zbug

Tonight's playtest was pretty epic and devoid of major issues so, here comes the v0.89 https://github.com/GreuhZbug/greuh_liberation.Altis/releases/download/v0.89/greuh_liberation.Altis.pbo And the tutorial will be done in the next version :D If you have any major issue the v0.88b is still available on GitHub

That's a great idea! However on a dedicated server it won't work that well, for example I suppose our dedicated doesn't have any DLC ;) It would be easier to always set the mass of the fob box to 3 tons and add a ghosthawk to the LHD (and alternate base spawn). I will do that, unless you see another issue :)

Good catch with that comma, I didn't see it, will push the fix tonight ;) We're currently working on the tutorial, trying to get it into the v0.89

Corrected some issues: reinforcements not being called when an headless client was managing the spawn, invincible objectives in one of the fob templates (thanks Tetsel), and added an option to prevent players from becoming renegades https://github.com/GreuhZbug/greuh_liberation.Altis/releases/tag/v0.89-alpha2

I have pushed the current progress on v0.89, including the headless client support and more control over how many AI troops you want in your game. That will benefit both smaller groups of players and people who are using a dedicated server complete with headless clients. Now liberation will support up to 3 of them, an infinite increase from zero ;) I have spent a few hours testing and it works fine on my end, but depending on your specific configuration things may break unexpectedly. If you're scared of bugs you will be better off with the current version, but if you want to help with the testing, you and your rpt logs will be most welcome :) https://github.com/GreuhZbug/greuh_liberation.Altis/releases/tag/v0.89-alpha If you want to activate the headless client diag you just need to execute this in the admin console GRLIB_offload_diag = true

So, yeah... headless clients are working pretty well :P http://i.imgur.com/gQcrxAR.jpg

You can load liberation with any mod, in the worst case scenario the mod just won't work :p I don't know ACE well enough but it seems it requires several modules to be put in the mission so it can work properly? If it's the case you can easily do that, or even better, put the modules in their own mission file and merge it with liberation after each release for minimal effort. I will look into ACE properly later on, right now I don't feel like maintaining two different branches just for that, but liberation 1.0 will have an ACE version for sure :)

The mission parameters are never saved unless you resume the previous session which isn't a good idea :p If there's a way, I don't know about it yet I didn't say I wanted to remove the overpowered units, just add an extra step to unlock them that would drive the gameplay forward instead of punishing the players with stupidly high prices like we have right now. I have an idea, will see if it works later ;) Damn, good job :D Not directly, that would have a terrible effect on performance :) It affects the AI skill settings, the chances of a counter attack, the reaction speed of reinforcements, the alertness increase when you capture a sector, etc

Tetsel that's Arma issues you're having here, not much I can do about it :D Some units like the scorcher, sandstorm or apache are extremely powerful indeed, and balancing them through extremely high prices doesn't feel fair. I will come up with a way to unlock them that drives gameplay instead of causing frustration.

Yep, that will come by eventually :) Tonight's progress: http://i.imgur.com/MFNuyFU.jpg Some screens: http://imgur.com/a/OKrIS#0 Some more screens: http://imgur.com/a/pFd4S#0

1- Performance Give the server admin satisfying control over the amount of AIs on the map at a given time, so small rigs still get acceptable performance, at the expense of global AI amount of course. done v0.89 Make AI amounts adaptive to the player count, which will benefit smaller groups of players, done v0.90 Headless client(s), obviously. done v0.89 Estimated time : 2 weeks 2- Refactoring / Code quality That's behind the scenes and won't affect your gameplay, but the code quality sucks as a result of doing too much too quickly and I'll spend the needed time to make it nice and shiny before moving on. That might also result in a slight script performance gain but I wouldn't bet too much on that, it might be hard to notice. done v0.902 Estimated time : 1 week 3- Commander mode The Zeus placeholder is nice but it doesn't do most of what I'd want to see. I'm aiming for the level of functionnality of the Wargame series interface, plus a few goodies that you should like. Expect a lot of teasers on that one :P Players will be able to order troups around just like they do with Zeus, I will put everything I can for a more precise AI control, especially behaviour/combat modes and vehicle usage, The commander mode will allow players to build remotely from any existing FOB Players will be able to assign and use hotkey groups (CTRL+1, CTRL+2 and so on), those groups will have a summary card at the bottom of the screen at all times, not unlike what you get in a Total War game. The cards will show clearly what's going on, for example they'll flash yellow when the group is firing and red when the group is taking damage. There will be the ability to switch between 3D and map view at ease, just like Zeus does, and players will be able to give the same orders on both views, Players will be able to watch any unit camera feed either in full screen or with picture in picture options (that's the one where I have the most doubts :P) Estimated time: 4-6 weeks 4- Secondary objectives Currently the secondary objectives system is barebones, it will be expanded greatly. When prisonners are captured and brought back to a FOB they will yield intel. A new dedicated interface will allow players to spend intel and obtain secondary objectives. Accomplishing secondary objectives will give various rewards: resources, reduction of the CSAT reactivity, improving the relations with the population, and maybe unique top tier units? Once the system works, the actual amount of different missions is limitless, and I surely hope you'll come up with a lot of ideas ;) Estimated time: 4-6 weeks 5- Neutral guerillas Currently the guerillas are always hostile. The point is to have them react to the actions of the players. If players kill civilians and destroy buildings, the guerillas will turn more hostile. They will start to launch random attacks at player controlled sectors, might setup ambushes and IEDs, etc. If players play it nice the guerillas will become supportive and may launch attacks on CSAT positions. That way the players will have an incentive not to kill civilians ;) Estimated time: 2 weeks 6- Experience and leveling Players will receive xp from a wide variety of actions (not only killing stuff, logistics role will have a reward too). Xp will give levels, levels will give perk points, perk points can be spent on perks that will slightly improve parts of the gameplay: increase your stamina, make your vehicle more resistant to damage, etc Estimated time: 4 weeks So that's the current plan. Everything is subject to change and your feedback on every point will be very welcome :)

The xp and leveling system will be among the last major features to come, if not the last. The current idea is that perks should give bonuses and not restrict players in any way, and they should be levelable. For example you could imagine an infantry perk that gives 10% damage resistance per level, with a maximum level of 5. Damage resistance, health regen, fatigue resistance, fatigue regen, vehicle damage resistance and so on, are all simple things to implement. I'll try to come up with more original ideas along the way. Of course those who want an acceptable degree of realism will be able to switch it off ;)

Hmm, that's a good point, I could leave an admin-only unrestricted Zeus option. But it might cause unexpected problems with units that aren't supposed to be there or removed units that shouldn't have been removed so, it will be much of a "use at your own risk" featurette ;) 1- Uh that's a pretty weird one :D I can assure you it never happened in v0.88 or any other version for that matter, I would have noticed it :P I suspect you have used the ATLAS_B_LHD_helper object, which was removed in 0.88 to allow people to play without the ATLAS mod. All you need is an invisible object named lhd (LHD in lower case)(I've used a grass cutter), and everything SHOULD work fine ;) The savegame will joyfully ignore the LHD and everything on it so you can disregard that. If you really do want to wipe your save you may execute this code from the console in any mission or even the editor preview 2- Should be resolved with point 1-, the huron and FOB container need something named lhd to spawn in the correct place 3- Indeed, noted here 4- Under "supports" (the ammo crate) you have the Arsenal Box for exactly that purpose The starter black huron is also a mobile arsenal & spawn point Well glad it's solved, thanks for the info :) So you say you're running with RHS, did you replace the CSAT with russian forces? Does it work well?

Well you found the temporary fix already :P I'll do something more convenient, noted here Well that's funny because I've actually raised the AI skills in the last version, because they weren't accurate enough to me. The long range accuracy has always been odd but I find their close to mid-range performance to be rather fair. If you're paying attention, progress slowly and wear heavy kevlar you hardly ever get incapacitated, at least in my experience Here's the mission's AI settings in case you're wondering, for reference the regular accuracy skill from the original game is 0.7 or something I think (which is very deadly indeed) As you start your multiplayer game, when you choose your soldier slot, you have a "parameters" button in the top right corner. Here you can set the two "wipe savegame" parameters to "yes" and start with a fresh savegame. Note that it will start saving again right away, and the option will go back to "no" next time you start a game, so you don't have to worry about it ;) bCombat works in multiplayer now? That's nice to hear, I have to test it then ASR was nice but the load from AI smoke grenades was crippling the performance, we stopped using it when Bohemia integrated the AI smoke behaviour in vanilla #1 That's a great question for McKeewa as I don't own the server, but I suppose it's a pretty good rig based on a core i7? We get 40 to 48 fps if we don't do something stupid like attacking Pyrgos with 100+ blufor troops that were transfered to the server when my Zeus interface stopped working... just realized that today, surely the reason why I've seen the server go below 20 fps for the first time ever :P #2 Not really no, the fps will always fall quickly when you reach a certain number of AIs, it's not a question of network packets size or frequency or whatever. I will lower the AI cap and integrate this feature for those who don't use HC, then the HC later on so you can play with much higher AI caps. I will also reduce the sector activation range back to 1000 instead of 1250, raising it in the last version surely didn't help with performance issues. That's a funny topic cause I remember back in the old days playing MFCTI with about 10 fps and finding it just about fine. Then we had another mission for Arma 2 with about 400 AIs and I had 15-20 fps when hosting it but again that was just fine. Now 30 fps on Arma 3 feel like poor performance. That's funny how standards and expectations have changed over the years :) Currently the AI does two things: - reinforcements: every patrol will go towards the sector you are currently attacking. They may cross your territory to reach their objective, but they won't stay long enough to actually switch a sector. - counter attacks: a battlegroup will pop on the nearest possible position from the sector you are attacking, taking into account your territory and your forces (they won't ever spawn within visual range, or into blufor controlled territory). Then they will attack the nearest blufor sector from their starting position, which might not be the one you're at, depending on where they spawned and where the frontline is. They will stay until their target is captured, then go to the next nearest one, and repeat until they are destroyed. So you shouldn't expect AI troops to backcap your territory, even if it would be a good idea for them to do that, I don't find it interesting gameplay to run everywhere after AI forces, I'd rather have them attack the frontline where the players are and we've already had some pretty epic battles thanks to that. Ghostcapping is never epic ;) In some next version they may start to ghostcap if there is a high number of players on the server like 25 or 30+, I'm still thinking about it here. But I'm very cautious about it, because the older mechanics I've tried weren't fun at all (long before the beta release fortunately). But everything is subject to change ;) Yes you can't use the Zeus interface to build as I wouldn't be able to manage the ammo you're using. You should build troops and vehicles at a FOB, then use Zeus only to command their movement. Again it's a placeholder, the commander interface will allow you to build and command at the same time (and much more) Thanks for your all feedback!

v0.88b is up, minor hotfix to the civilian repair offroads being counted as actual blufor units

1- Ha yes, I didn't understand why I had a civilian truck on my zeus interface yesterday. Thanks for pinpointing the issue, I'll remove the truck from civilian units. Noted here 2- Sure thing, noted here :) That won't improve performance that much though, yesterday we chocked the server with two full CSAT battlegroups, pyrgos + pyrgos base + pyrgos quarry defender spawns, and every possible patrol because of the 100% alertness. The 15-ish civilians on top of that won't change much :P So I'll also put an option to reduce the number of units spawned at a given time, and the global cap for both sides (currently 200 for opfor and 100 for blufor). Headless client support might also become a priority, only the big towns make it necessary but they're supposed to be the core of the mission, that sucks if everyone gets poor performance with them. Yes I'll be curious about that. It's really strange that you're the only one to have this issue. Can you tell me where you are on the map, what town are you trying to attack? Maybe one sector in particular is bugged. How good is your performance? Are you hosting on your computer or dedicated? If you're on dedicated you can log as admin and use #monitor to see what's happening. I really have no precise idea :( Like Keewa said it's only for the built-in save that every scenario uses by default. When it's activated you can bypass the in-mission save system by clicking "restart" and you'll lose progress if the server has crashed on the previous session. At least now you can't do that mistake anymore :) So yeah, less saving equals more saving. Don't worry :P I'll have a 0.88b tonight just to correct the civilian truck bug. Thanks again for all your feedback!

Not on my end, I check the server rpt after each play test and yesterday's was clean. But no doubt you've got a problem here. Can you reproduce it or is it a one time thing? Any change you've made to the source, mods you've added maybe?

We took Pyrgos tonight, that wasn't easy :P http://i.imgur.com/HN187gl.jpg http://i.imgur.com/OU5jqKv.jpg http://i.imgur.com/2ptGVuc.jpg It's possible to take Pyrgos without hostile reinforcements being called, even with that radio tower right next to the town... you just have about 2 minutes to take the tower :P

v0.88a released, with minor fixes to sector activation delay and civilians management

No, reinforcements don't spawn anywhere close to BLUFOR units, what you may have here is that you're playing solo and you've gone straight to the hostile spawn before it had a chance to activate. What version are you playing? Are you sure you're not a renegade after killing teammates or empty vehicles? I can't change the spawn mechanics for solo players, activating sectors immediately for one person would cause a massive lag everytime you're flying a jet or an helicopter and you fly over a sector. Sectors will activate slightly faster in the next version but that's all I can do. If you are rushing right into an hostile town on your own, there is a slight problem with the way you play, not the mission. I can make it work somewhat, but I can't make it realistic, because what you're doing isn't realistic either.

Hey Tetsel, many thanks for your feedback :) A lot of your issues seem to be caused by the original save system, which you shouldn't use. I know it's counter-intuitive but you should have been starting your server by clicking the "restart" button, as demonstrated here: http://imgur.com/fySwGJu Now I've just discovered that enableSaving is a real thing, so you will only have the "play" option from now on, which relies on my own save system and not bohemia's ;) This explains: - Players being replaced by AIs, - The save rollback. My own save system forces the savegame to the hard drive every 60 seconds so you can't lose any progress. The built-in save system only saves when you quit the game, unless there's a script to force it (which I don't) - The action error with build, arsenal and else. Basically you've been using 0.87a actions on 0.88 scripts :D This might explain the player spawning issue, unsure about this one. Try with the right method and tell me if it still happens ;) If you kill BLUFOR soldiers or vehicles (even empty) you will be kicked from your faction and everyone will start shooting at you, including your own AIs, including your own squad. This is the normal behaviour in every scenario. Now that mission options have been implemented I could prevent that, because removing that system on every server (including public servers) seemed like a bad idea at first. Noted here I've just tested it and it works, it's just a matter of timing. I've reduced the delay in 0.88a but it will still take about 40 seconds (from 70-80) to trigger a spawn with a solo helicopter. Also you have to be flying below 750 meters. Also if you're renegade (because of the teamkilling) you're not counted as BLUFOR anymore and you won't trigger anything - again, a global game mechanic that I can't really override. Good idea, noted here The Zeus interface is a placeholder and comes with such few limitations, in the next system you'll be able to do that. In the meantime you can edit their group and rename it "delete" (or "DELETE" or "Delete") and they will dissapear after a short while. Yeah the current system sucks, it's been noted here for a while but not prioritized yet ;) Baddies will surrender when they have less than 3 people alive, or when the BLUFOR has overwhelming forces (more than 85% of everyone in the sector, excluding civilians). So technically if you solo a town you will have 2 guys surrender to you :P Well here comes the complete ruleset: - When a sector is active, reinforcements are called when 15% of the initial defenders have been killed, - The only exception is large towns, reinforcements are called as soon as the sector is active, - The time it takes for reinforcements to answer the call is determined by this: _reinforcements_time = (((((markerpos _nearestower) distance (markerpos _targetsector)) / 1000) ^ 1.66 ) * 150) / GRLIB_difficulty_modifier; Depending on the distance to the nearest tower (csat controlled), on normal difficulty, that means: 250 meters -> 15 seconds 500meters -> 47 seconds 1km -> 2 minutes 30 seconds 2km -> 8 minutes 3km -> 15 minutes 4km -> 24 minutes For each active sector, reinforcements can only be called once, unless the sector deactivates/reactivates again. All patrols will answer the call for the next 30 minutes.

v0.88 is up Lots of changes, with the most important one: the mission is now vanilla compatible, no need for the LHD anymore ;) Where we're at with my team, started the campaign 3 months ago :p http://i.imgur.com/hLb45yJ.jpg

No worries, the 0.87a was a quick hotfix just for the issue you're having now :) As for the 0.88, we have an internal playtest later today, so depending on the result, the release might be available tonight or tomorrow (sunday). Lots of good stuff incoming in this version ;)

Are you using the latest version? v0.87a and not v0.87 ;)

The chance of IED detonation depends on the number of blufor units in its activation radius, there's hardly a chance a solo engineer will trigger it. I will lower the activation radius and the chance of detonating just in case ;) Noted here 1) The mission is released under the MIT license which allows you to do whatever you want with it, no limits, no restrictions. I've chosen this license in full knowledge of what it meant, yet people still ask me if it's okay to do their own modifications :D As for porting, oh my, that might be a bit too soon. There may not be a lot of new map elements and gameplay markers incoming, but I can't tell for sure. There are some major changes coming (namely the RTS interface and the new secondary objectives system), and I can't say how difficult it will be to merge these changes with your own version. There's also some major refactoring in progress so you might want to wait until it's done, as all the gameplay variables might end up in the same file, easier to modify. My advice would be to wait until we're closer to the stable release, but because of the licensing, you're free to go against my advice and try anyways ;) 2) Yep, I've added that to the incoming mission options here 3) Ugh that damn issue again... it seems the height of the LHD is different on each server, and sometimes it's different enough that the deck will clip into the choppers indeed. I had made a few changes in 0.85 but I suppose it's still not fixed. I will try some more ideas. Noted here 4) Well there's already a group manager in the greuh options, I'd rather try to improve it rather than scrap it for something else. What would you want to be able to do, that you can't do with the current system? That's a strange one. You mean the building was already destroyed, then AIs tried to spawn in and got glitched? That could also be a synchronisation issue (network performance or something else), anyways I've noted a tentative fix here @Daneplant: yep there's some cases where the spawning script will kick in slowly, going in with 1 person or assaulting a capture point with helicopters flying high enough will surely cause that kind of thing. The idea is that a small amount of forces wandering into a sector by mistake should not trigger massives spawns which cause massive lag. If you are attacking sectors with only 1 or 2 persons on purpose then well, yeah, stuff tends to spawn in your face :P As usual, thanks a lot for all the feedback! :)