pebcak

I can't seem to find a decent lighting source for a custom firebase. At night everything is in total darkness. Placing cars, fires and spotlights are all well and good but car headlights and fires look out of place and spotlights don't seem to move around when manned. I can't seem to find the streetlamp object name either - and even if I did would it be lit? What do other people use for their lighting needs?

Getting vehicles to remain in a fixed position whilst still making them viable targets for AI gunships, i.e., not zero fuel or surrounding the unit with objects, seems to be tricky; however, 'disableAI "MOVE"' in the unit's INIT line seems to have at least most of the desired effect. The thing is, does disableAI work in MP?

I have a trigger (in the editor) with Name: T2 Activation: OPFOR OnAct: serpentList=+thislist ; serpentListCount=Count serpentList ; {_x AddEventHandler ["killed","serpentList=serpentList-[_This Select 0]; serpentListActive=(serpentListCount-(Count serpentList)>=1);"]} ForEach serpentList ; DeleteVehicle T2 (It counts all OPFOR within the trigger area at the start and places the info into a list then kills itself, and sets up an event handler to reduce the count as units get killed.) However, in MP the list value is multiplied by all clients. Â Pretty obvious what's happened now I've tested it. Â How do I stop this from happening? Â The idea being that there is another trigger waiting to be fired once all of the units in this list have been killed. Â Works SP, but in MP it clearly becomes impossible beyond one player. Â

I'm not really sure what best practices are so I'm kind of blundering around in the dark until I find something that works. What I'm trying to do is simply have a list of units, defined at the start, that when all killed trigger an event. I did simply use '{alive _x} count [serpent1,serpent2,serpent3] == 0;' as the condition but I was experiencing a strange half-second stutter. I had a number of these kinds of condition running - about 10 - and converting them all to the above over-complicated solution stopped the stutter, so I thought I was on to something. Ah well.

As per BI wiki: unit say [sound, maxTitlesDistance, speed] and: playSound name Information contained within is a little confusing. What's the difference between the two? As a point of context, if I wanted a custom sound to be played so that all players (MP - obviously) can hear it clearly once triggered, which one, or what, should I use?

Kyle, Ah! I see. It was the term Player that was confusing me. I was assuming that it refered to a single player amongst all, not Player as being the player local to the client. Thanks for taking the time to explain that. Now, at least, I know what I should be searching for. *bow*

Yes, but it's still not clear which of the two, if either, will play the sound so that all players can hear it no matter where they are in proximity to another player / trigger / whatever. I'm not sure that the xRadio commands will do what I want as they seem to have to originate from a specific player as well.

I have a short intro script that I would like all clients to run on joining. How do I call this script, called titles.sqs, from within the init.sqs file? As the intro takes about 30 seconds to complete, is there a way for this script to be called by init.sqs without the processing of the rest of the init.sqs script pausing until the titles.sqs script is complete? Does this make any sense..?

Cheers.

Okay, but if I want a sound to be heard by all players, no matter where they are in the game world - a custom radio message for example - what should I use? Â 'playSound name'? Clearly, not interested in having the sound directional or be affected by doppler effect.

Yeah, I read that. The query I have is if I put that call into the init.sqs file will the remainder of that init.sqs file only run after that call has completed?

I'm in the process of attempting to break ArmA. I've already found the upper group limit of 144. I've not encountered a unit limit yet after having placed over 300. Also not encountered an object limit after having placed about 500. All seem to have minimal effect on (SP) performance, even tho I am intending my mission for MP coop. What I have noticed is a slight stutter every half second. As I understand it ArmA runs through all of it variable checks and wotnot twice per second. So, something is taking a bit long script-wise. I'm not doing anything super-impressive, just a large number of variable state change triggers, some against alive/dead members of lists all contained within the editor - no external scripts (yet). At the moment I'm just checking the state of variables using a trigger with simple condition instructions, e.g., '(var1==1)&&(var2==0)'. Where I'm checking the status of units within a list I'm defining the list by doing a count once right at the start, e.g., 'whitechapelList = [];{whitechapelList = [_x] + whitechapelList}forEach thislist;', then running checks against that list in another trigger for effect, e.g., '{!alive _x}count whitechapelList >= 10;'. My question is, what is the best practice to do this kind of thing to minimize the half-second stutter? I've probably got about 20 of these variables and conditions running at once.

As it happens I do have an AI list that will be attacked by other AI, so this check would need to be performed irrespective of player presence. (Two AI forces, first to reach 50% casualties withdraws.) I'll try it with the first method, see how that goes.

UNN, Ah, now I understand what it's doing! Â Excellent stuff. Â (I'm assuming there won't be any MP issues with this method.) If I could award points on this board for helpfulness you'd get a bunch. Â Have a cookie instead... Many thanks. Â

Okay, I tried to put this 'whitechapelList=+thislist; {_x AddEventHandler ["killed","whitechapelList=whitechapelList-[_This Select 0]; whitechapelListActive=(whitechapelListCount-(Count whitechapelList)>=10);"]} ForEach whitechapelList' in OnAct for the trigger that makes the list. I made another trigger that checks to see if whitechapelListActive is either true or false (tried both) as the condition for other messages, but it does nothing. I fiddled a bit with various elements but I either generated errors or nothing else.

UNN, Cheers for that reply. I'm a bit new to all this, so I'm gonna ask some stupid questions most likey! I have several of these '{!alive _x}count whitechapelList >= 10;' -style conditions going on. If this is a laggy way of doing things then that may explain it, and it doesn't need to be tested anything like every 0.5 seconds either. Clearly I should have a script file if that is the most effecient way of doing things. Not sure how to do that tho. :S What I'm trying to do (and it does work as is, bar the every 0.5 second lag): The above 'whitechapel' example is to check to see if a specific group of soldiers is either killed or arrives at a location. I create an array with this in a trigger that just covers them at the start: whitechapelList = [];{whitechapelList = [_x] + whitechapelList} forEach thislist; whitechapelListCount=Count whitechapelList (which you say would be better off as per you example. I've not tried that yet.) And in another trigger, the one that kicks other things off if all within the whitechapelList are dead, I have the condition: {!alive _x}count whitechapelList >= 10;

So far there are no external scripts, just editor triggers and the like, so I'm not sure how I can factor sleep into these. There are about 300 units and the majority do have waypoints to work through. As far as I can find there are no recursive calls happening; again, it's all in the editor so such a thing would be tricky to set up (even accidentally)? I could post the mission up for debugging if that would be helpful...

Does removing the dead like this improve MP server performance significantly?

So it would seem, Sat. As I said, 'disableAI "MOVE"' and HOLD works when I test it SP; whether or not it still performs in MP is the question. Not had the oportunity to test in MP yet. The units still move around a bit, mainly due to the fact that if they're in a formation and the lead vehicle pivots (which they still do under 'disableAI "MOVE"' I have observed) the other group members move in order to maintain the formation. Haven't tried placing the units at their HOLD point with Formation None yet becuase I actually want the units to move in to their defensive position from elsewhere first. If I have to place them in their defensive position first in order to prevent the formation pivot effect then so be it.

Setting HOLD doesn't stop the armour from charging off as far as I can see. With Armour the vehicle still moves around a bit with 'disableAI "MOVE"' but not as much as anything else I've tried. All I want is for the tank to remain in a hull down position whilst still showing up as being a valid target for AI gunships. I thought it would be easy.

I did, smart arse. It turned up nothing of use. Thanks for your suggestions thereafter though.

I would like an AI squad to get into a chopper that comes to pick them up and then drop them off at another location. I can get the pilots to board the chopper and fly to the pick-up point; but I can't, for love nor money, make the AI squad actually get into the chopper once it arrives. Any clues..?

Ziggy, Cheers, but that's not really what I'm after.

Cheers Novusordo. I'm not entirely sure what all that script is doing but I did settle on a solution that wasn't 1000 miles away from yours.

Doesn't work. Chopper just hovers about 20m away from the AI squad and won't land. AI squad just stands there looking at it.