-duke-

Hello all. I've been working on a mission for some time that includes random artillery which happens to take down buildings as intended. It makes the battlefield seem much more authentic however there is one element missing, and that is smoke and fire (ok 2 elements) in those destroyed buildings. I'm comfortable with creating my own drop commands but Im not sure how to have a script find destroyed buildings within a trigger area and set small fires and/or smoke effects to these buildings? Since the artillery and destruction is random, it would be great if the fires could also be random in size, smoke, etc. Any thoughts on how to make this work? Sincere thanks!

I'm currently working on an MP Mission where tanks are used in a supporting role allowing you to concentrate on engaging enemy soldiers. Each time your team moves the line forward, your supporting armor is triggered to move forward as well and engage any opposing OPFOR armor. Each trigger is synced to an armor waypoint and it works well for the most part. To keep the action continuous without bogging things down, OPFOR and BLUFOR spawn additional units when they've reached a minimum count of < X. Unfortunately, sometimes your supporting armor takes enough damage for the crew to disembark but they will not engage enemy nor will they continue onto the next waypoint until one of the triggers is activated which is to be expected. The problem is, not only does it look a bit silly to have them standing there doing nothing, it disrupts the math for respawning BLUFOR units and as such, creates a noticeable lull in the overall gameplay as less BLUFOR units are created. Hopefully I haven't lost you at this point because I'm having a tough time explaining myself so far :o Anyway, to deal with this issue I've tried simply destroying the tanks when they reach a damage level of x which doesn't always work. I've also tried to have the units join my spawning BLUFOR troops but so far to no avail. Lastly, I've just tried deleting the tanks synced waypoints keeping all but the last waypoing which is a move waypoint. I must be doing something wrong because that doesn't seem to work either? Any suggestions on the best course of action on how to deal with the static tank crews once the tank has been destroyed? Also, the tanks themselves are set to move as careless/limited as this seems to be the only way I can get them through a city without getting stuck on buildings. If the tank crews of the destroyed tank are to join the fight, I need them to change from careless/limited to combat/limited. Any and all help is greatly appreciated! Thank you.

If I haven't confused you with the title, I'm sure I'll be able to do so in my description. Essentially, I'm currently working on a MP Mission where I have a need to keep AI fighting one another continually in the background. Irregardless of where you are in the mission, there is always fighting and something to do, its pretty fun really. Currently I have approx. 5 Blufor Squads and 6 Opfor Squads on mission load and they are configured to spawn replacement squads when killed via Triggers such as follows: Condition: ({not alive _x} count units BLSquad1) == count units BLSquad1 && ({not alive _x} count units BLSquad2) == count units BLSquad2; On Activation: Friendly12= [(getpos city),west,12] call bis_fnc_spawngroup; wp = Friendly12 addwaypoint [position city3, 0]; wp setwaypointtype "MOVE"; wp setwaypointspeed "Limited"; wp setwaypointbehaviour "Combat"; hint "Spawning from BLSquad1, BLSquad2, Combined" I have some existing markers in key locations that allow for the units to advance on one another. BTW, my apologies if the code doesn't look very good, I'm still very much trying to wrap my head around how to actually achieve things. Much of what I got is cut and pasted from browsing this forum and others online as well as the Biki. BTWx2, I always use hint to make sure my triggers are at least activating. It may be n00bie but it's all I got. :o The above works actually rather well but there are times when squads can overlap upon respawn and you notice it rather drastically in FPS for about 5 seconds or so. You can also hit choke points now and again where FPS can literally be cut in half if there are both a number of units close by and overlapping trigger based respawns. It occurred to me that it may be a much better idea to spawn squads when a Repeating Trigger counts a number less than X but I'm just not educated enough to make this happen. Essentially, I'd like the Trigger to keep running and only add squads when Opfor (for example) has less than 50 alive units. Does anyone have any insight on the matter? BTW, thanks for taking the time to read. I did look around a fair bit before posting but really didn't see anything that would suit this particular need.

So I played around with it a bit tonight and it worked like a charm. Thanks again cobra :)

Thank you very much for the help cobra. I'll try the code either tonight or tomorrow and will respond on how it worked. Cheers.

Thanks a lot for the info Demonized, much appreciated!

Probably a stupid question, my apologies. Is there an easy way to run this script in a trigger to keep the battlefield clear over the course of the mission? Thanks.

I was looking for something just like this for some artillery placed well back of the main battle. The script worked like a charm, thanks rowdied!

I'm glad to see some Audigy users are experiencing issues as well because this has driven me completely crazy. In my case lowering ingame sounds did not work all that well and I'd still receive enemy radio chatter at ear splitting volumes through my center channel. I did notice something interesting though as I lost my system drive recently and had to re-install my OS and everything that was on c:\ (where I also keep Steam). My version of XP Home is quite old (SP 1). I re-installed my entire Steam platform (including ArmA II) on SP 2 and the sound was absolutely perfect in 5.1, no issues whatsoever. When Windows XP automatically upgraded to SP 3 the issues were magically back. ...incidentally I had all these issues prior even on my old failed system drive. To make a long story even longer, there were no issues in SP 2 however they have reared there ugly heads once again in SP 3. My card is an Audigy 2 ZS; tried all the driver versions I could find. The ONLY thing that works for me at this time is using 2.0. It'll be nice to see this addressed in a future patch but I do agree with one of the previous comments that a hotfix is a much better idea. I know it may be a bit more work but it does suck being a loyal customer and not being able to enjoy a game due to major sound issues.

This is why I'd like to open my own parachute, rather than the automatically activated one we have now. Ever tried to shoot something travelling at free fall speed Mind you, they'd be a few red smudges on the landscape if you didn't time it right, or the server suddenly lagged. lol Medic!!!! Slightly unrelated but this is the one feature that I loved about Battlefield 1942. If you jumped from high enough altitude, you could hear your guy build up to a scream and then crap his pants; it sounded hilarious. I do agree that it would be a great feature to have more control over when your chute opens but I'm not sure whether or not this is realistic? Don't quote me but I thought most (if not all) military para insertions had chutes deployed straight away, is this not the case?

As if that is the most important thing it needs fixed.... Where 'o where does it mention "most important thing" in the topic title? Sometimes I wish some of you would actually take more time reading and less time responding or simply take your meds before doing so While it may not be the most important thing to fix it is a rather noticeable aesthetic that's gone untouched and it looks ridiculous. H3ll, maybe if they actually have the guy steering the car controls wouldn't suck as much either ...of course I don't mean that it would make a difference so I better state it now before someone else takes it the wrong way

I'd settle for seeing the hands actually steer with the wheel instead of having the wheel turn through my static fingees.

Outstanding work Chammy and well worth the wait (as many have already indicated). I think it's great to finally have a soundmod that makes explosions sound like the ear rattlers they should instead of sounding like a corpse falling from the sky and landing in sand. The only minor observation I can make is that Urals seem strangely quiet but I must admit that my mission has them accompanied with armor so maybe the Ural sounds were just muted by the sounds or M113 tracks. Regardless, fantastic sound mod and my new favorite. BTW, I'm playing the Morphicon.de downloaded version because ArmA only became available in Canada approx. 5 mins ago. OK I'm kidding but it sure felt that way with the poorly staggered release dates.

I must say that I really do like this soundmod, great work! The only suggestion I can make is toward artillery shells because they really only sound like over sized grenades. If you could take the explosion effect from YASM then it would certainly add to your already great mod.

ArmA just isn't the same without these effects, FPS be damned, I like the immersion just so damn much. Great work as usual!

I'm really thankful that this mod exists because it used to amaze me how many shots it would take to kill a prone enemy. Now the sparks give me the insight that I'm not hitting the soldier, I'm hitting his weapon instead.

Looks fantastic, I can't wait to try this one out. Great work!

This should certainly help out, thanks.

It just blocks the AI view, that's all. Actually, it also blocks sound, nothing I can do about that as it's hard coded into the engine, if it blocks view it also blocks sound. Or rather, muffles it. Well in that case can you make me a smoke suit so I suck less ingame?

'Get the community involved somehow' is not an idea. It's like saying 'go to alpha centari somehow'. How can I be right or wrong when I don't even know what he's talking about, and he refuses to elabourate? I think that's as far as he got in his thought. He thought it would be nice to end world hunger and then decided to post his idea for feedback. Sorry but it appears at least one person here was intelligent enough to understand where I was going with the idea. If you want me to draw you a roadmap then I can't do it for you. As for your world hunger reply it only goes to clearly demonstrate that no amount of input will help alleviate your ignorance.

Mark I hate to ask but is there any way you can update the first post in this thread when you post a new version? I only ask because if someone is unfortunate enough to not have followed the development cycle of this terrific mod, they'd potentially have to scan through many pages to get to the latest release. BTW, dl'ing now; can't wait to try it out.

Simply amazing sound mod and by far my new favorite, great work!

I'm not sure if I'm imagining things or not but the smoke now looks a bit less dense and seems to dissipate at lower altitude than the previous version. Of course it could be the wind in the mission I playtested so my apologies if I'm talking out my ass; the one thing I did notice is an overall 2 - 3 FPS gain in this latest version. BTW, sparks look much better. Great work Matt!

Regardless of whether you think ArmA sux, ArmA rulez or somewhere in between, you have to admit that its better than many games out there just for the simple fact that its highly moddable. While I agree that ArmA was a bit of a Pita out of the box the community has stepped up and made it something much more enjoyable to play and the devs continue to churn out patches to help fix the major issues. Lets see a company like Codemasters, or even EA make this claim.

Good Lord, if you can't understand my first post then I'm not even going to bother clarifying myself anymore just so you can multi-quote every sentence I post and pick it apart by reading between non existent lines. I don't believe I stated anywhere about budgeting around community mods, that is your input. My suggestion is merely getting the community more involved earlier in the process instead of after release, it's simple really. If it's something that simply cannot be done then fine, it was an idea pure and simple. I don't believe anyone in the community is taking a penny for their work presently so I'm unsure where you came up with the idea that they would be paid as BIS employees either thus taking food from the table of actual employees? What you have here is a community focused on making a good game even better by enhancing it in ways that the dev couldn't do for reasons known only to themselves. My suggestion was simply to embrace the talented within the community and involve them in the process prior to release. I simply cannot explain it anymore simply, if you can't get it then my apologies, hopefully someone else will. BTW I never said it was a good idea or a bad idea, simply an idea.