The_Captain

One hell of a chinook! Nice work guys, love all the pics.

I actually think teamswitch helps the more advanced casualty model Arma2 is supposed to have. As far as I know, teamswitch is only within your own squad of ~5 recon marines, and if not outright killed, they can likely be dragged to safety and possibly patched up, perhaps more to stop bleeding than restore health. This means that they are roughly in the same area (probably in formation), and equipped with a good selection of weapons. As long as you keep all of them alive and healthy, you can make use of all of the weapons. dug in infantry? Use M249. Enemy taking cover in a building? M203. Light armored vehicle? Switch to the AT4. Being in the same proximity as your squadmates allows you to use their weapons without relying on them to do so, and also gives you an incentive to keep your formation together (so you can switch easily). Also, being close to the people you're switching to and having them in the same squad prevents some of the teamswitch disorientation that plagued some Arma missions. (switching long distances into troops in an unfamiliar situation is a big immersion breaker, and probably worse than just dying and respawning). I know same-squad teamswitch seems like an immersion breaker, but to me it actually enhances the squad feeling: you feel like a part of a functional squad, not a single human in a swarm of dumb AI robots. Now, in regards to the casualty model: If one of your soldiers is wounded, you can switch to another soldier and attempt to drag him to safety and patch him up. if killed, you can switch his weapons with those of another squad member. As you take casualties, your job as a player will become more difficult: your firepower will diminish, you'll have more wounded and dead to attend to, and your pool of available weapons shrinks... as well as potential targets, so remaining enemies are probably focusing more on you as one of the few remaining squad members. Each time a squad member dies or is wounded (or you die, and respawn into a marine), you get a new 'chance' but in a new, and probably more difficult situation: troops dead, advancing enemies, etc. You have the opportunity to fail a few times before you can succeed, hopefully making the success even better if you manage it. Sounds suitably intense, and different enough from die>reload>die to me. Maybe same-squad teamswitch and some of the casualty stuff will make its way into the difficulty screen, in any case.

<100kb, you're ok Soviet. That is a stunning picture.

*sad violin music* The super weak choppers are a serious annoyance, to be sure. The latest truegameplaymods release (in addons & mods complete) has one component that increases helicopter durability (mostly of the engine, not the overall health). This greatly helps when making rough landings, and means that your helicopter can be damaged *before* the engine cuts out. In the other components in that release, AI are very aggressive about attacking choppers, so if you have a full squad of riflemen & machinegunners & rpg soldiers firing wildly at your chopper, you'll still go down fairly quickly (though you might survive the landing now!

For switching between AP and HE: The M2's cannon has a switch to load from either the AP or HE feeds. Basically, you can switch in a second by flipping a button.

No global ranking, please. Also, give us a simple player vs. player mode that isn't warfare (not replacing it, just alongside), that focuses on real players shooting each other and trying to capture flags or sectors... Perhaps something that feels realistic, appealing to people who like PvP as well as a less-gamey and more realistic gametype.

<table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td>Code Sample </td></tr><tr><td id="CODE">player addaction ["the action","action.sqf"]; Should only add the action to the player on his own machine. Since player is unique to each computer, it should not show up for the other players. If you name each player s1, s2 in the init.sqf you will get one action added to each player on each machine. Hopefully that works. I can't test on two clients at the moment though. :-/

try saying "player addaction ..." in the init.sqf file (create it if it's not there). Make sure to end with a semicolon! This file runs once on each computer when they start the map. You can restrict who runs each command (say, you want something server only) by adding the isServer condition to an if statement (or any other conditional). Also, you can add "waituntil {player == player}; before your addaction. That means that JIP players will wait until their player object was created before running your addaction line. If you want the action to persist after respawn you'll need to do a little more work.

Very nice! Someone needs to make a mission pack using this template. Some reliable, fun, simple ideas here. Honestly, I haven't played a good CH since tacticians CH maps in ofp.

Hopefully the game is a bit easier for you now. On the subject of vehicles & weapons, you need to 'turn in' to use most of the weapons. For example, the BMP-2 and Stryker guns must be used from inside the vehicle. Use your "go prone" and "stand up" keys to hop in and out of the hatch.

I'd like to add also that cover and concealment are as important when using vehicles as when running on foot. There was a great post on these boards where someone training with tankers a number of years back described how they took full advantage of cover, hopped in and out of their tanks to look for new concealed positions, etc. If you drive your vehicle straight into a combat zone you'll end up like the aforementioned infantryman who simply ran forward into one. Taking it slowly, dismounting troops to screen for AT soldiers, and moving between covered positions can help a vehicle survive long enough to deliver its cargo or weapons fire.

Arty is fairly well covered already in arma, but most of the solutions that I'm aware of that use actual trajectories tend to require an addon (so the projectile life isn't compromised). Meanwhile, script-only solutions tend to just createvehicle projectiles over a map click. It would be nice to see a fully featured, script-only mando artillery which fires shells from a gun and uses multiple warhead types, while also working properly in MP, supporting both human and AI gunners as well as human FO's. *keeps dreaming* I agree though that mando missiles and mando gun fill far larger holes.

I think ANY sort of medical and first aid system beats the hell out of "crouch behind a sandbag to magically heal multiple bullet wounds" system that many other games seem to be using. But that is neither here nor there. On topic, I would be quite happy if BIS implements proper dragging/healing AI (which SLX had to a degree), so your AI squadmates in the SP campaign could drag you behind cover and then attempt to bandage you. That would be a bit more interesting to me than dying, reloading, and memorizing the positions of enemies.

I use Actual Search and Replace as my search tool, because I already use ArmaEdit as my editor. It's a pretty good stand alone find-in-files program. http://www.divlocsoft.com/

-When wounded you're often quite screwed: can't stand and bad at aiming. Suicide or restart is a good idea, if there are no nearby medics or medic tents. -The BMP gun should work if you're in the gunner position. If you're in commander position you won't have a gun. -You can sometimes change weapons before a mission starts by going to the "group" tab in the briefing, selecting your name in lue text, and changing weapons in the gear menu that pops up. Alternately you can change a unit's weapons if you edit a mission yourself. -Teamswitch is only by default in SP, but it can work in MP if it is specifically coded into the mission, but due to bugs it often is not. -There are keys to switch weapons if you bind one. you can swtch rate of fire/grenades with 'F' by default. The mousewheel menu (also can select actions with '[' or ']' and perform them with 'enter' gives you the option to change from a rifle to a pistol or launcher (lower right of the screen, yellow text). You can exchange weapons with a dead soldier (or use an ammo crate or vehicle) by approaching it and using the 'gear' menu action. Playing as a team leader with AI backup can be hard. Remember you can always loot their bodies for weapons. It's also very tough to give them commands while in combat, and also try to keep yourself alive. Try experimenting with giving them different commands (change combat mode, engage at will, advance, assign targets, etc) before you enter combat so you don't have to give them order while in combat. One trick I use sometimes, is to leave a few AI in my vehicle as driver and gunner, and give them the "stay back" command. This means they will stay about 50m behind me and the rest of the team. With the infantry in front, I can spot targets and the vehicle can engage them, and it also prevents the infantry from simply burning to death while still inside the vehicle, while meaning I don't have to abandon it fully. Good luck.

Hi Victor, You can PM me with the addon pack link. I can check it out when I get a chance. I haven't tested it yet, but I think I know where the problem might be. It looks like _leaderType has a problem when you createUnit, so it's either when you say that _leaderType = _unitTypes select 0 OR when _leaderType is set to _soldierType (which is defined to be WSOLDIER or ESOLDIER.) My suggestion is to try replacing "_leaderType = _unitTypes select 0" with "_leaderType = soldierType" and see if the problem goes away. If it does, the problem is probably in unitTypes. _unitTypes in AITownDefense is a parameter, called from serverUpdateTownDefense. On ~line 56, it sets _unitTypes to be a random value from West/East/ResistanceDefenseTeamTypes, which is set up in your ConfigAITeams file. (Common\Config\Config_AITeams.sqf). Basically, unit types I think that is a file you did edit, so it's possible when setting up the side's defense teams you made a small error. Alternately, if the problem might be with _leaderType = soldierType, you could comment out the line beginning with if (!(leaderType in soldierUnits... by adding // to the beginning of the line. Also, soldierType is set to a *global* variable of WSOLDIER or ESOLDIER, and it might not be defined properly (though I suspect it is if you're not having other problems). So maybe by saying _leaderType = "SoldierWB" and _leaderType = "SoldierEB" instead of WSOLDIER and ESOLDIER could fix the problem. Should be something along these lines but I don't know for sure. You can try adding this line before the createUnit to see if there's an error: globalchat format ["_leaderType is %1, _unitTypes: %2",_leaderType,_unitTypes]; I can take a better look later when I have a chance.

The tent that deploys is a new unit (a building) which has the tent attached to the HQ (You can find it in the editor). So you would need to remove the HQ and replace it with the new building at the same position and direction.

"type any expected string" -> CreateUnit takes two strings, the unit type and the special field. Your special field is fine, so it sounds like your _leadertype is buggered. Perhaps because "_leaderType = _soldierType" isn\'t getting the proper value of soldierType (maybe the unit doesn't exist and _leaderType is being set to null). Because it happens only occasionally means _unitTypes might be empty, or the value in it might be corrupted. Try some player globalchat format ["_unitTypes: %1",_unitTypes ]; statements in that script to figure out if there's a problem in that script. It sounds like it's a problem with the automatic AI defense squads, not the AI in your team. http://community.bistudio.com/wiki/createUnit_array

this will take care of creating the name: _magazineName = format ["%1%2%3",_lbData1,_lbData2,_lbData3]; When you hit load your script will have to get the data from the current selection on the listbox, for each listbox. Then you can format the string and load it into the gun. eg: _prpData = lbData [FC_PRPCOMBO,(lbCurSel FC_PRPCOMBO)]; something like that should work. Good luck.

The download links no longer work. Is it possible to still get a download of this? I would like to compare this with DAC, as it seems streamlined without too many features.

Thanks Gen B! I was actually wondering about this myself. Spliff: The wiki is a bit thin, but you can get some evry basic info there. http://community.bistudio.com/wiki....ress%29 This tutorial is a good start, but as it is for OFP, some things have changed: EG, you have to open the description.ext files and change all fonts to "bitstream", and I think example 3 crashes arma. http://www.ofpec.com/ed_depo....cat=xyz Dr_Eyeball's dialog framework is a good place to start making your own dialogs once you have the basics. http://www.flashpoint1985.com/cgi-bin....amework

Total thread necromancy, but as far as I know you can override any arma key input by detecting the keypress with a displayeventhandler and simply returning *true* as the function's return value. Thanks to Spooner for demonstrating how to do that. http://community.bistudio.com/wiki/displaySetEventHandler I'm using this trick to prevent esc from closing the child dialog and the main one; it'll only close the child if you're in the child, and the main if you're in the main. I haven't tested this just yet, but it should work. I'll repost if it somehow fails... Hopefully this tip will help someone out who needs it.

There was a thread about this a while ago with someone trying the exact same thing and detecting keypresses. If I remember correctly, a helicopter's flyinheight is unreliable for higher-lower, and it's hard to get it to move laterally. The question I'm wondering is, if we change the up vector of a helicopter, will it move on its own accord? Something to test. (From limited tests it does, briefly, but I don't think you can override the AI of the pilot) Perhaps by continuously changing the vector, you could have a simple 'flight model' for the helicopter while you were controlling it from another seat. Perhaps I'll look at this more in depth...

Speechless. I'm in love.

I have a few comments: It's hard to make a battle that takes most of the island without it feeling scattered: Arma can simulate at most (I think) about a company vs. a company of troops in MP before it bogs down (think 10-15 groups). Combat density for that in real life might be only 1 or 2 kilometers square, and having those forces fight across the entire island will give what you described, scattered undynamic battles over similar chokepoints. AI also has trouble moving long distances, and can hardly be expected to send a number of groups to a location and arrive synchronized. I might try to focus on a more limited area and expand from there. It's also a good idea to make each side have a limited number of forces, so one side can overpower the other and win. If the forces are constant and always respawn the battle will feel very static. (IE, a tank or helicopter dies and a new one comes back in its place.. this will eventually become boring). It's a good idea to have progressive objectives or zones that the sides fight over, so they can push forward (and perhaps push their spawn forward) and push the enemy back, so the field of battle changes slightly throughout play. I think this is a viable alternative to "activating" the whole island at once. I would also try to think of bases not as static headquarters or factories, but simply deployment or spawn sectors. That frees much of the AI from having to 'defend' important buildings or structures and it can focus on what it does best.. search and destroy, and local area guard. Arma AI is pretty bad at defense, and built up or strategically important bases just end up being magnets for lots of firepower and deathtraps for defenders. More interesting to fight over the towns than the bases. Maybe you can simply link deployment zones to some of the towns? That way some towns are strategically more important than others but you don't have to worry too much about static bases. This is a tall order, but I might think about having the AI and players use units from the same 'pool', so AI and players are treated in a similar fashion by the underlying game. (Maybe they spawn from the same spots, or spawn as the same types of units/groups, or they request units from the same pool). This way players don't feel like a sideshow to the AI's fight. I would shy away from activating and deactivating AI as players move around. This creates scalability problems when you have players moving across the map, all activating different groups of AI. If the game can handle one player and one 'set' of AI, it might have trouble with 15 players each activating their own 'set'. Also, this takes away from the "battle happening independently of the player" feel.. as the battles are actually *dependent* on the player's movements. My random two cents. Good luck. (OT: are you the same andersson that wrote andersson's gunship deathmatch way back for OFP? I loved that mission!