The_Captain

Re: eventhandlers: Some eventhandlers execute on all machines (like dammaged), and some only where the unit is local (like killed or hit). If you have a publicvariable in a handler that is executed on all machines, all machines will send out a publicvariable. If it's local, it'll just be sent from the one machine. For example, I use dammaged for my vehicle damage script so the effects are 'global'. If I used hit or killed, I might need to use a publicvariable in the handler to notify the other computers that said unit was hit or killed... The wiki list of arma eventhandlers notes which are executed globally or locally.

Here you go: http://community.bistudio.com/wiki/displaySetEventHandler

Technically Berzerk is inspired by Battlefield 1985, which was an OFP map which appeared right around when BF1942 came out (2001-2). BF2 is as much of a clone of that sort of gameplay as Berzerk may be...

I would like to see Arma's PvP aspect improved *before* Arma II. I realize that Arma II will provide an influx of players, but it cannot be assumed that the desired gameplay will magically appear as well. In my opinion, competitive quality PvP is what drives public PvP. With clan and organized interest in a competitive game, public interest seems to follow. If a game cannot be sustained in a competitive context (buggy, laggy, unbalanced, too-simple gameplay), then it likely will not catch on with the public. If I recall correctly, the CTI leagues started roughly a year after MFCTI was introduced in fall 2002, after it had matured. By this point it was clearly not 'too late' for OFP to develop a new PvP scene. It seems that the same could be true for Arma. While it might be too late to revive the same PvP scene that floundered when Arma was released, it may not be too late to begin a new scene if the community can rally behind it. Maybe this will come through config mods to fix gameplay issues, new maps or modes, or all inclusive mods such as ACE. Many of the issues outlined in this thread are certainly important, and if fixed and widely distributed, they would make the game far more fun in public or competitive PvP. Me, I just want to hop on an available server, with no fuss, and have fun shooting at other people. I suspect others would like the same. If as a community, we can discover what we like in PvP before Arma II, there's a chance the success can carry into the sequel and benefit the new community.

Will try out CEX recon and The Cause. Thanks for the recommendations.

What I want to know is... why does competitive PvP always imply CTF? Though the CTF scene in OFP was substantial, the basic 16v16 Capture and Hold maps (popularized by Tactician & the SHoP server, among others) were quite a lot of fun, and usually there were at least 2-3 full servers if not more. Why have we not seen maps like these considered for public Arma play? It seems with the slightly larger battlegrounds and increased usage of vehicles, these maps would rely *less* on quick animation precision than CTF maps, though the animations certainly remain important. Thus this map style should be more suited to competitive play than the quicker CTF maps which place more importance on individual player movement precision. (I don't count Berzerk as a CnH equivalent, as Berzerk is much closer to the old Battlefield 1985 than the simple CnH missions. The CnH maps had vehicles respawning at base, usually 3 non-spawnable control points for both sides to capture, a point tally increased when objectives were held, and a smaller selection of gear than berzerk. Simple and with good overall cooperation among publics. My favorite job was as a transport pilot ferrying troops to the drop zones...)

2x1 km might be too much if all four sectors are active at one time. 17v17 would likely fill out the server, but most PvP missions need to be fun with low-ish player counts (say 4 or 5 per side) to keep players playing, to attract more players, to eventually fill out to 17v17. If you imagine 4v4 players, the 2x1 KM sounds like a stretch. You might think about progressive respawn and moving the active sector when one side captures it. IE, when side A captures objective A, objective B becomes active and both sides' spawn points move accordingly. Hard respawn limits, or a timer that increases the more players that have died might encourage cooperation: If one side can get an advantage by killing off the other team (reducing their respawns, equipment, local presence, whatever), and push towards a victory, the other team will quickly realize that to prevent losing they must work together. If by acting as lone wolves the team does not quickly lose against a coordinated enemy (like if respawn was effectively instant), they will see little incentive to work together. I think the key to a realistic feeling PvP mission is intensity and duration of combat, and combat longevity. If the players are too dispersed and not focused (ie, all four objectvies are active, so few players are near each other at any one time), then any combat is going to be painfully short. If you can figure out a way to corral players into fighting over the same objectives, then everyone's fun will increase, especially if you've limited gear and 'whoring' as you've outlined. Good luck

I'd be very interested in a generic suppression framework. I'm not quite sure what I'd want to be added other than just what's been stated: calculating a group or individual soldiers' suppression levels, and then being able to Do Things with that in the code. One of many things that I'd like to do, is when a player's AI 'breaks', he joins a null group which is already set to fleeing, and thus he breaks from the squad and runs. The suppression framework (esp separated from the condition code), would make such little tweaks easy.

The only close combat's I've played are: 1) Demo of CC1 *waaay* back in the day, and 2) Close Combat III. I quite enjoy CC3 for the 1v1 gameplay, and don't really play it against AI. It seems the CC5 maps would be a bit large for good 1v1 head to head play, and I feel the combat density in CC3 was spot on. I'd love to hear about CC:MT from a fellow arma player. I've read the official forums but haven't found a personal impression that's convinced me either way. When mimicking the CC3 density in Arma (8-16 squads or vehicles per side in a 300x500m area), the battles feel quite close to the intensity of the CC series. Obviously modern weapon lethality suggests a slightly lower density, but the rough feel is quite enjoyable. The MP game mode I'm developing actually stemmed from playing lots of CC3, and trying to figure out why CC3's battles were so intense compared with typical arma MP. My first thought was the combat density and overall engagement should be mimicked, and when simulated, the battles in arma approximate what the poor sods in CC must be experiencing. When walker mentions CEX as an analogy to CC, I think he's referring to the increased density and control (platoon and company size actions in a limited area) and the enjoyment that it brings to the player. I've heard about the CC3 remake, but as I'm quite happy with CC3 original, I'm not really convinced enough to spend $50 for a copy of COI for myself and the guys I like to play against... UNN, afaik CC:MT supports 5v5 player matches, not just head to head, and I think this was one of the primary focuses of development (and part of the reason why there was no dynamic/continuing sp/mp campaign)

My only problem with commanding missions (IE, platoon size and up) is the same problem I have with SF missions, actually: the entire outcome of the battle often depends on the player's actions and forces, and usually there are not many friendly or supporting units. This makes the games tend towards more frustrating, as poor moves by the player in commanding his forces can signal a defeat, and the player feels like the responsibility for victory is entirely upon him. AI subordinate squads do not display tactical initiative, essentially forcing the platoon commander to act as platoon commander AND squad commander for each squad (positioning them, giving them appropriate orders, etc). 'Classic' OFP infantry missions usually allowed the player a degree of latitude while friendly forces engaged the enemy along with the player: He could simply hide behind a fence while the AI fought, and the battle would carry on without him. Usually the missions were balanced carefully such that the player would lose if he left the mission *entirely* up to supporting forces, and could win if he simply managed to survive while also killing enemies and completing the objective (or supporting the friendly forces in completing it). This careful balance where the player has partial, but not full responsibility for mission success (and half the player's job is simply staying alive) is where I feel a great deal of the fun lies. Sometimes when I'm under fire, I simply want to worry about surviving and not babysitting my platoon or worrying that completion of the mission objective relies solely on me. I think SF missions would be more enjoyable for me if the mission success didn't rely entirely upon me. I don't necessarily always want to take out an entire base by myself. I would be happy conducting recon or key target destruction missions while I enabled friendly forces to locate and destroy the enemy (as long as I could watch or assist). </rant>

Personally, i would prefer to play PvP than coop. My favorite public server mission is '[DM][20] gdtdeathmatch'. I forget which server I've played it on, but it usually shows up on Berzerk servers. Setup: up to 20 players, randomly spawn on Ramahdi, and can create a random helicopter or tank with an action menu command. Tanks spawn with an AI driver. Hellicopters don't have AT rockets. Similar to Andersen's gunship DM and similar, except the list of spawnables is reduced to simply zsu/bmp/vulcan/t72/m1a1/ah1/uh60/mi17/ka50, tanks get drivers, and there are no jets or guided AT missiles. Call arma itself, and its infantry or vehicle combat, unrealistic, and clunky, etc, etc, etc. But such a deathmatch, pitting helicopters and ground vehicles against each other on the small island of ramahdi, is intense and quite fun! Ramahdi is small enough so that you can reliably find most other players while still having enough terrain to hide from them. Players are out to kill each other, and displaying your position too long or revealing yourself by fire leads to a quick death. There is no traveling 10 minutes to the action after respawn, no flags to capture, and no cities to conquer. It's simply balls-up DM on a 1000m island with rolling terrain. Why is it the most fun Arma PvP I've played? You can have a continuous amount of fun, and the victor in the small engagements is the one who is intelligent and exploits advantages in other players. Tanks aren't neutered by being forced to have one crew, so you can reliably move and shoot as a tanker without being either blind or immobile half the time. Want to fire your shilka at a helicopter? The other players are going to spot your tracers, so you should move! Want to attack a tank from long range? You had better be sure of killing it (with whatever your weapon), as once it spots you you'll quickly be dead. Though the setup is laughably unrealistic, the combat engagements feel far more realistic than most SP or MP arma missions, and that's why I like GDT Deathmatch. Call me a philistine, but playing 20 minutes of this deathmatch is more cerebral and more rewarding, for me, than a few hours of playing either Berzerk or Evo. More Arma PvP should have a similar balance of fun and skill needed. If there were a team based, objective oriented MP mode that had a similar combat balance, I'd play it exclusively. To the answer of PvP or Coop, I say "N/A": As it is, I spend 99% of my time either in ArmaEdit or Arma itself testing and debugging missions...

Ai are great at offensive actions: IE, that which involves killing. tanks, choppers, and infantry are all great at pulling the trigger. AI are unskilled at defensive, preservation actions. They're awful at preserving their own skin. Their tanks don't go hull down, their infantry don't hide behind cover, and helicopters don't pop up from behind treelines. This is their key disadvantage when compared to human players, who may not have the same quick trigger or situational awareness all the time. On a one on one basis, I get stomped far more by humans than I do against AI. When you're outnumbered by an AI, and they fire at you without regard for their own lives.. you're in trouble. A squad of human players against a squad of AI players will usually emerge victorious, as the humans will try to preserve their own lives while the AI will simply shoot and shoot and shoot and eventually die. Treat the AI as 'rambo' players who simply want to run forward and engage the enemy without thinking about their own skins. You'll generally win as long as you're not grossly outnumbered. In a competitive game, 2v10 odds would be considered grossly unfair.. or at least, the team with two players would generally be expected to lose. With 2 humans versus 10 ai, we seem to expect the humans to win, and if not, it's 'unfair'. Of _course_ it's unfair. The end.

For users of the CWR mod: If you port some of the infantry missions from OFP's campaign that were on Malden/Abel to Arma/CWR, they're quite fun! My favorite missions in the OFP campaign had me as a part of or leading a small infantry squad, with one or two other squads and perhaps a tank or gunship for support. That scale allows the individual infantry soldier a good amount of control over the battle without it being overwhelming. When a large battle is set up in arma (8+ tanks, many squads, etc), the individual infantryman doesn't have much fun, and can't really affect the battle in a meaningful way. Small battles that emphasize the importance of the squad, whether the player is in control or merely a part, are the most enjoyable for me.

A few things that throw off Berzerk's AT vs. Vehicle balance: 1) All/most infantry have an AT launcher. IRL only a small portion of soldiers have launchers. This means that any infantryman you encounter is immediately dangerous. 2) Most humans drive vehicles from the driver position, alone, without weapons ready. To engage a launcher equipped soldier, they must halt, switch to gunner, rotate the turret to aim, and fire. It's also very difficult to spot soldiers with launchers in this manner. This swings the balance in the favor of the infantry. 3) Infantry usually swarm the areas vehicles are likely to travel in, and vehicles usualy travel blindly into these areas. Hence, coffins. Vehicles in berzerk are deadly when someone sits just beyond a ridgeline in a tank and uses the main gun and machine gun as long range support. In short, lone vehicles with no crew ready on the weapons scanning for targets, blindly traveling into areas full of rocket equipped infantry... are going to freaking die. I know it's hard to get a fully manned vehicle in Berzerk, but many times I've been annhiliated as infantry by a fully manned tank or APC sitting 500+m away from the action, behind cover. If you treat your vehicle not as a PanzerDeathWagon, and instead as a vulnerable weapons delivery platform with a long range, it helps survivability immeasurably. Some might call that "camping" and "lame", and I call it a viable and survivable tactic.

I had a similar bug when I installed the latest FFAM sounds. The G36C had zero recoil, and I couldn't figure out why. First I assumed it was a bug with 1.09, but then I realized it was the FFAM sounds. I didn't check the silenced weapons, though... Perhaps this one is the culprit?

I played berzerk 2.0 on [MSD] Truppenuebungsplatz yesterday. 1- It's very slick. New interfaces and overall smoothness 2- It runs fast. The code is highly optimized! 3- New features like mobile HQ, HUD, smoke launchers on tanks, etc 4- I wish people would have joined while I was playing... No addons needed! Come on, 1.09 PvP people!

I think in the 'glory days' of OFP, OFPEC served this exact function. I went to it daily for the unofficial comref, forums, addon depot, tutorials, and resources. Now, in arma, I don't think OFPEC has the same impact as a community rally point. I do wish it did, however.

This solution sounds like wave respawn, but with the trigger to release the wave being a number of people waiting rather than a time limit (like 5 minutes). Two suggestions: 1) write a dialog or interface to keep players at until they respawn. This would negate the need to keep them in a walled enclosure and be portable between maps. you can also respawn them wherever you want: on a squad leader, at the mose forward base, whatever 2) allow players to respawn if the wave timer has reached 5 minutes, or some maximum limit, but respawn the wave if a minimum threshold is reached (5 or so players). This allows dead players to still respawn if the maximum time is reached.

BIS is a small company, and they can't tailor their already released game to the exact needs and wishes of the community. Many community members have extensive experience in various areas, and potentially this experience could translate into high quality paid addons. Individual members and small teams are more nimble than BIS as a whole, and could do a good job at satisfying what players want. However, there are some obvious issues: 1) Copy protection (in a download-to-play addon system) 2) Intercompatibility between addons & players 3) Limited utility for buyers & small market size 4) Differentiation between free addon quality and paid addon quality 5) BIS' overall involvement in regulating/authorizing products and release, as well as sorting out legal issues. 6) Customer entitlement vs. developer profit 1) Copy protection or some sort of anti piracy system would need to be developed if simple PBO's are going to be offered for sale. Otherwise, they will be freely traded, which undermines the financial motives of the developer. Copy protection is usually a losing battle, especially when added to an open format like Arma's PBO's. This would be a difficult problem to solve. With the 'like it free' mentallity of the Arma community, I'm not sure an honor system release would be profitable either. 2) Not all players will have all pay-to-play addons, esp if many are released piecemeal. Heck, it's hard enough to get a group of players to download the same set of free addons to their hard drive to be able to play together. If the addons or packs had to be purchased? Cost aside, the hassle is an even bigger problem. The hassle and cost involved might lead to a splintered community that finds it difficult to play together. 3) Addon buyers would be doing little more than downloading the packs and playing with them, which they can do well enough with the myriad of free addons. This suggests that the market for paid addons is not very large, nor lucrative (what, $5 addons?). Individual addons would seem to not offer enough 'bang' for a user's buck, and most users would ignore them. In addition, the relatively small pool of Arma players would negate any advantages in pricing the addons at a low price. 4) Free addons can make use of content others have developed (sounds, models, etc, from original game or other media), and most people don't mind, as the author isn't trying to profit. A paid addon would need to make all aspects from scratch, which could be an expensive and time consuming proposition. Furthermore, there's no guarantee that a paid addon would be of significantly better quality a free addon, especially considering free addons can usually rip commercial content. The paid addon would need to be priced to leverage its advantage over free content, and if this is low, then the makers of the paid addon will likely not profit much. 5) BIS would need to spend time hammering out the legal issues involved in such a process: contracts, NDA's, lawyers. At the very least, a large amount of BIS' effort would need to be spent in setting up such deals with the addon authors; time and effort which would likely not be recouped (given the small number of potential buyers). 6) People are cheap. Don't sell to cheap people. Cheap people are whiny and demand features and support from a developer far beyond their buy-in price. Arma addons would naturally have to be priced low to attract any sort of interest, but in selling them at a low price one would attract buyers who felt entitled to the developer's time, effort, and support. However, if the addons were priced relative to the amount of time that was required to make them, I'd expect most addons would be priced at $50+... At any rate, I would forsee an unhappy developer who never felt that his time had value. One of the natural benefits to Arma and OFP were that once you paid for the game once, community releases and patches to this very open game would extend the product beyond your initial purchase. Offering addons for players to buy on top of their initial purchase undermines this obvious advantage and leaves a bad taste in many people's mouths. I already paid my $50 for arma, and I'm not terribly interested in investing more unless it's obviously worth my money. I can't see producing paid addons being a profitable enterprise. I would expect it would be more of a hobby, with a slight income, but with all of the hassles of producing and maintaining a commerical product. I would think it would be much more satisfying to develop an addon that you, as an author enjoy, and make it available for others to further enjoy. Edit: Ack, I just realized that the OP was referring more to a commission system: You want a harrier, or osprey, and you pay the addon author a princely sum to develop it. Work for hire, as it were, though who retains the rights? The commissioner or the original author? This negates most of my concerns above, but it would still be a difficult proposition by the author.

Good idea for the initiative. Usually the biki is helpful only if you already know what you want to do: You're looking up a specific command you know about, and checking someone else's notes on that. Often to find the *real* meaty discussions or answers, I have to search the official and ofpec forums, as well as all the obscure corners of the biki, to get a specific answer. One thing on the biki I'd like to see more of (and really helps) is when people link to relevant discussions or forum threads from the comments page. Of course, I'm completely guilty of what you outline, sickboy: I'll search and search until I find out some piece of information, but then I just use it and don't really share it with others. I think an open avenue to share information (perhaps as a part of the biki) would be a great idea...

OFP is a great laptop game. I have a celeron 1.4, built in video, and 1gb ram, and OFP runs silky smooth.

QFT: Low density of Arma PvP maps is one thing that kills the fun. A company of troops on the offense IRL has something like an 800m frontage. In arma PvP map makers get two steps ahead of themselves, and expect 20 humans to fight over half the island. ~100+ troops in 1km^2 would be a proper density to encourage teamwork. In a low density battlefield, sticking near other players is a great way to get shot and noticed. Being alone and stealthy is a better option when enemies could be hiding anywhere. In many other games, including OFP, I've noticed that given the right set of incentives, random people WILL work together and cooperate. If the game doesn't encourage it, they won't. @Walker, what sort of MP do you play? How do you use CEX in your missions? How are the PvP coops organized? I've read your SP battle reports, but just curious about the MP...

There are great PvP, Coop, and CTI style maps. And bad ones. And mediocre ones. Good players + good map of any sort, especially ones that leverage the best parts of arma, equal a fun game. That's my 2 cents. (For the record, I maintain that Coop maps are often playable with 1 or 3 players on a server, so you're more likely to see lots of servers at once, as it's easier to get a game going. PvP maps with high player counts often attract browsing players to the same few servers, so while the player counts when compared to coop might be similar, the PvP maps are usually only on a few servers at a time.)

I've read the 2.3 online help.. very insightful! Default arma missiles are woefully bad (they have wobbly seeking unless you fire them just so), and I'd like to improve matters. As my mission requires no addons, I'm excited about using MM to achieve improved performance since it's addon free... My goal is a bit of a tall order: to replace all missiles in default arma with mando ones, fired by AI or players, in manual or automatic guidance, with countermeasures available against guided missiles for airborne vehicles. I would love to integrate MM into my mission, but I have a few questions: Is it possible to have a unit operate as both an AI MM launcher and a player targetted MM launcher at the same time? (I use teamswitch within squads, so the same vehicle must have both capabilities). Can a unit have the ability to drop AI flares *and* player flares? If a player unit has AI flares enabled, will it automatically dump flares when a missile is fired at it? What I would specifically like to do is enable manual gunnery and AI 'guided' gunnery on humvees, strykers, BRDM's, and BMP-2's. For hellfires, vihkr's, stingers, strelas, and javelins, I think I can get away with using your incoming-missile handler. Would it be posible for me to write a method for the MM scripts to retain missile firing/ammo restrictions for manually guided missiles (ie the mando script fires on a fired eventhandler), but the player's movement of the optics guides the missile? I'm most interested in using Mando style TOW's with the fainter smoke trail.. that would make TOW's far more useful. As an aside, I'd also like to ruin the guidance functions for AA launchers when firing at ground vehicles. I think I could do this by replacing missiles fired on ground vehicles with the MM incoming-handler, and giving them crazy or random flight characteristics? (ie, guidance messed up by being close to the ground). How might this work with mando-scripts? A second aside: the default Arma javelins seem to clip or such when they near a target, or at least miss by only a few meters. Before I realized I could use MM, I wrote a simple eventhandler script that setposses the javelins to the target vehicle's position when they get within 20meters. Do MM javelins similarly fix the default and buggy arma javelin clipping/missing behavior? I'd like to ditch my hack if possible. I'd additionally like to use stryker tow's and BRDM's as AA missile launching platforms. When you add AA missiles to those vehicles in vanilla arma, they work with player control but AI refuse to fire. Can I use a combination of MM scripts to get around this? (IE, manual player control as well as AI actually firing missiles at the enemy aircraft) Thanks in advance!

The local and isnull checks do take a few seconds to recognize. This can mean if a player disconnects and reconnects instantly in the same server slot, your script might not notice they have disconnected. In most cases that shouldn't be an issue, In my case, I used !alive as the unit dies instantly when the player disconnects, and the function activates quicker. (I also have instantaneous respawn on the player objects). I also had some problems with onPlayerDisconnected and onPlayerConnected so I switched to using a script that polls every second. For example, if you were using a local or isnull check, your onplayerdisconnected would need to have a wait to wait until the player was null (as it only fires once). Otherwise, it will fire instantly but may not detect the locality change in time. Good luck.