ACRE v1.0 - Advanced Combat Radio Environment - Official Thread (ArmA2 to TS3 Plugin)

[Pathy 0]

I know it's probably a TS3 thing rather than an ACRE thing, but given how many people are using ACRE and how followed this thread is, I guess this is a good place to get an answer; Last night we had 20 odd guys playing, and alot of people were having a problem whereby TS3 kept muting other players. We kept having to alt tab to unmute the people it was muting. At one point I ended up with about 16/20 players muted. I've not seen this before, not in TS3 nor ACRE - whats up with this?

[noubernou 77]

I know it's probably a TS3 thing rather than an ACRE thing, but given how many people are using ACRE and how followed this thread is, I guess this is a good place to get an answer; Last night we had 20 odd guys playing, and alot of people were having a problem whereby TS3 kept muting other players. We kept having to alt tab to unmute the people it was muting. At one point I ended up with about 16/20 players muted. I've not seen this before, not in TS3 nor ACRE - whats up with this?

Were these people more than 100 meters away? Were these people on a different radio frequency?

If so then that muting is intentional. It is meant to help cut bandwidth down on the TS3 server. When a plugin locally mutes someone then you no longer will receive voice data from the server for that person, saving bandwidth for you and the server.

Also to confirm, you are running 1.0.8?

Edited August 23, 2010 by NouberNou

[Alpha-Kilo 36]

I had the same thing. I can't remember if ACRE was active when it happened. I may have been playing Tuschino, a Russian PvP-mode where players use another (similar) radio.

I had to exit TS and start it again. Someone suggested it might have something to do with the TS-plug-in.

[noubernou 77]

I had the same thing. I can't remember if ACRE was active when it happened. I may have been playing Tuschino, a Russian PvP-mode where players use another (similar) radio.

I had to exit TS and start it again. Someone suggested it might have something to do with the TS-plug-in.

What is this mod?

Also was it local muting or was it just not being able to hear certain people (you see them light up but get no sound when you look at TS3).

That is a TS3 bug, which is one of the main issues right now and we are working with the TS3 devs to get resolved.

[Alpha-Kilo 36]

Nouber-Nou,

Tuschino is a game server which supports realistic gameplay. The rules follow the Russian doctrine as much as possible. Ordinary soldiers do not carry maps and binocs, for example. They basically just follow their leaders into battle. The leaders have to issue their commands in a very precise way in order to keep the group together. You can't choose your weapons. There is no respawn. Dead players may watch the rest of the mission using a spectator script. Language on the server is Russian, but you may find someone who speaks English. Foreign players are welcome. It is best to bring a few people together so that you can form an international fire-team or even squad sized group which makes it easier for your "liaison officer". You can find the game server by filtering for "Tushino" but it is passworded during the PvP-missions on Fridays and Saturdays. It is open for the public during the rest of the week. But let's discuss this by PM or in another thread.

The bug - as I experienced it - was very strange. When I realized that nobody was answering to what i said I opened a window for Teamspeak. All players in my channel showed the blue lights. Two (those who should have responded to me) had the symbol for muted by client. But I could not unmute them. When someone else talked, he was audible for the briefest moment and then appeared as muted. It didn't take long until everybody in my channel was muted. I typed a message and someone typed back that they could hear me alright. They suggested I should check my settings, make sure my headset was plugged in correctly etc. I tried everything but nothing worked. I said thanks, switched off my TS, switched it back on, joined the TS-server and the problem had disappeared. I am sorry I cannot give you any more details. I was just glad that the solution was so simple. I think it happened again on another day. this time I briefly informed the other players, switched TS off and back on and thus lost communication for just a few moments. Really no problem at all. But again: I am not sure I was using ACRE when this happened, so this is not an official bug report. Does this sound like the TS3-bug you're trying to resolve?

[noubernou 77]

Nouber-Nou,

The bug - as I experienced it - was very strange. When I realized that nobody was answering to what i said I opened a window for Teamspeak. All players in my channel showed the blue lights. Two (those who should have responded to me) had the symbol for muted by client. But I could not unmute them. When someone else talked, he was audible for the briefest moment and then appeared as muted. It didn't take long until everybody in my channel was muted. I typed a message and someone typed back that they could hear me alright. They suggested I should check my settings, make sure my headset was plugged in correctly etc. I tried everything but nothing worked. I said thanks, switched off my TS, switched it back on, joined the TS-server and the problem had disappeared. I am sorry I cannot give you any more details. I was just glad that the solution was so simple. I think it happened again on another day. this time I briefly informed the other players, switched TS off and back on and thus lost communication for just a few moments. Really no problem at all. But again: I am not sure I was using ACRE when this happened, so this is not an official bug report. Does this sound like the TS3-bug you're trying to resolve?

Yes, this sounds like the bug. Remember this is NOT an ACRE bug. It is a bug that appears even when not running any ts3 plugins. It is a bug in TS3 itself that has appeared over the last few releases (beta25/26).

[Pathy 0]

NouberNou. I get the "lights are on, nobodies home" bug all the time (I have a moderately low end PC so i'm guessing thats the issue), but this was something else. At first, it was one of the guys in my section who had it; his TS kept actually muting me (as in, the mute symbol appeared on my name), and he kept having to alt tab to unmute me. We were on the same radio frequency, and within direct chat range, and it did it 5 or 6 times. Then, as the mission went on, but mostly once the action kicked off, lots of others started having the same issue; TS randomly muting people.

And yes, 1.08.

Edit: Great news to hear you're talking with the TS devs about the random cutout bug. It always seems to hit me when I need comms the most -whenever theres action going on, I lose comms. When theres nothing doing in the mission, it's fine.

Edited August 23, 2010 by Pathy

[McArcher 0]

Hello.

I have a question to the ACRE developers team.

Do you plan including your MOD into ACE ? It would be great, if people didn't have to install separated addons and ACRE was included into ACE. ACE is used widely, but "@acre" string in servers' addons is seen rarely :( I think, cooperation with ACE would make ACRE more popular and gaming more realistic.

[jaynus 10]

Hello.

I have a question to the ACRE developers team.

Do you plan including your MOD into ACE ? It would be great, if people didn't have to install separated addons and ACRE was included into ACE. ACE is used widely, but "@acre" string in servers' addons is seen rarely :( I think, cooperation with ACE would make ACRE more popular and gaming more realistic.

No. ACE will not integrate JayArmA2Lib, and as such, ACRe will always stay independent. Additionally - although we share ideas and some code, we are independent dev teams.

[gpk76 10]

Can this be made for ventrilo??

[noubernou 77]

Can this be made for ventrilo??

No. Ventrilo does not support any of these features we use to make this work.

[_S2_ 10]

Alright Nou, i tested the whole power thing last night, seems to work now. Dunno what happened previously.

[noubernou 77]

Roger, yea if you have any doubts set up a test mission in the same area and turn on the signal hinting and ping each other.

acre_sys_signal_showSignalHint = true;

[_S2_ 10]

ah ok thanks

[Victim ZSU 10]

It is with a fair bit of regret that we've decided to disable ACRE for the time being and fall back to using TS3 only. As I've posted previously, this is an awesome mod, and when it works it is game changing.

Unfortunately the entire setup is not 100% reliable, and when it doesn't work it screws it up for pretty much everyone, making it worse than our regular TS3 setup.

We will continue to download, test and participate in feedback, but in the interim our regular twice weekly gaming sessions will be ACRE free.

Issues we have encountered:

* TS3 stability / crash / freeze issues

* TS3 mute/unmute issues

* Loss of positional sound (all people can hear you)

* Clipping and random muting of people nearby

* TS3/Radio not re-activating after respawn / revive (norrin's)

[noubernou 77]

Sucks Victim, we hope you get back to using it all the time soon. Unfortunately a lot of these issues are out of our direct control... :(

TS3 at the moment has some serious issues with people not being able to hear each other sometimes. This is something we are working with the TS3 devs on fixing. You will get this bug even with out ACRE running.

As for the loss of positional audio, that is something ArmA2 is responsible for. When missions have heavy/poor scripting in them, the scheduler that tells when code can execute in game gets really REALLY slow (like 5 seconds apart between executions of our code) so this is something we are trying to mitigate.

Please post issues on DH about the Respawn stuff with Norrins revive though, we think we have most of those covered.

[Brainbug 10]

It's a pity that it doesn't seem to work with beta patches (even with the dsound.dll placed beside the beta exe), so one has to decide between ACRE and all the improvements that the beta brings, and it's unfortunate to loose either one. I hope you can find a way to make it work, would be really appreciated!

EDIT: Ahh, nevermind, I just realized that beta patches ARE actually supported, just not the latest one (yet).

Edited August 25, 2010 by Brainbug

[m1n1d0u 29]

what beta patch version have you ?

[galzohar 31]

How would you suggest to test whether a mission is "too heavy" on the scripting for ACRE to work properly? That is, before you actually get people to play it with ACRE running? Any specific "benchmark" of some sort you suggest to run?

[jaynus 10]

How would you suggest to test whether a mission is "too heavy" on the scripting for ACRE to work properly? That is, before you actually get people to play it with ACRE running? Any specific "benchmark" of some sort you suggest to run?

We are working on attempting to work around it ( for the most part). We have it down to a consistent 0.5 second delay now (rather than 3-15 seconds)

The reason most people don't notice this, is that there is nothing that is really "time critical" with any other mods. If you look closely, ACE missile guidance is extremely affected by this bug as well.

Best way:

private["_prev", "_delta", "_next"];
waitUntil { 
    _delta = diag_tickTime - _prev;

    if(diag_tickTime > _next) then { 
         diag_log format["+++++++ 0.5 SECOND TICK +++++ %1", _delta];
    };

    _prev = diag_tickTime;
    _next = diag_tickTime +0.5; 
    false
};

I just hacked that together. Not tested or anything, so use at own risk or whatever.

But in a heavily lagged mission, you'll see the delta time printed is WAY more than 0.5 seconds. (this outputs to your RPT btw). Commonly somewhere between 2-10 seconds. this is generally caused by having around 50-60 while/waitUntil loops without sleeps in them running.

[galzohar 31]

How much higher than 0.5 is "too high for ACRE to work properly" though? That was the main think I was asking for.

[noubernou 77]

How much higher than 0.5 is "too high for ACRE to work properly" though? That was the main think I was asking for.

Hopefully in 1.0.9 nothing will be "too high" within realistic bounds. That being we have guaranteed execution every 0.5 seconds of our scripts, but most of the time it is a lot less.

The thing to remember is that "breaking" means lag, so in 1.0.8 every second of lag in the scripts is a second you have to hot mic before speaking. Other wise people will only get the last bit of your message. :p

[Rafalski 10]

Arma2 OA 1.54 and @JayArma2Lib compatibility problem!

Edited August 26, 2010 by Rafalski

[Loggert 10]

Arma2 OA 1.54 and @JayArma2Lib compatibility problem!

http://a.imageshack.us/img801/6397/libk.jpg

Is that a suprise?

Just wait for jay2armalib update...

[frosties 10]

Hello,

Me and my squad is trying to use this mod on our rented dedicated server but i cant get it to work.

I got the mod working locally last night, but when we joined our dedicated server it didnt work at all.

No radios shows up when pressing ctrl+shift+v.

Have tried to look around if someone else had this problem but figured i could post here and ask .. :)

Edit: it seems to be working after moving around some files and changing some startup parametres

Edited August 26, 2010 by Frosties