madrussian

Awsome island! I love the parking lots and alleyways behind the buildings. Handful of areas for potential improvement: * There seem to be almost no enterable buildings in the bigger towns. Especially enterable houses you'd expect on the frindges (for important mission locations, etc). * Here and there (especially on the hills), there are huge empty spaces that seem kind of odd... Like there should be more variety. * The forests could use a bit more density, as they currently kind of feel like walking through a park. I do love the towns and the mine, and the general feel of the island. Overall, great effort!!! :)

This wargame released only a couple of days ago: NVP-xeybO9k The list of features is blowing my socks off: That's like everything I've been wanting to put into my dream game I've been planning for years... only it's out now and ready to be downloaded/played!!! :eek: Sure sounds like Total War meets awsome High Fantasy meets Ultra-Dynamic Gameplay, all wrapped up into one package! :D The only thing I see missing is the ability to ride into battle in 1st/3rd person - Mount and Blade still rules the roost in that department. But KAtRPW does have one big advantage: Apparently, you can eventually win, unlike in M&B (which goes on and on, starts getting repetitive, and never encourages you to start another game). Perhaps KAtRPW has multiple endings? And hopefully ways to lose as well? I suppose we shall see. Hmmm... Maybe these two developers should get together and deliver the end-all-be-all fantasy wargame?!? :cool: I'm thinking KAtRPW will probably turn out to be a great game to compare notes on regarding other people's varying expereince playing through it. Indeed there appears to be a huge amount of replayability here. Anyhow, I took the leap... downloading it now on Steam!

Amid Thanksgiving Holiday in the US, I had a few hours to finally check it out. Here's a small update (very initial impressions mind you): The turn based campaign map looks great, evokes a sense of wonder and excitement, and really makes you want to go exploring and see what's out there. The campaign system itself is highly dynamic, extremely playable, and ripe with possibility. That's the good news, which I'll get to in a moment. The real-time battles, however, leave something to be desired. The mechanics are nowhere near as advanced as in TW. * When soldiers clash in hand-to-hand combat, it's really not that convincing. The animations are simple and to be frank it looks kind of cheesey. Perhaps a bigger problem though... Seems to me like only small edges of the formations are actually doing any fighting, with men rigidly standing in formation, refusing to break ranks to attack an enemy mere meters away. * There appears to be no morale system in place. As in, after four or so battles, I haven't seen anyone fleeing on either side yet! Zero! Unless something changes, here every victory in battle results in complete annihilation of the other side! :eek: (IIRC, I think the player has an button option to retreat, but I certainly haven't seen the AI doing their version of that button.) * Your heros will knock opponents through the air, which is cool. But this actually is not very dynamic at all. After watching only a few iterations, seems like they are more-or-less following the same path through the air. Maybe once droves of men go flying at once (like in the trailer), this effect will get better. * This one more a matter of personal preference, but I really don't like how battle victory is set up. There is a sort of "victory bar" in place and when each battle starts, both sides are forced to make a mad dash from neutral starting locations toward 4 to 5 victory locations. If you hold the victory locations (or kill enemy), the enemy's bar drops, and once one side chips the other's bar to zero, that side acheives victory. Kind of reminds me of Capture and Hold the Flags in FPS, and it's quite a laughable gimick, imo. What's wrong with the good old "drive the enemy from the field of battle" paired with a good morale system where men actually flee the field of battle?!? Furthermore, why don't the defenders hold the victory locations when the battle starts?!? :confused: * Here's the real killer - Although there are three different camera modes for the real time battles, none of them are intuative or easy to use. Rolling the wheel-button does not seem to do what you think it should, resulting in the need for a second operation to adjust the horizon to maintain view on what you were looking at... seemlingly a problem in all three modes. That coupled with the fact that you cannot strafe the camera while pressing middle mouse to look around. Very user-unfriendly, and if there are hills and forests, forget it! Indeed, Total War has honed the real-time camera over the years, and this game should have taken some notes in this department. --------------------------------- Now, the turn-based campaign map on the other hand... some truley groundbreaking stuff there. It's plays like an branching interactive novel, and it seems I cannot seem to turn the pages quickly enough. There is plenty of intrigue, betrayal, and great dynamic gameplay possibility in place. :) I'm running late to a football game, but I'll most likely come back at some point and provide a more thourough description of the wonderful and viceral campaign map sometime soon. At this point though, it's a tough sell. Will the positives of the groundbreaking dynamic campaign map and heros system be enough to overcome the underwhelming real-time combat? Having only played a few hours so far, I'm not convinced either way yet. But one thing is for sure, there is definately a auto-resolve battle button, so if worst comes to worst, I'll definatly see how my own version of the dynamic story of Aurthur and his Knights ultimately unfolds. :D btw - Anyone else get this game yet? Hope I didn't scare you all off! :p

WIC = World in Conflict, right? I played the demo to WIC, and I don't recall any dynamic turn-based features... were these present in the full version of the game? Anyhow, WIC was a very cool game regardless. Very nice feel of being down there and in the mix, by RTS standards. ;)

Just made sure... indeed using v1.21 Anyhow, if he goes with either suggestion I made, we'll all be happy. The first was to break the effects out into seperate PBOs, so we could individually enable/disable as desired. Second suggestion was a user config file, so we can all fine tune our puffs per individual preference. So no harm in any event. ;)

Awsome explosions! :D However, the puffs of dirt from bullet impacts are simply way too over-the-top imo. Any chance of getting seperate PBOs for the various effects? Better yet, how about in addition a config file to tweak the size of the various effects? (btw- I have not read through the thread.) Anyhow, very cool, but I think I'll have to pass until we can tone down those freakish bullet puffs bit. :p

Interesting mod. When I read through this intro on the first post, you clearly say the above AI characteristics have been "changed". And then in the version history you say that many of those original values have subsequently essentually been "tweaked" (either up or down). It currently seems somewhat unclear as to the original effect of these modifications. For example, does "changed" mean increased or decreased from game defaults? :confused: Just a suggestion, but maybe go back and update that initial section I quoted above to say what the result of each of the changes will be. That way people will be able to tell at a glance what they'll be getting into without lots of digging through the thread. Anyhow, just a friendly suggestion. Cheers. :)

Sorry to hear you were sick... that sounds like it must have been awful. :( Good to know you are up and at em again. :) Awsome! I'll look toward putting together a good description for the manual. Based on your rapid progress recently, can we infer you are somewhat close to release? (No pressure or anything. :p ) fyi - I will be out of town for the next couple of weeks and most of that time I won't have access to a computer... If release is imminent though, maybe we can simply use the descriptions from the headers within the functions for the manual? They do give a thorough and precise explanation of what the functions do. (But... not necessarily how to apply them to greatest effect.) Wonderful addition! Now my crazy ideas are spinning... For the ultimate clean end-to-end solution, how insane would we have to be for an equivalent Destroy-DAC-Zone on-the-fly? (Probably too crazy, but I have to ask. :D ) That is welcome news indeed. It certainly will be nice stacking up zones without worrying about dire and mysterious implications!

I just built a new Win7/GTX 275 rig and was getting all kinds of horrible stuttering all over the place. After reading through 10 pages on a simliar thread on people having these issues, I found one thing that cleared up all the problems for me: Disabling Hyperthreading in the BIOS. Worked like a charm and now everything is smooth as silk! Anyhow, hope that gets it sorted for you. :)

It's been a while since I uploaded a file. Anyone know a good site that: a. You don't have to log-in to upload or download b. There are minimal ads and related annoyances c. The site doesn't try to load plug-ins, etc onto your computer d. The person downloading can download easily (i.e. It's clear for them, no hoops, etc) So what the best no-log-in site out there? Any help much appreciated. Thanks! :)

@All Thanks for all the responses. Will check out those sites! @Hans Not actually Russian... I am from central USA, a Hoosier. :) "The Mad Russian" is what my grandfather named his half-track during WW2 while fighting through France and into Germany. He was sent over in February just after the Battle of the Bulge, and his first task was directing his men to clear away the dead from that massive offensive. He spent seven long weeks in combat, and the biggest single conflict he fought in was the Battle of the Ruhr Pocket. He had three very close brushes with death over there. The most severe was due to the shockwave of a friendly artillery round that picked him up and threw him close to ten yards. He ended up deaf for three days and "bleeding out of every hole in his body", but in the end he made it out of the war ok, all things considered. My grandfather was a great story-teller, and his memory was second to none, which also turned out to be something of a curse for him when he would would tell us these dramatic tales of life and death in combat so many year ago. During the most compelling moments, you could see the pain in his eyes and hear it in his voice. Plenty of funny and sureal stories as well. I personally had over three decades of great visits out west to see him before he passed several years ago of natural causes. My mother has a awesome photo of grandfather (a captain at the time, who retired a colonel) posing next to The Mad Russian (again, his famed half-track). It's bristling with extra MGs they had welded on from the scrap of battle. I'll have to get a hold of that photo someday and scan it in for use as my sig. ;) Edit: In case of any newcomers, I just went a bit OT there... this topic indeed regarding the best upload/download sites. Cheers!

Thanks for the response. However, when I go to FileFront and try to upload, I get a prompt for an Addon-Installer. Funny, but my prior attempt on FileFront is actually what prompted me to post this thread in the first place! :eek: Any others?

Cool McRuppert. Good to see your amazing work continue!

You're going to love the DAC. And yes, you can spawn units from any mods.

Do most agree now that AI in ArmA2 can "pin pointing you with deadly accuracy through heavy vegitation"? I haven't really noticed this, but then again, maybe I haven't spent enough time in the forests. If this is a problem, anyone know of another Durgs or similar to fix it? Because we definately need to be on equal footing with the AI in all those wonderful new jungle maps we'll eventually see in ArmA2. :)

Greetings Silola. :) Glad you like it! Sure makes reading in markers a breeze. Let's address your second question first: Good points. However, note that when ReplaceDACPoints replaces some (or all) of the points within a zone, it is NOT doing so relative to the position of the zone. Instead, it's simply taking the contents of the user-defined point cloud and replacing the points inside the zone. So the user really is indeed placing markers on interesting locations for his custom points, and those custom points aren't doing any moving at all. In my overlapping-moving-zone scenario (first described earlier), the process went something like this: To summarize, this method of custom points still uses interesting fixed points on the map chosen by the mission creator. These points are read in via ReadMarkers and then used to replace some or all of a given DAC zone's original points via ReplaceDACPoints. Replacing points in this manner is currently the only method available to mission designers, for zones which have moved. Although I designed GetDACPoints and ReplaceDACPoints with fixed locations and point cloud ownership in mind, imo mission designers will undoubtedly find many unanticipated uses for these functions. Having said all that, I do keenly recall you wanting to make most of the DAC functionality editor based. Maybe you can find some way to implement something along this location / point cloud system and have it all accessible inside the editor? For the purposes of my mission, it wasn't important to replace a particular group's points, but rather some extent of points in the overall zone. I was most interested in achieving a town/country-side ratio for points. As in, to get DAC points inside of towns/cities, we all know you generally have always had to use custom points. To get to a 70% country-side / 30% town ratio, once I'd placed my POIs in the towns, it would simply be a matter of choosing an appropriate number of total zone points. Sure, some groups would end up with more custom points (town) and others would end up with more country-side points (DAC-chosen), but maybe that just spices things up a bit? :D Now, by all means, if you feel that being able to replace an individual group's points is a worth-while endeavor, maybe you can make a function for that? I'm sure I'd make use of it! Anyhow, I hope I've shed some light on how these functions might be useful to mission makers. If you have anymore questions, please don't hesitate. (Very little about the DAC is uncomplicated, after all.) Good luck on the continuing effort for 2.1. Can't wait to see it! ;)

Yes, I do prefer more than one life on long missions. But only in the context of limited lives. The reality is that I want something I've not seen yet in any OFP, ArmA, or ArmA2 mission. More on that later. Huh? Did you mean to say that unlimited respawns means always winning? IMO, getting "stuck watching the mission" is only a bad thing when there's a lot of mission left, and you have no chance at getting back in. Even worse is no fear of death at all (i.e. unlimited respawn). IMO, there is a huge difference between "out of action", and "out of the game". If you're in a death cam mode but there's still the chance to get back in, that keeps you rooting for the living members of the group to keep going, because your getting back into the game hinges on their success. Agreed with all points here. I personally won't go for unlimited respawn or unlimited revive because without the possibility of losing, I just get bored. :rolleyes: Cipher does a pretty good job on all fronts here. 1. The terrain you are fighting on is completely different every time. 2. It is impossible to predict enemy positions. Sometimes you even run into them outside the markered "mission area". You'd be hard pressed to "learn" Cipher. 3. It's definitely NOT boring. There's an appropriate level of buildup on the way to the mission zone. And, as mentioned earlier, you have to keep your eyes open even on the way there. 4. There's a difficulty adjustment (among others) that adjusts enemy numbers. Important note here is that what may be balanced and enjoyable for one person may be frustrating for the next guy. The ability to adjust difficulty (enemy numbers and enemy accuracy) go a long way towards getting a good experience in this regard. But even the mighty Cipher (in coop) still has the problem of the group getting down to just you and your buddy, you kick the bucket, and now you're out of the game and waiting to see whether he makes it through or not. My proposal is to give the players a limited number of men (no respawn, no or limited revive), and give them more men upon completion of objectives. As players die, provided there are no friendly AI to take over as, they go into death cam, but they are by no means necessarily out of the game. If their remaining living buddies can pull through and complete the remainder of the current objective, extra men are added to the group (in a way that makes sense per the mission), and the players watching from death cam get to return to play in fresh bodies. For LONG missions, this is by far the best way I've been able to come up with to strike a balance between Terminal Death Syndrome (which again is no fun on long missions when you go out early), and what I personally view as the absolute worst, Respawn-O-Matic, where you just keep playing until you win (and you win every time). Now, why haven't we ever seen this balance between fear of death and frustration for longer missions? Well, the system I propose is not without some difficulty in implementing. 1. You have to come up with story or objective based reasons why the players are getting new group members. 2. It's not trivial to write the code for this system the first place. (i.e. It's much different than default group respawn, which does NOT allow you back into play once you're out. And TeamSwitch apparently does not work in MP.) I created something like the system I describe for OFP, but without the switchPlayer command offered starting with ArmA, the system was extremely complicated and had some visual glitches. (swapping units, etc). It did work though, and was not difficult to apply to missions. Just hard as hell to write the thing in the first place. edit: corrected spelling - including Cipher

Can't wait to see that "surprise"!

That is weird indeed.

Take all the time you need on that. There's no rush what-so-ever, especially because maybe it delays the release of 2.1, and I am chomping at the bit! :D Kidding there of course, we all know based on past experience that you take your time and release a quality, tested product. btw- Appears you are really making some leaps and bounds. It's always exciting to see what pops up next around here! :) Hey Uglyboy, thanks for saying so buddy. It gives me the motivation to keep going with it!

Seeing as I personally lean more towards infected over dead, I'd say about the same shots as to kill a living non-infected man. However, it you set it somewhat higher, that should please everyone, because those that like em weaker can just use setdammage get them back down where we like em.

Demo mission for the new functions sent your way via email Silola, for evaluation! I can think of no greater honor than to fight and die (virtually anyway) with the creater of the single greatest addon ever to grace OFP/ArmA. I like the sound of that! Is there a way to do this and keep the init line uncomplicated?Quick unrelated question regarding DAC I've been wondering about for a while now: If I recall correctly, DAC used to have a requirement that no two DAC zones could be located at the same position. Was that still a requirement as of 2.0? The thing is, it would be nice to stack DAC zones. Much easier than having to put them slightly side-by-side and keep track of all that. Anyhow, just curious. Both of these are very high on my list also!

Isn't that somehow the essence of OFP/ArmA though? :) Agreed, it's pretty crap to be completely out of it far from the end of the mission and have to sit and watch as your buddies complete the last two or three objectives. I call that Terminal Death Syndrome, and it often rears it's ugly head on longer coop missions. Revive, as you mentioned, is a nice way around this problematic scenerio (imo provided it's limited). Another method might be keeping the spectator, but giving the players playable reinforcements upon the completion of objectives (that make sense based on the mission), thereby giving the players limited opportunity to get back into the game. Haven't installed it yet, but Left For Dead works like that, right? In any event, I think we need to preserve the tension and fear or death this series provides, and without the possibility of getting wiped out early (all players dead), imo we lose something extremely fundemental. I know that feeling. :p Agreed, not enough mission makers attempt anything other than Destroy targets A, B, and C. Or worse yet, kill all enemy! (even that guy hiding in the shed that you'll never find.) :D I strongly agree here about the optionals, and on the importance of being able to adjust enemy numbers. Way too many missions with unrealisitc expectations out there. Letting us adjust enemy numbers also has a huge added benefit for coop, as we can then scale the mission to the number of players.Good points throughout your post.

I'm working on a dispersion mod, and need to be able to detect whether each round was fired by a player or an AI. I've got most of the logic in place. (Way more complicated than it should need to be.) But I've hit one final hurdle. To finish this thing... I really need a way to detect whether Manual Fire is on or off (when a given vehicle fires). Any help is much appreciated. :)

Hadn't tried that. :) However, with the following code: _anyoneHaveWeap = false; { if (_x hasWeapon _weapon) then { _anyoneHaveWeap = true; }; } foreach (crew _shooter); hint format ["_anyoneHaveWeap : %1", _anyoneHaveWeap ]; Unfortunately, _anyoneHaveWeap always comes back false, provided _shooter is a vehicle. When I simply try (_shooter hasWeapon _weapon) and _shooter is a vehicle, it always returns true, which makes sense. The vehicle always does have the weapon that got fired. So the mystery of how to detect "Manual Fire On/Off" remains unsolved... :confused: