weaponsfree

Damn! Great progress guys. Now I just need a narrative that justifies a NATO/CSAT showdown in rural Germany.

Hey Variable. I think you already stumbled onto my stratis campaign (dardanelles) on steam, you left a comment a while back asking me about dedicated server and revive settings. Im not sure if said settings were what you required, but FYI I recently updated the missions with arsenal and BIS revive. Though im not sure how they fare on dedicated. You can find the links at the bottom of my description for my current Tanoa campaign (some connection between the two) : https://forums.bistudio.com/topic/193066-spco-5-mission-pack-venture/

Mission 4 added. Not too sure about this one. Semi linear, some unarmed stealth elements. Any feedback appreciated (in steam ideally ;)) Cheers

I'm glad despite your reservations you are keeping the project alive. Although I suspect you guys see this project more of an almost artistic project rather than a gameplay sandbox, you have many many fans eager to blow &*$% up inside your canvas. So many thanks again :)

Great thread! Wish I had gone through it a bit earlier since I am already halfway through making my Tanoa campaign. This is my second campaign (connected mission packs to be more precise), but I have to admit I don't put enough work in the narrative as I don't have time/resources/skill to build detailed cutscenes, or add voice work. I can share some thoughts and tips on making fun campaigns without strong in-mission narrative (Although I'm sure some of this is obvious): Keep the Story Simple and create an overarching goal to your campaign. If you won't be able to have a detailed and changing narrative, the overall arc of the campaign should be simple, and preferably communicated on the maps. For example in my first campaign, it was a straight "Nato takes Stratis" 6 mission campaign. The battle lines were always on the map, and progress was visible. Gameplay Flow between missions. The most basic flow I try to follow is alternating between High and Low action missions. This can take different forms : Stealth Followed by Combat. Small area mission followed by Large area missions. Linear mission followed by Open missions. The cadence doesn't have to be 1-2-1-2-1. It can be something like 2-2-1-1-2. Just as long as there is some contrast between missions. Unique Gameplay Flavor. If you don't have a strong narrative guiding your missions, your gameplay mechanics should give each mission a flavor, a hook. For example I make efforts in my current campaign to have at least some unique gameplay aspect for each mission :Mission 1 (linear/open): Boat based combat finale Mission 2 (linear): Being hunted in the jungle at night by IR Laser equipped bad guys Mission 3 (open): Searching for a hidden vehicle in the large Blue Pearl port Mission 4 (linear): Sneaking through a city as a civilian, avoiding getting too close to enemy patrols. Mission 5 (open/huge) : Clear an entire side Island, multiple open ended objectives. At least SOME narrative. Just because you don't have strong in-mission narrative doesn't mean you can't have some characters. Keep some characters throughout the campaign. A superior that gives orders. A team lead who updates the mission status. You can also have written briefing with personal touches, jokes n such. It is obviously not as ideal as having voice work and in-game cinematics, but for the player who takes the time to read them, it gives a little reward and flavor. My 2 cents! Cheers

Hm, I think I see what you mean. Two units are within the trigger area, but only one is actually detected by OPFOR, and both will have their setcaptive switched. Which sucks for the player who was actually still hidden. I'm checking the Trigger List Changed script you recommend, which is clearly above my paygrade, but from what I can see, it allows you to handle what to do with units entering and leaving the trigger area. But I'm not sure how this could be applied. In my case it's not the act of entering or leaving that requires an action, but rather the act of being spotted, and just because a particular unit was the last to enter the trigger zone, doesn't mean it's the one that will be spotted and therefor requiring the setcaptive switch. Although I may be misunderstanding the functions possible with these scripts. As for your other two, correct me if I'm wrong : A local trigger on each player (instead of on the enemy patrol) would have the same limitation no? If a player's trigger area includes another player, both will receive the setcaptive switch no? For the script you suggest : { if (captive _x) then {_x setCaptive false}; } forEach thisList; Is indeed useful, but since my triggers only change the setcaptive to false, isn't the "if (captive _x)" unnecessary? Because even if we catch an already "non-captive" unit in the trigger, it will just receive a redundent setcaptive false. Sorry if I misunderstand the suggestions you make. In any case, you point out a problem with my solution which IS problematic, so thanks for the help! I think the solution I would need is something that captures exactly which unit was spotted within a trigger zone. Probably something involving knowsabout.

I'm wondering, in an MP environment, Are "player in thislist" area triggers activated by any human players that encounter it? And AI units (of the same group or not) that enter the trigger zone won't? For example, in an MP mission, say I have a repeatable area trigger with "player in thislist" in the condition field. I have 5 playable units, 3 of which are human controlled, the other 2 AI (not grouped for this example). As all 5 units walk through the trigger one by one, it will fire each time a human controlled unit passes, and will NOT fire when AI passes through it? I'm asking here, because it is difficult to setup an actual test without buddies willing to test in MP. Hoping the splendid community has a clear answer. Cheers

Got it. Complete solution is : Condition of trigger attached to patrol : {isPlayer _x} count thisList > 0 On activation field : {_x setCaptive false} forEach thisList This solves both problems : 1. Only humans can activate the trigger 2. Only the units that actually activated the trigger get the Setcaptive change @Badbenson : Regarding your concern of "i'm not sure if the trigger would fire again if there is already a player in its activation zone. haven't used triggers in ages but i remember that being a thing." I'll try and test it out, see if that's actually a problem. Thanks for the help btw :)

So I've confirmed I can have the trigger only fire when a human enters it using this script in the condition field. {isPlayer _x} count thisList > 0 However I can't find a way to then trigger a setcaptive false to JUST that unit that walked into the trigger. I've tried a few variations of these in the On Act field. thislist setcaptive false _x setcaptive false [thislist, _x] setcaptive false And so on. Still not been able to make it work. I feel I'm reeeal close! Any ideas how to change setcaptive for only the units that actually fired the trigger?

In this case, will the code following then apply only to the unit that triggered the trigger? If so, that is exactly what I'm looking for for problem number 2 :) (will try it shortly). To mix it with the "are you human check", would look something like if (isPlayer _x && _unit in [P1, P2, P3, P4, P5]) then {_unit setcaptive false} I again apologize if reading that made some people bleed from the nose. I am an extreme beginner scripter. Ah yes, good call for the Detected by. Will allow much more realistic gameplay. Civilian detected by OPFOR since my units will be setcaptive true. Thanks!

I do need it to work in SP though... I basically need a script inside an area trigger that asks : Are you a human player? If so, what's your name? Ok unit_name I'm now removing JUST YOUR setcaptive state. If only scripting was so easy :P Right now I only seem to be able to do : Are you a human player? Yes? Ok you and ALL YOUR FRIENDS have setcaptive removed. Which is not what I want.

Well damn, that will be very useful. Thanks for the tip. Yes, I think this can be used for my purposes. But the more I work on the mission, the more I realize this is a little more complex than I first thought. Specifically : I have 5 playable units, set as captive that have a waypoint accross a city. There are multiple enemy patrols randomly walking around the city with area triggers attached to them. The idea is that the players have to avoid the patrols as they cross the city. If a player gets too close to a patrol, the attached trigger removes the setcaptive setting on that player, and the player gets shot at. The problem is that I want the mission to be playable in Single Player. Which means the 4 other playable units have to cross the city as AI's following a waypoint. However Arma AI being as it is, I can't expect AI controlled units to successfully avoid patrols and make it to the waypoint. So I want the triggers to simply ignore AI units, and only activate when humans are controlling them. So this gives me 2 problems to solve : 1. Make sure only human players trigger the patrols (player in thislist should work) 2. Ideally, make that only the individual unit that actually triggered the trigger gets their setcaptive removed, and only if they are human. This part is proving quite tricky. But I'm hoping that if one playable unit is discovered, it doesn't mean all the other 4 are now fired at. Not sure if all this is 100% clear, but any help would be appreciated as I am a very poor scripter. For now I'm going to try and confirm that problem 1 is solved.

In making coop missions for the public, I'm wondering what the comunity prefers in terms of getting back into the fight : Revive or Respawn. I'm not asking about permadeath since I prefer to always have an option to keep playing when with friends.

I only edit missions, I don't mod like you, and I have friends who ask me why I "work" on making Arma content... Hope you keep finding an answer to that question! Cause your modding makes my editing much easier :)

I'm getting some strange view distance behavior in and around the Blue Pearl Port on Tanoa (might be happening elsewhere, but not sure yet). First issue I got was when editing, I was previewing a mission and when using the splendid camera the viewdistance (or fog, I'm not sure), instantly closed in to less than 500 meters. Leaving the camera did not fix the issue. Manually changing the view distance did not fix the issue. Reloading a save DID work in returning to normal. Second similar issue was playing the same mission as an SP scenario, this time the render distance (again, or fog, not sure) suddenly went down to maybe 1300 meters. Reloading a save game did not fix it, manually changing the view distance did not fix it. I had to quit the mission entirely. I am interested in creating a tracker issue for this, but I don't have much time to isolate the issue, and asking here in case someone else has seen this and can better add steps to it. I am using 3den Enhanced.

Thanks for the test update Revo. I've seen some discussion of ambient animations on the thread, but I'm not sure what this fix addresses : ambient animation should now work in mp again as expected (fingers crossed) Issues I notice with ambient animations in SP and MP : - They are "permanent", in that AI can't leave the animation loop dynamically when shot at or hears combat for example. (I assume this is expected and part of vanilla arma) - Once placed in the editor, you can't move the unit until you remove the animation. Issues I notice with ambient animations combat in SP and MP : - If your AI squad mates are given a combat animation, you can't order them out of it. Or is your fix something else entirely? Cheers!

Pretty unanimous. My public missions will be keeping Revive. Although my buddies tend to be of the Battlefield tribe, so for personal matches I use respawn.

3rd Mission added. Original post updated with link.

I have not been able to find an answer to this question. Apex added a new Jungle Full Ghillie Suit, which look great but I was under the impression that the full ghillie's were DLC dependencies, meaning if I am creating a Tanoa mission with them, it will create a marksman DLC dependency, which I want to avoid as I want the only required dependencies for my mission to be Apex.

Thanks! I'm going to try fiddle around with this command.

I am trying to get units to change gear and activate setcaptive true when they enter a specific vehicle. The player will be able to select units from his group to add to the vehicle, so that only units that are actually in the vehicle get the gear change and setcaptive. Right now I'm thinking of attaching a trigger to the vehicle that has a thislist script to change the gear. But even this requires some scripting that is a little beyond my skills. If possible, this should only occur when first entering the vehicle, to avoid a reset of the gear each time a unit enters. Any help on how to accomplish this would be greatly appreciated! As a reference, this is the gear I want players to receive upon entering (on top of the setcaptive true) : removeAllWeapons this; removeAllItems this; removeAllAssignedItems this; removeUniform this; removeVest this; removeBackpack this; removeHeadgear this; removeGoggles this; this forceAddUniform "U_Competitor"; this addItemToUniform "FirstAidKit"; this addItemToUniform "30Rnd_556x45_Stanag"; this addVest "V_Rangemaster_belt"; for "_i" from 1 to 4 do {this addItemToVest "30Rnd_556x45_Stanag";}; this addHeadgear "H_Cap_blk_ION"; this addWeapon "arifle_SPAR_01_blk_F"; this addPrimaryWeaponItem "optic_Holosight_blk_F"; this linkItem "ItemMap"; this linkItem "ItemCompass"; this linkItem "ItemWatch"; this linkItem "ItemRadio";

Great! Randomly is surely better, to avoid patterns in the crowds. Cheers

It just keeps getting better! This will be very helpful. I have to copy paste multiple kits when making missions, this will save a bunch of time. One question/suggestion though. I tend to make a lot of irregular troops (militia, gangs, armed civilians, etc). Would it be possible to copy multiple loadouts, and apply them to multiple target units? For example, I select 3 different units with different loadouts, Copy Loadout, then select 20 different targets, Apply Loadout, and the 3 kits are distributed evenly to all 20 units? In any case, looking forward to using this feature! Thanks again for all the hard work R3vo. I think he already answered this :) :

Glad you liked it! I'm the only one testing my missions, so if you find some problems bugs or issues with flow/difficulty I'd be interested to hear.

Folding this into my mission pack : https://forums.bistudio.com/topic/193066-spco-5-mission-pack-venture/