KaRRiLLioN

I'm not sure I want to alter the core gameplay too much. Â Infantry were actually very effective in one mission last night. Â Someone set up AI MG and AT soldiers along the corridor from Dolores to Ortego and they took out several of our trucks moving forward to cap. Â I finally had to take a squad in to wipe them out. Also, a squad of AT infantry single-handedly held off a wave of 3 BMP's from an enemy FB. Â It isn't that their roles are limited, it's just that few people are trying to use them. Â Build an MH-6 or another transport chopper and take a load of them to enemy-held areas, and you can do some serious damage. Â Problem is, most people are not patient enough--myself included. Â But I always use infantry plus armor to hold forward bases. Also, I'm making it so Level 1 forward bases have infantry available right away so as to increase their roles.

I will be looking into a method for placing static defenses like MG's, etc, but when it comes to placing objects like sandbag fortresses, wire, etc.--those are considered buildings by ArmA, and as a result, their Position and Direction are NOT globally transmitted to all clients when built. Â In other words, you might build a perfectly straight line of wire barricades and then be horrified when tanks roll right through them. Â That's because the only position other clients receive is the initial placement of the objects. Now you might wonder how I made the base buildings "grow" and collapse when they die--a lot of scripting and hacking around that limitation which basically boils down to client-side buildings + killed evenhandlers to link all buildings on all clients. I'll be adding a new group list to the status list that will enable you to track your group units easily and disband those who you don't want anymore. Â I'll eventually put in a soldier cam as well. Now as for having issues guarding territories--it's always going to be a battle. Â If you're playing with fewer than 12 people on your team, it'll be harder, because AI aren't that bright about it. Â But you need to see the strategy. First - Cap closest towns to you for resources. Â Your main base will be the center of defense operations for those territories. Â Assign other teammates to keep AI there. Second - Look on the map for natural AI pathfinding bottlenecks and choose a territory just past it. Â Get an ammo truck there and cap it for a forward base. Â This new base will be your center of operations for territories on this side of the bottleneck. You'll also want a forward base in other remote areas, but not too many, of course. Â If you have to choose, always put a forward base in a territory with Energy as the resource, since energy determines building speed, and isn't necessary for more advanced vehicles. Now build plenty of defenses at the forward bases and keep them safe until they get to level 4 so you can roll out the heavy armor. One other thing--when you're talking about having issues guarding an areas because the enemy can keep pumping out heavy armor, I have to ask--where are you located and does the enemy have a Level 4 forward base nearby? Â If they do, then you made a mistake trying to establish a base there without first destroying their forward base. Â If you destroy their forward base, then their tanks have to come all the way from their main base and then you'll have more time to establish your own defenses. What I'm trying to say is--when the other team can pump out heavy armor and air units, it means you haven't been doing a good job at keeping their refineries down. Last night when we played the North vs South version, we actually created a noose of territories that we tightened around the Blufor team until all they had left was the airport. Â First, we established refineries in our own territories, then destroyed a forward base of theirs and established our own. Â From there, it took them a long time to reach our FB with their armor so it was able to level up. Â Then we built Strykers, etc. to guard it and sent out repair trucks to take nearby resources. Even though they kept destroying our refineries, our forward base established a strong presence and we could send out tanks from there to guard our refineries. Â After that, we crept north until they had nothing. Okay, this is a bit long, but what I'm saying is, you already have the tools to play, you just need to analyze the situation and realize it. Â TBH, static MG's and such aren't going to do much, especially when a sniper could take them out easily. Â Having armored units guard is much more effective. Aaaaanyway--last night we played some great games. Â We had around 40 people--probably would have gotten more, but the server kept disappearing from the browser list, dammit! Â Many of us had over 30 AI and no lag. Â It was AWESOME! Â ArmA like it's meant to be played.

@penfold : Yes, it goes in your MPMissions folder. Â If you're trying to play it by yourself, you need to start ArmA, click "Play" then "Multiplayer". Â When the server list comes up, click new. Â It should then be selectable from the mission list. Â @Victor--I'm looking over battle flow, etc. Â I'm gonna put up two versions for testing tonight. Â Both with 16-18 flags, one which uses most towns on the south island, and one which uses part of north and south with Corazol at the chokepoint. Just noticed there are 54 players on the server playing it right now. Â I might hop in and see how ArmA handles that many peeps with this mission, lol. EDIT: BTW, I figured out why AI were acting funny. Apparently the createUnit Array command doesn't transmit groups or something globally. I switched back to the old style createUnit and voila, all AI are fully engaged and active! I use that term loosely, since AI are still idiots.

Ozzzzzy--I'll get right to re-coding ArmA for that. Â ;P @causticwindow911 - Make sure you click the button to change view distance. Â Simply changing the combo box to the number won't do it--you have to confirm it with a button to the right of it. And TBH, I don't know if AI are constricted by view distance or not. Â I've had my squad AI shoot at stuff that was out of my view range plenty of times before. Â And yes, it's client side. Â Unfortunately, until 1.06 comes out, the haze in ArmA prevents a decent view even at 10K.

Thx Bratty, and yeah Ziggy--I'm Krusty the clown! @causticwindow-- 1 - you can change your view distance in the status menu at any time, up to a maximum of 3000. It's on the right side. 2 - I'll be tweaking values to balance things as it goes. I've already upped costs and times for some aircraft. 3 - Infantry are sort of a gray area. The AI tends to be so stupid sometimes, that they don't seem all that valuable to me. Sometimes the AT guys engage tanks--sometimes the AA soldiers decide to shoot down aircraft. I'll adjust them somewhat, but BIS needs to improve their brain capacity a touch more. 4 - I've thought of this one and I'll probably implement it at some point. I'll be designing a soldier-cam interface so you can watch any of your squad members from wherever you are, just like in RTS-3. I may add a button to delete them as well in case you get some idiot trying to swim the river or getting stuck in a bush. With the AI, you never know. In addition, I'm working on a command mode for the commanders, but I'm still thinking it out. I want the commander to have the ability to create independent squads to guard territories, but I don't know if it'll work with the bug in the ArmA netcode as it is--units built on remote clients/server don't seem to be able to join a player's group, etc. Anyway, thanks for the ideas!

Well we had some great games tonight. Had up to 43 players in one game without a hitch and 41 in another one. The only issues I see are related to netcode--apparently AI created on client machines are not seen very well by other clients' AI's. I've tested building them server-side but that doesn't seem to make a difference. Also, you can't get a count of units in another player's group either, and if you try to build AI server-side and join them to a player's group it doesn't work. I'm pretty certain it worked in 1.02 with RWS, which operates on similar principles. I hope that gets sorted with 1.06.

EDIT: Â To get around that issue, simply build the entire base right away. Â The script is supposed to reassign you as commander each time you die, but it can't since it never initialized a commander for the opposing team and is stuck looping, looking for a player on the other team to assign as their commander. Â With AI enabled, that should fix it. Decompile the mission first. To enable AI so you don't run into this issue, edit the description.ext file. Â Change the disabledAI=1; to disabledAI=0; BTW, Victor, the base only rebuilds if you drop from the server or JIP, not if you die. @Rumsfeld: Â The reason a coop/SP version wouldn't work well is because of the territories. Â The AI won't destroy the buildings on the territories and so they'll never take them from you. Â I'm sure with an addon or something it could be made possible, but ATM it isn't. Â You'd probably need a new FSM module for the RTS AI to work properly as well. Â I don't have the time for that. Â I made RTS-3 coop/SP enabled and I never once enjoyed playing against the AI. Â There's nothing quite like PvP, IMHO. @Vic: Â Some of Zig's ideas are good, but it'd detract from the strategy to make very single town a forward base. Â The entire idea is to make the team make a strategic decision--what's more important, a forward base to deploy units and respawn from, or the resources? Â Â It's all about battlefield flow. I suspect it might take people longer to adjust to the concept than a simple "take the territory" approach, but in the end, it makes for more realistic warfare. --For the marker size--I can't increase the size of the text, only the marker itself, and that doesn't increase the text size, only the icon. --building a squad of AI at once is a good idea --having a queue is something I might consider, but the reason I didn't include one is to keep the base from getting cluttered with unused built vehicles and also to keep people from making a ton of Cobras/etc at once. --Status menu text-if I make it too much larger, it might run off the side of the screen. Â And it wouldn't make a difference if I removed the other team's info, because the text size tends to run out of room vertically. Â Also, I think it's a good idea to track the enemy's resources so you'll know where their weak spots are. Â It's a strategic resource. --dynamic flags would be very hard to get to work right. Â What if you start with 4 people and then 20 more join? Â It would be difficult to have the mission adjust. --I prefer the random areas starts to commanders choosing a location. Â 9 times out of 10 both teams would choose the airport or some "perfect" location, and it'd suck for gameplay.

I just tried it a moment ago, BigRed and it worked for me. Try again to see if it might have been a glitch.

Sounds really interesting! Always great to see some new missions of this nature out.

Is there a way to get rid of the ever-present haze in ArmA? Even setting view distance to 5000 doesn't banish it, and neither does setting the fog values to 0, nor the overcast to 0. I've been searching this topic for a while because in some long-distance laser-target missions, it's a bit frustrating not to be able to see targets from the top of a mountain because of the haze, even on an otherwise crystal-clear day. Or was this sort of a game engine "cheat" to allow further view distances without really having further view distances?

I've been through this a dozen times with OFP, and I had hoped the find command or something might work with nested arrays, but it apparently doesn't. Let's say I have a nested array: mainArray = [[_x,_y,_z],[_xx,_yy,_zz]] and I want to remove [_xx,_yy,_zz] from that array. mainArray Find [_xx,_yy,_zz] is -1, i.e. null. mainArray  = mainArray - [_xx,_yy,_zz] still returns the same array. So the only way to really update this array is by using the set command.  mainArray set [(mainArray select 1) "Delete"] mainArray = mainArray - ["Delete"] And to use that, I have to find the position in the array that I want to update which requires a loop.  A loop means I need to make another function to take care of that which is a PITA. So, is there a miracle command I don't know about that can do this in real time, or do I need to make another function to take care of this?

Yes, for now. I have a server-side script that keeps count of a trigger which activates on Anything present and counts the sides. I was using nearestobjects, but since that's broken in MP right now, I had to use this instead. I'd hoped to go completely trigger-less, but that'll have to wait for 1.06 I suppose. So the server-side script that monitors the territories checks for a specific vehicle and then builds a base depending on the support vehicle driven there. The base then upgrades provided the side holds it over time and with it, the units that can be built. For that, this server-side function will update the array and then publicVariable a string which a client-side script will convert to the updated array. I plugged it into my script and it seems to work pretty well. I'd bet I could use some functions in other places as well once I get around to optimizing.

It's an array with several values for territory control that updates over time as the territory value is upgraded. I'm almost positive, as is apparently raedor, that I'll have to use a function for this. Here's a sample array-- and keep in mind these are all dynamic. <table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td>Code Sample </td></tr><tr><td id="CODE"> _tArr = format ["[[""%2"",1,%1Transport1 + %1Support,""%3""]]",_flagSide,_bldName,_varName] So it could look like: <table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td>Code Sample </td></tr><tr><td id="CODE"> ["Flag1 Base Level 1",[["HMMWV","Hummer","vcl",10,2,2,1]],"eastBuildingFlag3"] Then over time, the base upgrades and changes to level 2: <table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td>Code Sample </td></tr><tr><td id="CODE"> ["Flag1 Base Level 2",[["M1Abrams","M1A2 Abrams","vcl",10,2,2,1]],"eastBuildingFlag3"] So really the only thing changing is the vehicles available and the name of the territory base. I whipped up a function that I haven't tested yet, but I think it'll do what I need. Â I don't use them often as I should and haven't used a pure function for ArmA yet, so I'm not even sure my syntax is correct. Looks like this: <table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td>Code Sample </td></tr><tr><td id="CODE"> mainArray = [mainArray,_tArr] call compile preprocessfile "updateArray.sqf" <table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td>Code Sample </td></tr><tr><td id="CODE"> private ["_x","_newArray","_newName","_n"]; _mArray = _this select 0; _newArray = _this select 1; _newName = _newArray select 3; player sideChat format ["%1",_newArray]; _n = count _mArray; _x = 0; _set = FALSE; while {_x < _n} do { _name = _mArray select _x select 3; player groupChat format ["%1 | %2",_newName,_name]; if (_name == _newName) then {_mArray set [_x,_newArray]; _set = TRUE}; _x = _x + 1; }; if (!_set) then {_mArray = _mArray + [_newArray]}; _mArray

Yeah, it'd be great to also have some string functions as in SQL. The "like" command would be great in some instances, substring, etc. especially for contatenating unique strings. But I think we're kind of expecting BIS to create an entirely new programming language, which they practically already have, lol.

I had a mission similar to this that I made for OFP. One team had a VIP they needed to escort through a certain area while the other team tried to kill the VIP. It could be pretty fun when both sides were engaged. And the VIP was a commander or something so he did have guns. After a successful run, or if the VIP died, all players were reset to spawns and a new round started. Yours sounds definitely more covert and a lot of fun if you're the type who likes to lay traps, etc. You might have to make the VIP a player, though, cause the AI would be stupid in situations and be easy pickings for a player.

This works fine on a dedicated server. As I mentioned in an earlier post, BIS hasn't fixed the bug where if you don't have a gunner, then the vehicle will not rearm properly. If you get in as gunner, rearm and then get out, it'll work fine. I use it in several of my missions on my dedi.

If you want to trigger it only on your soldier, just create the trigger, then group the trigger to your soldier and you'll activate it when you enter it.

In the latest version I wrote a script to keep cars perpetually burning. Problem is, of course, that the fog keeps you from seeing them. It's too bad there's no "real" fog, i.e. in real life, you'd see the glow. In this, things sort of pop up. I decreased the fog slightly to account for this and added NVGoggles.

Yeah, it's pretty much done for now. Â I could make it fancier, I suppose, but until I figure out how to refill the secondary turrets on the tanks and UH60, there's not much I'll do to it. This makes it so you can hop in the gunner seat and rearm those stubborn aircraft with gunner positions. Â Apparently if you hop in as pilot, say in an AH1 in MP, when you try to rearm, the thing will keep resetting to 0. Â So you have to hop in as gunner, rearm it, then get back as pilot. Â After that, it seems to rearm just fine. Â I suspect it's because if you're both gunner and pilot, the it makes the unit local to you. Â *shrug* I toyed with another version that actually uses getArray to get ammo from the various turrets, but I found that every vehicle config has different turret names and such so it wouldn't be as universal--i.e. you'd have to edit it for future addons with different turret names and such. Â So I left it like this. Â It's not perfect, but it works well enough. Oh, and if you're wondering why I left it as SQS, I've had some odd performance issues with SQF scripts taking up too much CPU overheadin MP missions, so I'm sticking with good old SQS for now, especially in cases where several instances of the script could be running at once. <table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td>Code Sample </td></tr><tr><td id="CODE"> _pad = _this ;;repairList = ["UH60MG","Mi17_MG","Mi17","AV8B2","AV8B","SU34","SU34B","AH1W","AH6","KA50","AH6_RACS","M1Abrams","T72"] repairList = ["Land","Air"] #CheckLoop ~3 _x = 0 #SearchLoop ~1 _class = repairList Select _x _obj = NearestObject [_pad,_class] ?!Isnull _obj : Goto "Continue" Goto "Skip" #Continue ;;hint format ["%1\n%2",_obj,_pad distance _obj] _type = typeOf _obj ?_obj isKindOf "Man" : goto "Skip" ?_pad Distance _obj < 10 && Alive _obj && getPos _obj select 2 < 2 && Local _obj && count crew _obj > 0 : Goto "Found" #Skip _x = _x + 1 ?_x < Count repairList : Goto "SearchLoop" goto "CheckLoop" #Found _name = getText (configFile >> "CfgVehicles" >> _type >> "displayName") ?damage _obj > .01 && local _obj : titletext [format ["Repairing %1",_name],"PLAIN"] #RepairLoop ~.03 _obj setDamage (Damage _obj - .01) ?damage _obj > .005 : goto "RepairLoop" ?fuel _obj < 1 && local _obj : titletext [format ["Refueling %1",_name],"PLAIN"] #FuelLoop ~.03 _obj setFuel (fuel _obj + .01) ?fuel _obj < .99 : goto "FuelLoop" #Rearm _weapons = weapons _obj ?count _weapons < 1 : goto "EndArm" ?count _weapons == 1 && _weapons select 0 in ["CarHorn", "BikeHorn","TruckHorn","SportCarHorn"] : goto "EndArm" ?local _obj : titletext [format ["Rearming %1",_name],"PLAIN"] ?!local _obj : goto "EndArm" {_obj removeWeapon _x} foreach _weapons ~1 {_obj addWeapon _x} foreach _weapons _x = 0 #GetMagazines ~1 _w = _weapons select _x _mags = getArray (configFile >> "CfgWeapons" >> _w >> "magazines") ?_type == "AH1W" && count _mags > 1 : _mags = ["38RND_FFAR"] ;;player groupChat format ["_w: %1, _mags: %2",_w,_mags] {_obj removeMagazine _x} foreach _mags ~1 {_obj addMagazine _x} foreach _mags _x = _x + 1 ?_x < count _weapons : goto "GetMagazines" ~2 ?local _obj : titletext [format ["%1 is ready to go.",_name],"PLAIN"] #EndArm ~30 goto "CheckLoop"

Yes. You can create empty parachutes in the air, or simply create the chutes, then create AI and move them in as drivers.

One free server restarter that I use is serverdoc. http://www.serverdoc.com

I've adjusted the zombies to do more damage depending on the level of difficulty. I'm also working in a script to make them run a little faster without killing themselves in the process, and also to make AI zombies do a little leaping.

Veeektor--SQF is just a more streamlined version of SQS. execVM is used to exec an SQF script whereas exec is used to do the same for SQS. When you put that in the mission editor, you need to put a dummy variable to make the parser happy. (the thing that gives you errors when you screw up) I.e. var = [thislist select 0] execVM "scipt.sqf" When something triggers a list, then thislist means whatever is in the trigger that activated it. Say, a plane named Plan1 is grouped to a trigger. When the plane hits the trigger, thislist select 0 is the same as Plane1. Thislist would literally look like an array like so: [plane1] Soooo hope that didn't cornfuse you more.

Unicorn, yes, that would be the simplest solution. But if a person wanted to get complex, they could also get all those variables and pass them to the towed vehicle. In this case I'd prefer to move the vehicle to [0,0,0] -- it should stay above the water when it's moved like that, but I'm not sure. Of course you could always put a spot somewhere on the map to relocate it.

Are you talking about adding weapon CARGO or adding magazines to a vehicle's weapon? You're probably wanting: {_vehicle addmagazine _x} foreach magazines _vehicle This will only work properly if you haven't zeroed out the magazines in the weapon before getting in. In other words, if you fire all the ammo, then run the command, it'll work. If you put the vehicle in the editor without any ammo, i.e. setVehicleAmmo 0, then the command won't work. Not sure why. If you want to add ammo cargo to a vehicle, then use satexas69's example.