General Barron

I'm 20 years old and I live in Seattle, Washington, USA. I have a lovely girlfriend of 3+ years. I recently quit my job at a grocery store. I'm an Armorer in the Marine Corps reserve, and I have a brother who is also in my same unit. He is getting sent to Iraq for the second time, next week. I'm staying here, again . I'm transferring to the University of Washington in the fall, and I'll be starting my 3rd year. I want to be a professional programmer, and OFP gives me an outlet to vent my creative/programming skills, and it is also military-themed, so it ties in to the Marines. I used to program games on my TI calculator, but now I can do much, much cooler things in OFP scripting. That is why I'm still with it.

Wow, more here than I can read at the moment. However, from what I've read, I have to fully agree with Sputnik Monroe. I see a lot of posts that talk about how America is full of redneck/cowboy/violent/arrogant/selfish people who lump other nations into certain stereotypes. Something is wrong with that statement, lol. Anyway, instead of trying to explain why some people hate America (and trust me, there are plenty of Americans who hate the US too), I'm going to explain why I love America. When it comes down to it, what I love about it is freedom. Cheezy? Yes. But you know what? It's true, America is one of the most free countries on Earth. I didn't say it was the most free, because other countries (mainly European ones) are more free than America, in some aspects. However, in America: I still have freedom of speech. There are no laws making it a crime to publish "hate speech" (who defines 'hate speech'?). I am free, nay, encouraged to criticize my government. I am still free to own a gun and defend myself with it. My own constitution states that the population has the right to overthrow its government if it becomes oppressive; and the second amendment ensures that we have the ability to do so. I'm sure those living in 1940's Germany, or in Stalin's Russia, would have loved to have this right... My taxes are relatively low. (Although, after WWII they shot up and have only gotten higher since). I am still free to spend over half the money I earn. I am still free to put a majority of what I want in my body. Drugs, obviously, are not allowed, but I am still free to smoke, drink alchohol, and eat fatty foods. Don't laugh about this one, because there are people who are trying to take away your right to do the rest. The internet is still a wonderful beacon of freedom in my country. The government has very little control over cyberspace here. For the most part, religion is respected and tolerated here. My government, in theory, does not endorse or interfere with any religion. Although I'm an athiest, I still see the value in these ideals. Now, why do some people truly hate America? I mean, like the Taliban/Al Queda (sp?) types? Because they hate the above freedoms. Yes, again, cheezy. But its true: they absolutely dispise western freedoms, such as those mentioned above. They think women shouldn't be allowed to show their face in public, for god's sake! Now, if I were trying to bring back the "good old days" when women had to wear burkas, I would hate it too if there were countries like America/Britain/Japan/the West that proved that freedom is a better way to live. It sure is hard to oppress a population, when they keep seeing how life could be better. Now, as for those that dislike America (but wouldn't run a plane into the WTC), I think it is a little more complicated. However, the issue of our freedoms does still come into play. I know plenty of America-hating Americans, who hate many of our freedoms. There are many things that I do hate about my country, though: My government interferes too much with the free market. The force of government is often used to benifit one business over another. The price of sugar is set by the government to benefit the makers of corn syrup. Microsoft can be sued by its competitors for being a 'monopoly'. Farmers are paid (subsidised) to not grow things. The list is painfully long. Our legal system is broken and out of control. Jurors are picked for their stupidity and lack of knowledge. You can sue for stupid stuff and win. If I am only 5% at fault in an accident, I can be made to pay 50% of the costs, simply because I have deeper pockets. We need a 'loser pays' system, among other things. We have an increasing culture of "victimhood". Everyone is a victim, and nobody is responsible for their own actions. If I get cancer from smoking cigs all my life, I can sue the tobacco companies (since it isn't my fault, after all). If I get fat from eating McD's, it must be McD's fault. If I'm black, nothing is my fault; I cannot be blamed for anything, because hundreds of years ago, blacks were enslaved in the US. This will victim culture will destroy America if it keeps getting worse. As people take less and less responsibility for themselves, they also start expecting more and more from the government. This just means that they want other people to do things for them, since the government can only 'make' money by taking it from other people. The government is always the first thing people seem to turn to whenever they want any changes to occur; be they economic or social. Both our presidential candidates try to woo voters by talking about what new government laws/programs they will create, instead of talking about what worthless laws/programs they will repeal. Personally, I would love to live in a country where the government's sole function is to protect my rights to live my life as I want; and where I would be free to live my life as I choose, as long as I'm not interfering with somebody else's right to do the same. Unfortunately, no such country exists on Earth, but America is a close-enough second. Â

The road blocks kinda worked, because these were the places where I would crash and injure my team. But I think that before you do anything else, you should reduce the amount/distance of driving done. No point in driving across the entire island, IMO. Heck, that was one of my pet peeves in Skye Virus. The long drives just kinda killed the excitement.

Hmm... the mission seemed kinda... boring to me. All I did was drive all across the island. I could just run over the zombies and I would be fine; they never could hurt me when I was in a truck. I dunno, to me it just seems like a zombie roadtrip....

Actually, I just thought of a way to limit the number of smokescreens you get. First off, you would have to create the invisible target at the start of the script, and never delete it until the tank is destroyed. Next, "addmagazine" some smokeshells or whatever to the invisible target. You would then remove one magazine each time a smokescreen is used. When the target is out of magazines, you can't use the smokescreen anymore. This all hinges on being able to actually add magazines to the invisible target. I tried adding smokeshells to a tank, but it didn't work. So perhaps you could only add vehicle weapon magazines to the invisible target, if you can't add smokeshells. Or perhaps you can't give it magazines at all, and this won't work

Lol... you caught me :P. I read the first couple lines, but it seemed like a duplicate of your first post. Anyway, now I see that your original intention was for a full-human crew in coop. For that, I think this script would be perfect and required to balance gameplay, since a human crew is at an unrealistic disadvantage (since it doesn't have access to auto-targeting systems of the tank). The way choppers don't use their missles against you I still think is very unrealistic, but I could see how it would be nice for playability in coop missions. I should also point out to others, that this script would work equally well on any type of vehicle; not just tanks. For example, you could run it on a truck, and make a mission where the player drives thru a valley being shot at by tanks, and actually has a chance to live. My only question about the script is: how does it affect AT soldiers? After opening up the script and looking at it, I could see no reason why it wouldn't work in SP, or without a full human crew. Obviously from my little experience, it worked fine in MP with 2 AI crew members. Actually, it could work on a fully-AI crewed tank, if you just replaced this line: <table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td>Code Sample </td></tr><tr><td id="CODE">; Wait until some of the crew gets in the _object if ((driver _object == player) || (gunner _object == player) || (commander _object == player) || (isNull player)) then {goto "check_side"} else {goto "start"} With this one: <table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td>Code Sample </td></tr><tr><td id="CODE">; Wait until some of the crew gets in the _object if ((count crew _object) > 0) then {goto "check_side"} else {goto "start"} That means the script would start when anybody, AI or not, gets into the vehicle. I looked thru the script, and found a few problems: Bug found in this line of the script: if (side _object == civil) then {goto "civil_side"} "civil" isn't a 'side', unless the comref is wrong. It needs to be "civilian" (misspelling intended). Also, this line is kinda weird, as it will tend to place the target within a square area to the NW of the tank: <table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td>Code Sample </td></tr><tr><td id="CODE">; Move invisible target0 to random spot around your tank/APC _target0 setPos [((getPos _object select 0) + (random _proximity) - (random _proximity)), ((getPos _object select 1) + (random _proximity) - (random _proximity)),(getPos _object select 2) + (random 3)] Could be replaced with this, to make it fall within a circular area centered directly on the tank: <table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td>Code Sample </td></tr><tr><td id="CODE">; Move invisible target0 to random spot around your tank/APC _dir = random 360 _dist = random _proximity _target0 setpos [(getpos _object select 0) + _dist * cos _dir, (getpos _object select 0) + _dist * sin _dir, (getPos _object select 2) + (random 3)] It also seems like the delay in the main loop could be a little longer, since tanks don't really shoot that fast. Also, in the smoke launcher script, there are a couple small changes you should make, because I can see some possible problems. First off, this line should be changed: <table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td>Code Sample </td></tr><tr><td id="CODE">; Get players tank _tank = vehicle player You should get that information from the _this variable, so you are always sure that _tank is the one that the action was added to: <table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td>Code Sample </td></tr><tr><td id="CODE">; Get players tank _tank = _this select 0 Along the same lines, you should change this line: <table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td>Code Sample </td></tr><tr><td id="CODE">; Only allow the driver to launch smoke if ((player == _tank) || (player != driver _tank)) then {exit} so that it gets its info from who actually used the action: <table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td>Code Sample </td></tr><tr><td id="CODE">; Only allow the crew to launch smoke if ( NOT((_this select 1) IN crew _tank) ) then {exit} I changed it so that anybody in the tank can fire the smoke, but if you only want one person to be able to do it, it should be the commander, IMO. These changes would make the smoke deployable by the AI, when ordered to do so by the player via the radio menu. It also could prevent problems with multiple tanks running the script (I don't know much about MP scripting, so perhaps this wouldn't be a problem). I can't think of a way to limit the # of smoke screens a tank can shoot ATM, without using global variables. However, you could put in a "recharge time", meaning you make a delay before adding the smokescreen action back to the tank. To do so, put this line just below the "start" label: <table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td>Code Sample </td></tr><tr><td id="CODE">; remove smokescreen action from tank (_this select 0) removeaction (_this select 2) Next, add this line right at the bottom of the script: <table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td>Code Sample </td></tr><tr><td id="CODE">; add smokescreen action back to tank (_this select 0) addAction ["Launch smoke", "abf_smoke_mp.sqs"] You could add more delay beyond the 62 seconds already in the script, if you wanted.

Just tried the demo mission out. First I hopped into the "scripted" tank (the one w/the smoke), and drove myself to the east. Spotted some enemy armor on the horizon thru my radar, and decided to drive up into the hill where they can't shoot me. Enemy chopper comes flying at me, and I order my AI gunner to start throwing some lead at it. I don't notice it at first, but the hind doesn't throw any missles my way. It just shoots its chain gun, which I can sometimes avoid by driving perpendicular to his direction of fire. I have to take over for the AI gunner who can't seem to lead off, and I shoot the thing down. Next, I drive up onto the hill, and shoot down at one of the tanks. He shoots back at me, but misses. I drive back behind the crest of the hill where he can't hit me while I reload. Then I drive back to the edge and repeat. Using this method, I destroy one of the T80s, and I'm sure that I could finish off the rest, so I quit. Next, I try things in the "unscripted" tank. I drive to the same hill as before, and up comes the hind, ready for action. This time, I notice he is shooting his real payload at me--his missles. I take a hit but can still function, and I frantically try to target him so my gunner can start shooting. He shoots another missle my way, but misses as I back down the crest of the hill. I remember how bad my gunner was at shooting down the last guy, so I hop into his seat just as the hind passes over my head, and starts to turn around. I switch over to Sabot, and score a direct aerial hit (is that even possible in RL?). Next I try to use the same strategy on the tanks as I did before, driving behind the crest of the hill to reload, only this time, they are more accurate when I show myself, and I end up getting blown to bits. ---------------------------------- Â So, lets see... what to say. Well, I don't think this script makes things very realistic. I agree with bn880; things are pretty realistic as is, as long as you have an AI as your gunner. An Abrams can be cruising thru the desert at 40mph, in the middle of the night (viewrange = 0), and can directly hit another tank from like 2000 meters or more away. Modern tanks have stabilized turrets, and computer controlled targeting systems which make this possible. Â The AI can do that in OFP. So can you, as long as you are commanding the tank with an AI gunner. I'll agree though, that when the player is the gunner, it is pretty tough and unrealistic, since he has to manually aim every shot. Â But having choppers not fire their missles at you?! As far as realism goes, that is ludicrous. Again, an apache can blast the *$#% out of a tank from thousands of meters away, IRL. It happened in Iraq many times. Best defense? Have some anti-aircraft protecting the tanks (eg, shilka). Â But I do have problems with the AI too. Like bn880 said, the AI doesn't act aggressively/realistically enough. When my tank was in those hills, the other tanks just sat there in the open, instead of trying to surround me. If you are on foot and hide behind a car, the tank just sits there and waits for you to get in sight again. Also, it REALLY pisses me off that the AI can magically tell the difference between an empty vehicle and a crewed one, even when its engine is off. Â Â Now, gameplay-wise, I'd agree that it is easier this way. It lets you go "rambo style" against other tanks, which is impossible otherwise. Normally there is no way a single tank could take out 2-3 other tanks AND a chopper. So, overall I'd say, that you met your goal, but that personally, realism is more my style. EDIT Oh yeah, is there any reason this script can't be SP compatible? Usually it's the other way around...

Condesending. There must be a misunderstanding on both our parts, because I thought you were just unclear on sorta basic scripting stuff. I guess I'm missing something, because I don't see why it wouldn't be clear that it could be run on multiple guns, since you pass the gun to the script when you execute it. Sorry, I was just trying to be helpful

ConfigMoves are a pain to learn, since there aren't any tuts out there, really. One of these days, I'll write one, so others don't have to learn the hard way. Problem is, I'm still learning Anyway, best thing to do is to grab BIS's commented config files, from the breath site. Take a look at how their moves are done. But I'm not entirely clear on what your animation looks like. So I'm assuming it is like a hand signal. Here goes a simple config to get you started: <table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td>Code Sample </td></tr><tr><td id="CODE"> class CfgMovesMC { class Default {}; class States { class ANIMATIONNAMEHERE: Default { file = FILENAME.rtm; speed = -3.0; // number of seconds to play the animation for (must be negative) looped=false; soundEnabled=false; duty = RestDuty; }; }; }; Try that out, and let me know how it works. Also, grab that BIS config, and start looking at it. Over time, it will make more and more sense to you.

It certainly is possible, and it certainly has been done before. One popular script is the Chain of Command's Command Engine. Another good script (which is also simpler) is Ronald Speirs' Two player Simple multiple squad control. I also found these other scripts at OFPEC. I haven't tried them out, but they may be worth a shot: Multi-squad MP by uiox Multiple Platoon Script by Emef Simple Multiple Squad control my moph (Ronald Speirs' script is based on this one) Also, ThruYerStErNuM's mission Unscripted War features a system for commanding multiple squads. However, you would have to depbo the mission to find the script he wrote. Shoot, I even made a mission where you get to control multiple squads (although in a very limited way). Check out Platoon Commander. So yes, it is possible to command more than 12 people.

No thanks, I'm busy enough as is . However, if you do get the animation(s) working on the model, I'd be more than happy to script it for you. Just PM me if you can get it working.

Adjustable sights: To add some realism and challenge to the game, this would be nice. Basically, you would be able to adjust windage and elevation on your weapon, via the action menu (or a dialog). So you would catch fired bullets with an EH, and then give them a slight 'nudge' in a certain direction via setvelocity, according to how the player has adjusted his sights. Wind simulation: This would go hand-in hand with the above suggestion. Basically, you would detect the direction/strength of the wind via a dropped particle. Then, at the same time you 'nudge' the bullet for the player's sight adjustments, you also 'nudge' the bullet according to the wind direction. Thus, if the player doesn't compensate for the wind, he isn't going to hit his target. You could also script a wind simulation to affect aircraft. Bullet air-drag simulation: Again, goes hand in hand with adjustable sights. This is also easy to script, but harder to figure out the math/physics of. Basically, you would gradually slow down a bullet's velocity as it flies, due to wind resistance. You could also gradually curve its trajectory due to wind direction, as an alternate to the above idea of giving it a one-time nudge when fired. And of course, there is always the big pie-in-the-sky: Improved AI script: Make the AI fight intelligently and realistically. This would include taking cover, giving suppressive fire, reacting to suppressive fire, performing envelopements (flanking movements), etc. Are you up to the challenge?

I think The_Oakster needs some help on the basic ideas behind using scripts. Oh yeah, and I wrote the script he's using, so I guess that makes this some sort of.... celebrity thread . Oakster, I highly suggest that you read the following Tut, at least until the "Slightly More Complicated Stuff" section: http://www.ofpec.com/editors/resource_view.php?id=13 That will do a better job explaining how scripts work than I can do, but I'll give it a quick shot anyway. Anywho, the way you would call this script is like this: [gun, group to man gun] exec "manMG.sqs" You could put that line of code in the "init" field of a unit, or in the "on activation" field of a trigger. Now, you would take that line, and replace the words in the brackets [ ] with the actual name of the gun, and the name of the group to man the gun. So, to make things easy for you, put this in the init field of the group leader who is going to man the gun: [Gun1, group this] exec "manMG.sqs" In the next group leader's init, just replace "Gun1" with the name of the next gun to be manned.

I thought that the streetlamps in the EU weren't supposed to be able to be turned on. But also, grab the streetlamps addon from ofp.info. It works great. They removed the ability to do that in resistance. I think they also changed something about the classname of streetlamps from CWC to Res, because I ran into the same problem in a mission I was doing, between when I upgraded to res.

Well, isn't it possible to make animat-able portions of models? For example, there are lots of units with moveable goggles. So perhaps you could make an animation for the model that moves its buttpack around, then just have a script that loops the animations whenever the unit is moving. I don't really know anything about models though, so I don't know if that is possible or not. Scripting-wise, it is easy, if you can make such an animation.

Hey all! I've just recently found some .pbo files that I just can't for the life of me seem to depbo! I try to open it with Amalfi's pbo decryptor v1.5, but I get this error: "unable to unpack file". Why on earth am I getting this error, and how can I get around it? Thanks for the help, in advance!

Thanks for the replies, all! I already tried using unpbo v1.3, but no luck. I'll try feersum.endjinn and vektorboson's suggestions though. Thanks

What do you mean, "encrypt their addons a bit further than usual"? I didn't know you could encrypt pbos. How exactly do you do that?

PJ, Head on over to the OFPEC forums. There you will find that any question you may have will be answered almost right away, and everybody is very helpful and willing to discuss mission making with you. Unlike the mission editing board here, which is kinda like a ghost town, OFPEC is home to tons of players who love editing. It actually takes much longer for me to get a question answered about addon making than it does for me to get a scripting question answered; here or on any other board. So my experience seems to be exactly the opposite of what you describe.

Argh!!! I forgot about that... An alternative might lie in the setvelocity command, but the problem there is that you have to setpos soldiers above the ground to use it. Dang, I'm outta ideas now

Yes and no... it would depend on how many units/objects were moving with the ship. If it were a relatively small number, say less than a dozen, then I don't think it would be much of a drain on slower CPUs. But yes, if you tried to do something like put a crew of 100 sailors onboard, along with lots of other equipment, that would definately be a huge drain on almost any CPU. But for most practical applications (maybe an aircraft carrier with 5 planes and 20 crew), it should work fine for most mid-upper range systems.

Hey, I got an idea on how you can have a moving ship, AND have all the stuff on the ship move with the ship: Basically, you would need the mission editor to place a trigger on the map, and make it the same size as the ship (I dunno, rectangular and 700x200 or something). Activation needs to be set to 'anybody present'. Next, you have a script that continually moves and rotates the trigger with the ship. You also have that script move every unit and vehicle in that triggers list with the ship as well. This would be the tricky part, but definately possible. Empty vehicles could pose a problem if they aren't they caught by triggers (are they?), but this could also be dealt with. The only thing you couldn't catch with this method would be static objects. HOWEVER, you could let the mission editor pass an array to the script of all the objects he has placed aboard the ship. Assuming these objects never move, it would be no problem to also make them move with the ship. Also, I think this has been said already, but just to make it clear; you can have moving ships that are really STATIC objects, not vehicles. You just need to have a setpos loop really. This assumes that the large ships aren't going to be running into other ships, or running into land of course, but with aircraft carriers/etc, this really shouldn't be a problem (assuming you are making a realistic mission). Any thoughts on my ideas above?

Are you talking about the ECP in general, or this specific version of the ECP config that I have posted here? Release versions of the ECP shouldn't have any problems with "cheating" online. Please let me know how you think it could be used to cheat. As for this ECP config; I'm not even sure how it would work in MP, if for example, on my client's config, it says that AI can see twice as well as on the server's config. Or how it would work with the wobble... I'm not very well versed on MP editing/config, so if you could enlighten me, it would be much appreciated

There is this word in english: "polite". It doesn't mean 'wordtricks or other verbal shit', it just means that you try not to piss other people off by the way you say something. I would give you a free pass on this, since obviously english isn't your first language, but your last post sounded deliberately insulting; language barrier or not. All I can say is, you obviously aren't going to gain anything by being insulting, so why do it? Things just work better when people are polite. Obviously Western society is working better than Russian society, so maybe that should be a clue.

Personally, I would love to have some big ships to play around with. They don't have to be able to move; actually, I don't see any reason at all for them to move. What, are you going to sail around the island in your aircraft carrier or something? However, smaller ships for landing that actually worked would be nice too (such as LCACs). Think of it people: you could have a mission where you're fighter squadron has to take out the enemy' aircraft carrier. Imagine what that would look like, if it were protected by a couple destroyers: there would be a huge dogfight in the air, you would have tracers flying everywhere, it would be awesome. As someone else suggested, you could have the ship in port, in which case it would be an awesome piece of scenery, and a great mission centerpiece. Or how about in MP? How about a REAL CTI, where instead of "building" things, you have to bring them ashore, like it would happen in real life? Each team would have a small fleet of ships that would be on opposite sides of the island. You would be limited by how much you can move ashore at one time, so instead of capturing towns, you would capture beaches. To win, you could destroy your opponents naval fleet, or you could take all the beaches on the island. Instead of just getting 'new and improved' versions of things that we already have in-game (land units, helos, tanks, etc), I think it would be great if somebody would try something different, and bring something new to the game.