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st!gar

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Posts posted by st!gar

  1. Posted · Edited by St!gar

    Hey give it time OA is a new born baby and it will grow up with time. OA is in no way comparable to ArmAII 1.0 or 1.01.

    The whole game is much more advanced as it's foundation is ArmA II 1.0 and 1.07 is already an quite improved version.

    OA has a few new and old weaknesses, but im sure they will be gone soon...I encountered no "show stoppers" in 1.52 so far, but had only two hours today to play it.

    Of course, this information is completely useless to us, unless you define what those "weaknesses" are.

    Anyways, the only "bugs" I've encountered so far, are the fact that certain non-english units, (like the Germans), speak British, and that rather few units appear to have complete wound-textures. Also, Team Razor's voices if you play Harvest Red are all fucked up.

    I have not yet seen any differences, (for better or worse), in the AI.

    Note that I haven't played very much, either. Mostly been messing about in the Editor. I didn't dare try the OA campaign, yet.

  3. Posted

    Hey. As you probably know, there are missions in the ArmA 2 "Harvest Red"-campaign in which you have as an objective to find "evidence". Usually this involves looking around objective locations for things to pick up. Photographs and maps and things.

    Point is; how important are these for the outcome of the plot? The reason I'm asking is because I'm terrified that I'll forget to pick up one single photograph or something in the third mission, and because of this get a horrible ending some twelve missions later where everyone dies and the universe collapses in on itself. :rolleyes:

  4. Posted

    Fly over to Gorka. There is a road heading south from the center of the town. Travel down it for a little while, but make sure not to get too far from the town. Now wait off to the side of the road. About this time you'll get a message that Lopotev is trying to escape and you have 20 minutes to catch him. Just wait (I use fast forward because depending on how fast you moved you may be waiting for a while) and you'll see a red car comming up the road. Inside is Bardak (One of his minions might be in the car with him. For me it was just Bardak but be prepared for anything!). Shoot out the tires and if there is a guy with Bardak then kill him too but don't shoot Bardak. If he runs, just chase after him for a little while (He won't get far) and you'll eventually get a cutscene where you arrest him.

    I tell the chopper to fly me to Gorka. I stand in approx. the center, and post my teammates around the roads.

    Nothing happens. Not shit. For fucking ages. Then those assholes call me, and tell me he slipped away.

    This is just too stupid. What the hell does BIS expect us to do? What fucking road does he come from?! There are roads all over that place! You don't think you could be a bit more specific, Da Bomb? Please? This is just pissing me off.

  7. Posted

    There is a POW in the church ruins in the middle of the town, the conversation triggers when you go there, after that theres more prisoners in one of the hangars in the airport. You have to be fast to get there and save them before all enemies are killed co's the mission will end when all enemies are killed

    Aah. I figured it might have been something like that. Still doesn't explain why the dialogue was triggered while I was nowhere near the church, though. :)

    Anyways; this post wasn't really so much about that particular mission as it was about the status of the Scenario missions in general, though. I would really like to hear some of your experiences on the matter.

  9. Posted

    New order menu

    A good compromise therefore might be having a single new order - such as disengage until task x is complete.

    So whether regrouping, moving, boarding or hiding - the AI would focus on doing that task alone as fast as possible and ignoring the combat situation.

    One would only use the "complete task" order once it became clear that the standard algorithms had failed.

    That sounds pretty cool.

  10. Posted

    I can confirm that the AI infantry in combat mode now fail to follow orders in an acceptable way.

    Im working on an ammo runner script and this problem causes my units who are supposed to be carrying clips to another unit become frozen in place. If they are not near enemies then they behave predictably. If enemies are removed from their area they seem to recover ok.

    I notice if the units have a hard Waypoint then they continue to move along despite combat mode or enemies close by. Thats great since the waypoint counts for a whole group and not per unit.

    So the scripted per unit movement of a squad in ARMA2 has now been seriously compromised if not destroyed.

    These scripting commands appear to be nullified by this new feature of the game.

    domove

    moveto

    assignascargo/ordergetin

    (tried with disableAI "target" and "autotarget" setcombatmode "BLUE" setbehaviour "Careless" and "Safe"

    If the unit receives these commands in combat mode with enemy nearby they are ignored. This is repeatable in almost every test I ran. Very solid performance on this great new "feature".

    I just have to stop here to take a moment to complain about this pattern in the BIS game AI since OFP.

    My complaint is how much extra work the default AI behaviour creates for anyone who wants to mod the AI in the game or try to work with the AI so that it behaves in a predictable reliable fashion. Basically anyone who wants to work with the games AI in any way is affected by this.

    The conclusion I have reached after trying to work with the BIS AI since OFP is that you cant count on the AI, for anything.

    You cant count on them to do even the most basic simple things without extreme redundancy added with script or mod to ensure that they complete their tasks if they still have a virtual pulse (i.e. not dead).

    You cant count on the AI to spot targets how you will need, to navigate tight city streets without making 10 point turns if not stuck. You cant count on the planes dropping bombs when needed or not diving too low when they do bomb. So low that they either get shot down or crash because you cant count on them to notice the giant mountain in their flight plath quickly enough.

    This is something that effectively ruins the idea of an AI unit focused on anything else than killing an enemy and saving his own ass.

    With this, we cant have AI medics and ammo runners or engineers running through a hot warzone on thier way to do things other than killing an enemy. The medic cant deliver his morphine or revive action, the ammo runner cant deliver the clip to the MG nest on point and the engineer cant repair the vehicle or rebuild the structure or set mines on a bridge. We cant have them because if they detect enemy units they will freeze and fail to carry out their VITAL mission and we cant count on them.

    Its not the first time either. Its all just getting the stupid AI unit to not care about anything else for a second so it can just act predictably. Every script I make has at least half of it devoted to that dreary thankless job when BIS could eliminate this pain if they just altered their approach somewhat.

    If the AI would stop trying to do its own things when it has a clear order to do something it would be alot better. If we had more commands to disable/enable all the default AI actions we would be alot better off. Its ok for AI to self preserve if they are idle but if they have direct user based orders that should take precedence. If anything they could slow down and act differently, but not shut down altogether. BIS, please take this into account when you are designing AI and the scripting commands that control them.

    I find the BIS AI good for many things and I still rely on and appreciate it for that, honest. But when I want to enhance the game and often I need to controll the AI I would rather have the AI turn into complete dummies so that they would walk right in front of a pillbox if I told them to than rely on the default methods. Once I am done directing them they can go back to their default modes. As it is now I feel locked out of the AI at almost every turn. I cant be the only one.

    If they have some new self preservation mode then I wish we had a way to disable and enable it by script just so I dont have to fight the AI at every step and spend so much time testing it and writing code to ensure it acts how I want. Im not talking about making them do backflips either. I just want my ammo team to run from the truck to the "customer" even if their are bullets flying around! Is that such a tall order?!

    BIS, please stop messing me up with your wierd AI design! Youre killing me.

    :love: ...Thank you. Just... fucking thank you. That has got to be the single best post I've read on this forum in at least the last six months. You perfectly summed up every thought I have had on the AI since OFP.

    Honestly, BIS needs to read this. That was just perfect.

  11. Posted · Edited by St!gar
    Forgot to add something.

    There has been a lot of talk about bugs and scripting errors in Red Harvest, and although BIS has made a point of trying to fix them as much as possible, It should be mentioned that many, (all?), of the Scenario missions could use a good patch as well. When you play a game, and realize you're not quite sure whether what you just witnessed was a bug or something the programmers intended, I believe it says something about the game. And I leave it up to you to decide for yourselves whether it's good or bad.

    Warning - there may be spoilers ahead.

    I just played the first Scenario available; "Trial By Fire". A bunch of marines are to clear a tiny, little village followed by a hostile-held airfield, and the mission briefing warns that there may be Chernarussian PoWs about. What usually tends to happen whenever I play through this Scenario, is usually something along the lines of this:

    We enter the little village from our LZ on the the beach, and proceed to pew-pew away at the enemies that seem to throw themselves at the village from every direction. At one point, a hostile APC-thingy appears, and a gunship is called in to take it out. With that out of the way, we advance on the airfield, and, from high ground, proceed to take long-range pot-shots at enemies scurrying about. At some point, a friendly mechanized squad just sort of appears somewhere, and reinforces us. Mission Accomplished, Game Over, The End. A moderately decent player could probably mash something like that together in the Editor in about ten minutes.

    However, yesterday something happened that I've never experienced in that mission before:

    I was hiding from the aforementioned APC-thingy in a house, when there suddenly came a triggered conversation from out of nowhere. I couldn't see who was talking, because I was, like I said, cowering inside someone's house. But as I read the transmitted blue text, I realised that it was me, apparently talking to a rescued PoW about something. He said his name was "Captain Roman something-something", and that there was a bunch of prisoners like him somewhere else. That's pretty much all I can remember. And, I just to make it clear, I was laying, isolated, all alone, inside a house in the village. There were no-one else in the building with me, let alone a Chernarussian escapee.

    I'm guessing that this conversation was supposed to take place at another point in the mission - possibly at some other place in the village or maybe near the airfield where the PoWs where said to be held, if I recall correctly. I don't know. Anyways, probably due to some scripting fuck-up, it was now triggered completely out of place.

    I've played this mission several times before, and I don't know why I've never encountered this conversation before - I didn't even know I was supposed to. Maybe the mission is bugged, or maybe I have thus far simply not been to the right place at the right time.

    My point is; I've been playing this mission several times since the demo, and just now, today, did I realize that all this time, I have apparently not played the mission the way I was "supposed" to. That there are things that I'm intended to experience, but that simply never happens, apparently. And this is only one out of several Scenario missions where I feel the exact same way.

    Another example is "Counterattack", where a Russian mechanized infantry unit is to break through a "siege" in progress by the local forces, and link up with a platoon of insurgents dug down in a town. From that point on, the two forces are apparently supposed to launch a counterattack out from said town and sweep away the Chernarussian military.

    That, of course, never happens.

    I have actually made a separate thread about that particular issue, and so will not go into detail about it here. Suffice to say, everything consistently fucks up in that mission. Cutscenes that appears in some playthroughs and not in others, little story-sequences that doesn't go anywhere and the mission ending abruptly without much explanation as to why, declaring you victorious before you actually fulfill all the objectives. At least for me, that mission is a mess. :hmmm:

    So, to sum up, I think the Scenarios could use a good, hard patching. The scripting needs a good tidying up, from what it seems. So my question is - what are your experiences? Are you getting completely different results than me? Are there any things regarding this that people should be made aware of?

    *EDIT*

    And, yes, I'm using 1.05, and no mods.

  16. Posted

    that is because, as said before, you can use the current 1.05 patch on your steam version no problem.

    Wait - the hotfix, or the actual patch itself?

    Yet you still complain, guess some pepole cant stand some minor bugs

    Actually, the devs themselves admitted that the bugs were game-crippling, and anything but "minor". But hell, now that the hotfix is out, I don't see anything in particular to complain about.

  22. Posted

    if anything, women are better soldiers. this has been proven in ww2 when russian female snipers were among the highest in kill rating. studies have shown they are better multitaskers and posses a higher average intelligence than males. that makes them better at concentrating in situations that require many actions at once...and higher intelligence pretty much puts them above males right away.

    Okay, that is quite possibly the single most ignorant, inflammatory, overzealous drivel I've heard this week. So much, in fact, that I'd be prone to suspect deliberate trolling.

  23. Posted · Edited by St!gar

    Certain units appear to be half-blind.

    -----------------------------------------------------------

    The more I play, I can't help shake the impression that some of the unit types has significantly shorter vision range than others, in ways that doesn't really make sense. :confused:

    For example, I seem to find that most CDF and Chedaki infantry groups needs to be significantly closer to hostile units before detecting them than their USMC and Russian counterparts. (I haven't really checked out NAPA yet.) And just so it's said; this behavior can get extreme.

    I recall a situation I cooked up in the Editor, where a BLUFOR squad was to descend on the airstrip in Utes, from the top of a nearby hill overlooking the installation. The airport housed an OPFOR group, scripted to a "Guard" waypoint, standing out in the middle of the strip. On my fist attempt, the BLUFOR group was a USMC Rifle Squad, and OPFOR consisted of a Russian Infantry Squad. The hill the USMC squad was descending from was large, and had a good view of the enemy-held airstrip, so the firing started almost immediately after they had started moving down the slope. Once the Russians had detected where the hostile fire was coming from, they reacted semi-efficiently, returning fire and seeking cover. On my next try, I swapped the USMC squad for a CDF squad, and the Russian squad for a Chedaki group.

    That changed the whole dynamic.

    As the CDF started their advance down the hillside, I expected them to detect and engage the Chedaki around the same time the USMC had done on the previous playthrough. They didn't. As they reached the spot where the USMC had spotted the enemy, they just kept on walking. And walking. And walking. And, to my horror, I watched the half-blind fuckers stumble on aaaaalll the way down the hill, kept on blindly walking the whole distance from the foot of the hill over to the actual airstrip, and then suddenly detect the presence of the Chedaki group within spitting distance of each other, and, confusedly, started spazzing out, sending some units flanking all over the place, opening fire at point-blank range and generally speaking doing just about everything a serious MilSim should at no point whatsoever have them do. :mad:

    And when I say "point-blank", I mean that quite literally. As in, they could easily have hit the enemy with thrown rocks. It was insane.

    As for the Chedaki, they were no better. Standing around in their own thoughts while a CDF squad was marching at them almost in plain sight, and becoming equally confused once the firing broke out.

    I tired again, in several situations in differing terrain. The results were always the same - the CDF and Chedaki didn't detect one another until they were so close, a human being with regular eyesight would have detected them ages ago. Why is this? Is this a some kind of stats-thing, perhaps? You coding and modding pros here on the forum have no doubt cracked open the game files containing the information on the different unit types and their vision range(s) at this point. Does some units simply see shorter than others? Is this an attempt at some weird idea of "realism", to simulate that the CDF and Chedaki are less trained soldiers than Russian and American troops? Or is it simply a bug? What are your experiences on the matter?

    Please respond with whatever you've got. I'm confused and frustrated.

    ---------------------------------------------------------------

    Additional information: In all cases, I used the default infantry groups from the "Groups" -section of the Editor menu. There was no editing of the classes and skill settings. The attacker(s) waypoint(s) were set to:

    *TYPE: "Seek and destroy"

    *COMBAT MODE: "Open fire, engage at will"

    *FORMATION: "Line"

    *SPEED: "Normal"

    *BEHAVIOR: "Combat".

    In all cases, it was clear daytime.

  24. Posted · Edited by St!gar

    those that have the patience for a real-world military sim, and those that do not.

    Or, in my case, people who want functioning gameplay the way that was intended, and who refuses go around making excuses for the game, as if the bugs were intentionally put there by the devs in order to make the game more "realistic", or some nonsense like that. I mean no offense to you, sweep; thanks for your reply and all, (I particularly found the details on co-op very informative.), but that kind of thing just rubs me the wrong way. :plain:

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