Jump to content
Bohemia Interactive Forums

Hovis

Member
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Content Count

    69

  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Medals

Posts posted by Hovis

  1. Posted

    With an Iraq mod, if you want to do justice to the realism of ArmA you should really have a crack at dealing with the political realism of the situation on the ground, regarding the factions and such.

    By this I mean the forces should really stack up as follows:

    Blue:

    US Military.

    Iraqi Military/Police.

    Independent:

    Mercenaries

    Local secular militias

    Criminals

    Opfor:

    Imported Islamist insurgents

    Turkish special forces

    Iranian special forces

    Sunni/Shia extremists

    It's worth bearing in mind the brunt of the fighting, or at least the dying, in Iraq is being done by the Iraqi army and police and any mod that seeks to accurately reflect the conflict should take that into account. It should also take into account the cheeky sods nipping over the border from Iran and Turkey, the barking mad Jihadi tourists from all over the globe and the huge army of mercenaries involved on both sides.

  4. Posted

    Lo folks, I'm looking for some general help with my all round mission making ability, as I am really but a humble nub.

    Something I've been looking at lately with missions is setting the scene, exploiting ArmA's ability to make really spectacular scenes unfold and so on and so forth. For instance I like to monkey with lights, so on one night spec ops mission I set it during a storm and had helicopters patrolling with their lights on, all looked very nice.

    But I've noticed some things hurt the frame rate more than others, and some flat out hammer it. For example I had a zombie mission where the mission begins with the players flying over a town where the zombies are eating the civvies, big mistake, the server rolled around crying.

    So anyway, long and the short of it is, what are the least server/system hungy bits of eye candy and what are the big no no's? I mean for instance are vehicles a big system hog?

    As an aside to this I've been wondering for an ordinary mission for, say, ten or so players, what would you folks consider to be the maximum amount of units? Can the game handle around a hundred or so, or should I scale it all right back?

    Any help much appreciated. biggrin_o.gif

  6. Posted

    Quick question, will the Turkish forces be Bluefor, Opfor, or independent? Personally I think they'd be good candidates for Independent or Opfor, as they are most likely to end up fighting against (in potential campaigns) US, Greek or coalition friendly Iraqi forces. But that said are there any Bluefor irregular or Iraqi troops?

    Damn politics, you'd think three factions in a game would be enough to cover every side in a situation.

  8. Posted

    I'm a big fan of zombie mods, and my clan plays a lot of Yomie/Crappy Zombie Mod missions, so I'd like to see work put in on them. Some sort of CTI persistent thing like Evolution but with armies of the undead could be amazing. I make Zombie missions, mostly really simple ones, but I'll nose around and see how practicable such a map might be.

  9. Posted

    Just wondering if anybody is working on building Turkish troops, or if not, if they could shed some light on mods that could be used as a suitable alternative?

    I figure with the Turkish/Iraqi border now a serious flashpoint, with the potential to provide a shooting match between Turks, Coalition troops, Iraqi military and Iraqi/Kurdish irregular troops as well as the fact that Turkey and Greece could theoretically kick off as well, a Turkish army mod could see a lot of use for this region. Luckily enough there are some Greek military mods already as well, so that potential theatre is halfway done.

    As far as I can remember the Turkish (I'll nip off to do some research in a mo, just wanted to post this first) aren't a former Soviet client state or anything like that, but I'm not too sure. I'll have a looksee.

  11. Posted

    Lo folks, I'm running a 24 player server for my clan/mates and it's usually fine except recently I've noticed that it won't run some missions. I select the mission on the list and it just thinks about it for a second then returns to the mission list.

    At first I thought it could be a version problem, checked and it's 1.08 all round.

    Then I thought it could be a mod problem, but the server has all the mods that are in use, and I'm pretty sure it has the same mods and versions of mods that I have, even ones I haven't used.

    That said there is something odd in addons, I've noticed that some of the .pbo files in my versions are of a different size to the ones on the server, no idea what causes that, but I thought that could be a factor perhaps?

    Could it also be possible that me copying the .pbo's from my addons folder to the server addon folder, rather than using them fresh from the .rar file could be a problem?

    I'm not sure what's doing it, but I'd really like to rectify the problem is possible.

    I'm probably going to reinstall and repatch the server anyway, but wanted to know how to avoid this happening again.

    Any help much appreciated.

  15. Posted

    Okay here's the problem. I have a perfect helicopter landing set up, two Blackhawks touch down next to each other on a beach, they release a squad of troops each, then fly off. I tested this a lot in SP, made sure it all worked perfectly, all ready I thought for the multiplayer beta.

    So I give it a go, and a couple of problems appear.

    1. The helicopter containing the second multiplayer player (I'm in the first one) doesn't attempt to land, it merely hovers near the LZ.

    2. The helicopter of the server player (me) drops me off and flies off with my whole squad.

    There are four helicopters in total, all using an identical system of waypoints and an invisible H, and all release a squad. The two helicopters with AI squads do the job fine in SP or MP, and when I logged out of the MP (when a friend hosted) my helicopter then went off and carried out orders as instructed.

    Anybody able to help? It's bloody weird and I have no idea how to fix it.

  19. Posted

    I think troops in the same unit as their transport tend to dismount as a defensive measure if they see an enemy. If your beach landing is under fire that could explain it. I'm not sure though, I am a monkey. What I do know is that if I want reliable transport AI the best way to achieve it seems to be to make the transport and the troops that ride in it separate groups.

    So I'd have the squad leader called Grunt1 and the transporting BMP called BMP1 (cos I'm imaginative). Then run this line:

    {_x moveincargo BMP1} foreach units Grunt1;

    I think that is right, but if it isn't you should still be able to find the accurate syntax somewhere online easily enough.

    With the unit and it's ride split up what I then do is a get out order for the squad synced to an unload order for the transport at the same location.

    With a bit of luck, that should fix it.

    No guarantees though, that's just how I'd try it. smile_o.gif

  20. Posted

    Lo folks, I'm still working on my night mission. Since Paraiso has no street lights I was wondering if there's a way to switch the lights on vehicles to always on, even if the vehicle is fighting and operating on a high state of alert? I want to add Mi-17 helicopters with their lights on you see, sweeping over the city, adding tracers (both to and from) their own lights, and possibly their own explosions, to the darkness.

    Any ideas how it's done? Most of the lighting commands I have found seem to pertain to street lighting, not vehicles.

  21. Posted

    What can one do to make an aircraft literally explode in mid-air? Anything simple? Or does it all have to be scripted etc? I wouldn't know how to do any of that old nonsense biggrin_o.giftounge2.gif

    If I had to guess it would be something along the lines of a sabot or bomb hitting the aircraft. (I'm using this for another one of my videos. I don't know what I'm going to call it yet. Perhaps base attack 3 smile_o.gif)

    Here's how I did this for the intro to a mission.

    First, I grabbed a pre-made IED script. This one by Jeevz to be exact. You can download it as a file somewhere, but I'm sure if you just cut and paste this into an ied.sqs file you're sorted.

    Quote[/b] ]

    ; Improvised Explosive Device Script

    ; By Jeevz

    ; v1.2 12/13/06

    ; This script will create an explosion of a

    ; selected size on any object when called

    ; The arguments are [objectName, explosionPower]

    ; Explosion Power will be 1 of 4 choices

    ; Small - Good for Anti-Personnel use

    ; Medium - Will usually disable a Humvee without killing the occupants

    ; Large - Will usually destroy a passing humvee and kill or severly injure all occupants, will disable the tracks and possibly engine on M1A1

    ; Huge - Nothing will survive, I mean... it's HUGE :-)

    ; Example script call --> [theCar, "Small"] exec "IED.sqs"

    ;start script

    _theObject = _this select 0

    _theExplosion = _this select 1

    ;locate the Object to be blown up

    _bombLoc = GetPos _theObject

    _bombLocX = _bombLoc select 0

    _bombLocY = _bombLoc select 1

    _bombLocZ = _bombLoc select 2

    ; Deterimine the ordinance used to create the explosion

    ? (_theExplosion == "Small") : _ammoType = "R_57mm_HE"

    ? (_theExplosion == "Medium") : _ammoType = "M_Sidewinder_AA"

    ? (_theExplosion == "Large") : _ammoType = "M_Sidewinder_AA"

    ? (_theExplosion == "Huge") : _ammoType = "Bo_GBU12_LGB"

    civvy1 globalchat _ammoType

    ; Get the explosion size and blow the object up

    ? (_theExplosion == "Small") : goto "SMALL"

    ? (_theExplosion == "Medium") : goto "MEDIUM"

    ? (_theExplosion == "Large") : goto "LARGE"

    ? (_theExplosion == "Huge") : goto "HUGE"

    #SMALL

    _ammoType createVehicle[_bombLocX, _bombLocY, _bombLocZ]

    _theObject setdammage 1

    civvy1 globalchat "Small"

    exit

    #MEDIUM

    _ammoType createVehicle[_bombLocX, _bombLocY, _bombLocZ]

    _theObject setdammage 1

    civvy1 globalchat "Medium"

    exit

    #LARGE

    _ammoType createVehicle[_bombLocX, _bombLocY, _bombLocZ]

    _ammoType createVehicle[_bombLocX, _bombLocY, _bombLocZ]

    _ammoType createVehicle[_bombLocX, _bombLocY, _bombLocZ]

    _ammoType createVehicle[_bombLocX, _bombLocY, _bombLocZ]

    _ammoType createVehicle[_bombLocX, _bombLocY, _bombLocZ]

    _ammoType createVehicle[_bombLocX, _bombLocY, _bombLocZ]

    _ammoType createVehicle[_bombLocX, _bombLocY, _bombLocZ]

    _ammoType createVehicle[_bombLocX, _bombLocY, _bombLocZ]

    _ammoType createVehicle[_bombLocX, _bombLocY, _bombLocZ]

    _ammoType createVehicle[_bombLocX, _bombLocY, _bombLocZ]

    _ammoType createVehicle[_bombLocX, _bombLocY, _bombLocZ]

    _ammoType createVehicle[_bombLocX, _bombLocY, _bombLocZ]

    _theObject setdammage 1

    civvy1 globalchat "Large"

    exit

    #HUGE

    _ammoType createVehicle[_bombLocX, _bombLocY, _bombLocZ]

    _theObject setdammage 1

    civvy1 globalchat "Huge"

    exit

    Then the first time I tried it I made a helicopter explode with this line:

    [Heli1, "Large"] exec "ied.sqs";

    Bind that to a trigger the helicopter flies through and POW. It goes nova. But it doesn't look great, and still didn't, even when I stepped it up to a "huge" explosion.

    What worked for me in the end was not exploding the aircraft itself, but exploding one of the crew inside it. In this case I used an Mi17, so I stuck a guy in the back called Bomb, and ran this script on the trigger.

    [bomb, "small"] exec "ied.sqs";

    Sure enough there's a small explosion, like a grenade hit but bigger, inside the helicopter, which does enough damage to cause a fuel leak and to effectively force it to land, fast and hard, and bingo, you've got a cinematic crash sequence.

    Now I haven't tried this with a single seater aircraft, and no matter which way you try it with this premise you're going to get a fatal crash (cos your pilot is obviously sprayed all over the cockpit). But you should get a nice trail of smoke and crash into the ground effect, rather than a burst in mid air job.

  25. Posted

    I was really disappointed by the building garrisons. They are really good until the insta-kill garrison units appear. Flame tanks and grenadiers. Completely ruined that aspect of the game for me.

×