JonasBane

A Bizon, Dragonov, and some RPGs are the more useful items you get from that convoy mission. You can certainly get by without them if you are able to scavenge them from later missions. I like to equip the last few guys of my squad with just an AK and four clips, leaving them room to pick up other useful goodies after a firefight. When you're playing the convoy mission, its best to use RPGs on the armor leading and behind the trucks. Have one of your guys target the BMP and have two go after the T-72. I put three guys with RPGs in the rocks to the south of the ambush point, and three more guys armed with MGs and AKs on the northern rocks. This way, the RPG team can take out the armor while the second team has a good vantage point to eliminate the infantry that comes out of the trucks. When the other tanks come to investigate, move your ambush up a few hundred meters so you don't end up blowing up the trucks in the resulting carnage. If you have guys to spare, you can have them drive off with the trucks before the tanks arrive. This gives you plenty of time to sort out equipment away from the scene of the crime, and you don't have to worry out the infantry patrol ruining your little shopping spree. Jonas Bane There's Love Inside

I snuck around to the left and up by the vehicles like everyone else. My first AI was equipped with a sniper rifle and I set him on the hill near the start, so he could see the two guys patrolling in the north east. Gave him orders to target the first one. My second AI received an AK-74 and was placed a little further up, on the hill with all the bushes to the NE of the village. He was targeting the second guy in that group. I went through the W side of the village with a Bizon and snuck behind the only stationary soldier who was north of the church. Once the second patrol crossed my sights, I took out all three and gave my buddies the order to fire. Next up was to steal the two RPGs and move everyone out to the meeting point. If you were quiet there's a lone BMP that comes to check out the base that arrives a few minutes after you start shooting. If he lingers in the town too long he'll call up another BMP and a T-72, as well as a squad of guys from the south. Best bet it to be gone by then, or to take out the first BMP which will buy you a little more time. Jonas Bane There's Love Inside

What range are you firing at? Jonas Bane There's Love Inside

Keep in mind that the bullet comes from the barrel of the gun, and your scope is mounted above this. Sometimes you can see over a hill or other obstruction with the scope but the remainder of your gun is still "buried" in the ground. Try crawling forward a little more and using freelook to check the barrel of the gun. As long as its peeking over the mountain and clear of obstructions, you should be in business. If you're sniping and need to stay stealhy, try finding a bush or some other cover instead of firing from the top of the hill. This way you can avoid shooting the ground entirely, and you have a little extra concealment. Guys sitting at tops of hills are pretty easy to spot, but ones hiding among bushes or other objects are more difficult to recognize. Jonas Bane There's Love Inside

So I just finished the Resistance single player campaign and, damn, that was pretty cool. Â The missions were varied. Â The new equipment and personel rules were cleverly implimented. Â In all, I was very impressed. Â Before I turned to the single missions I thought I'd give multiplay a go. After two nights of experimentation, my only verdict is that it sucks. Maybe that needs some clairification. Â Within hours of installing the original OpFlash, my roommate and I were already playing some LAN coop games. Â Our neighbor stopped by that afternoon, saw how cool the game was, and he and his roommate came over and joined our little LAN party. Â We must have played that Return To Eden mission a million times. Â The next day I started making missions in the editor, and my roommate downloaded some missions from the web so we'd have more for the next weekend. Â Since then, our little group has grown to a monthly 8v8. You would think that I'd make the transition over to public internet games a little better. Â Sure there's more lag, and you don't have voice communication with your team. Â But the game has plenty of teamwork enhancing tools to keep everything running smoothly. Unfortunately, a typical pub game boils down to Counter-Strike gameplay. Â Step one, get a big gun. Â Step two, find bad guy. Â Step three, shoot him. Â Go back to step two. Â Occasionally you die and have to start over. Â Sometimes people mess up on step two and shoot the good guys. Â But we're talking about the same kind of gameplay. Â The same lack of organization. Â For all practical purposes, why aren't we playing Counter-Strike? Because OpFlash can do large playing fields. Â Yes, I'll give you that. Â CS can't do large outdoor areas very well. Â But its not like its helping our gameplay any. Â This just means people can get further apart so you never have firefights bigger than a 2 v 2. Â Your mission objectives are often thousand of meters apart so you're spending most of your time running to where you need to go. Â Besides that, most players don't even recognize the existence of mission objectives or know how find their location on the map so they just get lost anyway. But OpFlash has vehicles! Â That's true, tanks and helicopters are cool. Â But their only practical purpose in the game seems to be to get you from point A to point B faster. Â I have yet to see a tank that was manned by more than one person. Â Or a helicopter for that matter. Â Tank battles are simply both tanks coming to a stop so they can switch to the gunner spot, then proceeding to pound at each other until one blows up. Â Helicopters do impressive WTC imitations as they proceed to crash into buildings, tanks, and various hills. Â But I haven't seen any provide close air support or do a transport that involved returning to base. OpFlash is a mil-sim and CS is a twitchy action game! Â I for one, would be fooled. Â Have you seen anyone move as a squad? Â Have you played on a server that used the Cadet visual cues so you could find your team? Â Or played a mission that had more than two people per group? Â Used team chat to work out a plan that wasn't ditched ten seconds after getting into the game? Â In fact, have you even used the radio commands? Â From what I've seen, no. I'm wondering what went wrong. Â How did we get a game geared towards tactical squad combat and turn it into another deathmatch FPS? Â Maybe because we are all 14 year old kids who suck as CS and want to be good at something, so we gave OpFlash a try. Â Or maybe because we're not using all the features that this game provides to establish a true team based tactical mil-sim. Â Personally, I'm betting on the latter. Therefore, I'd like to offer up some suggestions of things we can do to improve the situation. Â I invite you to add your own. Â Maybe we can hash out a few ideas here and get our community back on track. Mission Makers - Keep It Small A 30 v 30 game that involves the entire western side of Norgova with 17 tanks, 10 helis, and a bunch of other vehicles simply doesn't work with the average 12 players on a server. Â 6 people on a side is barely a squad, and having lots of real estate in the mission area makes things feel mighty empty. Â Adding vehicles is not the solution. Â This just helps to spread things out even more. Â Instead, focus more missions on a single village or specific landmark. Â I shouldn't be spending most of my game time either traveling to an objective or sitting there waiting for the bad guys to show up. Server Admins - Keep Cadet Mode On Alright, I know I'm probably going to get alot of flak for this. Â There seems to be some kind of secret rule that Cadet mode sucks. Â But I would contend that it adds essential tools to help players work as a team. Â First off, its cake for people to find out where they are on the map. Â Personally, I'm pretty good at finding out where I am using landmarks and whatnot. Â But a majority of players have a hard time figuring it out. Â And with the massive play areas that some of these missions provide its easy to get lost. Second, the visual cues to help find your teammates is essential. Â I can't recognize anyone by their ingame faces, nor do I have the time to run all the way over to them so I can see it. Â With the Friendly Tags, simply passing my cursor over them tells me what they are (soldier, sniper, officer) and who they are. Â This way, you can talk to people using their name instead of "guy on hill west of flag hiding in bushes." (which, by the way, is usually most of your team =) ) Â It also cuts back on friendly fire issues. Â Sure, we can tell everyone to memorize the uniforms. Â But when I steal an enemy tank and then get shot by my own RPG guys, you really can't blame them since they have no way of knowing. Finally, when you do play a mission that has squads (all two of them it seems), you can actually give them useful orders. Â Giving someone a target command will provide them with a little bracket so they know what you're talking about. Â Working as a team in a vehicle is much easier as well, since the tank commander is actually useful instead of simply providing radio chatter. Â Team leaders also get visual cues to help them find objectives, making navigation less of a burden. BIS - Give us voice comms, please! I know I'm probably asking for the impossible here. Â Implimenting VON with the new sockets code will probably take a few months of development to get it working right. Â But it provides a critical component to effective teamwork. Â Events happen simply too fast for players to convey information effectively using text. Jonas "snpr ne flg 400m L of blu bldg" Quinicrux "what?" Jonas "sniper north east of flag" Quinicrux "where?" Jonas "behind that blue building" Quinicrux "what side?" Jonas "the left" Quinicrux "you mean the close blue building?" Waring Hudsucker "OH NO... 4 IS DOWN!" Quinicrux "or the far away one?" Quinicrux "jonas?" Waring Hudsucker "2 IS DOWN!" I've had that happen one too many times. Â Sure, we could all start using Roger Wilco or Teamsound. Â But that just means I can talk to other people who are using the same software and I'm still madly typing away to the rest of my team. Finally, the most controversal... Turn on the AI Before you start flaming me, let me explain. Mission makers like to make things epic. Â Why have a CTF in a small village when you can have a grand battle that takes place across many villages. Â Imagine the massive engagements that could take place as one army tries to take a checkpoint from another. Â Or a coordinated strike to steal a flag and get it back to base. Â Now, jump on a pub server and look for things like "grand battles" and "coordinated strikes." Â It doesn't happen. Its hard to provide teamwork when you don't know the people you're working with. Â If I give you an order, you'd probably ignore it. Â Likewise, I'd ignore the ones you gave me. Â The reason is because we each have different ideas of how to play. Â But if you had a squad of 3 AI players under your command, and I had a squad of 3 under mine, we each could do our own thing and still be successful. Â I could crew a tank and roll into downtown and you could get two helicopters airborne and strike them from above. Â Our third buddy could put a sniper on the hill and have the rest of his team secure the village. Â This is starting to sound like a "grand battle" that, believe it or not, has a "coordinated strike." Â Something that without AI would be enormously difficult to duplicate. But what about lag? Â I'm guessing its really not that big of an issue. Â At worst, an additional AI player is like adding an additional client to the game. Â Except this client doesn't need any bandwidth from the server and basically has a zero ping. Â For each client its like adding another tank or other object. Â Sure, playing that Battlefields mission over the internet might get us into trouble. Â But its still the easiest way to have a 30 v 30 game without handing out invitations and renting a hotel conference room. Anyway, if you've gotten this far, thanks for sparing a few minutes to read through this. Â Throw up your suggestions and we can start making this game live up to its potential. Jonas Bane There's Love Inside

If you are carrying both the flare and grenades for the under-barrel launcher, you need to "reload" the red flare to get it to work. Press spacebar until the grenade option is active. In your action menu, you will see an option for "reload flare (red)." This will load the flare and your firing option should now represent this. After you set it off, you can reload the standard grenades by selecting "reload grenade." from the action menu. Jonas Bane There's Love Inside

With a pistol actively equipped, you can run forever without hearing the heavy breathing sound or suffering from decreased aim. Jonas Bane There's Love Inside

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (NightEye @ July 16 2002,16:13)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">About the tanks : there is still what I think is a bug (it was also in CWC & Red Hammer): When you are the tank commander, you target the ennemies for your tank squad, saying "T80 there, T72 there, AT Soldier other there", etc... But while your saying all this, you CANNOT say to your gunner "FIRE" ! Which means that even if you have targeted an ennemy tank or RPG Soldier, that stupid gunner will NOT fire until you order it ! And of course, in the mean time, you have eaten 1, 2 or even 3 rockets ! This bug makes me mad !!!<span id='postcolor'> Can you solve this by using the manual fire function? You would still have to right click to target things, but once you give the order to fire the gunner should let loose a round. Only downside is that the gunner may not be ready to shoot when you click. So you can't string together a series of commands as effectively. And with the machine gun, he'll only shoot one burst every click. This could make mopping up infantry squads a little more frustrating. Jonas Bane There's Love Inside

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (Hit_Sqd_Maximus @ July 16 2002,22:42)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">32. There are periscopes like in the ZSU driver and BMP passengers, but there are NO working mirrors on the trucks and cars.<span id='postcolor'> To make the periscope effect, the interior texture for the BMP and ZSU is left empty where you see the exterior. This way the game engine just draws the outside first, then draws the interior of the vehicle on top of it. Think of it as taking a piece of paper and cutting a hole in the middle. You could color the paper to look like the inside of a tank and the impression would be that you're looking out of a tank. Reflections, atleast realtime, are very intensive operations to perform. Basically, you would have to draw the entire game world twice. Once from the original perspective and once from the mirror's perspective. Adding additional mirrors only adds additional passes the game engine needs to make. With a typical BSP based engine (Quake is a good example) you can get away with this because you're really only drawing one room and any room you can see from that point every frame. With flashpoint, its harder to "cheat" as it becomes very difficult to determine what you need to draw to make the scene. Even if you're looking at a building wall and it fills your entire view, the game still has to draw that building's interior, the other side, and the 900m of terrain behind it. Not an easy task. =) Jonas Bane There's Love Inside

Oy, checked the tracking of my Resistance order through UPS today. Apparently it got left on a truck and made a nice detour to Texas. So maybe it'll get here today, maybe Monday. Looks like I'll be trying the Ralph method. =) Jonas Bane There's Love Inside

I usually put my AT guys in a seperate team and keep them farther back. Its much easier when they are the last two guys in my squad. This way they'll switch over to their rifles once I call out the infantry targets, and since they are farther back they are less likely to be targeted by the bad guys. If I come across some tanks, I can call them up and get them into position instead of having them shoot as soon as they see them. Jonas Bane There's Love Inside

Yep, same thing here. Good thing I have the day off. =) Jonas Bane There's Love Inside

See that island on the south part of the map? Two words: multiplayer mayhem. =)

See that island on the south part of the map? Two words: multiplayer mayhem. =)

See that island on the south part of the map? Two words: multiplayer mayhem. =)