TRexian 0]

I've just done a cursory review, but it looks like the new one has a more advanced mechanism for figuring out where to put civs, and what they will do. It also looks like it has set up hit and killed eventhandlers for them ;) but I'm not sure how to tap into them. It also may lead to some eh-confusion, but I don't know.

It also creates a civilian traffic fsm which will likely render obsolete my main claim to ArmA-modding fame. :D (And that is ok with me - theirs is a much more elegant system.)

Generally, it looks like the civs will seem more "organic" in the cities... less artificial.

[manzilla 1]

I wish the BIS guys would do some more/better documentation in the WIKI. It's really my only problem with them. I can't imagine it would take too long if the guy(s) that created did it.

Oh well.....

[Victim ZSU 10]

Is the (expansion) version still bugged on a dedicated server?

[dmitri 0]

Even if it isn't "bugged", expect server performance to go from 40fps in an average mission to about 9fps with the module active.

[b00tsy 28]

I don't get the issue, so far that I tried the module seems to work in a smart way. When I place the module and I check it out ingame it takes a few seconds before the civils to appear, but after that I see hem all over the town. They walk in/out houses, talk to eich other etc. And when I drive to an other village the civils in the village where I was are deleted (so it seems) and they pop up again when I arrive in a new village. Only when you drive around fast through villages the civils and ambient vehicles are not rendered, you have to stay in a certain radius for a while for the module to rez new civils and vehicles.

I only dont seem to get the civils drive the ambient vehicles (no interaction), which is to bad.

[Victim ZSU 10]

Was this on a dedicated server?

When we tried it the other week on our dedicated server, we had civilians flickering on the rooftops and appearing / disappearing.

The mission tested fine in Player hosted server.

[teilx 4]

I wish the BIS guys would do some more/better documentation in the WIKI. It's really my only problem with them. I can't imagine it would take too long if the guy(s) that created did it.

yeah the wiki is a joke. Some more/better documentation in the WIKI is a must but they don't do a better doc... since Arma 2 release.

[shuko 59]

Is the (expansion) version still bugged on a dedicated server?

Yes, not like it fixes itself magically without any patch released. ;)

[polar bear 10]

What's the advantage of using this ambient civilians feature over dropping them on the map and giving them something to do?

[kylania 568]

yeah the wiki is a joke. Some more/better documentation in the WIKI is a must but they don't do a better doc... since Arma 2 release.

So make it better, that's why it's a wiki... :rolleyes:

[shuko 59]

What's the advantage of using this ambient civilians feature over dropping them on the map and giving them something to do?

I guess the point/goal is to save effort/time.

[teilx 4]

So make it better, that's why it's a wiki...

lol:blahblah2: you are joking lol I think it's better the BIS guys would do some more/better documentation in the WIKI. I'am just a "Player" not the modul-creator or Bis dev & don't know what the module possibilities are.:pet6: You know it???:lecture:

[Victim ZSU 10]

1.54 patch for OA in the patch notes / missions section shows a fix for ALICE2 in MP, anyone tested it?

[Victim ZSU 10]

I've tested this with OA 1.54 and Windows dedicated server and the civilians now spawn and behave properly .