PowerMage

Did a lot of work lately! Dialogs are now implemented with DynamicCTF v2.0. There is an improved Execute-Engine to start scripts and share complex data with clients. Also all city related scripts only kick in if city is active (reduced amount of simultaniously running scripts). Command-Dialog now allows to call for support, transport, buy infantry and vehicles per chopper, etc etc... New feature is an ingame Mission-Generator. Only mission available right now is an Attack-Defend Mission where random sides have to battle for a random selected town. Mission-Types like Convoy, Assasination and Hostage Rescue may follow soon. Mission-Places are marked on the map! New implemented Marker-Engine allows scripts to optain free markers on map. This allowed me to write a cool scanner which shows enemies and friends on the map in a range of 500 meters. Yet I have to rewrite a lot of code. The new functions of OFP allow a lot more flexibility then before. Civil-Events on the map are still a bit buggy... If you want the map then send me an eMail to powermage@powermage.dyndns.org. That's it for now! CU!

It's nearly done... after launch of Dynamic CTF v1.0 We've done a complete rewrite of most scripts which make the game faster and more efficient than ever before! Check out the new beta-test demo -[eSp4all-DynamicCTF_a&d_v1.1]- on http://www.planetofwar.com. Don't forget to read the manual! It's a lot of stuff you can do and you'll be frustrated if you don't know about it! The new version includes 3 new special vehicles! Now you can build a transport helicopter, mobile artilery and flak to blow your enemy from the island! Civil and military traffic has been improved and much more functionality has been added to ease your conquest on one of your favourite islands of OFP. Check it out! It's hot! Also visit my official DynamicCTF forum on http://www.planetofwar.com!

I'm still alive! Also DynCTF is it, too. Couldn't continue working on a new version due to a bug that OFP Resistance introduced (that nearestObject issue). So now I'm concidering to rewrite a lot of the scripts since there are Dialogs now that will improve a lot of controling inside the game (building, etc). Stay tuned... as soons as I make progress I'll let you know. I'm glad you're still interested in my project! Cu soon!

This is the first running Version (1.12b) of my MultiplayerMap Dynamic CTF. I have tested it some days now and fixed a lot of bugs so it should work now (http://powermage.dyndns.org/ofp/). In this map you have to take control on Malden. You have to hurry because the Resistance-Forces are already coming for you. So capture some towns and secure your area at first or you'll be overrun! In each town you can go to the FlagPole and use the ActionCommand "Set global Respawn". As you can guess you can set the respawn of your squad to any captured and secured town. The Upgrades 1-3 are not working yet. When they are done you can build things in towns to protect it. Check out the MobileBase (Factory->Build Vehicles->Special). This unit is already working and you can build a base anywhere on the map. You can also set your Respawn to that unit. The Upgrades 4&5 only work in Singleplayer now. I have to get some things fixed because MultiplayerScripting is not that easy. I hope to get it running the next days. Factories are sometimes Bunkers, Repairfacilities or Hangars. You have to take a look into each town for these buildings. They're not that easy to find. When you aproach a factory you have the menu option "Build Vehicle". If you chose this menu then you can select between various vehicle categories (Tanks, APC, Jeeps, etc). After you chose a category all units will be displayed that you can build in that factory. After selecting the unit it will pop up near the factory building (maybe behind it). Vehicles are ordinary vehicles like in the game. The only feature they have is that they'll be taken from the map if you go away for about 1000m. Don't fear! If you go back they'll be stangin there again. Special Vehicles: Mobile Base This truck is not an ordinary truck. You can move it to a place where you want to build a base for an assault on the enemy HQ or what ever. There is also an action menu on that truck. Chose Build Base->Mount Base to mount the base. You can't use the truck anymore. After you did that a new menu will show up. I'll shortly explain the menu items: - Respawn On/Off: Makes your truck the new respawn position. If it gets destroyed your respawn will be in your old respawn town. - Get Fence, etc: This opens the available buildings for that categorie. You can take out fences, tents, sheds and much more out of the truck. When you turn around you'll see the selected item floating in front of you. By moving and turning your can place this object where you'd like to. Wait for the "Drop Object" action to pop up. - Lock/Unlock all Objects: This locks/unlocks all objects you've moved and placed somewhere. Locking means that all objects will remove their "PickUp Type" and "LockUp Type" action menus. Now they can't be moved anymore. The Unlock option does the opposite. It adds the PickUp and LockUp commands to all objects. The Lock function also appears on each placed object. - Unmount base: This will put all buildings back into the truck. After doing this you can use the vehicle again. Rember: The respawn function is still active! If you move your truck and then stop somewhere your respawn will be there, too! If you don't want to respawn at your truck while traveling then switch off respawn first! If your truck gets destroyed you'll still respawn at it's location for 2 minutes! - SelfDestruct: This option is nasty! Only the leader of your squad can use this command! After 30 seconds the whole base will blow up! Only use this if you are getting overrung by the enemy and you don't have a chance to hold the base. Now some other nice things: When you see the whole map you might think it may take ages to meet the other player. Yes... this is true but see this map more like a Coop map than a Team Death Match or else... later on you will battle your ass of with the other player but first you must get towns and factories to prepare for the big war! Each town is held by the Resistance. If you attack a town where no NetPlayer is in sight the town will defend itself. There will be AI units spawned at it's location. If there is a factory that can build tanks in that town there will also be tanks guarding the town. So take care! If you are attacking with tanks there will be more law soldiers defending same for choppers and planes. Then you'll get AA missiles on your ass! Rushing might be dangerous... it's maybe better to place snipers on strategic points and take out all LAW/AA units at first. Your captured towns will also defend against enemies if you're not there. Events: Ever been in the middle of nowhere and you had to walk to the next town on foot? Well... there is a solution in this map! Just sit down and wait... in a few minutes you might notice that civilians will cross your way with their shitty Scodas and Trabants. You just have to step in fron of them to make them stop. Just get one of the backseats and you can be taken anywhere without even beeing noticed by the enemy forces. You also can try to convince the driver to get out of this car but I think they're obstinate. I hope you won't kill a civilian for a lousy car! That's nasty !!! Well... there are not just civilian events. If you are near enemy territory there might be a chance that you get overrun by a horde of T55 or else... also there might be a chance that you'll get support from your captured towns and that a horde of M1A1 is heading for your position to support you! But be careful! The enemy might attack your towns and take them back. If you don't secure your area then you might be blown off the island faster than you'll notice. Okay... that's it for now! I hope you'll enjoy them map. You can download it here: http://powermage.dyndns.org/ofp/ This is my webserver at home. It's not always online. You may also check out www.operationflashpoint.de at mission center or the editing forum under Dynamic CTF. I'll post new bugfixes and updates all the time. So stay tuned if you like this map! Thanx for your interest! Greetings, PowerMage

Cool that we solved that problem. I never had this issue since I've never installed any inofficial stuff yet. Right now I'm working on the big maps but there are some syncronisation problems right now which I hoped to have fixed. Maybe I have forgotten to replace some scripts with new ones. As soon as it is running I'll post the first Map for Deser Island. Had a small test yesterday and it's fun. You only have 6 locations and you can also fight in coop against the enemy sides. Stay tuned.

T55 issue: Yep, I think I can confirm that, too. Never had this kind of crash and also haven't got any shitty addons installed. I thinks something is messing arround with your OFP if it crashes with this message. I think this DynCTF Version runs pretty stable for now. Some things I gotta fix in the big missions but should be done soon. CU

Hmmm... that T55 Bug or JeepHorn bug never appeared on any test sessions I had... and I had a lot of them. Have you got inofficial Addons installed? Maybe that's the reason. I'll check this out as soon as possible... Haven't played Resitance very often so it could be a bug in the vehicle-arrays. Thanx for your reply!

Hi there! Some explanations and corrections: @residuun & Hit_Sqd_Maximus: Hey! Who said I sell that thing??? It's just on the PoW-CD and they support me with the official DynCTF Forum, etc... that's all! I've just released those small versions because it's better for debugging... you progress faster and will encounter errors much faster as if you'd fight for 10hours arround the island. @Hit_Sqd_Maximus: I didn't say that this map was the first RTS for sure... I said it was --->probably<--- the first one. Which means I can't tell for sure... As far as I know Karrillions Map first appeared in the beginning of this year. The DynCTF-Project also hat posts here earlier this year when the first playable versions came out. It was version 0.1 and 0.2 as far as I remember! @all the others: I'll release a fast battle map on Desert Island very soon... so stay tuned!

Yep... I think so that Dynamic CTF was probably one of the first RTS Maps out there... I started this project in May 2001 but had some pausing due to lacking commands in the OFP-Scripting language (createUnit/createVehicle). After the patches where these commands were introduced I continued my work. So I think it's the first one.

You can build boats at those locations where are anchors on the map. Just move on the pier and you'll see the factory menu pop up. It has no building. Everything is logicaly imbeddet with the islands in OFP. The final version will have no time limit and will cover the whole Island and the smaller ones on Malden, too. At the airport you'll also be able to build planes. The TrainSoldiers-Option only appears in SinglePlayer mode yet. It's not implemented in this demo version for now but will be done soon. But we still recommend to play it in multiplayer mode even if you want to do a single player session. cu soon.

Check out Dynamic CTF v1.1! It's probably the first RTS-Project for OFP and is now ready for massive destruction. You can build lots of vehicles. All Factories have an advanced menu sub-system that eases use and control over all functions! You can build strongholds anywhere on the map with the mobile base. The new version also introduces some more special vehicles. You can transport up to 2 vehicles with a transport helicopter and start major assaults on enemy towns with the mobile artilery! Also protect your troops from air-to-ground attacks with the mobile flak! The game also features an advance AI-system which creates enemy and friendly troops that launch assaults or reinforce your troops while you're on the road. You can download the demo on www.planetofwar.com and stay tuned for more islands that will be supported by Dynamic CTF soon! Make sure that you read the manual! This Mod has lots of features that are really useful in the game!

Hi folks! This URL to Dynamic CTF hast now changed to a more reliable location: Planet of War. Also stay tuned for more featured OFP-Islands!

Hehe! Thanx! Well... the lagging is because of the creation of AI-Units. Everything works dynamically. I made a Soldier-Cache to prevent this but looks like I have to tweak somewhat with the cache-flush times. This mission has a timelimmit because it's a demo and beta-test version. After things work out I'll release the full version also. Check out www.planetofwar.com for more information! Is suggest you read the manual. As far as I know I've placed it into the same directory as the mission files. You really should read it completely... there are many many features in that mission!

*bump*

Hi there! If you want to play RTS in Operation Flashpoint than try out Dynamic CTF. This Project has become really advanced and is working in Multiplayer 100% without any loss of great features! You can build Vehicles, conquer towns and have a whole war on your favourite OFP-Island. We have nearly finnished Version 1.1 of Dynamic CTF and you can download a beta-test demo version on http://powermage.dyndns.org/ofp/. There is also a manual. Read it to get a glimpse of all it's features! This version is including new special vehicles like transport helicopters, mobile artilery and flak. You can also build your own assault base anywhere on the map with the mobile base! Check it out! It's hot! Also visit official discussion forum for DynamicCTF at www.planetofwar.com!

Hi there! If you want to play RTS in Operation Flashpoint than try out Dynamic CTF. This Project has become really advanced and is working in Multiplayer 100% without any loss of great features! You can build Vehicles, conquer towns and have a whole war on your favourite OFP-Island. We have nearly finnished Version 1.1 of Dynamic CTF and you can download a beta-test demo version on http://powermage.dyndns.org/ofp/. There is also a manual. Read it to get a glimpse of all it's features! This version is including new special vehicles like transport helicopters, mobile artilery and flak. You can also build your own assault base anywhere on the map with the mobile base! Check it out! It's hot! Also visit official discussion forum for DynamicCTF at www.planetofwar.com!

Hi there! If you want to play RTS in Operation Flashpoint than try out Dynamic CTF. This Project has become really advanced and is working in Multiplayer 100% without any loss of great features! You can build Vehicles, conquer towns and have a whole war on your favourite OFP-Island. We have nearly finnished Version 1.1 of Dynamic CTF and you can download a beta-test demo version on http://powermage.dyndns.org/ofp/. There is also a manual. Read it to get a glimpse of all it's features! This version is including new special vehicles like transport helicopters, mobile artilery and flak. You can also build your own assault base anywhere on the map with the mobile base! Check it out! It's hot! Also visit official discussion forum for DynamicCTF at www.planetofwar.com!

well... it was the same with me. I had big arrays that contained all weapon/ammo/equipment types and the ammo crated always replinshed themself after 60 seconds. So you could do the same by always repeating the fill loop so the ammo won't go out (important for MP-Missions).

yep... there are no more weapons anymore... You have to reduce the ammount of weapons you put into a box... else they'll pop out.

hi there... I got the same bug and maybe found out how to fix it... maybe it's a feature... dunno. I did a skript that refilled/respawned ammo boxes. The skript put in 99 weapons of each kind. I reduced the amount of weapons to 12 and magazines to 9. I'll test it now. But it also happens with Trucks or everything that can load weapons/ammo. I didn't have that much ammo in my truck so there were less weapons. I'll report when I tested it in a minute... stay tuned.

That was one of the ideas I had... you have to prepare your attacks: Build a base somewhere hidden and launch the attack on a town that is nearby or assault the enemy player directly. I added some more additional features. Day and night changes are faster now. So it can be interesting to battle during night. Enemy towns launch flares, when they detect the attackers and some more things are fixed. There is also 100% german/english language support now. English translation will be corrected tomorrow. There are still some mistakes in the stringtables. Later on there will be a ingame help system that will be controled by the action commands. Also I planned a ingame mission generator. I don't know if it will work but I'll give it a try. After some time each team gets a mission. Team west will have to defend a convoy for example while team east has to stop it. I have lots of more ideas but first I wanna get things bugfree and finnished.

Yes... I also agree... but I used the fact, that actions are only run client side for the palyer who activated them. All Sides have a global Resource... factories produce their own resources and it grows as high as the global resources. The global Resources are gained by killing enemies and conquering Towns. You can see it like this: Every Player has it's own source of money and all Players together can raise this supply by fighting together against the enemy... Having only one Player controling all the stuff makes the mission boring for the others. That I really wanted to avoid. Leaders only can do things like selfdestruction of a base or something like that. Even the buildings that a player build are controlled only by this player. This gives everyone freedom to do something and prevents others taking away things from the other players...

Yep... that's true! I needed quite long to figure out how the multiplayer stuff works. It's all really frustrating! Some important rules: If you have scripts that create units somewhere and remove them then let them just run on the server! Otherwise the server may crash by creating units or deleting them if the scripts are also executed on the client. Preventing Skripts from beeing executed by clients is easy: Place a logical unit somewhere and give it a name. In your scripts do: ?(!local logicUnit): exit; to prevent cients from executing. Logical units are only local on the server and not on the client mashines. Next thing that really ripped my ass of is the fact that you can only use publicVariable with fixed size objects. Like units, Numbers or booleans. No strings and no arrays can be broadcast to other clients. This really made things hard because I stored all data in arrays. Solutions I'll describe later. Another tricky thing is that action menus are also only executed on the client. So if you use a action on some object the connected skript will only do something with your client data. In most cases this doesn't matter anything but I first encoutered problems with my mobileBase. When it's created it has an action menu where you can select to build objects, etc. This menu only appeared for the player who build the truck because the build was thrown in by an action menu. So the menus for the truck were only attached at client side. I inveted some kind of global executer. I store sript names that I want to run in an array. Then I public a number that is the index of that skript name that I want to run (I can't public strings coz their not fixed in size! ). I also set some global Variables that contain the parameters for the script I want to run. On every client a special script is running that checks these global variables if they contain something. Now if the index variable has a value the script takes the scriptname I want to execute from the array with script filenames. Then it executed the script with the parameters that are stored in the global variables and voila the script runs on all clients. With this method I managed to attach the base menu for all players. Next issue might be if you execute a menu on some object and this menu should affect a state of that object visible to all other players. Let's say if some players start building objects. Only the objects a player build are stored on his computer. The objects of other players are stored on their mashines. So if a player wants to unmount the base and drive away the truck has to remove all buildings from the map again. Without proper syncronisation only the buildings that have been build by the player will disapper. So I defined some events in global Variables. For example: mobileBaseGlobalEventUnmount = 0; Then I made a global Variable: mobileBaseGlobalEventObject = objNull; This variable will hold the truck object so that the script can indentify itself if it should execute something. Next variable holds the event to execute. mobileBaseGlobalEvent = -1; The -1 means "do nothing". If it has the value 0 then it will be the mobileBaseGlobalEventUnmount (which is defined as 0). If you set these variables in your script then you have to public them to all clients. In my truck script I check if the object variable holds the truck. If it is so the script checks for the event to execute and does it's job. In this case alle build objects will be removed from the map including the ones that were build by other players. Well... it's late now. I'll go to bed and have some rest. I hope you somehow understand the things I wrote. My english is not the best. If you have questions then ask and I'll try to explain more detailed. Thanx for your interest!

Yeah! Sorry... it's only english now... I'll do the StringTables soon

Hi there! I hope one of the DevelopementCrew of OFP is reading this. I just want you to tell that you please please please add a joinInGame function with the new Netcode. I did a very huge Multiplayer map and I skripted my ass off for months to create this map! It has about 100 Skriptfiles (50 are really important rest is ActionMenu stuff). There have been lots of difficulties but I nearly mastered all of them so please read on and don't let my afford be wasted! Let me now explain why it is so neccessarly that MultiplayerGames allow joinInGame feature! (I do not complain about waiting 30 min. but if you are having a real war that is scattered around the whole island and you have to restart because of lacking players or players that are bidding for a restart it gets really frustrating when you have just played a map for 4 hours and have just conquered half of the island and this is what my multiplayer map is about! Not a small mission it's real MP war on the whole Island! And it is not just planned, it's almost done and it works!. First of all you can Download the map here: DynamicCTF I did the first full running version and I tested it with 10 Players. There are some minor bugs left. One thing is important! Each Side must take the Officer or the map will be buggy (fixed soon). So I beg to you OFP-Developers: Play this map and wait till your clients crashed or the server crashed and then you will want to kill someone because this map is a lot of fun and takes a lot of time and is very very huge and that's why you'll be frustrated because you really enjoyed it and then it's all gone! Now I'll explain some of it's features. They all might be improved by time but doing their jobs for now: Cities/Towns: First feature and goal is it to conquer towns all around malden! All cities are held by the Resistance. East and West have to take control of all these towns and battle themselves off the island (it's like the whole OFP Campaign but in one Mission and Multiplayer). Each Town will defend itself if there is no player at it's location. Some towns have special buildings that will allow you to build vehicles. Some towns may build tanks others may even build Helicopters/Planes (Airport). Each town can be upgraded (right now only IV Artilery & 5 Flak work properly). Also you can set your glogal respawn to every captured town. If a town gets attacked and you had your Respawn in that town the respawn will automatically move to a town near the attacked town that is under your control. Ammoboxes refill at respawn and also appear again if they got destroyed. Factories: Factories are mostly visible as bunkers and repair facilities. In Harbor1 the factory is located at the pier. Just move on it and you'll see the "Build Vehicle" ActionMenu appear. After you chose "Build Vehicle" you'll see all buildable vehicle categories popup. If you select one you can choose the specific Vehicle to be build. Each player can build up to 3 Vehicles on each factory... if you can't build anymore vehicles but you badly need some then you can chose "Destroy all Vehicles" and the vehicle slots are free again. Take care that no other player is using your vehicle! If the factory gets damaged it can't produce until it regenerated itself. If it gets completely destroyed it will be inactive for serveral minutes. It starts to disappear in the floor and a new undammaged factory pops up at it's place. Special Vehicles (maybe a bit buggy yet): Ever dreamed about building your own base in a multiplayer game? Ever wanted to place tank barricades arround a town to protect it from those nasty T80s? Well, here you go: There is a special Vehicle that is called MobileBaseW(E/G). With this vehicle you can set your Respawn anywhere on the map and you can build a base to gather your troops and coordinate attacks on the enemy. This special vehicle can be build only at your start location, so don't let the enemy take control of it! If you moved your BaseTruck to a location where you want to build up your base then unload all troops and chose "Build Base"->"Mount Base". Now the Truck is fixed and can't be moved. If you select "Build Base" again you can chose between "Respawn On/Off" and "Get Type". Type is replaced by buildingtypes like fences, tents, sheds, etc... Now you can select the building you want to build. After that this object will appear in front of you. You can move arround and place it on the floor where you want to. If you wish to place the object then select "Drop Object". Now the Object is placed before you. Only you can move that object again (because ActionMenus are executed local at the player but even that I managed to avoid ;-) ). With "Lock Object" you can fix it totaly to the floor. It can't be moved anymore (no ActionMenu). Pickup is self explanatory. On the truck you can select "Lock all Object" and "Unlock all Objects". This locks all placed objects or unlocks them again. "Unmount Base" picks up all build items and enables the truck for driving again. "SelfDestruction" is to be used with cation. Only the leader may use this function. After 30 sec. the base will blow up. Only use this if the enemy is about to overrun you and you have no chance to secure the base. If you turned on respawn then you will respawn at your just build up base. By unmounting it the respawn will move back to the last city where you set the respawn. Only one BaseTruck can turn on respawn at a time. Be careful: If the truck gets destroyed the build base will slowly fall appart and the respawn also returns to the last city after 2 minutes. Some more nice features: Ever been in a town far away from your group and you had to run all the way on your feet? Well, this map has a solution! This solution is called civil traffic! It's a really useful and funny feature... there will always be cars driving from town to town and it's a total "coincident" that they will cross your way. You may walk infront of a driving car and force it's driver to slow down. If you're fast enough you can get aboard and will be carried through the land without beeing detected by the enemy. You can also get a ride faster and easier by shooting the driver and stealing the car. But this is nasty, isn't it? There is also military traffic! If you travel through your conquered cities far away from the frontline you will mostly meet troop transports and jeeps. The closer you are comming to the frontline there will be more support units and even whole Tanksquads. It just depends how many enemy cities your city is surrounded by. So in a way your captured towns may also be attacked by the enemy side (without enemy palyers beeing in sight). You wonder how such a big war may take place on the whole island with dozends of vehicles without slowing down the clients/server? Well... very easy... I developed a system that I call virtual vehicles. If a player created a vehicle it appears for real on the map. But if the player goes away (1000m) then this vehicle will disappear. All it's data (position, dammage, etc...) will be stored in large arrays and if the player returns than this vehicle will appear again without the player noticing it has been away! So you can build 10 Tanks and leave them behind. They won't desturb the performance. Same principle works for the events (civil/military traffic). First the event will drive from a distant town to the player and then head off for other towns randomly. As soon as the event gets out of sight it's removed from the gamefield again. Only if a player decides to get a ride and stays close to the event it will move on and on and on and on... You can see that this map will not be boring! There will always be events that will get the attention of the players. In later versions there will also be dynamic mission targets. The east players have to detroy a west convoi and the west players will have to guard that convoi. So there is a lot to be done but I think it's worth the work if there will be inGameJoins and a more stable Win/LinuxServer ;-). So I hope you read this whole stuff... yeah I know it's a lot but I think it was worth the writing because Operation Flashpoint has a potential that has not been seen before because there is no limit in missions and game designs that can be placed on top of the OFP engine. So please consider my request for a joinInGame Option and you'll see thousands of OFP-Fans scream up in extacy! Imagine what other kewl projects might follow for the multiplayer mode in OFP! Sincerly, Â PowerMage